Local leaders joined roughly 45 Chatham University faculty on Thursday evening to formally advance a union organizing effort that began this fall after the university made a series of cuts to trim a multimillion-dollar deficit.

The faculty met at Larimer’s East End Brewing Company to sign cards declaring their intent to unionize. If at least 30% of the university’s roughly 135 full-time faculty sign them, the National Labor Relations Board will hold an election. Chatham also has the option to voluntarily recognize a union, without an election, if there’s evidence that a majority of faculty want representation. 

About half of the full-time faculty had signed cards by Friday morning, an organizer told PublicSource. Roughly a third of the faculty were present at Thursday’s event.  

The event – graced by Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey and Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato – was one step forward in what could be a lengthy process. If successful, the faculty will be a local of AFT Pennsylvania.

“This is a really exciting night for us. We’ve been working up to this point for many months now,” said Jessie Ramey, an associate professor and organizer with Chatham Faculty United. “We’ve been working really hard with our faculty colleagues to make sure that everybody feels like they are a part of what we’re doing.”

The event was organized by Chatham Faculty United, which is seeking to achieve unionization for the full-time faculty. The group believes that unionization will allow faculty to have greater influence in university governance; protect their pay and benefits; and benefit from a formalized grievance process. 

This summer, Chatham reduced faculty benefits and cut some salaries to trim its deficit, which the university has said stands at $6 million. Professors told PublicSource in November that the university’s response to the deficit renewed a previously simmering interest in unionizing and “really underscored how powerless we are.” 

Much of the organizers’ work so far has focused on connecting with faculty and explaining the benefits they believe a union could bring. Jennie Sweet-Cushman, an associate professor and organizer said the group will visit Chatham’s three campuses after Thursday to ensure all interested faculty can sign cards. The organizers will contact the National Labor Relations Board soon, she added. 

“We’re hoping to have a really strong showing with the cards so that we can make that case for voluntary recognition,” Sweet-Cushman said. “We would really love it if that happened. Nobody wants this to be a contentious thing. Nobody feels like the university should be spending money trying to fight it.”

Bill Campbell, a spokesperson for the university, did not provide comment on the union effort to PublicSource by press time, and did not say whether the university would voluntarily recognize a union. 

Gainey said in an interview during the event that his administration would like to write a letter to the university’s Board of Trustees stating that unionization is “for the best interests of not only the school but the city.”

“I’ve said from day one, if you want to make the quality of your workplace better, it’s important that you’re able to collectively bargain,” the mayor said. “A lot of times what happens is, we don’t listen to our frontline employees. When you have a union, you don’t have a choice.”

Innamorato also voiced support for the nascent union effort. “We need to make sure that the people who make institutions like Chatham great are taken care of,” she said. Councilor Erika Strassburger, who represents Squirrel Hill where Chatham is located, also attended.

The union effort, if it advances, may be more challenging for the faculty than for workers in other industries. A decades-old decision from the U.S. Supreme Court determined that full-time faculty members at the private Yeshiva University were managerial employees; the case has made unionization very difficult for similar faculty at private universities.

A more recent ruling from the National Labor Relations Board, however, offered standards for determining whether faculty are managerial employees. A local victory that followed this ruling bodes well for the group. Full-time faculty at the private Point Park University reached their first tentative agreement on a union contract in 2017. 

Sweet-Cushman said the organizers have met with labor attorneys and feel strongly that they would not be considered managerial employees under the ruling. 

The organizers are optimistic that their effort will be successful. But regardless of the outcome, they’re committed to serving as “a forum where faculty can build community,” Sweet-Cushman said. 

“Our work doesn’t end,” she said. “We’re eager to keep building those bonds and being supportive for our colleagues.” 

This story was updated on Jan. 26 at 9:55 a.m. to reflect a final count of the cards signed during the event.

Emma Folts covers higher education at PublicSource, in partnership with Open Campus. She can be reached at emma@publicsource.org.

The post Gainey, Innamorato back Chatham faculty union push at East End card-signing appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

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In May 2023, the student leaders of Lambda — an LGBTQ affinity group at Duquesne University — asked school administrators to change their organization’s name to something more recognizable: the Queer Student Union.

Today, the fate of that name change is uncertain. Catholic universities like Duquesne find themselves at a crossroad, with support for LGBTQ rights growing nationally but the Catholic Church and some of its U.S. membership still officially opposed to gay marriage and the full inclusion of transgender parishioners.

While some university administrators expressed support for the name change, Lambda President Nialah Miller said others disapproved of the word “queer” appearing in the group’s title. Still, “we’ve been trying to push it,” they said.

Gabriel Welsch, vice president of marketing and communications at Duquesne, said in an email that discussions remain “ongoing.”

University officials did not oppose including the word “queer” in a group’s title, Welsch wrote. Instead, staff members “sought to confirm that the term ‘queer’ was not offensive to the individuals it was going to represent.”

As an interim measure, university administrators allowed the group to expand its title from Lambda to Lambda Gender Sexuality Alliance. But a lack of consensus around the original proposal has delayed the group’s full name change by upwards of six months.

Meanwhile, student leaders at Duquesne emphasized that the name change is a crucial step toward the open expression of LGBTQ identity on campus.

“It matters a lot, because the words that you use — they have to align with the words that people are using to describe themselves,” said Maddie Fitzgerald, founder and president of Duquesne oSTEM, an LGBTQ affinity group within the School of Science and Engineering that frequently collaborates with Lambda.

Now, “it’s Lambda Gender Sexuality Alliance, which is fine,” Miller said. “But nobody’s saying the whole name.”

A nixed mass and a sleek, black dress

Conflicting ideas over LGBTQ inclusion in Catholic spaces came to a head at Duquesne this summer when Catholics for Change in Our Church [CCOC], a local group that hosts monthly masses advocating for “constructive reform” in the Catholic Church, planned a service celebrating Pride month on campus.

While the group received permission to host a similar mass the year prior, CCOC began advertising its event this year before seeking approval from officials at Duquesne or the Pittsburgh diocese.

As word spread about the service, local religious leaders including Bishop David Zubik urged that the mass be canceled altogether, claiming that the diocese received an outpouring of complaints. Duquesne obliged, nixing the event less than two weeks in advance.

Similar contentions between religious and LGBTQ interests at Duquesne have spanned decades, back to when Lambda was founded in 2005.

There are several theories about why the Greek letter Lambda has been adopted by LGBTQ groups, including its traditional uses as a symbol for change and balance. By creating and identifying with a covertly named group like Lambda, LGBTQ students at Duquesne hoped to signal their identity to one another without scrutiny from outsiders.

But times have changed, according to Miller, and Duquesne’s LGBTQ student body wants more visible representation. That’s why last semester the group sought approval for the name change.

“Whenever you tell people that you’re a part of Lambda GSA, they think you’re in Greek life,” Miller said. “We just wanted to change it to something that was more recognizable, and that covered more people.”

For Miller and Fitzgerald alike, pushback surrounding Lambda’s name change exemplifies limitations on how LGBTQ student groups can represent themselves on campus.

Both leaders pointed to another incident in 2019, when student and faculty organizers of an annual gender-neutral fashion show were told they could no longer use gender-neutral language or imagery for the event.

One year prior, posters for the show depicting a male-presenting model walking a runway in a sleek, black dress “generated numerous complaints,” according to a September 2019 statement by Duquesne officials. They walked back their restrictions following public outcry, but students still felt blindsided by the decision.

Although neither was involved with the show, Miller and Fitzgerald said its fallout was familiar territory.

The school community can be “finicky about word choice,” Miller said. For both groups, this means screening event ideas with faculty advisors to ensure they will receive approval.

In his email, Welsch wrote that all student groups must receive administrative approval to ensure that programming aligns with university policies, adding that “Duquesne has no restrictions for LGBTQIA affinity groups or topics.”

But Miller said their group preemptively factors an understanding of the campus climate regarding LGBTQ issues into the decision to propose events. When the group follows through with an event idea, a desire to avoid controversy on campus influences the language and imagery it uses for promotional materials.

Avoiding controversy “is just about word choice,” Miller said.

Similarly, when oSTEM hosted a fashion show featuring upcycled clothing in November, Fitzgerald said the group had to be tactful with the language and images it used to promote the event due to the 2019 incident.

When planning for the show, “there was a lot of anxiety within oSTEM and the School of Science and Engineering,” Fitzgerald said.

The school’s leadership, which Fitzgerald described as an overall supportive presence, helped oSTEM plan its promotional materials, telling the group: “We don’t want this to go poorly for you.”

“We didn’t run into any problems,” Fitzgerald said. “We just had to be careful.”

Catholic and queer

For Fitzgerald, who identifies as both Catholic and queer, tiptoeing around LGBTQ issues on campus like this is frustrating. At Duquesne, Fitzgerald said some of her peers in each community struggle to understand how she holds both Catholic and queer identity at once.

“It’s kind of crazy even to explain to other queer people that I’m also Catholic, or to other Catholic people that I’m queer,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s usually just something to avoid.”

Creating LGBTQ spaces on campus does not undermine Duquesne’s religious mission, Fitzgerald said. Instead, it opens it to identity groups historically excluded from Catholic spaces.

When those institutions uplift LGBTQ community members in the ways that they choose to represent themselves, it “legitimizes your identity,” Fitzgerald said.

Likewise, Miller, who is Black, said the goals of LGBTQ student groups mirror those of cultural or ethnic affinity groups on campus: to create a space for community-building among students with shared experience.

Students who join cultural affinity groups “want their own space where they can interact with people who know what they’ve dealt with,” Miller said.

“Queer people want the same thing,” they added — to visibly represent LGBTQ identity through resources, events and even a group name.

“Both of our groups have been approved as being aligned with the university mission,” Fitzgerald said. “We deserve to be here.”

Jack Walker is a journalist based in West Virginia, and can be reached at jackwalkerwv@gmail.com.

This story has been fact-checked by James Bell.

The post Student group’s push for name change raises questions around LGBTQ visibility at Duquesne appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Pencils Down
How plummeting enrollment and low success rates at the Community College of Allegheny County harm students and the Pittsburgh region

When the next Allegheny County executive takes the helm in January, they’ll assume influence over the county’s community college – and potentially shape its role in the community. 

They’ll support the Community College of Allegheny County [CCAC] financially, a responsibility that has been the subject of political dispute. They’ll appoint board members to govern the college, which serves thousands of students but has seen enrollment fall in recent years. And they could deepen the relationship with CCAC, especially after a race that saw one former candidate support free community college. 

CCAC declined to make President Quintin Bullock available for an interview about the potential impacts of the upcoming leadership change and declined to respond to a list of emailed questions. In a late-March interview, Northwest Region President Evon Walters said the college was not backing a particular candidate at that time.

Walters, a member of the President’s Cabinet, said that the shift in power is an opportunity for CCAC to continue to emphasize its mission and “the transformative work that our faculty and our administrators do on a day-to-day basis.” He said he couldn’t speak to whether the change could pose challenges for the college.

“We stay in our lane in terms of being able to be that champion for the college, for the community, regardless of who is in that position,” he said.

The two candidates for county executive, Democrat Sara Innamorato and Republican Joe Rockey, fielded questions from PublicSource about their visions for and responsibilities to the college. Here’s a breakdown of what they shared:

Do the candidates support free community college?

Before losing in the Democratic primary, Pittsburgh Controller Michael Lamb said he planned to provide two years of free tuition at CCAC to high school graduates in the county. He estimated that his program would cost up to $60 million annually and said it would be funded through contributions from philanthropic groups, local employers and the Allegheny Regional Asset District, WESA reported. 

Tuition-free programs for colleges and universities have grown nationwide, according to The Washington Post. So far, Innamorato and Rockey have not announced similar proposals. 

A spokesperson for Rockey did not respond to a question on whether he would pursue a program. Innamorato told PublicSource that Lamb’s proposal interested her, but she said she wanted to confirm whether such a program would be financially feasible for the county. 

“I haven’t been able to explore wholly what the opportunities for funding that would be,” she said.

The contestants for Allegheny County executive, Democratic candidate Sara Innamorato (left) and Republican candidate Joe Rockey. (Photos by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource).

Innamorato also pointed to the poor student success outcomes facing community colleges nationwide and questioned whether tuition costs are a primary barrier to completion at CCAC. County residents paid $4,602 in tuition at CCAC during the 2021-2022 academic year, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education. About 40% of full-time students who had enrolled that fall dropped out by the next.

The county could instead invest in addressing other roadblocks that CCAC students may face, such as housing insecurity or a lack of childcare, Innamorato said. Nationally, about 42% of student parents are enrolled in community colleges. A 2021 survey of more than 80,000 community college students nationwide found that 14% were housing insecure.

“I’d hate to say, ‘Let’s definitely put money towards covering tuition’ when there might be all of these other factors at play,” she said.  

How is the county funding CCAC?

In questioning the viability of a free community college program, Innamorato referenced claims from some Allegheny County Council members that the county has historically underfunded CCAC. The state’s Public School Code of 1949 says that tuition should cover, at most, a third of the college’s annual operating costs and that state and local funding make up the rest.

Innamorato said in an interview that she’d “be really interested to dive into the finances of the county and figure out: Where are we at with that obligation?” She added that covering the cost of tuition “would be quite a jump” from the state’s current requirement.  

In a later statement, Innamorato said that the county and CCAC should regularly discuss how the county can support costs in the college’s capital budget, including infrastructure. She said that she would work with members of the General Assembly to prioritize state funding for community colleges.

A spokesperson for Rockey did not respond to a question on how he would prioritize funding for CCAC. 

Council member Bethany Hallam has said that the county is supposed to cover a third of CCAC’s operating costs but had fallen short prior to this year. County spokesperson Amie Downs, however, disagreed. She provided PublicSource with excerpts of reports CCAC submitted to the state from fiscal year 2019 to fiscal year 2022, which show that tuition costs made up less than a third of CCAC’s operating costs during that period. 

In December, the council approved a roughly 12% funding increase for CCAC, bringing its 2023 allocation to $31.1 million. The increase was the largest that CCAC had received in at least a decade. Both Hallam and Council President Pat Catena, who also claims the county has underfunded the college for years, would like the council to approve subsequent boosts to CCAC’s budget. 

Hallam, who supports Innamorato, said: “There’s so much room to grow, especially considering the lack of investment over the years, that a new administration could really start off from the very beginning saying, ‘In Allegheny County, we prioritize education. We prioritize our most valuable assets.’” 

Catena added that he’d like the next executive to collaborate more with CCAC and other entities during the budget process. CCAC did not respond to a question asking for its assessment of the ways the county has collaborated with the college during the budget process. 

Council Vice President John Palmiere, who sits on CCAC’s Board of Trustees, spoke positively of the support the college has received from current County Executive Rich Fitzgerald. He’s hopeful that Fitzgerald’s successor deepens the relationship.

How would the candidates appoint board members to CCAC?

The county executive is responsible for appointing members to CCAC’s Board of Trustees, with the approval of county council. The next executive will likely appoint nearly all of the 16-member board if they serve a single term. 

Rockey indicated that he would prioritize technical and managerial expertise, while Innamorato said she’d seek the representation of affected constituencies.

In an interview, Rockey said he hadn’t given much thought yet to the appointments to CCAC’s board but would ensure that new members have “the qualifications to manage something with that budget and that importance inside Allegheny County, with a view towards direct-to-employment opportunities.”

He added that, in the board appointments he would make countywide, he would seek members who fill gaps and bring diverse skills, from legal to accounting expertise.

Innamorato said she’d like faculty, current students and alumni to be represented on the board, along with people with knowledge of higher education trends and the region’s workforce needs. 

She said that a member who understands dual enrollment programs – where high schoolers take community college courses for credit – could help CCAC ensure that county residents are saving time and money before transitioning to four-year universities. 

How could CCAC support the county’s workforce?

CCAC graduates can play a big role in bolstering the county’s workforce: About 85% of 2021 graduates went on to live and work in the region, according to statistics from the college. Rockey said that CCAC should place greater emphasis on its trade programming to help meet the region’s needs.

“What I would say is not necessarily about CCAC. It’s about, ‘Are we preparing folks to stay in Allegheny County for the jobs in Allegheny County?’” Rockey said. “We need to make sure we have a clear path, with CCAC, as to what jobs are being needed and necessary for the future of Allegheny County.”

Innamorato said she’d like to ensure the county is utilizing CCAC to fill vacancies within county government. She also wants to partner with local employers to identify broader gaps in the workforce, then work with CCAC and the county’s higher education institutions to help fill them. 

“If people are using CCAC as a springboard to their job or to another university, then we need to make sure that those systems are streamlined so that students are making the most efficient use of their limited time and resources,” she said.

Emma Folts covers higher education at PublicSource, in partnership with Open Campus. She can be reached at emma@publicsource.org.

This story was fact-checked by Tanya Babbar.

The post Exec candidates make no promises of free CCAC as Allegheny County debates college’s funding, role appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

As Chatham University grapples with a multimillion-dollar budget deficit, several current and former faculty members are describing their past interactions with the university’s budgeting and accounting practices as “chaotic,” “god-awful” and “always an adventure.” 

The private, nonprofit university estimates that, after making significant cuts, it now faces a $6 million deficit, which it attributes to declining graduate student enrollment, rising costs and an “aging financial system and reporting infrastructure,” among other factors. The concerns of the current and former employees reveal, at least, that some lacked confidence in the university’s financial management prior to the deficit’s announcement.  

The university’s auditor, Schneider Downs & Co., has not found “material weaknesses” in Chatham’s internal financial reporting mechanisms, according to a review of 10 fiscal years’ worth of audited financial statements. The next report, covering the fiscal year ending June 2023, is expected to be released in December. 

However, five current and former faculty members — two of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for career ramifications — criticized or expressed concern with some of their financial interactions with the university. Some said that administrators shared conflicting information about program budgets or provided little oversight during the budgeting process, and others said they managed program budgets or grants using only Excel spreadsheets, some provided by the university. 

Reliance on spreadsheets could lead to errors in budgeting or grant management, according to some experts in nonprofit accounting and financial management. 

Michael Collyer, a professor of biology, said that the spreadsheets he received from Chatham left him unsure about how grant funding had been credited.

“I had to trust that the bookkeeping was good because I couldn’t reconcile it,” said Collyer,  who has managed a roughly $112,000 federal grant from the National Science Foundation by requesting Excel spreadsheets from the university. 

Late last month, the university created a new office to help administer grants and contracts.

Read more: ‘We were all blindsided’: Chatham University faces multimillion-dollar budget hole, lays off staff, cuts benefits

This summer, faculty at Chatham learned that the university faced a projected $8-12 million deficit, inherited by then-incoming president Rhonda Phillips. Under Phillips, the university has limited retirement benefits, laid off staff and cut the salaries of the leadership team, among other austerity measures. 

Board of Trustees Chair David Hall told faculty that the board became aware of the deficit ahead of its June meeting, adding that the influx of COVID-19 relief funds had delayed the impact of the budget shortfall. The audited statements from the fiscal year ending in June 2022, however, show a roughly $19 million gap between revenue and expenses. 

The university said the statements include expenses that “are not necessarily” in the operating budget, where the deficit is.  

Bill Campbell, a spokesperson for Chatham, declined to comment on internal university business operations or the statements of current or former employees, citing university policy. He did not respond to questions from PublicSource that asked how the university managed its finances prior to June; what role Excel spreadsheets have played in its management practices; and how administrators ensured that the financial information shared with faculty was accurate. 

Read more: From pink pencil to nonprofit: How a writing utensil ignited a passion for tutoring in our community 

People walk through Chatham University’s campus, in Squirrel Hill North, on Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2023. (Photos by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource).

Campbell also did not comment on how the alleged accounting shortcomings cited by faculty may have contributed to the deficit. “Chatham has previously communicated to employees that we are upgrading some systems to replace those that did not keep up with growth and needs,” he wrote in an email.

Steven Thompson, the co-chief executive officer of Schneider Downs, said the company does not comment publicly about its clients without their request or consent, referencing an industry code of professional conduct. 

Grant management prompts questions and concerns

Erica Harris, an associate professor of accounting at Florida International University, said universities like Chatham would want to use a “sophisticated” budgeting software that supports real-time analysis and draws data from accounting software. 

Managing individual grants through Excel is common for nonprofits that lack budgeting systems, but “it comes with a lot of downside” partly because of the risk of errors, said Jim Croft, the academic director for nonprofit financial management programs at Northwestern University. 

“Excel can do a beautiful job” at small nonprofits, Croft said, “but at some point, you have to be concerned about the ability to have some controls over the input and output of information.”

Read more: Allderdice and Westinghouse, 3 miles away, are worlds apart in AP classes, teacher experience, student disadvantage

For some professors at Chatham who manage grants, the use of Excel spreadsheets has made it difficult to reconcile accounting disparities or know how much of their funding remains available. Based on his spreadsheets, Collyer, for example, is unsure whether the university has properly used a $24,000 component of his grant from the National Science Foundation to hire a visiting professor while he was on sabbatical. 

Similar concerns have persisted for some time. In 2009, Sarah Shotland co-founded Words Without Walls, a program at Chatham that brought creative writing workshops to local jails and prisons. Shotland said that she would send the university spreadsheets that she had made to track how the program’s grants were spent. Shotland found her method of management difficult. 

She left the university in 2022 partly because of financial management concerns. She now teaches at Carlow University, where she says that she logs into a software system and can easily view and update her budget in real-time. That didn’t exist at Chatham, she said.

“In my role, as the director of Words Without Walls, it was extremely important for me that I was accountable to the incarcerated students and the MFA students that I worked with,” Shotland said. “In the absence of a system that is clear and consistent, it makes accountability almost impossible.”

Brian Mittendorf, a professor at The Ohio State University who specializes in nonprofit accounting, said it’s unclear whether Chatham’s use of Excel spreadsheets reflects a poorly managed accounting system. The practice could be helpful, he said, because it allows faculty to confirm whether documented transactions are accurate.

“I hate to say the presence of Excel in and of itself is an issue because it just depends on how that plays out,” he said. Still, practices that call into question a university’s ability to carefully track grant- and donor-restricted funds can be concerning – even if there isn’t an underlying problem, he said.

“I don’t think ‘chaotic’ is something anyone would want as a descriptor of an accounting system,” he said.

Questions about administrative oversight

A program director who is also a professor at Chatham described a lack of administrative oversight of their program budget. 

The professor said that they attended annual budget meetings where they would present the amount of money they intended to spend on their program in the next three years. There, they said that Jenna Templeton, the former vice president for academic affairs, and Jennifer Hoerster, the former vice president of finance and administration, would “just shake their heads and go, ‘OK, yeah, that seems reasonable.’”

“It was just the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever been in,” the professor said. Templeton and Hoerster did not return calls and emails from PublicSource. 

The professor said they would not receive confirmation that their budget had been approved after the meeting, so they “just spent the money.” The administration would provide monthly budget updates, but the information would be months out of date, they said. They estimated that they once went over budget by a couple hundred dollars.  

“There was never any question about the spending,” they said. “It seemed like every year, we would get an email that said, ‘Oh, we need you to cut [the budget] by 3%.’ And I would make ridiculous cuts here and there, which were meaningless because I would just keep spending whatever, because I never knew what I was supposed to be spending anyway.”

Collyer, who previously served as a program director at Chatham, said that he would receive confirmation in October that his budget had been approved after presenting it to the administration in May. He said he would occasionally go over budget in some areas, likely by just a few hundred dollars, without repercussions.

Phillips announced the departures of Templeton and Hoerster in a late June email to faculty and staff. The email did not detail the terms of their departures. Templeton had served in her role for more than eight years, while Hoerster had held her position for about 10 months. For about five years prior, Hoerster had served as associate vice president of finance and administration.

Hoerster’s predecessor as vice president was Walter Fowler, who served in the role for nearly 20 years until retiring in September 2022. Contacted by phone, Fowler said he hadn’t been involved with Chatham’s finances in more than a year and didn’t want to talk. 

Sheryl St. Germain, who retired from Chatham in 2019 after serving for 14 years as director of the masters in fine arts program in creative writing, said she learned early in her tenure to keep scrupulous records about her program’s finances. In the annual budget meetings she attended, administrators would provide budget spreadsheets that conflicted with her records and suggested misallocated funds, she said. 

Though she recalled that the university would correct the errors she identified, she described the process as “very painful and anxiety-producing.”

“I would wind up just very angry when I walked out of these meetings, or extremely upset. And on a couple of occasions, I was crying,” St. Germain said. “I did fight very hard to make sure that those discrepancies were resolved. …

“It was just a nightmare, honestly, to try to balance the budget with these people.”

Changes at Chatham?

In late September, Phillips informed staff and faculty via email that the university was creating an Office of Research and Sponsored Programs to help administer grants and contracts across the university, among other responsibilities.

Collyer was pleased with the office’s establishment. He said that Phillips informed faculty that the office would help faculty manage their grants, which he hopes will mean that other personnel will be involved in the budgeting. 

“President Phillips appears to be rather progressive in this regard,” he wrote in an email. “I am optimistic about our future.”

Correction: Chatham’s campus is primarily in Squirrel Hill North. A prior version of this story placed it in another neighborhood.

Emma Folts covers higher education at PublicSource, in partnership with Open Campus. She can be reached at emma@publicsource.org.

This story was fact-checked by Rich Lord.

The post On Chatham’s anxious campus, faculty recount funding frustrations as deficit reduction takes hold appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Kendra Wilmer, a rising high school senior, had planned to write her college entrance essay about her struggles as a Black student in a predominantly white school. But on this mid-August morning, she wasn’t so sure.

She questioned whether mentioning race in her essay would disadvantage her. “Is it worth it to write it at this point?” asked Wilmer, who attends Oakland Catholic High School in Pittsburgh.

That day, she went to a workshop to learn how to perfect her essay. It was organized by the Crossroads Foundation, a nonprofit that provides college readiness programming to students of color and those of low-income backgrounds. Crossroads marketed the annual event differently this year, emphasizing to families that the essay may now carry heightened importance in students’ applications, said Executive Director Esther Mellinger Stief.

The reason? In late June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that universities can no longer consider an applicant’s race in the admissions process, a practice sometimes referred to as “affirmative action” which supporters say leveled the playing field for students of color but critics say provided unfair advantages. Students are still allowed, however, to discuss the impacts of their race in their essays, so long as universities consider their stories only as reflections of their ability or character.

Universities across the country are trying to understand what the ruling means for them. Most accept the majority of applicants, meaning that more selective universities will likely feel its impact and see a drop in enrolled students of color, according to observers of higher education. Many institutions don’t require essays, either, and others don’t factor them significantly into admissions decisions. 

Read more: ‘We were all blindsided’: Chatham University faces multimillion-dollar budget hole, lays off staff, cuts benefits

Still, the essay is a window for students to tell selective colleges who they are, and what their strengths are. Without explicit considerations of race in applications, it could now be the means for students of marginalized backgrounds to express the systemic disadvantages they’ve faced. Some students of color, though, would rather not focus their essays on that topic.

“For many of our scholars, they don’t want to be deficit-based. They don’t want to be writing, ‘This horrible thing happened to me, or all of these things were a struggle.’ They want to be able to be proud of who they are and come at it from a strength-based perspective,” Mellinger Stief said. “I worry about it suddenly becoming a competition of ‘Who has the hardest story to tell?’”

Read more: Pittsburgh higher ed steps up sexual assault interventions ahead of annual spike in cases

Wilmer was one of about 15 high school seniors who showed up to the workshop at Crossroads. She said she’s interested in studying marketing or mechanical engineering at Ohio State University, among others. That university accepted about 60% of applicants in the 2021-2022 academic year and had considered race in the process. 

What does this mean for the admissions process?

In Pittsburgh, at least three universities said they considered race in admissions prior to the ruling: the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and Duquesne University. Chatham, Point Park and La Roche universities said they do not consider race, and information was not publicly available for Carlow and Robert Morris universities.

Pitt and CMU declined to make admissions officials available for interviews about the ways they’re responding to the ruling and did not respond to written questions for comment. 

Duquesne spokesperson Gabriel Welsch said the ruling will not impact the institution that much. The university, which accepts about 88% of applicants, has for years considered “the entire person” and their qualities that may foster academic success, he said. He pointed to the university’s membership in the Coalition for College, a group of 150 institutions seeking to improve access to higher education, as one effort to attract diverse students. 

“We will continue our approach and believe that our efforts to attract and retain a diverse community of students have been working,” Welsch said. White students made up 80% of the university’s undergraduate student body in fall 2022. 

The high schoolers at the Crossroads workshop, most of whom were students of color, got a glimpse into how universities are navigating this new terrain. Fabian Cotten, who previously worked at Crossroads, is now an admissions counselor for Pittsburgh at the Pennsylvania State University. Standing in front of a Google Slides presentation, he told the class that some universities will make greater efforts to attract diverse students through recruitment to offset new restrictions on admissions policies. 

Read more: Pitt outlines ‘BioForge’ plans for Hazelwood site in initial pitch to city panel

He said that Penn State and other universities are now ramping up direct marketing through emails and social media; strengthening and forming relationships with community-based organizations like Crossroads; and simplifying the application process. Penn State, for example, helps students complete the required Self-Reported Academic Record, a process Cotten said can otherwise take up to an hour. 

And though universities can no longer consider race in applications, Cotten said there are other identifiers that could help in recruiting, such as residential ZIP codes and first-generation status. Penn State, like other universities, also purchases student names and information from the College Board, which can include their ethnicity. With that data, the university can “see what you’re interested in, and then we can send you a bunch of flyers and emails.”

Read more: They’re calling it ‘bio valley,’ but Hazelwood residents want to know what it means for them

“My office – we’re in Pittsburgh, Downtown – our sole mission is to recruit underrepresented students,” Cotten told the students. “We don’t want to have the same students from Central, Oakland Catholic or predominantly white schools. So we’re also going into inner-city schools as well, Pittsburgh Public.”

He asked the students: “What do you think makes a good applicant? Anybody, just jump in.” The students, quiet that day, offered: Dedication. What they’re involved in. Academics. All are valuable, he said, adding that Penn State seeks students who demonstrate leadership skills, community engagement and authenticity. 

He told the students that the last characteristic, authenticity, is an important component of the entrance essay. “It doesn’t have to be something tragic. Just tell your story. The idea is for the reader to know more about you as a person, something that we cannot see on your transcript. That’s just black-and-white. It’s a bunch of numbers.”

Read more: Want to enroll your child in an after-school program? Here’s what you should know.

Crossroads is encouraging students to narrow their lists of top universities and establish personal connections by visiting campuses, calling admissions counselors and sending thank-you notes. If a university knows a prospective student, admissions staff can advocate for them, Cotten told the class. He recalled that a Crossroads student visited Penn State twice last spring, wrote an essay about his financial situation and earned a full-ride scholarship.

“It was really up to me,” Cotten said. “I know you guys are in Crossroads for a reason. You guys want to be successful. … So, it’s that simple guys, just get to know people.”

For some students, ‘I don’t want my race to be the factor’

Back in June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on two cases filed by Students for Fair Admissions, a multiracial group led by conservative activist Edward Blum. The group sued Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, arguing that their admissions policies were racially discriminatory and violated the 14th Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

Read more: Private loans can be risky. At some Pittsburgh universities, students are borrowing more than others nationwide.

The plaintiffs argued that the universities’ admissions policies discriminated against Asian-American applicants. Opinions on the ruling, however, vary widely among Asian Americans. About half of Asian Americans who’ve heard of affirmative action say the practice is beneficial, according to a June survey from the Pew Research Center, but only 20% of Asian adults believe that colleges should consider race. 

Shreya Pant, a senior at North Allegheny Senior High School, performs in marching band and serves on her school’s student council. She plans to study political science and law and is considering Georgetown, George Washington and American universities, all of which reported in recent years that they considered race. Pant, who is Indian, wants to focus her essays on her life experiences – potentially on what she’s learned through travel – and not her race. 

“I don’t want my race to be the factor that gets me into college, and if the college is going to base how they choose me off of my race, then that’s not a college I think I’d want to go to,” Pant said. She believes that admissions decisions should be based on merit, adding: “I wish the process was more transparent, like, colleges were more transparent with why they choose kids.”

Read more: Anti-violence teams surge as $50 million in Allegheny County funding flows

Pant has received academic support from Pittsburgh Prep, a college preparatory organization that lists Brown, Carnegie Mellon and Johns Hopkins universities among its student acceptances. Terri Koprivnikar, one of Pittsburgh Prep’s college admissions counselors, said she’d recommend that students applying to selective institutions consider focusing supplemental, optional essays on their race, even if they’re white. 

“Everyone has been impacted by their race, at some level.”

She said that a lot of the students of color that Pittsburgh Prep works with “are concerned that it’s going to hurt them in the process, not being able to say what minority they identify with. But we said, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll put an essay in.’”

Marcia Sturdivant, however, doesn’t think the Supreme Court’s ruling will significantly impact students from marginalized backgrounds. She’s the president and chief executive officer of NEED, a local nonprofit offering preparatory programming with a historic mission of serving Black students. 

Even when universities could consider race, they admitted only students of color who were qualified, she said. She believes institutions that care about diversity will continue to accept those who are capable, as long as they feel encouraged to apply.

“We have to make sure that we stay steadfast in helping them understand that they are qualified, that they’re capable, to not let someone define what they see you as,” she said. “We have just superior students here, and we just have to continue to motivate them not to be discouraged.”

Read more: Her ex left her bruised and in shock. Her attempts at justice illuminate the struggle to prosecute partner rape allegations.

A peek into potential essays 

After taking a brief recess, the seniors at Crossroads took a look at the seven essay prompts available this year through the Common Application. Wilmer, who had considered writing about her experience at a predominantly white high school, was mulling over two. One would have her discuss a moment that led to personal growth; for the other, she would write about how gratitude has motivated her. 

“The fact that people have done something nice and generous for me makes me feel like I can do this for somebody else,” she said about the latter. 

The students later read two essays from former, anonymous Crossroads students. In one, the author discussed growing up in a nine-person, four-bedroom household, struggling with financial insecurity, diving into an internship program and falling in love with optometry. 

“… although I had to grow up quickly, I am prepared for what is ahead. I am using everything I have experienced to tackle life head on,” the student wrote. They concluded, in bold text, “I am ready for my future.”

Read more: ‘It’s just too close’: People living near fracking suffer as Pa. and local governments fail to buffer homes

Marcus Hart, a senior at Seton LaSalle Catholic High School, sat in the front row. Having a passion for animals, he was planning to apply to several HBCUs to study environmental science and biology. He hadn’t thought too much about what he’d write about in his essay, but he was considering drawing on his background. 

That day, he wasn’t feeling deterred.

“Fabian just said it’s supposed to be a peek into your life,” Hart said. “I’m not going to stop myself … especially if it’s a part of me.”

Emma Folts covers higher education at PublicSource, in partnership with Open Campus. She can be reached at emma@publicsource.org.

The post With ‘affirmative action’ out, Pittsburgh college applicants ask: Does race have a place? appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Five days before Rhonda Phillips took over as Chatham University’s new president, faculty and staff received an email from her. “While excited to officially begin my tenure,” she wrote on June 26, “this is not the tone nor tenor of the first message I envisioned sending.”

Earlier that morning, Board of Trustees Chair David Hall told faculty and staff via email that the private university faces an increasing deficit in its operating budget, projected then to be between $8-12 million, and likely needs to “realign costs and revenue” over the next two years. That’s a substantial sum for Chatham, which brought in about $52 million in revenue in the 2022 fiscal year, according to audited financial statements. 

So far, the university has limited health care benefits and laid off staff members. The board also passed a resolution allowing university leadership to begin a “campus-wide reorganization,” Hall wrote in his email. The process was already underway by the time Phillips messaged the faculty and staff about half an hour later. 

Read more: With affirmative action out, Pittsburgh college applicants ask: Does race have a place?

The incoming president shared that she plans to restructure Chatham’s leadership team over the current academic year. At that time, that meant the departures of the vice presidents of finance and administration; academic affairs; strategic planning and Title IX; and advancement. The effort was necessary, she wrote, to streamline administrative decision-making and help establish “new approaches to supporting our students, employees, and alumni.” 

And she was forming an academic advisory committee, partly composed of faculty, staff and students, to review the university’s programs, outcomes, pricing and funding. She told the faculty and staff that she’d hold a campus update on “Chatham’s situation and plans” the week of July 3 and would schedule additional meetings in the summer and fall. 

“I fully recognize the uncertainty and impact the days ahead will have on our community. As we chart our path, please know that it is my goal to always lead with empathy, support for our mission, and by providing clear direction for Chatham as we move forward together,” Phillips wrote.

Emerging indications of Chatham’s fiscal crisis bring to Pittsburgh a problem faced by many universities as enrollments dip, costs rise and federal pandemic relief money runs out. And even if Chatham tackles the deficit, the university may face additional headwinds in the future. The state has the fourth-highest number of higher education institutions in the country, and they’ll likely compete for an undergraduate population that’s expected to fall sharply in the coming years.

Read more: Pittsburgh higher ed steps up sexual assault interventions ahead of annual spike in cases

Chatham pay, insurance benefits trimmed

Bill Campbell, a spokesperson for the university, said that the deficit is now projected to stand at $6 million. The university estimates that it will shrink to $3-4 million next year, but he noted that all numbers may fluctuate.

To get there, the new administration has made significant cuts.  

Phillips announced the layoffs of about 20 staff members in an early August email to faculty and staff. Two librarians, including the archivist for the 153-year-old university, were among them, two professors told PublicSource. 

Read more: Want to enroll your child in an after-school program? Here’s what you should know.

Employee benefits were substantially limited, too. In September, the university reduced its maximum retirement match for faculty and staff from 8% to 3%, a move one professor described as “draconian.” Spouses who have insurance through their employer will no longer be eligible for the university’s self-insured plan in January.

The university also cut the salaries of the leadership team by 10% on Aug. 1 and plans to implement a 5% reduction on Oct. 1 for faculty with annual base salaries of more than $100,000. The university had weighed whether to cut the salaries of faculty earning between $50,000 and $100,000 a year but decided not to as of mid-August.

“I cannot emphasize enough how low the morale is. People are just devastated and feel so victimized by all of it,” said Jennie Sweet-Cushman, an associate professor of political science. “How do you get up in the morning and put in a 12-hour day instead of an eight-hour day when your retirement’s been cut and your benefits have been cut?”

Top of mind for many faculty, she said, is job security. Some professors expressed concern to PublicSource that the work of the academic advisory committee would lead to programmatic cuts and faculty layoffs. 

Read more: Pitt outlines ‘BioForge’ plans for Hazelwood site in initial pitch to city panel

Campbell did not explicitly state whether the university anticipates cutting any academic programs but said that “additional operational cost controls, some temporary in nature, will continue over the reorganization period.” 

“I’m not saying that administrators aren’t working very hard,” said Erin Marie Williams-Hatala, an associate professor of biology and program coordinator for the biological sciences, “but we are being asked to be cheerleaders for an institution that doesn’t necessarily have our back.”

What caused the deficit?

Hall, the board chair, attributed the deficit to several factors in his email to faculty and staff. Graduate student enrollment, “a central part of the budget,” dropped by about 25% from 2012 to 2022, though undergraduate enrollment nearly doubled. Maintaining buildings, investing in technology and upgrading classrooms has become more expensive since the pandemic began. The university also lost a long-term tenant at Chatham Eastside.

Campbell also attributed the deficit to “an aging financial system and reporting infrastructure that did not keep pace with the University’s growth and needs.”

The university’s expenses have outpaced revenue largely since fiscal year 2016, a review of audited financial statements shows. That fiscal year, revenue and expenses totaled about $53 million and $59 million, respectively. In fiscal year 2022, revenue totaled $52 million and expenses amounted to $71 million. During that period, the university reported that its revenue was greater than its expenses only in fiscal year 2021.

Read more: Most community college students hope to transfer and earn a bachelor’s degree. CCAC students have better odds than others nationwide

Though the financial statements from the most recent fiscal year show a roughly $19 million gap between revenue and expenses, Campbell said the statements include expenses that “are not necessarily” part of the annual operating budget, where the deficit is. 

The university's endowment grew from around $75 million in 2016 to $101 million in 2021, but then dipped to $89 million last year, according to the audited financial statements.

Despite those mounting challenges, Hall wrote that the board only became aware of the deficit ahead of its June meeting, adding that the influx of COVID-19 relief funds had delayed the impact of the budget shortfall. 

Three professors who spoke with PublicSource said they were aware of most of the circumstances outlined in Hall’s email but didn’t know of the deficit until early this summer. “Nobody ever presented a picture that was negative. It was, ‘We have some challenges, and we're working on those.’ But we were all blindsided,” Sweet-Cushman said. 

“I feel bad for President Phillips because it wasn't her fault,” another professor said. “She has come into this budget crisis. So I think a lot of us are angry with the board. Why didn't they know?” 

Hall and other board members PublicSource attempted to reach did not respond to inquiries at the time of publication.  

Read more: Plan to put private firm in charge of Allegheny County juvenile detention revealed and criticized

President’s early departure led to advisor

The timing and handling of a late-spring leadership change hinted to some faculty that the university faced challenges. A May 19 email from Hall alerted faculty that then-President David Finegold would "transition out of the day-to-day leadership" almost immediately, speeding a departure that had been set for July 1. 

Campbell did not respond to a question on Finegold’s departure. 

Hall announced that Chatham had hired a chief operating officer and “special advisor” to the board, Eileen Petula, who would begin immediately. A committee of board members would manage the university’s operations with Petula and the leadership team before Phillips took over. Petula would work “closely with all parties to ensure effective operations and provide support … in all transition activities and planning,” he wrote. 

“While unconventional for Chatham given the longevity of our leadership through the years,” he wrote, “the Board feels a role such as this will provide additional experience, skills, and support to successfully prepare for Dr. Phillips’ arrival.”

Read more: Anti-violence teams surge as $50 million in Allegheny County funding flows

An uncertain path forward 

Phillips and Petula briefed faculty and staff on the university’s financial situation in July, reiterating what Hall had shared days earlier and, according to three professors, outlining the cuts to retirement benefits and possible salary reductions for faculty. 

One professor said the meeting prompted them to search for other job opportunities. “Money is not everything for me, but I do want to be at a place that has growth opportunities,” they said.   

Read more: ‘It’s just too close’: People living near fracking suffer as Pa. and local governments fail to buffer homes

That professor, though, said they believe Chatham “is in good hands” with Phillips and added that, “I think we will come out of this.” Another said they’ve found Phillips to be a good listener who is willing to change her mind. A third, however, described the administration’s approach so far as “spreadsheet leadership.” 

Sweet-Cushman said that faculty – who lack union representation – should have greater input in the decision-making. 

“The bigger thing is not that we have magical thinking and imagine that nothing should be cut, because we understand that we're facing a crisis here. It's that it's being unilaterally decided on in almost every instance,” Sweet-Cushman said. “Between the administration and the Board of Trustees, there's some groupthink that goes on there.”

She appreciates that Phillips has assured faculty that Chatham will come out of this period “stronger than ever,” but the broader state of higher education in Pennsylvania concerns her. 

“I think [the deficit] is a hit that could hinder our ability to be flexible enough to weather those storms,” she said. “I don't want to leave Pittsburgh. I don't want to leave Chatham. My vision was to spend my entire career in my sweltering office that has no air conditioning.”

“So, I appreciate her optimism. I don't know how accurate it is. And I'm not alone in that.”

Correction: Chatham's campus is primarily in Squirrel Hill North. A prior version of this story placed it in another neighborhood.

Emma Folts covers higher education at PublicSource, in partnership with Open Campus. She can be reached at emma@publicsource.org.

The post ‘We were all blindsided’: Chatham University faces multimillion-dollar budget hole, lays off staff, cuts benefits appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Pittsburgh-area universities and career schools are taking new steps this fall to tackle a pervasive problem: sexual violence.

A new state requirement has led trade and career schools to ramp up their programming on sexual violence prevention, and it’s prompting more training for faculty and staff at universities across town. The universities are also making use of substantial grants they’ve received for prevention work in recent years, deploying a response team and, potentially, expanding resources for survivors of domestic violence.

There’s an urgency to this work. While sexual violence happens throughout the academic year, more than half of assaults occur in the time between the start of the fall semester and Thanksgiving break. This period of time is known as The Red Zone, and women, students of color and LGBTQ students are most vulnerable during it. 

Here’s a breakdown of what’s changed in the last year at local universities and schools:

A new law ushers in more partnerships and training

A state law (Act 55 of 2022) enacted last summer required all higher education institutions to enter into memoranda of understanding [MOUs] with at least one local rape crisis center and domestic violence program. Each institution was directed to use the agreements to develop their policies, training and programming on sexual misconduct by the start of this academic year. 

Read more: They are Pittsburgh college students and survivors of sexual violence. Here, they share their stories.

“Offices change, people in roles change. But the MOU is meant to withstand any changes so that the students that need services aren’t at the whim of who’s in what role and who knows who,” said Alyssa Pietropaolo, civil rights compliance officer at the Community College of Allegheny County [CCAC].

Each institution must also work with the partner rape crisis center and domestic violence program to offer a sexual violence awareness program that includes, among other requirements:

• Discussions of consent and types of abuse
• Information on reporting and the importance of seeking medical treatment after an assault
• Introductions of members of local or campus law enforcement 

A follow-up educational program is also required. Institutions must self-report compliance with the law to the state Department of Education. 

Chatham University’s Shadyside campus on Aug. 27, 2023. (Photos by Alexis Wary/PublicSource)

For CCAC and many of the larger universities in Pittsburgh, the law formalized existing partnerships and programming with local organizations. 

More than half of sexual assaults among college students occur in the fall. Resources, survivor stories and investigation into what’s being done to protect those at risk in the Pittsburgh area. Explore the series.

Chatham University formed agreements with Pittsburgh Action Against Rape [PAAR] and the Women’s Center and Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh. Chatham wants to expand its prevention programming, and the law will help the university make the most of existing partnerships, said Chris Purcell, vice president of student affairs and dean of students. 

Will McGinnis, director of education and prevention at PAAR, said the law’s requirement of collaboration between universities and rape crisis centers is positive, but it’s still a “pretty low-level bar they have to hit.” The language around collaboration is broad, he said, and he believes it’s too early to tell whether the law will foster more effective prevention work from universities.

Read more: She still felt stalked. A sex assault survivor at Duquesne University blames the toothless no-contact order.

But for some of the region’s smaller trade and career schools, it was the impetus for establishing relationships and offering more substantial prevention programming, said Tyler Dague, the communications strategist for the Center for Victims.

The center – which provides counseling, advocacy and legal support to survivors of crime in Allegheny County – formed agreements with nine trade schools and technical colleges. All of those were new partnerships, which is “fantastic for outreach,” Dague said. 

“Every single person that becomes aware of not only our services, but all of the services that are available, becomes an advocate for you,” he said. 

Bidwell Training Center, a career school, had already established prevention programming and had been “operating in a fairly significant way to support compliance” with the law, Vice President Kimberly Rassau said. Still, the Center for Victims reviewed all of the training center’s prevention programming and policies and trained its faculty and staff on responding to sexual harassment and violence. 

Over the next year, Dague aims to gather feedback from the schools to potentially tweak the center’s support. He wants to make it easy for the schools to comply with the law so they view it as an opportunity to connect students to resources – not “an annoying obligation.”

The Women’s Center and Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh is expanding the training and resources it provides university faculty and staff through the law. STANDING FIRM, a national program that the center operates, educates employers on the signs of intimate partner violence and reviews their policies for supporting survivors in the workplace. 

The program is now working with local universities for the first time. 

Read more: Dear parents: Sexual violence is a reality on college campuses. Here’s what you should know and how you can respond.

The University of Pittsburgh, for example, is partnering with STANDING FIRM to offer three one-hour training sessions, and a four-hour intensive program, on the ways faculty and staff can recognize abuse and support students and colleagues who disclose. Attendance for both is optional. 

Mary Onufer, senior account executive at STANDING FIRM, said that the expanding partnership “fills a gap” in higher education. Title IX, the federal civil rights law, does not provide recourse when faculty, staff and students are abused off-campus, if the misconduct occurs outside of the university’s educational program or activity. 

Onufer previously taught at Carlow University. When students or colleagues share that they’ve been abused, “it’s really devastating when you don’t know how to help,” she said. “Basically, we’re just trying to put those supports in place before it happens.”  

Universities bolster prevention work with grants funding 

Money is also flowing to several universities for prevention work. 

In 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice awarded Point Park University a $300,000 grant, for use over a three-year period, to help address sexual violence, stalking and dating violence on campus. With that, Point Park formed a team of on- and off-campus partners who meet twice a semester and oversee the university’s prevention and education efforts.

The team, which began meeting in spring 2022, includes representatives from the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, Pittsburgh Regional Transit and PAAR, as well as university officials and campus police. Their work will continue this academic year. 

Read more: These Pittsburgh women survived sexual assault on campus 20 years apart. Their experiences shed light on how little has changed.

“If we have a case for stalking, for example, I can go to the Port Authority and say, ‘Hey, are you able to provide footage? We have a student that was in this area at such and such a time,’” said Maria Lewis, the project director for the university’s grant. 

CCAC plans to create “stopgap kits” of basic resources for students who’ve recently fled domestic violence using a $55,000 state grant. Students at CCAC tend to be older than those at four-year universities – the average student is 27 years old – which means they’re likely more vulnerable to domestic abuse, Pietropaolo said. 

At Pitt, Carrie Benson, senior manager for prevention and education in the Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, received a $500,000 internal grant from the university this summer to fund sexual violence prevention and survivor support efforts over three years. 

The funding comes after an academic year that saw many students express outrage and concern over sexual violence at the university. In October 2022, a female Pitt student was reportedly assaulted in a stairwell in the Cathedral of Learning. Students organized a protest, issued demands for change and expressed dissatisfaction with administrators’ responses. 

That year, the university provided dialogue-oriented prevention programming – where students sit in a circle with a facilitator and talk about consent, boundary-setting and healthy relationships – to about 20 student organizations. Benson’s office plans to use the grant to hire more facilitators for the program, which Pitt is offering to some freshmen this year and intends to expand to Greek organizations. 

Read more: Across Pittsburgh colleges, students step up to prevent sexual violence through education, advocacy and support

Along with funding the grant, Pitt hired Campos, a marketing research firm, to conduct focus groups with students at the end of the fall 2022 semester. The firm asked students about their awareness of campus resources and barriers to seeking help, finding that students are often unsure about who is required to share disclosures of sexual violence with the Title IX office.

To help address that, Pitt is posting flyers in all its public restrooms to explain the reporting process and plans to post a video on the topic on social media.

“This year,” said Benson, “we have been particularly focused on bringing student voice into everything that we do.” 

Emma Folts covers higher education at PublicSource, in partnership with Open Campus. She can be reached at emma@publicsource.org.

This story was fact-checked by Erin Yudt.

The post Pittsburgh higher ed steps up sexual assault interventions ahead of annual spike in cases appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Hazelwood may be a food desert, but in the neighborhood’s partly vacant commercial corridor, you can still enjoy a “little taste of France” at a bakery occupying the site of a former grocery store.

The nearest grocery store is a Giant Eagle a mile and a half up the hill in Greenfield, and some longtime residents like Saundra Cole-McKamey, 58, wonder who the bakery is for.

“We didn’t ask for that at all,” she said. Developers “come in our community. They don’t ask what we want.”

Similar concerns apply to the future of a large land tract just north of the business district that, at least for now, sits largely undeveloped. The grassy swath of land, known as Hazelwood Green, is historically tied to the adjacent Hazelwood neighborhood and will likely shape the course of its future.  

This fall, the University of Pittsburgh plans to begin constructing a biomanufacturing facility, known as BioForge, that it says will transform “Steel Valley” into “Bio Valley.” Pitt plans to present the project before the City Planning Commission in September, with the commission’s approval required before the university can move forward with construction. The commission process will eventually include a public hearing that could showcase differing neighborhood views on Pitt’s community engagement.

And Carnegie Mellon University, which already operates a Manufacturing Futures Institute on the Hazelwood Green site, received city approval last month to build a Robotics Innovation Center. 

Both universities have met with residents to discuss their development plans and say they’re using feedback from residents and community organizations to bring opportunities from Hazelwood Green to the neighborhood. But, so far, some residents are unaware of what’s happening on the site, or feel they’ve been left out of the conversation and may not be served by the development. 

In step with the region, Hazelwood is adapting and changing to new economic realities. Decades after the collapse of heavy industry, the Hazelwood Green site has garnered millions in funding from foundations and brought a promise of community revitalization. 

“If our community knew that [Hazelwood Green] land was valuable, we could have bought it ourselves,” said Terri Shields, a lifelong Hazelwood resident who founded JADA House International, a local organization that provides space to at-risk teens and women.

A new vision for the former brownfield

For much of the 20th century, Jones & Laughlin Steel operated on the 178-acre Hazelwood Green site, simultaneously polluting and providing for Hazelwood. By the early 1960s, roughly one in four employees of the company lived in the neighborhood. When the steel industry collapsed, closing the plant in the 1990s, Hazelwood withered. 

A population that stood at roughly 13,000 in 1960 had tumbled to shy of 4,000 as of the 2020 census. Today, there’s more poverty, higher rates of unemployment and fewer job opportunities here than in the city overall. In 2019, nearly half of households in Greater Hazelwood – which includes the Glen Hazel neighborhood – earned less than $20,000 a year, according to a neighborhood plan published by the City Planning Commission. At the time of the study, only a quarter of citywide households fell within that income bracket.

The Almono Limited Partnership – a partnership of the Richard King Mellon Foundation, the Heinz Endowments* and the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation – now owns most of Hazelwood Green. The group envisions the site including 3,500 mixed-income residential units, 30.6 acres of recreational space and millions of square feet of office, retail, dining and other buildings, according to the 2018 preliminary plan that was updated last year.

Overall, reports WESA, the group aims to transform the site into “a global center for tomorrow’s economy” focused on science, engineering and entrepreneurship. And the next several years could advance that vision more concretely, roughly two decades after Almono LP purchased the land. 

Pitt and CMU hope to fully or substantially complete their projects by 2027 and 2025, respectively. Both are funded by multi-million dollar grants from the Richard King Mellon Foundation. 

Hazelwood Green’s Mill 19 business center, to the left, on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023. To the right, a person looks toward the development of the site as they walk along Tecumseh Street that day. (Photos by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource).

When is development a good thing?

Many local leaders welcome the injection of money, jobs and industry.

“There’s a lot of potential and promise for good jobs for the community and increasing the number of people that are living here,” said City Councilor Barb Warwick, who represents the neighborhood. “It’s also important that we are deliberate with this development in making sure that it is, in fact, a development that uplifts the people who are living in Hazelwood.”

But Pastor Lutual Love, of Hazelwood’s Praise Temple Deliverance Church, believes that the Hazelwood Green developers aren’t extending development to the rest of the neighborhood. 

Love, who has lived in the neighborhood for roughly 45 years, said: “I don’t see how what Pitt and them is doing is going to benefit the community. It doesn’t benefit the community – it benefits the people that’s developing it but does not bring any particular resources to the people who live in the community.” 

Shields, who has partnered with both Pitt and CMU for unrelated work, believes the research activities of Pitt’s biomanufacturing facility could benefit Hazelwood. Still, the university is only asking residents for permission to develop a ready-formed plan, she said, presenting “a blueprint already out, and it’s going to happen anyway.” 

“Pitt coming to Hazelwood and presenting this BioForge, it was something that they just didn’t come up with in a day,” she said.

Pitt views the Hazelwood Green site – large and close to campus – as an opportunity to transform the university into a global leader in biomanufacturing while growing the industry in Pittsburgh, said Kinsey Casey, associate vice chancellor for economic development in the health sciences. 

“Our intention is to really involve and engage the community in this development,” Casey said.

To that end, the university has developed three planning teams, partially staffed with leaders of Hazelwood community organizations, to determine how the neighborhood can benefit. The teams – which have met 30 times since July 2022 – are respectively exploring STEM education opportunities for youth; “new paths of employment” and workforce development programs; and means of ensuring existing residents and businesses thrive.

Sonya Tilghman, executive director of the Hazelwood Initiative, serves on that last planning team. They’ve begun meeting with residents, and she’s sought to familiarize members with the Greater Hazelwood Neighborhood Plan. The plan, created with residents, has a clear objective for the neighborhood’s future: “development without displacement.”

To Tilghman, when developers like Pitt partner with organizations and say they want their projects to serve the community, “I think you lean into that.”

“The neighborhood needs investment, right? We’ve had decades upon decades upon decades of no to minimal investment, and that hasn’t helped, really, the residents in the neighborhood,” Tilghman said.

Peter Kerwin, a spokesperson for CMU, said the university has been involved in several meetings with residents. 

Based on that feedback, the university plans to offer a workshop on technology training for senior citizens and tutoring services at its existing space on Hazelwood Green. CMU also partnered with a neighborhood organization this summer to offer STEM programming to youth and hopes to offer additional engineering programming as early as this fall. 

Cole-McKamey, who has lived in the neighborhood for more than 45 years, is wary of developers. She’s the executive director of People Of Origin Rightfully Loved And Wanted, or P.O.O.R.L.A.W., a coalition of residents seeking to prevent gentrification in Hazelwood. She says she doesn’t want her neighborhood to become another East Liberty, which saw the demolition of an affordable housing complex, and the displacement of hundreds of residents, as the neighborhood gentrified.

She doesn’t believe developers have acted in the neighborhood’s best interests. For example, Hazelwood has lacked a full-service grocery store for decades. On the site of a former grocer sits the artisan French bakery, developed with funding from the Heinz Endowments and others. 

In 2021, a coalition formed by P.O.O.R.L.A.W. and Pastor Love’s Praise Temple Deliverance Church received approval from the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority to build a grocery store. The group is currently searching for a general contractor. Love believes the effort offers the Hazelwood Green developers an easy opportunity to positively serve the community – but, so far, they haven’t seized it.  

Hazelwood Green’s Mill 19 business center, to the left, on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023. To the right, houses along East Elizabeth Street. (Photos by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource).

“When [representatives with Almono LP] came and they put their little whiteboards up and they asked everybody, ‘What’s the No. 1 concern in the community?’ everybody in the community put ‘grocery store,’” Love said. “It would seem logical that they would step up and help spearhead that, but they’re not.”

Todd Stern, managing director of U3 Advisors, which serves as the site’s project director, said that gentrification was a concern he shared but added that it’s “pretty early days.” He said that the foundations are continuing to pursue mixed-income and affordable housing on the site and have financially supported broader efforts in the neighborhood to ensure affordability. 

The Heinz Endowments has invested nearly $87 million into the neighborhood, about half of which has gone to “support aimed at improving the neighborhood and the quality of life of the people who live there,” according to a 2022 issue of The Heinz Endowments’ magazine.   

Cole-McKamey said many residents are left out of conversations about the development happening around them. She’s heard little about the Pitt and CMU projects on Hazelwood Green, which she partly attributes to Pitt selectively engaging community groups. 

Pitt wants to “partner with anybody that’s going to dance to their music,” Cole-McKamey said. 

Love feels similar frustrations.

“Yes, Hallelujah, they have meetings,” he said. “But their meetings are with the same people, and they’re not with people who live in our community. They’re with people who work in our community.” 

Tilghman, who lives in Swissvale, is however pleased with the ways Pitt and CMU have engaged the Hazelwood community. CMU has not publicly outlined an engagement process like Pitt, but Tilghman said “it feels like it’s being prioritized.”

An emphasis on job opportunities

Nearly every community member who spoke with PublicSource said the universities should work to connect Hazelwood residents to the job opportunities available on Hazelwood Green. According to the neighborhood plan, 56% of Greater Hazelwood residents of working age were employed, compared to 76% of city residents overall.

ElevateBio, Pitt’s Massachusetts-based commercial partner for the project, estimates that the biomanufacturing facility will produce 900 construction jobs and more than 170 full-time jobs. About half of the full-time positions will be accessible to those with community college degrees or trade-school experience, and the company will pay for their job training. 

“We want to make sure that Hazelwood residents have the first opportunity for those jobs,” Casey said of the full-time and temporary opportunities. Beyond that, the university is still thinking through solutions to keep Hazelwood affordable for current residents and support local businesses, officials said. 

Kerwin, at CMU, said the university expects jobs on the Hazelwood Green site to be available to residents. The university and its construction partner hosted an opportunities fair in the neighborhood last month. 

Shields, the founder of JADA House, welcomes the training opportunities but cautioned that any training would have to consider the educational backgrounds of Hazelwood residents. “As we know, most people in low-income communities do not have degrees,” she said. 

Love, though, isn’t buying it. 

“That’s a talking point that developers use knowing they cannot fulfill it,” he said. “They shouldn’t say things like that.”

What comes next?

Keith Caldwell, executive director of place based initiatives for Pitt’s Office of Engagement and Community Affairs, said the university will look at the number of community meetings it attends and the number of residents hired for jobs to hold itself accountable to the neighborhood. 

Since July 2022, Pitt representatives say they have attended 38 public forums or community meetings in Hazelwood and the university has held seven tabling events, a university official said. “We’re a year-plus into a formal process, well ahead of the opening of this facility, right,” Caldwell said. “That’s really creating a lot of lead time, a lot of runway, to be able to really engage folks.”

The university also plans to open a community engagement center in the neighborhood, signing a long-term lease with the Center of Life neighborhood organization. Angel Mckinstry, a Hazelwood resident of about 10 years who works for Center of Life, said the organization views development as a way “to bring other people into the community, to make it more diverse, to bring in the business.”

“I just think it’s a good idea,” Mckinstry, 34, said of the university projects. “There’s plenty of space down there.”

Pitt’s engagement hasn’t reached Cole-McKamey yet, she said – but she hopes that will change. 

“This is development time,” she said. “If we are all at that same table, we can get things done, regardless if we like each other or get along or not. It’s for the best interest of the people of this community.”

*PublicSource receives funding from The Heinz Endowments.

Emma Folts covers higher education at PublicSource, in partnership with Open Campus. She can be reached at emma@publicsource.org.

Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz.

The post They’re calling it ‘bio valley,’ but Hazelwood residents want to know what it means for them appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Many college students take out loans from the federal government to help pay for college, but there’s a cap on the amount they can borrow. When they still can’t afford the cost, they face a choice: Don’t go to college, or take out riskier private loans to cover the rest. 

At some Pittsburgh universities, more students are taking on larger amounts of private debt than others nationwide. That raises questions about the affordability of these institutions and the financial guidance students receive, and it means more students are borrowing with fewer protections. Federal loans often have fixed or lower interest rates and provide borrowers with more options for repayment, forgiveness and discharge. 

Private loan debt can be “the most debilitating for people who already have the least access to higher education and to generational wealth,” said Ben Kaufman, fellow and former director of research and investigations at the national nonprofit Student Borrower Protection Center. While Black borrowers are less than half as likely to take out private loans than their white peers, they’re four times more likely to struggle repaying it.

The local universities should each “think about what it’s doing to people,” he said. “It’s just a shame that the universities have chosen to approach their own students so extractively.” 

Nationally, about 10% of public university students who graduated with bachelor’s degrees in the 2020-21 academic year took out private loans, with an average debt of roughly $32,000. At private universities, about 13% of graduates that year did the same, taking on an average debt of $42,800. 

Here’s how several Pittsburgh universities compare, according to publicly available data. The numbers exclude transfer students. 

• At Duquesne University, about 24% of 2022 bachelor’s degree recipients (254 students) took out private loans, averaging $66,509.
• At Carnegie Mellon University, about 7% of 2022 bachelor’s degree recipients (108 students) took out private loans, averaging $59,354.
• On the University of Pittsburgh’s main campus, about 20% of 2022 bachelor’s degree recipients (723 students) took out private loans, averaging $50,204. 
• At Chatham University, about 35% of 2022 bachelor’s degree recipients (63 students) took out private loans, averaging $44,851.
• At Point Park University, about 25% of 2021 bachelor’s degree recipients (100 students) took out private loans, averaging $10,314. Point Park did not make data on 2022 graduates publicly available.

Carlow, Robert Morris and La Roche universities do not make data on private loans publicly available and did not provide data to PublicSource.

What’s behind the numbers in Pittsburgh?

Selective private universities can often provide students with more financial aid than public or less-selective private institutions, which likely explains CMU’s lower share of graduates borrowing private loans, advocates for students said. A spokesperson for CMU said that the university’s undergraduate need-based financial aid has grown by 61% since 2016. 

“We are increasingly approaching, as a country, a situation where if you’re able to get into one of a small handful of the wealthiest schools, and you happen to be low-income – which makes it even tougher to get in – they can probably meet your needs,” Kaufman said.

Still, the data show CMU students whose needs were not met had the second-highest average private debt load of all the local universities.

Pennsylvania’s declining investment in public higher education could also contribute to the numbers at Pitt, said Mark Kantrowitz, an expert on student loans and college savings plans.

“It’s not surprising,” Kantrowitz said of Pitt’s share of students borrowing private loans. “If the state doesn’t give as much money to the public colleges, they have to get it from the students in the form of tuition, which means that they have to borrow more to pay for the costs.” 

But the debt burdens can’t be blamed entirely on outside circumstances. Universities are often aware of the number of students who intend to take out private loans, as lenders often notify them.

Officials at Duquesne start talking to families about financial planning for college as early as ninth and tenth grades, and the university’s advising team works to keep students on track for on-time or early graduation. Joel Bauman, senior vice president for enrollment management at Duquesne, said the university encourages students to maximize all of their scholarships and grants before borrowing and maintains a list of interest-free loan options. 

Even with those efforts, though, almost 1 in 4 of the university’s 2022 bachelor’s degree recipients took out private loans, with the highest average debt load among the local universities. Bauman attributed the average private debt burden partly to the number of students enrolled in the university’s professional programs, which can entail extra costs.

“I think you can find cases where we didn’t have the conversation, people slip through the net. People have free will, will make some bad choices,” Bauman said. “We feel pretty comfortable that we have really good relations with the families and as good advising and support as we can to help them make the right decision.”

What reforms may be needed?

Some students who take out private loans could be unaware of the amount of federal loans available to them: In the 2015-16 academic year, about half of students in the U.S. who took out private loans did not borrow the maximum amount of more affordable government loans. Typical undergraduates can borrow up to $31,000 over the course of their education in subsidized and unsubsidized federal loans.

Michele Shepard, senior director of college affordability at The Institute for College Access and Success, said the organization has advocated for the federal government to require that universities certify that their students have taken advantage of their entire federal loan eligibility before approving them for private loans. 

Kantrowitz said universities should provide financial counseling to these students and ensure they’re borrowing with “eyes wide open.”

Pitt, CMU, Chatham and Point Park did not make financial aid officials available for interviews about their efforts to provide financial advising to families, and they did not directly answer emailed questions including about whether they educate students and families about private loans. A Chatham spokesperson said the university’s financial aid staff present at open houses and academic visit days, and the university’s website provides information on private loan borrowing.

Pennsylvania could look to Colorado for reform. In 2021, the state’s governor signed a law requiring private education lenders to register with an assistant attorney general; allow for loans to be discharged if a borrower or co-signer becomes permanently disabled; and report borrower outcomes each year, among other protections. The Student Borrower Protection Center has created sample legislation for states that would allow for similar changes.

Kantrowitz said some universities have implemented temporary holds on approving private loans, which allow students to determine if they need to borrow after all. Others use peer counseling programs, where fellow students share the risks of borrowing too much to help the message resonate.

He added that universities should provide financial aid offers that clearly distinguish between grants and loans so families know how much they may need to borrow. The U.S. Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog agency, estimated in a November report that 24% of colleges do not make such distinctions in their offers. 

Duquesne provided PublicSource with a copy of a financial planning worksheet that it sends to families. The sheet includes tables that ask families to separate their gift aid from their loans when making calculations. 

Shepard recommended that students visit their university’s financial aid office armed with some research on private loans. That way, they can have a more informed conversation about their options for covering gaps in cost, she said. 

And parents should know that, unlike most federal loans, many private loans require students to have a cosigner or established credit record. Those who cosign for their children’s loans will see their credit score harmed if their children default, and they’ll be responsible for repaying the debt.

“I would encourage families to spend more than just a few minutes considering the cost,” Kantrowitz said. “Just like you look at whether a college is a good academic fit, social fit, environmental fit, you should also evaluate whether it’s a good financial fit.”

Emma Folts covers higher education at PublicSource, in partnership with Open Campus. She can be reached at emma@publicsource.org.

This story was fact-checked by Punya Bhasin.

The post Private loans can be risky. At some Pittsburgh universities, students are borrowing more than others nationwide. appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.