School of Law

Overview

Office of Development and Alumni Affairs: Giving Levels

The Law School's Annual Fund helps support the School's mission to attract the best students, provide programs of distinction, support faculty achievements and strengthen the School's local and national reputation.
Several leadership giving levels have been established to recognize alumni and friends of the School for their annual support.

Amicus Society

The School of Law's premier donors of $10,000 or more

Dean's Council

The School of Law's premier donors of $5,000 or more

Law Fellows

The School of Law's key donors of:

Advocates: $1,000 to $2,499

Partners: $2,500 to $4,999

Associate Law Fellows

Gifts from alumni who have graduated within the past 5 years - $500

When considering your gift amount, remember that your gift can be increased if you or your spouse is associated with a company or foundation that will match your gift. Your gift may be tax deductible. Please check with your tax advisor.

For additional information concerning the Dean's Council, Law Fellows, or Associate Law Fellows, please call Jui Joshi at 412-624-0083 or email her at alumni@law.pitt.edu.

Donor Profile: Family Ties

A boy from the small coal-mining town of Grindstone, Pa., stands at the foot of the Cathedral of Learning, nearly bending over backwards to take in the whole building. It’s the tallest building he has ever seen. The towering Cathedral impresses him, but not as much as the person who emerges from the building’s revolving door seconds later.

The youngster blinks up at the man, who appears to be a giant to the 10-year-old. Instead of being afraid, the boy is thrilled. The giant is Pitt’s All-American football star Marshall “Biggie” Goldberg.
Seven decades later, Jim Duratz still fondly recalls asking the football legend for his autograph that day. His chance encounter happened in 1936, not long before Goldberg (CAS ’39) helped the Panthers win the Rose Bowl and the national football chammpionship. Back then, it was Duratz’s industrious spirit—selling the most Pittsburgh Press papers—that won him an overnight stay in Pittsburgh and led him to the Cathedral’s doors. He has applied that same industrious spirit throughout his adult life, inspired by and immersed in a family known for their business savvy and their generosity—the Barcos of Meadville and Titusville, Pa.

After serving in both the South Pacific and Europe during World War II, Duratz returned to western Pennsylvania in 1948 with a goal he had kept in mind since second grade, when mounted state police came to Grindstone to keep peace during a coal workers’ strike. He achieved that goal and became a state trooper, stationed in Meadville. Within a few years, though, he was restless and wanted a new challenge. He earned a degree in economics at Allegheny College on the GI Bill, graduating in two-and-one-half years, and he was soon working at Westinghouse in Pittsburgh. A few years later, though, he couldn’t resist an opportunity offered by his future father-in-law, George Barco. He moved back to Meadville to join the Barco family business in the fledgling cable television industry.

In the early 1950s, Barco almost single-handedly brought cable television to Meadville, an area that, surrounded by mountains, had poor TV-antenna reception. Duratz married Barco’s daughter, Helene, in 1956 and eventually began managing the Meadville business.
Meanwhile, George Barco (LAW ’34) and his daughter, Yolanda (LAW ’49), used their Pitt law degrees to shape government and industry policies and help make cable television the near-omnipresent educational and entertainment medium it is today.
“I had no idea what cable television was when I started,” says Duratz. When the Barco family launched cable in Meadville, it began with three channels. “It just grew,” he adds. “It surprised everybody in the business.” Duratz helped bring about that growth by pioneering the use of aluminum sheath cable, which boosted frequency strength and allowed more channels. By 1963, Meadville was operating the first aluminum sheath cable system in the United States, with 12 channels.

Together, the Barco-Duratz family made Meadville a center of cable television development. But their influence and generosity have extended far beyond this western Pennsylvania town—in fact, their story leads right back to the Cathedral of Learning and the University of Pittsburgh campus.

Today, in the Barco Law Building, future attorneys sift through volumes of books, briefs, and online resources in the Barco Law Library and work with innovative communications technology developed within the James J. Duratz Courtroom Technology Center. At the Duratz Athletic Complex, barbells clang and sweat runs as Pitt football players—some with Barco Athletic Scholarships—hit the weights. Pregame, the Panthers’ rallying cries can be heard whenever the door to the Duratz Locker Room at Heinz Field swings open. Two hours north of the Oakland campus, a mere jaunt along eastbound PA-27 from Meadville, students build snowmen in Pitt-Titusville’s Helene Barco Duratz Plaza, occasionally eyeing the plaza’s ornate, four-sided clock so as not to miss their next classes. In the George J. Barco Center for Continuing Education, a lively management training session for employees of a local company is in full swing, while in another room, quiet, sporadic mouse clicks and key taps underscore an instructor’s lecture on creating PowerPoint presentations. In total, the Barco-Duratz family’s contributions to the University of Pittsburgh approach $20 million.

Many familiar with Pitt are also familiar with the Barco-Duratz name—but some may be surprised at the vast legacy of giving that began with the late George Barco, continued with his late daughters Yolanda and Helene, and is carried on today by Jim Duratz.

Barco’s notion of giving back to the community went beyond simply donating money. Yolanda Barco once said about her father: “He strongly believed that every person must be accountable for the use of his time and resources over the course of his life. Just so, gifting is in the nature of an investment—to be done carefully and judiciously to generate increases in worthwhile returns over time.” This philosophy, embraced by the Barco-Duratz family, now perpetually supports the education of current and future Pitt students and the improvement of student life.
In 2004, Duratz received the Donor of the Year Award, University Division, from the National Association of Athletic Development Directors. He remains as focused as ever on carrying out the family’s philanthropic goals. He is working on one more Pitt project his family had planned—a state-of-the-art band complex. And his personal philanthropic endeavors have included the plaza at Pitt-Titusville named after his wife, Helene, who always loved the campus’ pastoral beauty.

Duratz credits Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg with providing exemplary leadership. “When I was growing up,” he says, “Pitt was something I never thought I would even get to see, let alone be involved in. The thing I notice most when I visit now is that it all seems to be in harmony. Everything is upbeat. It’s all going in the right direction.”

Student Profile

Nancy Potter, Student Bar Association President

People may wonder how a young woman from Merritt, Oklahoma, ended up in the Steel City studying law, but Nancy Potter is very certain of her career path. Born on a cattle ranch, she was greatly influenced by her mother, a teacher, and her father, a small business owner, both of whom always stressed getting a good education as a way of helping others.

When Nancy was only nine years old and interested in politics, she pored over some of the books on the family’s bookshelves and decided then and there that she wanted to be a lawyer, because, “in order to become a senator, I’d have to be a lawyer first.” Then, in high school, she became involved in a “teen court” program, learning the ins and outs of serving on a jury and representing clients in juvenile offender sentencing hearings. She fell in love with the courtroom, and her desire to work in the public interest has never wavered.

It was scholarship assistance, however, that brought Nancy to Pitt Law after she graduated from Oklahoma State University. Nancy feels very grateful for two scholarships, the Edward A. and Charles S. Perlow Scholarship and the Dean’s Professional Scholarship, which together have helped her defray a large portion of the cost of law school. She turned down bids from other law schools in New York and Boston, largely because of the financial help Pitt Law offered her. With less of a financial burden, she will be able to fulfill her dream of working in the public interest.

Currently, when Nancy isn’t studying for exams or working as a law clerk in the City Solicitor’s office, she admits to watching “a lot of C-Span” (large doses of politics are still important to her) and enjoying a bit of time off with her husband, Jon Akins, a PhD student in bioengineering at Pitt.

As President of the Student Bar Association, Nancy has tried to focus on service and representing Pitt Law at the regional and national level. In fall of 2009, she worked to make student orientation more relevant by involving the faculty and various community organizations in welcoming the new 1L students. She has also established a relationship with the Pittsburgh Community Food Bank to collect food items in conjunction with ticket sales to Pitt Law’s Barristers Ball. In addition, Nancy has worked with Associate Dean Lu-in Wang on bringing faculty and students together to discuss current issues in the law through the Student/Faculty Colloquia Series, which has met with great enthusiasm and success among students and faculty alike.

Nancy has also been involved with the Pitt Law Income Sharing Foundation (PLISF), both through her volunteer work with the organization and through receiving a PLISF grant to fund her work with the National League of Cities last summer. She is also a staff member of the Journal of Law and Commerce and a certified legal intern for the Community Economic Development Clinic.

Nancy is hoping to establish her career in Pittsburgh. Her goal is to secure a judicial clerkship and eventually move into the District Attorney’s office. She’d like to become involved with the Allegheny County Juvenile Courts and hopes someday to establish a Peer Court program in Western Pennsylvania. Peer Court is a sentencing program for first-time juvenile offenders in which they are sentenced by their peers, usually to some community service activity. Upon fulfilling the sentence, the juvenile’s legal infraction is expunged from his or her record. The program serves as an alternative sentencing model much like the very successful Allegheny County DUI court or Mental Health court.

Knowing Nancy’s track record of working hard to fulfill her enduring dreams and aspirations, we look forward to watching her continue to achieve and make our community a better place.

Contact Us

Jui Joshi

Director of Alumni Relations & Annual Giving
Phone: 412-648-2647
E-mail: juijoshi@pitt.edu

Drew Chelosky

Director of Development
Phone: 412-624-5187
E-mail: Chelosky@pitt.edu

Lisa Sciullo

Charitable Relationship Manager
Phone: 412-624-6434
E-mail: slisa@pitt.edu