Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg shares a laugh with Pittsburgh Tribune-Review higher education writer Bill Zlatos (right) following the June 24 Board of Trustees meeting.

In a surprise announcement at the annual meeting of the University’s Board of Trustees June 24, Board Chair Ralph J. Cappy revealed that Pitt trustees, board members of the Pitt Alumni Association, and other Pitt alumni and friends have made a combined gift of $2.4 million to establish the endowed Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg University Chair to honor Nordenberg’s 10 years of leadership as Pitt chancellor. Nordenberg assumed leadership of the University at the Board of Trustees’ annual meeting in June 1995.

In making the announcement, Cappy, chief justice of Pennsylvania, said: “This endowed chair indicates the extraordinary esteem in which we hold Mark Nordenberg, not only as an individual and a leader who has brought the University to an unprecedented level of success and achievement, but also as a true academic at heart. And for a person who is a true academic, the highest honor one can bestow is to endow a faculty chair in his or her name in perpetuity.” Cappy also said he considers it “an honor to serve as chair of the board” during a period in which “Mark has led us to such great accomplishments” and “a pleasure to work diligently with Mark and his leadership team on achieving our goals.”

Nordenberg said of the honor: “This came as a complete surprise, and I admit to being overwhelmed, both by the fact that a chair has been named in my honor and by the generosity and commitment that made its creation possible. As I said to the members of the board at the time of the announcement, they paid me the highest professional honor in electing me chancellor, and I am deeply grateful for all they have done over the course of the past decade to help move Pitt forward. In a very real sense, then, I am the one who should be thanking them.”

The chair, the 63rd endowed faculty position to be funded during Pitt’s $1 billion Discover a World of Possibilities fundraising campaign, is the first of its kind at the University in that it can be used to endow a chair in any of Pitt’s 16 schools and colleges. It will, according to Cappy, “reward in perpetuity distinguished individual faculty members for the top-flight research, scholarship, and teaching we all prize at Pitt.” The capital campaign, announced in October 2000, has raised more than $800 million in gifts and pledges to date and broken its record as the most successful fundraising campaign in Southwestern Pennsylvania’s history.

Appointments to the new chair, as with all chairs at Pitt, will be made by the incumbent chancellor upon the recommendation of the provost or the senior vice chancellor for the health sciences. It will be held by each honoree for the length of that faculty member’s active Pitt academic career.

“Endowed chairs are critical to a university’s ability to attract and retain truly exceptional faculty,” said Pitt Provost James V. Maher. “The establishment of the Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg University Chair is a fitting testament to Chancellor Nordenberg’s longstanding commitment—as a professor, as an academic administrator, and as a chancellor—to respect for faculty excellence.”

“As someone who works closely with Mark Nordenberg on a day-to-day basis, I know how deeply he cares about students and faculty, because at his core, he is still the concerned, committed, and energized scholar he was when he first came to Pitt as an assistant visiting professor 28 years ago,” commented Pitt Vice Chancellor for Institutional Advancement Albert J. Novak, the administrator in charge of the Discover a World of Possibilities campaign. “Therefore, I can think of no better way of honoring him than by creating this chair, which will benefit students and faculty members alike.”

Donors interested in supporting the new endowed chair fund at any level may call the Pitt Office of Institutional Advancement at 1-800-817-8943 or 412-624-5814 or make gifts online at www.giveto.pitt.edu.