Pitt Career Day Panel to Feature Host of Successful Alumni from the Communications Field

October 10, 2001

PITTSBURGH––The University of Pittsburgh Department of English will hold its annual Career Day Panel from 2 to 4 p.m. Oct. 18 in the William Pitt Union Lower Lounge, 3959 Fifth Ave., Oakland. The event, featuring Pitt graduates who now work in the communications field, is free and open to the public.

Pitt's Al McDowell Memorial Scholarship, named in honor of the late television newsman, will be presented prior to the panel discussion. The scholarship supports an undergraduate student in the English department's nonfiction writing program.

Career Day panelists are Lynette Clemetson, Newsweek national correspondent; Daniel R. Bates, editor of Small Business News Magazine; Tom Chakurda, vice president of communications and marketing at West Penn Allegheny Health System; Kelly Frey, WTAE-TV morning news anchor; and Tim Rozgonyi, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette assistant technology systems editor. David Guo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette local news editor for the west suburban region and coordinator of Pitt's journalism sequence, will serve as moderator.

Clemetson graduated from Pitt with the Bachelor of Arts degree in English writing in 1990 and the Master of Arts in East Asian studies in 1994. She joined Newsweek's Washington bureau in 1998 and has written on national social and political issues. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Clemetson began her career with Newsweek in 1996 in Hong Kong, where she worked as a freelance writer and reporter. In addition to reporting on Hong Kong's historic handover from Great Britain to China in 1997, Clemetson covered social and political issues in Taiwan, Malaysia, and the Philippines. She received an award from the National Association of Black Journalists for her story "Soul and Sushi," on the life of African Americans in Asia. Her honors from the U.S. Department of Education include the National Foreign Language Scholarship, allowing her to study Chinese in Taipei during the1993-94 school year, and the Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship.

Bates earned the Bachelor of Arts degree in English writing and journalism from Pitt in 1986. As editor of the Small Business News, Bates helped launch the local monthly publication in 1994 after serving for almost three years as a writer/reporter for the Pittsburgh Business Times. His journalism career began at the Pitt News, and after graduation Bates took a job as a writer for The Almanac and The Advertiser, two South Hills newspapers. He moved to Boston in 1988 and served as managing editor of MagazineWeek, a magazine industry trade publication. He became editor of the consumer division of The Donoghue Organization, a publisher of newsletters, books, special reports, and directories for consumer mutual fund investors. Bates is the winner of two Golden Quill awards for his business articles. In 1996, he was named the U.S. Small Business Administration's Regional Small Business Media Advocate, which encompasses a six-state region.

Chakurda is a 1976 graduate of Pitt with the Bachelor of Arts degree in communi-cations. Prior to joining West Penn Allegheny Health System (WPAHS) in 1988 as assistant vice president for communications, Chakurda served as assistant director for media relations at Presbyterian-University Hospital and as a senior account executive at Ketchum Public Relations. He became a vice president at WPAHS in 1990. Chakurda and his department have been honored with more than 100 awards for communications achievement, including a regional Emmy, two American Hospital Association Awards of Excellence, and a Golden Quill. In 1994, he received the Public Relations Society of America (Pittsburgh Chapter) Renaissance Communicator of the Year Award and, in 1996, was awarded the BIZ-Mark Advertising Executive of the Year honor.

Frey, a native of West Chester, Pa., earned the Bachelor of Arts degree in rhetoric and communications from Pitt in 1995. After graduating from the University, Frey began her career as a reporter with "Hometown News," a cable television program in Monroe, La. She returned to western Pennsylvania as WTAE-TV anchor after stints as a morning show anchor at KTBS-TV in Shreveport, La., and KTVE-TV in El Dorado, Ark.

Rozgonyi received the Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from Pitt in 1982 and the Master of Library and Information Studies degree from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1988. As Pittsburgh Post-Gazette assistant technology systems editor, Rozgonyi is responsible for training and assisting the staff of the newsroom in using computer technology. Rozgonyi started as director of information services at the Post-Gazette in 1993 before taking on his current position in 1997. Prior to 1993, Rozgonyi served as library manager at The Pittsburgh Press.

Guo, who has been with the Post-Gazette for more than 25 years, earned an M.B.A. in 1984 from the University's Katz Graduate School of Business. He has taught basic journalism and English writing at Pitt's Greensburg campus and continues to teach part-time at the Pittsburgh campus.

The panel is co-sponsored by the University's Department of English Nonfiction Writing Track, Pitt News, Pitt's Placement and Career Services, and Pitt's WPTS radio station.

There will be a table of informational handouts on jobs and internships available both locally and statewide. For more information on Career Day, call 412-624-6506.

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