Awards & more

Issue Date: 
April 2, 2012

The Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange Programs have awarded 2012 John G. Bowman Faculty Grants to 10 Pitt professors in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. Each of the awardees receives $2,000 to conduct research abroad for a class that is being taught or will be taught in the near future. The awardees and their countries of study are as follows: Christopher Armstrong, director of architectural studies and an assistant professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, Czech Republic and Slovenia; Joyce Bell, an assistant professor of sociology, Dominican Republic; Neil Doshi, an assistant professor of French, France; Bernard Hagerty, a lecturer in the Department of History, Greece, Latvia, and Denmark; Hannah Johnson, an assistant professor of English, England; Paula Kane, a professor and John and Lucine O’Brien Marous Chair of Contemporary Catholic Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, Italy and France; John Lyne, a professor of communication, Switzerland; Svitlana Maksymenko, a lecturer in the Department of Economics, Poland; Sabina von Dirke, a professor of German, Germany; and Amy Williams, an assistant professor of music, Switzerland.

Harvey S. BorovetzHarvey S. Borovetz

Harvey S. Borovetz, Distinguished Professor and chair in the Swanson School of Engineering’s Department of Bioengineering, professor of chemical and petroleum engineering in the Swanson School, and the Robert L. Hardesty Professor in the Department of Surgery in the Pitt School of Medicine, has received the 2012 Theo C. Pilkington Outstanding Educator Award. This national recognition is awarded by the American Society of Engineering Education’s Biomedical Engineering Division. Borovetz, who is also a deputy director within the Pitt-UPMC McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, focuses his research on the design and clinical utilization of cardiovascular organ replacements for both adult and pediatric patients.

webber_stevenSteven A. Webber

Steven A. Webber, a professor of pediatrics and clinical and translational science in the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, has been named the Peter and Ada Rossin Endowed Chair in Pediatric Cardiology. Webber is chief of the Division of Pediatric Cardiology at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC. The endowed chair is a jointly recognized academic chair within Pitt’s School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital.

Benedum Hall, the home of Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, was honored as part of the Master Builders’ Association’s (MBA) 2011 MBA Building Excellence Awards competition. Benedum Hall won the “Renovation Construction Over $10 Million” category. The contractor for the building’s recent [2008-10]  renovations was Volpatt Construction Corp. of Castle Shannon, and the architect was Edge Studios of Pittsburgh. The MBA award was given for the Benedum’s first-phase renovations, which included Benedum Hall’s auditorium (both levels), first-floor administration rooms, ground-floor classrooms, library, new basement level with computer lab, some subbasement work, and the fourth floor. Phase two renovations are under way and will include a new basement level as well as improvements to the third and sixth-through-12th floors.

Kirk SavageKirk Savage

Kirk Savage has been awarded the 2012 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize from The Foundation for Landscape Studies. Savage, a professor and chair in Pitt’s Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of the History of Art and Architecture, received the award for Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape (University of California Press, 2009).

The $2,000 prize is awarded to an author of a recently published book that has made significant contributions to the understanding of garden history and landscape studies.

In Monument Wars, Savage tells the story of the National Mall, its historic plans, its structures, and the dramatic shift in national representation through the years, from the image of a single man, often on horseback, to the commemoration of common soldiers and citizens, and from monuments that celebrate victory to memorials that honor victims. Savage explores the politics behind “national memory” and discusses events that helped shape the Mall’s evolution.

“The book will make you go back to the National Mall, but you’ll never again see it in quite the same light,” stated a review of the book in The Washington Post’s Book World.

In 2010, Savage received the Charles C. Eldredge Prize from the Smithsonian American Art Museum for Monument Wars.

Savage began writing about public monuments and public spaces as a freelancer in the 1980s. He went on to earn MA and PhD degrees in art history from the University of California, Berkeley. His book Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton University Press) won the John Hope Franklin Publication Prize for the best book published in American studies in 1998. —Sharon S. Blake