Awards & More

Katz’s Leana Wins Leadership Award

Carrie Leana, the George H. Love Professor of Organizations and Management in Pitt’s Katz Graduate School of Business, has been named a faculty pioneer in the Aspen Institute Center for Business Education’s Academic Leadership Award category.

This international award is given for demonstrated leadership in integrating social impact and environmental management topics into business school courses and curriculum, as well as for generating cutting-edge scholarship with a focus on social impact or environmental management.

Leana’s research area is organizational behavior with a focus on the issues of employment relations, authority structures at work, and social capital. Her research is field-based and has been conducted in such settings as steel mills, insurance claims offices, police departments, and labor unions.

She has published more than 70 articles and several books, including Relational Wealth: The Advantages of Stability in a Changing Economy (Oxford University Press, 2000) and Coping with Job Loss: How Individuals, Organizations, and Communities Respond to Layoffs (Lexington Books, 1992). Her current research projects include an investigation of human and social capital in the New York City public schools and several studies aimed at improving the effectiveness and work climate in nursing homes and child care centers.

Leana’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Heinz Endowments, Jewish Healthcare Foundation, and Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry.

Current editorial board appointments include the Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, the Journal of Organizational Behavior, the International Public Management Journal, and Perspectives on Work.

This year, she received the Sloan Foundation’s Best Paper Prize in Industry Studies, and in 2001-02, she was awarded the Viterbo Distinguished Chair by the U.S. Fulbright Commission. She currently cochairs the Work and Employment track of the Labor and Employment Research Association and was recently elected to a five-year term as OB Division Chair for the Academy of Management.

Leana is active in community affairs, serves on several nonprofit boards, and received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Public Service Award in recognition of her community service in 2003.
— Amanda Leff

Coleman Award Granted To Heinz Endowments President King

The University of Pittsburgh’s Institute of Politics presented its Coleman Award for Excellence in Community Service to Heinz Endowments President Max King at the institute’s annual Elected Officials Retreat.

King became president of the Heinz Endowments in 1999 after a distinguished career with the Philadelphia Inquirer that spanned various positions over more than 25 years. He joined the Inquirer as a general assignment reporter in 1972 and was named city editor in 1974.

In 1977, he left the paper to become a staff writer for Forbes, but returned to the Inquirer to serve as assistant to the executive editor, assistant managing editor, and associate managing editor. In 1987, he joined the business side of the organization as senior vice president for consumer marketing and distribution before moving on to the position of executive vice president.

King also has served on the boards of many local and national organizations, including chair of the National Council of Foundations and a founding member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Committee of Concerned Journalists.

During his tenure as president, King helped to form the Pittsburgh Riverlife Task Force, the Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse, and the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse. He also helped make educational funding a priority of the institute. In 2002, he joined with leaders from The Pittsburgh Foundation and The Grable Foundation to obtain more than $3 million in grants to Pittsburgh Public Schools.

The Coleman Award for Excellence in Community Service recognizes and celebrates outstanding community leaders for their contributions to the Western Pennsylvania region. This is the second year for the award. In 2006, the inaugural Coleman Award was bestowed on its namesake, Morton “Moe” Coleman, founder of Pitt’s Institute of Politics.
— Anthony M. Moore

First Fred R. Brown Literary Award to Be Presented to Novelist

Novelist, literary editor, and teacher Don Lee has been selected to receive the inaugural Fred R. Brown Literary Award as part of this year’s Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series.

Lee will read selected writings from his work at 8:30 p.m. Thursday in Room 343 of Alumni Hall. The award carries a $5,000 honorarium and is underwritten by Pitt alumni Fred R. (CAS ’71) and Melanie Brown (CGS ’86, KGSB ’90, KGSB ’93) of Bethel Park, Pa.

Lee is the author of Yellow (W.W. Norton & Co., 2001), Country of Origin (W.W. Norton & Co., 2004), and Wrack and Ruin, which is scheduled for an April 2008 release by W.W. Norton & Co. Lee’s work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, GQ, New England Review, and elsewhere. He was the editor of Ploughshares, a literary journal based in Boston, Mass., for 16 years. He currently teaches creative writing at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.

The Fred R. Brown Literary Award recognizes fiction writers in the early stages of their writing careers. The most recent addition to the Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series, the award is intended to enhance both the series and Pitt’s writing programs by attracting outstanding authors to the University. Pitt’s fiction faculty, the director of the writers series, and the director of the writing program select the awardee.

The Browns are owners of Adso Enterprises, Inc., a business-consulting firm founded in 2003. They have been avid followers of the Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series since its inception and saw the founding of a new literary award as the best way to show their support for the annual program. The Browns have pledged $25,000 over five years to fund the award.
— Anthony M. Moore

Doctors Receive Grant to Study Organ Donation Process

Physicians from the University’s Departments of Critical Care and Emergency Medicine have received a nearly $1 million, three-year grant from the Healthcare Resources Services Administration to develop a first-of-its-kind organ donor program specifically for hospital emergency departments.

The new program, to be developed by Pitt’s School of Medicine and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), is intended to bridge the communications gap between hospital emergency and critical care medical teams, whose focus is to help patients recover from serious injury; and organ procurement teams, whose task is to make sure organ donors’ wishes are respected.

Michael DeVita, professor of critical care and internal medicine in the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, will lead the team developing the new program, to be known as “Condition T” (for “transplant”).

While the vast majority of transplanted organs used in the United States come from patients who have been pronounced brain dead, the organs of many patients who die from cardiac failure in emergency departments are not used.

Under Condition T, if efforts to revive a patient fail and the patient is a registered organ donor, doctors working with the Center for Organ Recovery and Education (CORE) would immediately evaluate whether the patient’s organs are suitable for transplant. “Our goal is to honor patients’ last wishes to pass on the gift of life in the event of their own untimely deaths,” DeVita said.

Charissa B. Pacella, Pitt assistant professor of emergency medicine and chief of emergency services for UPMC Presbyterian hospital, said transplant surgeons would never be involved in the care of patients undergoing resuscitation in the emergency department. “The new Condition T program will in no way hamper life-saving efforts of our emergency department physicians,” she said.

Officials in Michigan will work with Pitt and CORE to determine whether Condition T can be replicated in that state.
— Maureen McGaffin