Public invited to Founders’ Day Celebration

The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford will celebrate Founders’ Day from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sept. 3 in the Bromeley Quadrangle.

The event, which was first started 11 years ago on the university’s 50th anniversary, is a free community event commemorating the first day of classes at Pitt-Bradford on Sept. 3, 1963.

The day will include a complimentary lunch and chances to win Pitt-Bradford prizes. Slick, the faculty-staff band, will perform. Slick consists of Dr. Drew Flanagan, assistant professor of history, on vocals and guitar; Alan Hancock, technical analyst, on lead guitar and drums; Dr. Max Jensen, assistant professor of Spanish, on drums, vocals and guitar; Mary Kafferlin, library specialist, on bass; Dr. Matt Kropf, associate professor of engineering technology, on keyboard; and Dr. Birney Young, assistant professor of communications, on auxiliary percussion.

Pitt-Bradford was founded in 1963 as part of a three-campus expansion for the University of Pittsburgh that also included campuses in Greensburg and Titusville.

Under the guidance of its first president, Dr. Donald Swarts, and chair of its Advisory Board, J. Bertram Fisher, Pitt-Bradford raised enough money from the Bradford community to renovate a few community buildings and hire faculty to serve 143 full-time and 145 part-time students.

In its early days, the campus provided students with two years of required courses before they transferred to the Pittsburgh campus to finish degrees.

In the 1970s, Pitt-Bradford moved from downtown to a 78-acre parcel of land that had been the Harri Emery Airport and began offering its own two- and four-year degrees. Today Pitt-Bradford is a 491-acre campus with 42 academic majors, 13 NCAA Division III sports, 436 employees, 1,100 students and more than 12,000 alumni. It continues to serve a rural area the size of the state of Connecticut and has been honored for its ability to help first-generation students and those with modest incomes.

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