People: Mark Nordenberg

The massive, wooden door swings open to reveal the long, dark room tucked into a corner of the… The massive, wooden door swings open to reveal the long, dark room tucked into a corner of the first floor of the Cathedral of Learning.

There are wrought-iron chandeliers, an enormous stone fireplace and bookcases along the walls that stretch to the ceiling.

This is the office of the chancellor at the University of Pittsburgh, where Mark A. Nordenberg has conducted his meetings for the past 13 years.

As he walks around the room, Nordenberg, with his wide, boyish smile and carefully parted gray hair capping off the traditional navy suit and blue-and-gold tie, points out the moments caught on film now framed and filling the bookcases’ shelves.

“This is one of my favorite photographs,” he says, pointing to a photo of Nkemjika Ofodile, Pitt’s Homecoming queen in 2002, embracing Nordenberg on Heinz Field with her arms full of roses and a tiara on her head. “They said when they announced she won, she hugged me so hard she picked me up off the ground.”

Through the years, Nordenberg has celebrated with students, hired new faculty, resuscitated the athletic department and pushed Pitt into the top numbers for rankings and finances among universities across the country, all while keeping the tradition of Panther pride alive.

Just as Ojodile’s reaction at the Homecoming football game was unexpected, so has been Nordenberg’s career path. With initial plans to practice law overcome by his desire to teach, his rise up the ladder into the top administrative position of chancellor was swift and unplanned. Nordenberg never stayed more than a few years with one title at Pitt, jumping from professor to assistant dean to provost before landing the title of chancellor more than a decade ago.

“A lot of my life has been a matter of chance,” he said. “I never had ambitions to be a college or university president.”

Nordenberg moved to Pittsburgh from Minnesota his senior year of high school when U.S. Steel brought the Nordenbergs to the area until they moved to Chicago four years later.

Instead of leaving Pittsburgh with his family, Nordenberg stayed in the area and attended Thiel College, a small, private school in Meadville, Pa. There, he ran on the cross country team, led the now-disbanded Alpha Chi Rho fraternity as president and met his wife, Nikki Pirillo.

Next was the University of Wisconsin Law School. In his final year, he served a brief stint as a Navy JAG officer and then practiced law for two years in Minnesota.

Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, gave him his first teaching position in 1975. Two years later, the faculty of Pitt’s law school welcomed Nordenberg as an assistant professor.

“The only thing I’ll say without false modesty that I was really good at was teaching,” he said.

Teaching awards sit on the upper levels of the bookshelves in the office and support his claim.

“Mark was a fabulous teacher, he really was. The students loved him,” said Barry McCarthy, a professor at the law school whose tenure predates Nordenberg’s. When Nordenberg first came to Pitt, McCarthy and he were close personal friends as well as colleagues, holding season tickets to the Pirates and attending the World Series together in 1979.

“He still looks boyish, but back then, the students called him ‘Sparky,’ a real term of affection,” said McCarthy. “He always got a huge enrollment in his class.”

In 1985, the year Nordenberg received the Chancellor’s teaching award, he became associate dean of the law school, before his promotion to dean two years later.

When Nordenberg tendered his resignation from the administrative position hoping to return to teaching in 1993, then-Chancellor Dennis O’Connor asked him to become an interim provost.

When O’Connor resigned from his post in 1995, Nordenberg was named interim chancellor. The Board of Trustees held a nationwide search to fill the chancellor position, finally offering it to the in house candidate, Nordenberg.

Nordenberg’s Pitt and the University before he became chancellor are two completely different places.

Wesley R. Posvar served as the chancellor from 1967 to 1992, a long stint in a demanding job.

“Morale on campus was low, and we were not attracting the numbers we wanted as students,” said Nordenberg about the 1994-1995 school year.

To tackle the problems, he focused on University fundraising and building the endowment, a saving that builds interest dollars necessary for today’s private and semi-private universities to thrive. Pitt is technically a state-affiliated university and only receives a small portion of funding – about 11 percent of its budget – from the state.

Since Nordenberg came to office, the University’s endowment has ballooned from $460 million as of June 1995 to almost $2.5 billion as of the same month last year, said Pitt treasurer Amy Marsh.

Thanks to such resources, Pitt has ranked for the second consecutive year as one of the top seven research universities in the country, the Pitt Chronicle reported in March.

In 1997, Nordenberg launched the unprecedented $1 billion capital campaign for private donations to the University. Last June, he announced the completion of that goal and set the University’s sight on earning a total of $2 billion in the campaign.

Steve Pederson, now the athletic director, had visited Pitt in 1992, four years prior to when he took the job, and was less than impressed by the status quo and community attitude, or lack thereof, on the campus, he said.

He interviewed for athletic director a year into Nordenberg’s administration, and after that visit to the Oakland campus Pederson said he told his wife, “This is a whole different place. You would not recognize Pitt if you came here now.”

Pederson still stands by his word.

“The secret of a great coach is to get everyone playing together, and that’s what he’s done,” he said.

But Nordenberg’s leadership of Pitt hasn’t been completely without weaknesses.

One of Nordenberg’s main focuses has been on strengthening Pitt’s athletics programs and facilities, and the University came under scrutiny last spring when the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette unearthed audit reports for building the Petersen Events Center. The reports noted that gross cost overruns, flawed designs and sub-par workmanship all marred the project.

“It was a state-managed project,” said Clark. When asked if University administration took any missteps with the project, Clark responded, “No, none.”

Now, the Pete is one of the trademark buildings on campus, the flagship of the athletic department and one of the joint triumphs of Nordenberg and Pederson.

This December, when Pitt men’s basketball upset Duke at Madison Square Garden with a 3-point shot at the buzzer, Pederson and Nordenberg headed to the locker rooms to speak to the team together.

Even in the excitement of the win, Nordenberg stopped before he reached the team and took Pederson to the athletic training room to see freshly injured player Mike Cook, Pederson said.

“A lot of people would have been high-fiving the ones who won,” he said.

Weaving the Pitt community into the fabric of the surrounding city has been a goal since Nordenberg came to Pitt.

Although occasional travel takes him out of the office for scholarship presentations, alumni dinners and Pitt sporting events, Nordenberg dedicates 12-hour days to his job.

He said he comes into the office at about 6:30 a.m. and leaves after 6 p.m. each day, often working seven days a week.

“It may not be until 7 or 8 o’clock, but we still have dinner together every night,” said Nikki Nordenberg.

Family has always been a priority for Nordenberg, he said, remembering how on the night he was named chancellor, he officiated his son’s swim meet. Nordenberg has three grown children, Erin, 33, Carl, 28, and Michael, 25, whom he often chaperoned on school field trips when they were growing up in Pittsburgh.

In the office, the chancellor has one favorite photo framed: a shot of him and his wife sitting on the bench as guest coaches at a women’s basketball game.

“Coach [Agnus] Berenato gave this to me as a gift, and I always save it for last,” he said.