Pitt Freshman Women to Participate in Traditional Lantern Night Ceremony Aug. 29

PITTSBURGH—University of Pittsburgh freshman women will receive a traditional lantern and the "light of learning" at the 84th annual Lantern Night Ceremony at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 29, in Heinz Memorial Chapel, Fifth and Bellefield Avenues, Oakland.

Nearly two dozen Pitt alumnae will act as flame-bearers, including mothers and grandmothers of some of the freshman women, lighting the freshman women's lanterns. The women will gather at 7 p.m. in the Cathedral of Learning Commons Room to receive a lantern and prepare for the procession to the chapel.

At 7:20 p.m., the women will process with unlit lanterns to the 7:30 p.m. ceremony at the chapel and, following the event, will return with lanterns lit to the Commons Room for a reception.

Provost James V. Maher will give the University welcome, and 2004 Alumnae Council Distinguished Alumna Jeannette E. South-Paul—medical director of the Community Health Services Division of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and chair of the Department of Family Medicine in Pitt's School of Medicine—will deliver the Freshman Address.

A 1979 graduate of Pitt's School of Medicine, South-Paul joined Pitt's family medicine department in July 2001, after serving as a family physician in the U.S. Army for 22 years. She is the first woman and first African American to serve as a permanent chair of a department in Pitt's School of Medicine. She chairs the Association of American Medical Colleges' task force and cochairs Pitt's Community Research Advisory Board. She is a senior adviser for the American Academy of Family Physicians Committee, with a family practice at the UPMC Matilda Theiss Clinic.

Other participants include Brian Generalovich (CAS '66, DEN '68), president-elect of the Pitt Alumni Association, who will give the alumni welcome; Lindsay Woods, Panhellenic Association president, who will speak on behalf of the students; and Martha Ann Terry (FAS '94) and Juliana Shayne (NURS '73), who will represent the Alumnae Council as its president and Lantern Night chair, respectively. Former Alumnae Council board member Ruth Forsyth (CAS '76) will play the organ.

The Alumnae Council of the Pitt Alumni Association and Pitt's Office of Student Life cosponsor Lantern Night. For more information, call 412-624-8229 or

1-800-258-7488.

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