The American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation honored Paula Leslie with its Louis M. DiCarlo Award for Recent Clinical Achievement at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s November convention.  Leslie is professor in Pitt’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences’s Department of Communication Science and Disorders, where she is program director of the Doctor of Clinical Science in Speech-Language Pathology. Leslie was nominated for her efforts related to speech-language services for UPMC patients enrolled in palliative care.

Richard Harsen has been named as chief of police at Pitt-Bradford. He succeeds Dan Songer, who retired Jan. 6 after 20 years as Pitt-Bradford’s police chief. Harsen will supervise eight full-time and eight part-time commissioned police officers and two communications room personnel.

Harsen served 32 years with the Bradford city police, many of those as a juvenile officer and school resource officer. He became a part-time officer with UPB campus police in 2005, joining the campus police force as a full-time officer in 2015. In addition to his work as a juvenile officer and a middle school resource officer, Harsen coached youth softball, baseball, football and basketball for 18 years. While with the city police, he helped to start the city’s drug abuse resistance education program. 

Harsen plans to work closely with the campus’s resident assistants, who are often the first point of contact for students who need help. He also has been trained in interviewing techniques for victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.

Two members of the Pitt-Johnstown staff have been recognized for outstanding service.

Dolores Berkey received the President’s Staff Award for excellence in service to Pitt-Johnstown.

Berkey, the executive director of budget management and purchasing, works closely with all departments to ensure efficiency in University operations, and takes the lead to improve budgeting processes on campus.

Mike Bodolosky received the President’s Staff Award for excellence in service to the community.

Bodolosky is executive director of the Pasquerilla Performing Arts Center, which is celebrating its 25th year. He was a driving force behind the creation of The Arts Coalition of the Alleghenies, which brings awareness and appreciation of the arts in the community.

Lauren Russell, assistant director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, has been awarded a 2017 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Through the fellowship — which carries a monetary award of $25,000 — Russell plans to further develop a book-length work, tentatively titled Descent. The book is a hybrid work of poems, lyrical essays, images, and documents based on her family history.

With 17 patents and more than 40 invention disclosures to his name, University of Pittsburgh professor William Wagner has been named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).

According to the NAI, the honor is “the highest professional distinction accorded solely to academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society.”

In addition to serving as director of Pitt’s McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Wagner is a professor of surgery, bioengineering, and chemical engineering. He also serves as chairman of the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society-Americas, deputy director of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Revolutionizing Metallic Biomaterials, and chief scientific officer of the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine. Wagner is the third Pitt faculty member to be named an NAI Fellow.