Chancellor honors staff member

University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Joan Gabel has selected Pat Frantz Cercone as the recipient of the 2024 Outstanding Career Achievement Chancellor’s Staff Award for the University of Pittsburgh.

Cercone is the executive director of communications and marketing at the university’s Bradford campus.

The Outstanding Career Achievement Award recognizes a staff member with more than 20 years of unparalleled service to the university who, throughout their career, has made exceptional contributions to the success of their department and Pitt; who has earned the respect of their peers; and whose efforts have defined what it means to be part of the university community.

Gabel recognized Cercone for spearheading the growth of communications at Pitt-Bradford and performing beyond expectations in her leadership roles.

“We hear through the grapevine how respected our campus is in the Pitt system,” said Richard Esch, president of Pitt-Bradford. “A large part of that is due to Pat’s efforts to always represent Pitt at its best. It is critical not only for attracting new students and meeting institutional enrollment goals, but also for the overall reputation of the university.”

Cercone came to Pitt-Bradford in 2000 as the assistant director for public relations when the three-person office primarily sent out press releases, wrote occasional enterprise features for local media and promoted all areas of the Bradford campus.

In 2001, she became director of communications and realized that the university needed a professional website to serve as a first point of contact for prospective students. That site was added in 2002. She advocated for and added a web manager and later a web programmer to ensure that the website could be managed in-house. 

The university’s second professional website was part of its first branding campaign, something that was innovative in the early 2000s. Cercone not only taught herself what she needed to know to get the university to where it needed to be, she proactively led the charge to educate the campus community – faculty, staff and even students – about the meaning of the campus brand and its tagline, “Beyond expectations,” that embodied what she herself always did as the campus’s chief communicator.

She has overseen two redesigns since then and advocated for an additional member of the web team to ensure that Pitt-Bradford could control its own branding, presentation and information on its website.

As the role of social media grew, she worked to stay abreast of trends and secure a position for a social media strategist for the university, again, making sure that messaging was consistent and professional.

Because of Pitt-Bradford’s unique position as the campus farthest from Pittsburgh, she has always considered it important for the campus to distinguish itself in its own right – as a proud part of the Pitt system, but also as a uniquely special place. 

Cercone will receive her award alongside eight other Chancellor’s Award winners across the university at a reception on Nov. 6 in Pittsburgh.

Nine other Pitt-Bradford staff members have received the Chancellor’s Award, including most recent awardees now-retired administrative assistant Sharie Radzavich; now-retired Associate Dean of Student Affairs and Director of Career Services Dr. Holly Spittler; and former Director of Student Activities Christina Graham.

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