Beth Piraino will retire as associate dean of admissions and financial aid in Pitt’s School of Medicine

Beth Piraino, associate dean of admissions and financial aid and professor of medicine, has announced her plans to retire in late summer after 43 years of service to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Piraino leaves her mark on the University in multiple areas, notably in shaping the classes of students in the School of Medicine in her 19 years as associate dean.

But her history here is even longer. Piraino graduated from Pitt with a BS in biology in 1970 and returned as a graduate student. After getting her MD at the Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (now Drexel), she returned to Pittsburgh for her internship and residency in internal medicine and a nephrology fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Health Center (now UPMC).

She has been working at Pitt since 1982, rising to become vice chair of clinical affairs in the Department of Medicine. Piraino did extensive clinical research and became internationally known for her expertise in peritoneal dialysis. Patient care was her first love, and she continued the demanding life of caring for very sick people with renal disease until two years ago.

Piraino added her role in admissions in 2003 and has helped bring in thousands of students who are now physicians, including many who are Pitt Med faculty members. “It's very rewarding to see how successful they are, and how well many of them are doing,” she said.

She said she enjoyed the admissions role because of the opportunity to determine “what the next generation of physicians is going to be, and how you pick the people who would be right for this school, and who would you know grow here and would do well and would be a good fit. So that's all a part of it. It's a very interesting process, and I just love working with these young people.”

Her work in admissions evolved along with the goals of the School of Medicine, bridging its traditional mission of training excellent physicians to building the medical school into a research powerhouse, while finding students who are able to pursue today’s bench-to-bedside focus and are committed to serving the patients and the community.

In her retirement, Piraino plans to write a book about the experience of being a physician-mother and losing her only son when he was 28 to common variable immunodeficiency and congenital heart disease. In a reflection of her deep and continuing commitment to the School of Medicine, she set up an endowment in his memory to fund an infectious disease award, which is given to two or three graduating students each year.
 

“Please join us in expressing our gratitude for Dr. Piraino’s many contributions to Pitt School of Medicine. She will be greatly missed,” Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of the School of Medicine, and Abbas Hyderi, vice dean for education in School of Medicine, wrote in a message to the School of Medicine faculty, staff and students.

“We will work with her on a smooth transition as we plan for her departure in late summer and begin the search for her successor,” they wrote. “There will be opportunities to celebrate her in the coming months, with details to be announced.”