Anne's Arts & Activities Blog

Fresh from a performance at Carnegie Hall in honor of Marilyn Horne’s 81st birthday, American bass DeAndre Simmons will return to the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford Feb. 6 for a recital in Bromeley Family Theater. Tickets for the concert, which will begin at 8 p.m., are $12 and $16 for the public and $5 for all students. Included in the ticket price is a Valentine’s Day-themed pre-show reception that will begin at 6:30 p.m. and feature hors d’oeuvres and chocolates. Simmons last sang at Pitt-Bradford’s 50th anniversary gala in 2013, when he wowed the audience with his velvety voice and captivating stage presence. A frequent recitalist, he has performed at Carnegie Hall, with the Music Academy of the West orchestra and for opera “Cyrano” with the Opera Company of Philadelphia. New York Times critic Vivien Schweitzer said of his performance for Horne’s birthday, “Mr. Simmons used his elegant voice to fine effect.” Simmons will si...

Northwest Savings Bank has made a $25,000 contribution to the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford to provide tuition support for high school students in the region who are taking classes through the university’s Bridges and College in the High School dual enrollment programs. The contribution comes through a tax credit program offered by the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development. This is the third year Northwest has taken advantage of the program to support Pitt-Bradford. “We’re pleased to be able to support Pitt-Bradford and local students through this tax credit program,” said Bill Pantuso, senior vice president, district manager – Warren, McKean, Potter and Tioga counties. “Northwest and Pitt-Bradford both have deep roots in the region, and we look forward to future partnerships that help meet the educational needs of students and employers.” Pitt-Bradford has two kinds of programs in which students can e...

The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford Office of International Services and Study Abroad is looking for students, alumni, faculty, staff, and community members who live within 30 miles of Pitt-Bradford to submit photos for an upcoming exhibit. The 2nd Annual Pitt-Bradford Photography Exhibit will be on display from Jan. 17 through Jan. 31 in the KOA Art Gallery in Blaisdell Hall. This year’s theme is a celebration of Pitt-Bradford’s 50th anniversary. Amateur photographers may enter the following categories: 50 and Beyond; Black and White; Famous Things; Nature and Animals; Daily Life; and Most Creative. The People’s Choice category will be open to everyone, including professional photographers. Professionals will also be considered in the “Best Professional Shot” category. All student photographs will be considered for the “Best Student Shot.” An opening reception will be held at noon Jan. 17 in the KOA Speer Lobby of Blaisdell Hall. Those att...

Employee Band Staff Infection to Perform The Hero's Anne Holliday Broadcasting Live The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford will celebrate its 50th anniversary with a Founders’ Day celebration Sept. 3, 50 years from the day it first opened its doors. In the 50 years since that momentous first day of class, Pitt-Bradford has grown from a fledging institution comprised of a hodgepodge of buildings in Bradford to a nationally recognized university with a campus of its very own. Its enrollment has grown by more than 455 percent from 288 students on its first day to about 1,600 students this year, and it has produced more than 10,000 graduates from all 50 states and several countries. “Pitt-Bradford would not have been established had it not been for several forward-thinking individuals in the community who recognized the need for an institution of higher education in this region and for those residents who contributed to the cause,” said Dr. Livingston Alexander, Pitt-Bradfor...

With the second-largest freshman class ever enrolling at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford this fall, the university will once again house some of its students for the fall term at the Best Western Bradford Inn. About 50 upperclass students with confirmed spaces on campus were given the option to switch to the Best Western, where they will be able to ride the Area Transportation Authority bus service to campus and eat at the hotel’s continental breakfast each morning. The students were offered an incentive in the form of a $500 on-campus credit for use toward books, supplies and food on campus. The purpose of the incentive is to create more bed space on campus in order to continue the tradition of having all freshmen live on campus. This is not the first time that Pitt-Bradford has used the Best Western to accommodate some of its students, having used blocks of rooms in 2007-08, 2008-09 and 2009-10. The university opened its 144-bed Howard L. Fese...

Hamlin Bank and Trust Co. of Smethport has made a $200,000 commitment to the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford that will allow more high school students to take advantage of a program that allows them to earn college credit. The contribution is made possible through the Educational Improvement Tax Credit program offered by the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development. The funds will be distributed to Pitt-Bradford over a two-year period. Pitt-Bradford has two kinds of programs in which students can earn both high school and college credits for the same course, College in the High School and Bridges. Hamlin Bank’s contribution will allow Pitt-Bradford to increase participation across more school districts in the region. Dr. Livingston Alexander, president of Pitt-Bradford, said, “Our friends at Hamlin Bank are longtime supporters of Pitt-Bradford and its efforts to provide educational opportunities for students in our serv...

The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford will host a Veterans Day Recital at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 11, in the Harriett B. Wick Chapel for all members of the campus and Bradford communities. The event is being co-sponsored by the Office of Community Engagement, Gold Bar Club and the Student Activities Council. The program will feature various patriotic musical selections, prayer and a moment of silence. Dan Robinson, a broadcast communications major from Gifford, will sing the national anthem. Staff Infection, which includes Pitt-Bradford staff members, will perform acoustic versions of “Freedom” by Paul McCartney and “Fortunate Son” by Credence Clearwater Revival. Members of the Bradford community will also perform. Sisters in Spirit members, Christy Danias, Deanna Peters and Claudia Quinn, will sing “American Anthem,” accompanied by Jeanne Gross. Gross will also be the organist for the event. For more information call the Office of Community Engagement at (814) 3...

By Kimberly Marcott Weinberg Assistant Director of Communications and Marketing Artists Monet, Van Gogh and Georgia O’Keeffe were inspired by flowers, but Bob Harris, facilities worker and gardener at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, is inspired by the artists. This year, Harris has designed the flower beds at Pitt-Bradford with an artistic influence in mind. Each major planting is inspired by the work of an artist: Monet, Van Gogh, Titian (he wanted to throw in a Renaissance painter), Georgia O’Keeffe and Picasso. It’s not the first year his beds have had a scholarly theme. They’ve been based on the colors of ancient Egypt (complete with plexiglass pyramid), mimicked Victorian carpet patterns and reproduced the Minotaur’s Labyrinth on the Greek island of Crete. This theme, he said, reflects his interest in and envy of painters. Plus, he’s got art in the family – a wife who loves art history and a daughter who’s a mixed media artist in New M...

By Kimberly Marcott Weinberg Assistant Director of Communications and Marketing University of Pittsburgh at Bradford John Schlimm sure knows how to make a crowd feel special. Speaking before more than 200 University of Pittsburgh graduates and their guests Sunday, the award-winning writer said that the address would be one of the highlights of his life. "When I was told that you, the seniors, specifically chose me to be your speaker, I was so humbled and honored, and I knew that this would be a moment that I would never forget as long as I live,” he said when taking the podium. Dr. Livingston Alexander, president, addressed the choice of Schlimm by students in his introduction. “Some of you may be wondering how a vegan cookbook writer ended up as our commencement speaker,” Alexander said, then explained that a group of students had had the chance to hear Schlimm speak at a career-preparedness event held at the beginning of ...

A University of Pittsburgh at Bradford program that had been in hibernation during the fall semester due to funding limitations is back in business thanks to a gift from Pennsylvania General Energy of Warren, part of an educational tax credit program through the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development. The $35,000 gift, along with funding from Pitt-Bradford and the Bradford Area School District, allows qualified high school students to take classes at Pitt-Bradford for free through the university’s Bridges program and therefore earn college credits. The gift also helped reduce tuition for some students in another Pitt-Bradford program called College in the High School, in which qualified high school teachers teach Pitt-Bradford classes in their high schools. An earlier incarnation of the Bridges program had students pay one third of the cost of a class at Pitt-Bradford, but the new funding formula al...

United Way of the Bradford Area, Inc. will host the 2nd Annual Spring Arts Gala on Thursday, April 19th at the Bradford Club. The event will feature over 30 pieces of artwork donated from local artists, including paintings, framed photographs, wood carvings, glass sculpture, jewelry, and hand crafted furniture. Tim Asinger will act as head auctioneer for the event, with a guest auctioneer appearance by Woody Woodruff. When we planned the Spring Art Gala last year, we had a vision of creating an event that showcased the local talent of the Bradford community, in a festive networking atmosphere. This year, we have been overwhelmed with the scope of talent and variety of artists that have agreed to donate hand crafted items for the auction. From students with the Bradford Area High School art club, to inmates with FCI McKean, to area artists such as Denise Drummond, Sean Huntington, Alan Hancock, Jay Monti, and Gina Zetts, among others, we know that this year’s gala will well represent t...

Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit group that builds affordable housing for low-income families, has chartered a collegiate chapter at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford. John Bevan, a senior criminal justice major from Wexford, is the president of the new chapter, which has been working with the Bradford Habitat for Humanity Chapter on its first home. The home is being built on Interstate Parkway, and Bevan said that students will be able to contribute more hours once interior finishing begins. Tonya Ackley, coordinator of community engagement at Pitt-Bradford, is the advisor for the club. “The Office of Community Engagement had a table at Club Night last year to see if there was interest in reactivating the club, and we got an overwhelming response from our students,” she said. “They were very supportive of the mission of Habitat for Humanity and were excited about the opportunity to go on alternative spring breaks.” More than 40 s...

By Kimberly Marcott Weinberg Assistant Director of Communications and Marketing Joe Hannon, a junior biology major at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, spent his summer bent over – first over delicate trout lilies in the field, then over a microscope as he dissected the spring flowers. Hannon worked with Dr. Mary Mulcahy, associate professor of biology, on a research project to test an evolutionary prediction: that the lilies that received more pollen would produce more ovules, or seeds. Once Mulcahy showed Hannon what the early spring lilies looked like and the conditions under which they were likely to grow, she turned him loose with the instructions to obtain a randomized sample of 40 lilies from three different elevations. Hannon found three areas where the flowers grew, laid down a string grid and harvested a certain number from each square in the grid to ensure randomization. Then he took his bounty back and dissected them under a micr...

By Kimberly Marcott Weinberg Assistant Director of Communications and Marketing For a moment Sunday afternoon, opera legend Marilyn Horne presented an alternate scenario for not only the city of Bradford, but also for herself. Speaking to the media before addressing the largest graduating class in University of Pittsburgh at Bradford history, she wondered if perhaps her family might have stayed in Bradford had Pitt-Bradford existed in 1945. She later touched on the same idea during her speech to the graduates. “Who would have thought when I left in 1945, that I’d be back speaking to the graduating class at Pitt-Bradford, which didn’t even exist at the time,” she said, explaining that her family left Bradford when she was 11 in part to seek an affordable higher education for her and her sister, Gloria. She also spoke about her personal history with her hometown. Although she has graced the world’s most important stages, her first performan...

By Kimberly Marcott Weinberg Assistant Director of Communications and Marketing When Lyndon Orinion came to the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, he thought that most other first-generation students would be like himself: children of immigrants. After all, he thought, everyone who’d been in America already had been to college, right? He found out differently when he began meeting his fellow Pitt-Bradford students, many of whom are first-generation college students. In fact, last fall, first-generation students made up 41 percent of the entering freshman class at Pitt-Bradford, which puts it in the top 10 of four-year baccalaureate-granting institutions in Pennsylvania. For those who have earned their degree and are crossing the stage in the KOA Arena Sunday, earning their college degree isn’t just for them, it’s also for their family. Orinion’s parents grew up in the Philippines province of Pangasinan, which Orinion said is a poor region of the country lacki...

The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford has received a $350,000 gift from George Duke in honor of his mother, Sarah B. Dorn, for a 17-rank pipe organ in the campus’s new chapel. “The exquisite Schantz organ was the missing element in an otherwise perfectly designed and beautifully built chapel,” said Dr. Livingston Alexander, president of Pitt-Bradford. “We’re deeply grateful to Mr. Duke for enabling us to acquire the instrument and name it in honor of Mrs. Sarah Dorn.” Flue voicers Stephen Leslie and Jeffrey Herr of Schantz Organ Co. spent several weeks on campus doing the final voicing and tuning for the instrument, which was installed late last month. Each of the organ’s 1,020 pipes is an individual instrument that must be voiced and tuned on site. The pipes can produce notes from 32 cycles per second to 16,000 cycles per second, a range of eight octaves, essentially allowing one person to reproduce an orchestra. Different ranks of pipes are crea...