While students and faculty rush headlong into new classes, two Pitt administrators are… While students and faculty rush headlong into new classes, two Pitt administrators are preparing to brave new responsibilities of their own. Patricia Beeson, the current associate dean for undergraduate studies in the School of Arts and Sciences, will become Pitt’s vice provost for graduate studies beginning May 1, 2004. She will replace Elizabeth Baranger, the current vice provost, who has announced her plans to retire at the end of the current academic year.

As the new vice provost, she will be responsible for establishing minimum standards and reviewing proposals for all of Pitt’s graduate and professional programs.

“I look forward to working with faculty and students in all of our graduate and professional schools and hope that I will be able to help them realize their programmatic and educational goals, within the context of the overall mission of the University,” Beeson said in an e-mail.

Beeson, who joined Pitt’s faculty in 1983, is also an economics professor in the SAS and holds a joint appointment in public policy in Pitt’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. As the SAS associate dean for undergraduate studies, she has been responsible for a number of major projects, including providing students services, like the Arts and Sciences Advising Center and the Academic Support Center, and developing quantitative models of student enrollment.

In the School of Engineering, Michael Lovell, an associate professor in Pitt’s department of mechanical and industrial engineering, has been appointed to associate dean for research, effective immediately. He will be filling a position that has been vacant for a year and a half since Eric Beckman, the former associate dean, became chairman of the department of chemical and petroleum engineering.

“I would like to build upon our research strengths by creating a vibrant research infrastructure that significantly enhances and expands our present research activities and promotes collaboration within the school and the academic and industrial communities,” Lovell said.

Lovell explained that he plans to improve the School of Engineering’s current biotechnology activities by establishing links between Pitt researchers and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He added that he also hopes to build upon the School of Engineering’s current nanotechnology research.

Lovell, who received both his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and his doctorate from Pitt, is also co-director for Pitt’s Swanson Institute for Technical Excellence and executive director for the Swanson Center for Product Engineering, which focuses on designing, prototyping, developing and marketing new products. His personal research focuses on manufacturing processes, micro- and nanotechnology, and tribology, the study of friction, lubrication and the wear between moving surfaces. One of his latest projects involves producing a lubricant out of boric acid, which would be both non-toxic and more effective than typical oil lubricants.