Going the Distance

This story, written by Ervin Dyer, is excerpted from the winter 2020 issue of Pitt Magazine, the University’s flagship alumni publication.

Runner #3189 is wearing a shirt emblazoned with the new script Pitt and colors. She dashes along the rain-slickened asphalt with a throng of 5,000 others in the 2019 Pittsburgh Marathon. Suddenly, at about the halfway mark, she feels a jolt of pain in her right knee. Wincing, she glances at the line of runners ahead, contemplating the many miles still to go. Ann E. Cudd has always been focused and determined, but on this day, as she continues on, will that inner strength be enough to get her to the finish line of her 14th marathon?

It has already helped propel her over hundreds of miles throughout her life.

She “was always running,” recalls Cudd’s mother, Bernice Daniels. Perhaps she was inspired by the students from a nearby college who often jogged past the family’s horse farm in the village of Gambier, Ohio. Cudd became part of the Midwestern landscape, too, “constantly running up and down the roads,” her mom says, even occasionally jogging eight miles to high school.

Cudd—who became provost and senior vice chancellor at the University of Pittsburgh in fall 2018—believes that her lifelong passion for running has taught her a lesson that transcends winning races: No goal can be reached without either the commitment to go the distance or the strength to overcome the adversity that invariably pops up.

She calls on that wisdom at Pitt as she pushes forward with bold new programs meant to strengthen the University’s commitment to inclusive excellence, battle onerous college debt, and pioneer innovative pathways for student accomplishments. Her agenda presents formidable challenges, with aspects that even presidential candidates are struggling to tackle. But Pitt’s provost isn’t one to be intimidated.

Learn more about Provost Cudd and finish the rest of the story at Pitt Magazine.