LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT Karl H. Lewis, associate professor emeritus in the Pitt School of Engineering’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, gets a congratulatory hug during a recent ceremony honoring him with the National Society of Black Engineers’ 2006 Golden Torch Award for Lifetime Achievement in Academia. The award honors individuals “who have produced a consistent body of highly distinguished work, served as role models for others, and advanced opportunities for African Americans” in engineering.

• Bernard D. Goldstein, Pitt professor of environmental and occupational health and former dean of the University’s Graduate School of Public Health, has been named chair of the National Board of Public Health Examiners, a new organization dedicated to credentialing public health graduates. Public health currently is the only health field without a credentialing program.

• Sandra J. Quinn, associate professor in the Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences and associate dean for student affairs and education in Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health, has been accepted as a fellow into the 2006-07 class of the Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Program for Women from Drexel University College of Medicine.

ELAM is a program designed for senior women faculty at the associate or full professor level at U.S. and Canadian medical, dental, and public health schools who want to assume higher levels of responsibility within their institutions and advance to positions of greater leadership.

• Joseph S. Alter, a professor in the Department of Anthropology in Pitt’s School of Arts and Sciences, has received the 2006 Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize from the South Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) for his book, Yoga in Modern India: The Body Between Science and Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2004).

A sociocultural anthropologist whose area of interest is South Asia, Alter has conducted research on the symbolic meaning of the body in the practice of Indian wrestling; the relationship between sexuality, male celibacy, and nationalism in postcolonial India; and the development of scientific yoga therapy as a modern, middle-class form of public health in urban India. He is the author of several other books, including The Wrestler’s Body: Identity and Ideology in North India (University of California Press, 1992) and Knowing Dil Das: Stories of a Himalayan Hunter (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).

• Carol Larson, assistant director for outreach and management in Pitt’s Office of Study Abroad, and Lynnett Van Slyke, director of the University’s Office of Disability Resources and Services, are the winners of the National Clearinghouse on Disability and Exchange’s Campus Collaboration Campaign.

Their proposal presents a collaborative approach between their two offices to encourage students with nonapparent disabilities to consider their study abroad options, outlining a process for the two offices to work together with students to develop a plan to make necessary accommodations and prepare for potential obstacles that students with nonapparent disabilities could face when traveling outside of the United States.

Larson and Van Slyke have received $1000 toward presenting as part of a panel at the “Educating and Accommodating Students with Visible and Non-Apparent Disabilities Abroad” session at the National Association of Foreign Student Advisors national conference on May 26 in Montreal.

AMVP TREATMENT Senior guard and team MVP Carl Krauser (pictured) and other members of the Pitt 2005-06 men’s basketball squad signed autographs for fans during the team’s annual awards banquet last month. Krauser earned the Most Valuable Player Award after becoming the third player in Pitt history to play in four consecutive NCAA Tournaments and win 20-plus games in four consecutive seasons; he also led the Panthers in scoring (15 points per game), steals (53), and assists (160). Pitt finished the season with records of 25-8 overall and 10-6 in the Big East Conference and advanced to a school-record fifth consecutive NCAA Tournament. Some 300 student-athletes, alumni, fans, coaches, family members, and support staff attended the awards banquet, held in the Downtown Hilton.

• Melissa Somma, assistant professor in the Pitt School of Pharmacy’s Department of Pharmacy and Therapeutics, has been invited to serve on the American Pharmaceutical Association and National Association of Chain Drug Stores Foundation Steering Committee for the development of the National Medication Therapy Management (MTM) Training Program. The program is being designed in an effort to provide practicing pharmacists with tools needed to establish MTM services in community-based pharmacies.

• Daniel Dewey, assistant professor of foreign language education in Pitt’s School of Education, has received a $400,000, three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s International Research and Studies Program for a study that will focus on producing profiles of some 1,000 Americans who achieve advanced proficiency in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean before, during, and after studying abroad.

• At the 2006 Distinguished Alumni Awards Banquet April 19, Pitt’s School of Engineering honored James J. McGrath as its 2006 Distinguished Alumnus. Vibha Rustagi received the school’s 2006 Young Alumni Award, given to alumni in the early stages of their careers who have contributed significantly to engineering.

McGrath, who earned the Bachelor of Science degree in chemical and petroleum engineering at Pitt in 1971, is president of Aker Kvaerner, Inc., of Houston. McGrath has more than 30 years experience in domestic and international engineering, construction management, project management, and executive management of heavy industrial projects ranging from chemical plants to steelmaking facilities. He received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Pitt’s Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering in 1998 and is a past chair of that department’s visiting committee.

Rustagi is the founding partner, president, and CEO of Itaas Inc. of Duluth, Ga. Rustagi received the Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Pitt. She recently was featured among the “Top 40 Under 40 Up and Comers” by the Atlanta Business Chronicle and was selected as one of the top 100 most influential minorities in cable by Cable World magazine.

• Prem Soman, assistant professor of medicine in Pitt’s School of Medicine and assistant director of nuclear cardiology and director of nuclear cardiology research in the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Cardiovascular Institute, has been awarded the 2006 American College of Cardiology Foundation/GE Healthcare Career Development Award in Cardiovascular Imaging.

Soman’s research is focused on noninvasive imaging of the heart with radionuclide techniques and echocardiography. He has coauthored several articles and book chapters in the field, including a widely adopted position paper on the cost-effectiveness of myocardial perfusion imaging for the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology.

DEE-LIGHTED Pittsburgh City Council recently passed a proclamation honoring Delores “Dee” Johnson for her 47 years of service as a Pitt staff member. Johnson retired in November 2005 as a communications support services specialist in the University’s Office of Public Affairs. A 2000 recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence for Staff Employees, she held the distinction of being Pitt’s longest-serving female employee. City Councilwoman Twanda Carlisle sponsored the council proclamation.

• The Small Business Development Center (SBDC) of the Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence in Pitt’s Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business has received the 2006 Award of Excellence for Capital Formation from the Small Business Administration’s Pittsburgh District Office. SBDC was honored for its success in helping new and growing businesses to secure financing.

• Rick Cancelliere (CBA ’06), a founding member of the Entrepreneurs’ Society of Pitt’s Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence, has been named the Small Business Administration’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year for Western Pennsylvania. Founder of his own Web design company at age 15, Cancelliere founded Forward Labs, his second company, in 2003 to help clients with Web, print, and interactive design, as well as branding and identity creation.

• A business plan developed by Pitt junior Andrew Reichert was one of only 16 selected from U.S. and Canadian universities for presentation this spring at the Venture Adventure Competition in Fort Collins, Colo. Reichert’s plan also placed second recently in Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper Venture Challenge Business Plan Competition.

Reichert’s plan envisions a company, Acadaid, that will help college students and their parents and guardians to navigate the financial aid process; eventually, the company would offer its own loan program. In developing his plan, Reichert received guidance from business professionals through the Big Idea Competition sponsored by the Entrepreneurs’ Society of Pitt’s Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence.

• Vernell A. Lillie, cofounder of Pitt’s Kuntu Repertory Theatre, has won one of six 2006 Governor’s Awards for the Arts. Lillie, a Pitt associate professor of Africana Studies, will receive the Pennsylvania Creative Community Award, which recognizes those who use the arts to address community issues.

• Brian L. Houston, a Pitt-Johnstown assistant professor of civil engineering technology, has received the “2006 Professor of the Year Award” from the Pittsburgh Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

Houston is the Pitt-Johnstown ASCE club advisor and also is involved in research and engineering practice. He has helped to organize and advise students on numerous community projects, such as helping local Boy Scouts earn their engineering merit badge.

• Heidi Mackowski, director of special events at Pitt-Bradford, is director-elect of the Association of Collegiate Conference and Events Director – International’s Region 11, which includes 300 members in New Jersey, New York, Ontario, Pennsylvania, and Quebec.

STAFF EXCELLENCE Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg hosted a reception for the six recipients of the 2006 Chancellor’s Awards for Staff Excellence in service to the community and to the University. From left: William E. McGahey, a School of Engineering systems analyst; Andrea J. Leibfreid, a secretary at Pitt’s Johnstown campus; Nordenberg; Margaret Chalus, secretary and administrator to the William Pitt Debating Union; Gregory L. Rodden, an electrical foreman in the Office of Facilities Management: Linus Ronald Pryal, a precision production machinist at Pitt-Johnstown; and Donald O. Johnson, a mail carrier at Pitt-Bradford.

• The Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society (TMS) will present its Application to Practice Award to Frederick S. Pettit, a professor in the Pitt engineering school’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, for his contributions to the development of protection systems for high-temperature alloys. TMS presents the award to individuals who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in transferring research results in some aspect of the fields of metallurgy and materials science into commercial production and practical use as a representative of an industrial, academic, governmental, or technical organization. Pettit will receive the award on Feb. 27, 2007, during the TMS Annual Meeting in Orlando, Fla.

Pettit and Gerald H. Meier, also a professor in the engineering school’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, have received a grant of approximately $250,000 from Apogee Technology, Inc., to collaborate on a U.S. Department of Energy project on the isothermal melting process for aluminum. This technology allows melting of aluminum with as little as 25 percent of the energy used in conventional melting, with no in-plant emissions.

Successful completion of the project will result in the development of more durable and efficient heaters. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that industrywide use of the isothermal melting process would save 63 trillion BTU in energy annually, which works out to a savings of $750 million annually at current gas prices.

•Willa Doswell, associate professor in the Pitt School of Nursing’s Department of Health Promotion and Development, has been selected to serve a four-year term as a member of the National Institutes of Health’s Nursing Science: Children and Families Study Section, Center for Scientific Review. As a member of the study section, Doswell may review grant applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), make recommendations on those applications, and conduct general reviews on the status of research in the section’s field of specialty. She was selected based on NIH criteria that included the quality of her research accomplishments, publications in scientific journals, and other significant scientific activities, achievements, and honors.

• Judy Erlen and Ellen Olshansky of Pitt’s School of Nursing have been elected as officers for the Eastern Nursing Research Society (ENRS). Erlen, a professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Development and associate director of the Center for Research in Chronic Disorders, was chosen as president-elect, and Olshansky, professor and chair of the Department of Health and Community Systems, was elected treasurer. ENRS is the research arm of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Nursing Association and the New England Organization for Nursing.