In early 1997, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center was facing a cut of about half its operating budget. It was the beginning of a planned phase-out of the then-10-year-old joint initiative of Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and Westinghouse Electric Co. that provided researchers access to powerful computing systems.
The board of the National Science Foundation had voted to maintain two centers and eliminate funding for two others — Pittsburgh’s being one.
Jared Cohon was still months away from officially assuming the presidency at CMU but already was facing his first crisis. Meanwhile, Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg and Cohon’s predecessor, Robert Mehrabian, had rejected the NSF’s recommendation the Pittsburgh center merge with the one at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, citing their opposition to a reduction in local staffing and the relocation of its supercomputers to the Midwest.
With the future of the Pittsburgh facility hanging in the balance, Nordenberg and Cohon, who was wrapping his tenure as Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University, each traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby the NSF for a reprieve.
The two men had not previously met, but their vigilance and like-mindedness would sow the seeds for a long-standing professional and personal kinship — and ultimately the survival of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.
By the time they were done lobbying, the NSF not only had reinstated full funding, but had chosen the Pittsburgh site to develop the world’s fastest supercomputer. Subsequent financing included a $45 million grant in 2000 and one for $52 million in 2005, but those figures are dwarfed by the countless jobs and innovations the center has created in the years since.
“It was a difficult time in terms of securing sustained funding for the program here, which had been so important to the region as well as the two universities, and there we were, kind of thrown together,” Nordenberg recalled.
“As you can imagine, it does make a difference to the audience if the president of Carnegie Mellon is talking about the great strengths at Pitt, and if the Pitt chancellor is talking about the great strengths at Carnegie Mellon and believing it and conveying that sense of belief,” he said.
What resulted was a partnership that spanned nearly two decades and led to the creation of several far-reaching community organizations, including the Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse and Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse.
“The community and civic work they did was really part of what put the region back on track,” said Dennis Yablonsky, CEO of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development and founding CEO of the two greenhouses. “The partnership they formed is fascinating. I don’t think there is any other place in the country where two heads of major universities have such a close working relationship.”
Since that first meeting 16 years ago in Washington, Nordenberg and Cohon have continued to instill a culture of collaboration between the neighboring institutions and laid the groundwork for future cooperation.
“What’s key is that the standard Jerry and Mark set created the academic environment Pittsburgh has today,” said D. Lansing Taylor, director of the University of Pittsburgh Drug Discovery Institute and an adjunct professor at CMU.
“They created a model that has to be continued here in Pittsburgh, and their successors have to build on what they started,” he said.
In October, four months after Cohon stepped down as CMU president and less than a year before Nordenberg is scheduled to end his term as chancellor in August — the Pittsburgh Business Times brought the two educators together to discuss their deeply personal bond, the joint accomplishments that have been instrumental in powering the region’s renaissance and the blueprint their partnership provides for businesses of all stripes to unearth more profits by joining forces.
Decades of tension
Before the Nordenberg and Cohon era, Pitt and CMU were literally institutions from opposite sides of the street, in their case Forbes Avenue. The relationship between the universities had been tense for decades, and at times was even described as adversarial.
“There’s a story — it may be apocryphal, but then again it comes from (billionaire businessman) Henry Hillman -— about a black-tie event where Pitt Chancellor (Edward) Litchfield presented plans to develop (the neighborhood of) Panther Hollow, and CMU’s president (John Warner) just sat silently,” recalled Charles Queenan, former managing partner of K&L Gates LLP and a past chairman of CMU’s board. “Litchfield turned to him and said, ‘Why don’t you like me?’ and Warner said, ‘I do like you. I just don’t trust you.’”
While this story dates back to the 1950s and 60s when Litchfield and Warner led their respective institutions, the relationship of the universities continued to be distant right up until Nordenberg and Cohon’s arrival.
The late J. Wray Connolly, a onetime senior executive vice president of H.J. Heinz Co. and member of Pitt’s board of trustees, sat on Mellon Financial Corp.’s board alongside Cohon and Nordenberg and was witness to the thaw in relations between the two schools.
“At Mellon meetings, they (Cohon and Nordenberg) happen to sit next to each other, and they chat quite a bit before meetings and on breaks,” Connolly told the Business Times in a 2001 interview. “They get on very well. They have a keen interest not only in their institutions, but in trying to move things ahead regionally.”
Connolly also served on Pitt’s board when Wesley Posvar was chancellor and Richard Cyert CMU’s president for much of the prior three decades.
“It was my observation that there was not that kind of relationship between (Posvar and Cyert) that there is between Mark and Jerry,” Connolly said.
“That’s not a criticism. It’s just not the way Mark and Jerry work together today. There weren’t the kind of joint initiatives as there are now.”
Meeting of the minds
Nordenberg, who became Pitt chancellor in 1995, said he was first introduced to Cohon through Judith Rodin, then president of the University of Pennsylvania.
“She basically said to me, ‘You are going to love this guy, and you won’t find anyone better to work with,’” he recalled.
A simple gesture got them off to a good start: When it was announced that Cohon would be taking over as CMU president, he returned to his office at Yale to find flowers and a note congratulating him on his new position and welcoming him to Pittsburgh. It was signed by Nordenberg.
“Mark really reached out, and as you hear this unfold, not only was it an institutional relationship, it became a close personal relationship and the two benefited,” Cohon said.
From the start, Cohon said it was a shared sense of optimism and possibility for the region that drove the partnership and led others to take notice. Yet, back then, Nordenberg said, there was no way to know how the two universities together could further the region at large.
Following their success with the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, the two embarked on even more-ambitious ventures.
In 1999, working with Gov. Tom Ridge’s administration, the two helped launch the Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse, an economic development initiative focused on building an industry cluster around system-on-chip technology in the digital multimedia and digital networking markets.
“Pennsylvania historically, and that region in particular, had been grounded and based in heavy manufacturing, but at the time, it was going through a renaissance where it was clear steel and manufacturing were not going to be at the center of economic development,” Ridge said. “To have university leaders that understood and accepted that reality and became enthusiastic, not just as supporters but advocates, was an asset.”
Their next major collaboration was the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse in 2002, which married CMU’s IT, computer science and engineering strengths with Pitt’s medical excellence and biomedical engineering. Nordenberg and Cohon were co-chairs of what Nordenberg describes as the pair’s greatest accomplishment.
Taylor, who was president and CEO of Cellomics Inc. at the time of the PLSG’s founding and became PLSG chairman in 2007, said the two men were key to the effort to attract foundation support for the PLSG, which was initially funded with money from the state’s tobacco settlement. Since its founding, PLSG has leveraged an additional $900 million in capital for the region, and helped more than 400 life sciences companies.
“Their partnership was crucial,” Taylor said. “It had two effects: some of the funding that went to the university was able to attract really first-rate scientists, but those scientists were in turn able to attract more money and got involved with entrepreneurial activities in the region.”
John Manzetti, president and CEO of PLSG, said without Cohon and Nordenberg, PLSG wouldn’t exist.
“They have always been there whenever I needed any kind of guidance or assistance,” he said. “They have been involved in just about every technology economic development project in Pittsburgh. I don’t think there is an area they have touched that hasn’t been affected in a good way.”
The work of PLSG helped Pittsburgh through its shift from a manufacturing economy to one with a greater focus in knowledge industries.
“Their leadership and the impact of their good works has been felt, and can be seen far beyond the boundaries of their own campuses,” said outgoing Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl. “Their partnership and shared vision for Pittsburgh created jobs (and) set the tone for a new Pittsburgh.”
Paving the way
Cohon and Nordenberg are quick to point out it wasn’t all them. Pitt and CMU came together.
“It’s the provosts and the deans and the faculty ultimately that do things,” Cohon said.
Don Smith, president of the Regional Industrial Development Corporation of Southwestern Pennsylvania and former director of economic development for Pitt and CMU, said Cohon and Nordenberg brought a spirit of trust to the alliance.
“The big challenge (when they arrived) was to build the trust between both universities to make sure the institutions also made the commitment to make the partnership work,” he said. “There were times when I needed to have information from one university that was proprietary to the other, and that takes a lot of trust. The ability they had to work on things collaboratively when it called for collaboration, and the ability to work on things independently when it called for that, was what allowed the partnership to work.”
Still, both Cohon and Nordenberg conceded the bringing together of independent minds from different university cultures can lead to tension, and at some points did.
“It’s not unlike a marriage; there are always going to be disagreements and fights, but you have to commit in a marriage to sustain it,” Cohon said, with Nordenberg continuing, “Well, the difference between our partnership and a marriage is, in the end, we are dependent upon partnering by other people, and I would say that looking back at the moments of greatest tension came when it was not clear that people actually doing the work were partnering in the same ways that we had become accustomed to partnering.”
Changing of the guard
Now, with Nordenberg and Cohon stepping down -— both men plan to stay in Pittsburgh and teach — the question has become whether the two universities can maintain the cohesion and what that could mean for the region.
Nordenberg’s successor has not yet been named. However, in Pitt’s search profile outlining the qualities the university is looking for in its next chancellor, included is a stated commitment to continue working with CMU.
“The partnership between the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University is unique in the world of higher education, and it has made the Pittsburgh region an internationally respected center of cutting-edge academic work,” said Stephen Tritch, chairperson of the board of trustees at the University of Pittsburgh, in a written statement.
Subra Suresh, Cohon’s successor who became president in July, said he intends to sustain the relationship.
“The two universities very much compliment each other, and by working together, everyone gains, both the universities and the region,” he said. “Mark Nordenberg has already been an extraordinary friend to me in the short time that I have been here.”