Pitt Seed program invests in projects proposed by faculty, staff

Boosting the teacher pipeline in Pennsylvania and helping marginalized students succeed in college are among the five projects that have been selected for investment by the University of Pittsburgh.

The program, called Pitt Seed, provides internal financial support for pilot projects that have growth potential and could have direct impact on advancing Pitt’s strategic plan.

“Pitt Seed is a very unique internal funding program in the fact that it is open to faculty and staff,” said Brooke Spenser, program manager. “A lot of the other internal programs that are available for research opportunities are usually directed towards faculty only. This is a nice opportunity for staff to be able to submit an idea and see if it gets picked up.”

The 2023-2024 round of the program received 18 applications, with representation from the Greensburg, Oakland and Johnstown campuses.

The winning projects will each receive up to $75,000 to demonstrate proof of concept and will be eligible to compete for a $500,000 scale-up grant next spring. All proposals will receive help from project management professionals in the Pitt Portfolio and Project Management Office.

The program is in its sixth year.

“Some of the other competitions within the university are focused on clinical research. Other internal funding programs are directed toward technology and innovation. So we carved out a unique place where we are focusing on how we can improve business operations within the university,” Spenser said. “How can we address any gaps that might not necessarily make it into either of those two other research opportunities, and how can we improve our operations for faculty or staff or students?”

Here are the winning proposals:

• Manisha Nigam in the Natural Sciences Division at Pitt-Johnstown proposed Project SOAR: Fostering Leadership, Resiliency, and Network for students at Pitt-Johnstown. SOAR, which stands for Students Overcoming Adversity through Resilience, is geared toward marginalized students and Pell Grant recipients to help them in their university education and later careers.

• Dmitriy Babichenko in the School of Computing and Information proposed STEM Through Games, an immersive media design and research program that introduces high school students to computational thinking, programming and cross-disciplinary academic STEM research through games and immersive technologies such as augmented and virtual reality.

• Keith Caldwell in the Office of Engagement and Community Affairs proposed The CommUniversity Initiative to create a framework to support faculty members interested in adapting their courses for community engagement centers such as in Homewood and the Hill District.

• Melissa Lenos in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences proposed TC²: True co-equal x transformative collaborations, which seeks to support interdisciplinary projects between the humanities and other graduate programs. The project aims to provide resources to graduate students and faculty mentors who want to cross academic fields to develop partnerships.

• Melissa Jo Marks in the Behavioral Sciences Division at Pitt-Greensburg proposed a project called Planting SEEDs-Growing Teachers: Creating a Pipeline, which will analyze curriculum within the Pitt education program’s state-mandated competencies to promote a high school-to-university teacher education pipeline. It also aims to work with local districts to develop a means to implement state regulations under Senate Bill 99 and provide university credits for introductory Pitt-Greensburg education courses.