Thai Room Committee to Present Pitt with Declaration of Gift for Proposed Thai Nationality Room May 11

PITTSBURGH—Yawvaluck Kosoladolkitt, chair of the University of Pittsburgh's Thai Room committee, and Pruet Siribanpitak, secretary of Pitt's Alumni Association in Thailand, will present a Declaration of Gift to the University for a proposed Thai Nationality Room, at 4:15 p.m. tomorrow in Room 156 of Pitt's Cathedral of Learning, 4200 Fifth Ave., Oakland.

Pitt Provost James V. Maher and E. Maxine Bruhns, Nationality Rooms program director since 1965, will accept the document at the presentation. The Thai Room project will be a gift to Thailand's Crown Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, on the occasion of her 50th birthday.

The 26 Nationality Rooms, which encircle the Cathedral's Commons Room, are gifts to the University from Pittsburgh's ethnic groups. The first 19 Nationality Rooms were coordinated by Ruth Crawford Mitchell, the program's founder and director, and dedicated between 1938 and 1957.

Under Bruhns, seven new rooms were completed between 1987 and 2000. She is now coordinating eight additional rooms—the Danish, Swiss, Philippine, Turkish, Latin American, Welsh, Finnish, and Thai rooms.

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