Representatives of Regional Campus Advisory Boards Elected as Trustees

Issue Date: 
July 6, 2009
Craig A. HartburgCraig A. Hartburg
Howard M. “Skip” Picking IIIHoward M. “Skip” Picking III

Advisory board members of two University of Pittsburgh regional campuses were elected as trustees during the University’s June 26 Board of Trustees annual meeting following the recommendations of the board’s Nominating Committee, which had met earlier in the day: alumnus Craig A. Hartburg (A&S ‘77), president of Servco Services Inc. and chair of the Pitt-Bradford Advisory Board, and Howard M. “Skip” Picking III, retired CEO and president of the Miller-Picking Corporation and vice chair of the Pitt-Johnstown Advisory Board.

A Pitt alumnus, Hartburg attended Pitt-Bradford from 1973 to 1975 and went on to complete his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1977 at the University’s Pittsburgh campus with dual majors in economics and political science. The year of his graduation, he began working for Servco Services as an operations manager, serving successively as sales manager, vice president of operations, and executive vice president before assuming the presidency of the corporation in 1995.

Hartburg has been a member of the Pitt-Bradford Advisory Board since 2000. During his tenure on that board, he has served as its vice chair, chair of the board’s Communications and University Relations Council, and a member of the Development Council and Executive Committee; he was elected chair in 2005. A resident of Bradford, Hartburg is active in the community, serving as a member of the board, and previously chair, of Beacon Light Behavioral Health Systems and chair of its finance committee as well as a board member of Control Chief Corporation. He formerly served as president of the United Way of Bradford and chair of its annual fund drive, receiving that organization’s Red Feather Award. He also has served as a board member of the Bradford Civil Service Commission and of the Bradford Regional Medical Center.

Actively involved in business and community affairs in the Johnstown area, Picking has been a member of the Pitt-Johnstown Advisory Board since 1974, and he currently chairs the Advisory Board’s Finance Committee and formerly chaired the Pitt-Johnstown Development Committee through two successful capital campaigns. He and his wife have endowed the annual Great Americans Day lecture series and have created an endowed scholarship focusing on entrepreneurship in business. He also serves as chair of the not-for-profit Concurrent Technologies Corporation and Stonycreek Quemahoning Initiative and is a director of AmeriServ Financial Inc. and a member and past officer of the Greater Johnstown Regional Partnership. Previously, Picking was president and CEO of Miller-Picking Corporation, a publicly held air-conditioning machinery business that was sold to York International.

A past director of the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute, Penn Traffic Corporation, and Johnstown Savings Bank, Picking served as a Pitt trustee from 2001 to 2003, as chair of the United Way of the Laurel Highlands, and as chair of Conemaugh Valley Memorial Hospital, where he was a trustee for 30 years.

Picking earned both the B.S. degree in mechanical engineering and the M.B.A. degree in finance at Cornell University. As a Cornell undergraduate, he was named an Alfred Sloan scholar and was nominated for a Rhodes scholarship.