Pat Frantz Cercone

Degrees and Credentials

M.S. Integrated Marketing Communications, West Virginia University
B.A. Journalism, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Short Bio

Pat leads all of the university's marketing and communications efforts, including overseeing all publications and advertising, championing the university's brand, publishing its award-winning alumni magazine, and protecting Pitt-Bradford's image. She also serves as the university's spokeswoman and is a member of the President's Cabinet. She also has taught social media communication and journalism courses, introducing students to the wild, wacky, and sometimes wonderful world of digital and analog communications.

In a previous life, she was a newspaper reporter and editor for 15 years.

She is a former member of the board of directors for YWCA Bradford and is a member of the Community Relations Committee of the Bradford Area Public Library. In her spare time, she reads, cooks, and spends as much time in the woods as she can photographing wildlife. She received the 2022 Community Choice Award in the Audubon Community Nature Center's nature photography contest for a photo she captured of a red fox with four different critters in its mouth. Several of her photos also are in the 2023 edition of Baily's Beads, including a very busy beaver and a solitary black bear.

Research, Accomplishments, and Publications

Most recently, Pat received the 2024 Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Career Achievement from the University of Pittsburgh.

She also leads a team of remarkable and award-winning communicators, which received nine awards in the 39th Annual Educational Advertising Awards program and four awards in the 2023 Collegiate Advertising Awards program.

So far, the C&M team has received 40 Educational Advertising Awards, 34 Collegiate Advertising Awards, and seven awards from the CASE District II Accolades program. (But who's counting, right?)

In her previous life as a newspaper woman, Pat received four Pennsylvania Newspaper Publishers' Association awards for investigative reporting, news writing and feature writing. 

She has had some of her work published, including an abridged first chapter of her novel-in-progress, "Pulling the Loose Thread" which appeared in the 2015 edition of Baily's Beads, Pitt-Bradford's award-winning literary magazine. Additionally, her "This I Believe" essay was broadcast on NPR station WPSU in State College in October 2010.  

Her most popular piece, an essay titled "The Card," was published in May 2006 in The New York Times bestselling book Wisdom of our Fathers: Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons by the late Tim Russert.