News of Note

Promoting a Primary Source Archive

Two Pitt professors have been selected to receive Dick Thornburgh Faculty Academic Support Grants for 2014. The grants, offered annually by Pitt’s Dick Thornburgh Forum for Law and Public Policy, are designed to encourage the incorporation of the Dick Thornburgh Archives into new or existing Pitt courses, to encourage student research in the archives, and to increase students’ recognition of the value of primary source material. The archives comprise a collection of personal papers that Pitt alumnus and emeritus trustee Dick Thornburgh (LAW ’57) donated to Pitt in 1998.

Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, assistant professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, will use the archives to develop a series of case studies to be used in GSPIA’s new Governance and International Public Management concentration. The four case studies—two focused on domestic issues and two on international ones—will also be made available online, free of charge, to instructors around the world.

Andrew Rose, a professor of civil engineering technology at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, will use the archives to research Pennsylvania’s Dam Safety and Encroachments Act, passed in response to a 1977 Johnstown-area flood that claimed 40 lives. Rose’s research will be incorporated into curriculum materials for “Soil Engineering,” a class offered to junior and senior Civil Engineering Technology majors on the Pitt-Johnstown campus, expanding the course’s focus to include the influence of government policies on the profession of civil engineering.

The papers, which chronicle Thornburgh’s distinguished public career as two-term governor of Pennsylvania and Attorney General of the United States, are housed in the University Library System’s Archives Service Center and encompass topics ranging from the Three Mile Island nuclear emergency to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

EU Excellence

Carolyn Ban, professor in Pitt’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, has been awarded the Larry Neal Prize for Excellence in EU Scholarship by the University of Illinois’ European Union Center of Excellence. The nationally competitive award honors work that addresses transatlantic relations or current issues faced by the European Union. The award recognizes Ban’s 2013 book Management and Culture in an Enlarged European Commission: From Diversity to Unity? (Palgrave), which explores how the European Commission faced the challenge of admitting new member nations, how it recruited and socialized thousands of new staff members, and its success in integrating newcomers. Ban has been invited to the University of Illinois this fall to accept the award and to present a lecture. 

Pitt Student Emergency Medical Services

The University of Pittsburgh Student Emergency Medical Services received the HEARTSafe campus award at the National Collegiate Emergency Medical Services Foundation conference Feb. 28-March 2 in Boston, Mass. Developed by the National Collegiate Emergency Medical Services Foundation, with support from the American Heart Association and The Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation, the award recognizes college communities that promote awareness for the potential of saving lives of sudden cardiac arrest victims.

The Pitt Student Emergency Medical Services members are all emergency medicine majors: seniors Amy Aaldenberg and Niki Pellicano, and juniors Matt Myers and John Ryan.

The students worked to improve recognition of sudden cardiac arrest, promoted bystander CPR, increased access to defibrillation, and promoted early access to advanced care. This year, the students have trained more than 2,000 people in CPR, mapped campus buildings to identify best access points for emergency responders, and participated in community awareness events.