Silhouettes 2022

the pitt news

SILHOUETTES

LETTERS FROM THE EDITORS

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avid Dinkins, the late former mayor of New York, once said the grand city was a “gorgeous mosaic” of so many different kinds of people coming together and living in one place. I’d like to think that despite many challenges, both past and present, Pittsburgh and Oakland also live up to this description.

Silhouettes, which you now hold, is the annual set of profiles produced by The Pitt News of interesting folks around campus, and a yearly attempt to truly dive into a longer format to fully tell these stories. In highlighting community members, the magazine provides an opportunity for Pitt Newsers to work both on longform writing and portrait photography. It took a team of nearly 50 hardworking students to put together the truly special edition that you are now holding. Going through each story always gives me goosebumps, both for how close our team is able to get to their subjects, and how much people are willing to share with us and you, our readers.

We hope you enjoy the magazine, and keep in touch with Pitt and Oakland news throughout the year at pittnews.com. Always feel free to be in touch with story ideas or questions at editor@pittnews.com.

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very year since I started working at The Pitt News, I find myself anxiously waiting for the Silhouettes magazine’s release and to discover, along with the rest of the Pitt community, the hidden gems throughout campus. Personally, I’ve had the opportunity to profile a couple people throughout the years and learn snippets of their lives through hours-long interviews — moments I’ll cherish forever.

At the risk of sounding cheesy, the great scientist Bill Nye once said that “everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.” Trust me, after reading this year’s edition — which includes professors, food truck owners, doctors, students and more — you’ll see the accuracy of this statement.

Nearly 50 staff members worked extremely hard to bring these stories to light and to capture their subjects’ amazing accomplishments amid a pandemic. I hope you enjoy reading their stories as much as I do!

Rebecca Johnson Managing Editor

Jon Moss Editor-in-Chief

Join our newsletter to stay up-to-date throughout the year with all that's happening in Oakland. Sign up at pittnews.com/newsletter.

This edition was produced with the help of donors to The Pitt News.

Pitt has no journalism program — students teach each other and learn how to report on their community at TPN. Consider supporting student journalism at Pitt by going to https://pi.tt/pittnews.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38

Danielle Andrews-Brown

Najeeb Shafiq

Diego Chaves-Gnecco

Kathy Gallagher

Colleen Krajewski

George Bandik

Brandon Brewster

Ashley Martin

DongJo Kim

Shenay Jeffrey

Todd Hartman

Mandy Cooper

Ward Allebach

Tyrone Carter

Joe Del Nano

Phil Wion

Alex Officer

Ruthie McDoodle

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THE PITT NEWS

Danielle Andrews-Brown Helping students grow

Story by Donata Massimiani Photos by Amaya Lobato

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hen Danielle Andrews-Brown started college at South Carolina State University, she envisioned herself as a medical doctor. But the formaldehyde and dead animals in her anatomy course disgusted her, so she found herself turning to the outdoors.

During her sophomore year in 2001, Andrews-Brown discovered a passion for environmental science through a summer program at the Savannah River Site. A professor in charge of the program personally invited her to attend.

“I really fell in love with environmental science in its entirety,” Andrews-Brown said. “Then I narrowed down to soil and water as I continued my studies.”

Andrews-Brown grew up in Trinidad and Tobago, located just off the coast of Venezuela. She left her home after graduating high school and immigrated to the U.S. in 2000 for what would eventually become a successful career as an environmental scientist, academic adviser and professor at Pitt.

Trinidad is a small nation about the size of Delaware with a population of about 1.3 million, according to Andrews-Brown. She said all citizens in Trinidad share a national sense of culture, but when she came to America and realized there wasn’t a “particular American culture,” she struggled to find a group to identify with.

“We celebrate each other all the time, and we might do some things differently, but the country as a whole has a culture that we all identify with,” Andrews-Brown said. “It wasn’t that way in the U.S. when I first came here, and it was really difficult transitioning into that space.”

After graduating from SC State in 2004, Andrews-Brown left South Carolina and relocated to the University of Kentucky to receive her master’s degree in plant and soil science. She said her master’s project focused on stream restoration, and was her favorite research experience.

Andrews-Brown received her Ph.D. in 2011 from Pennsylvania State University in soil science, where she remained as a postdoctoral scholar and research associate until her mother’s unexpected death in 2015. Following that experience, Andrews-Brown decided to spend a year in South Africa with her husband, who

had already planned to lead a study abroad experience there through Penn State.

During her time in South Africa, she received notices from colleagues at Penn State about a job opening for an environmental studies program coordinator at Pitt. Even though the position was not research-oriented, Andrews-Brown decided to apply anyway.

“I figured I need a change, a fresh start, because my mom and I were really close and it really threw me through a loop,” Andrews-Brown said. “My husband was still working for Penn State at the time and he was going to be out of the country for a year … so I took the opportunity to travel with him.”

Andrews-Brown said Pitt offered her the position in 2016. She began working as the adviser and coordinator of the environmental studies program in 2017, and has remained at Pitt ever since.

“I have mentored and advised students, but not in the official capacity that I’m doing it now. I think research was my love, but for personal reasons I just needed a switch,” Andrews-Brown said. “This seemed like a great opportunity to try something different and still be able to use the skills I had developed along the way.”

Given that Andrews-Brown had never lived in a big city before moving to Pittsburgh, she said it took her time to get accustomed to living in a “concrete jungle.” She had never resided in a place with constant noise from traffic and little trees. But she quickly noticed how friendly everyone in Pittsburgh was, and said her students are the reason she has stayed all these years.

“I love how much the students are able to impact the decision-making and really advocate for things that they want. Although it may happen slower than we want it to, we do get to see those changes because students advocated for it,” Andrews-Brown said. “That’s not something I had seen at any of the other institutions I had been at before.”

Nearly 20 years ago, Pitt received an endowment from the Heinz Endowments to form the environmental studies program, according to Andrews-Brown. She said it originally served as a “catchall'' for all students interested in anything environmental, and was very science heavy.

SILHOUETTES Andrews-Brown said about one or two years prior to her joining Pitt, the University created an environmental studies major. She took this opportunity to make the new major more interdisciplinary and provide a wider range of course options, including natural sciences, social sciences and humanities.

“If you have an interest in environment, but you are not science-minded, you can still find a home in this major,” Andrews-Brown said. “It’s focused a lot more on policy, sustainability, environmental justice, etc. and less on the science of the environment.”

Andrews-Brown said she is currently working to rename the environmental studies major to incorporate the term “sustainability,” and provide even more elective choices. Though she noted that approval from the undergraduate council is needed for any official changes to be made, it’s “currently in the works.”

“That’s what the major is when you look at how it compares to sustainability majors across the U.S.,” Andrews-Brown said. “We are working on rebranding the program — a lot of it is going to be the same, but the way students choose their electives and things like that will be even more personalized and customized than it is.”

Along with serving as the adviser and coordinator for the program, Andrews-Brown also teaches a writing course titled “Communication for Environmental Professionals,” and oversees all internships that occur within the program.

She said the course is mainly focused on professional and skills development, where she only assigns writing pieces that will prepare students for the business world. Andrews-Brown said she does not want students to have a lot of work to complete outside of class, and brings in many guest speakers who are experts in areas such as grant writing and resumé or cover letter writing.

“My classroom is really personalized,” Andrews-Brown said. “While everyone is doing the same thing, students are moving at very different rates and starting from very different proficiencies. I work a lot individually with students although I conduct it as a large class.”

Melanie Malsch, a Pitt alum, took this course as a junior and worked as a teaching assistant as a senior. Malsch worked closely with Andrews-Brown during her time in the environmental studies program, and said Andrews-Brown made sure she got “what she wanted” out of her degree.

Malsch, an environmental studies major, studied abroad junior year and completed her internship requirement at Pitt’s study abroad office. She said Andrews-Brown helped her figure out how to tie sustainability and environmental aspects into the internship, since it wasn’t environmentally oriented. Andrews-Brown also helped Malsch create an “environmental themed” workshop for students who

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have or wanted to study abroad.

“She contributed and added so much to the experience, which was not asked of her,” Malsch said. “She was just doing that to support and she ended up being a big part of it.”

After Andrews-Brown helped Malsch coordinate the workshop, she brought in her husband to speak as a guest lecturer for the writing course. A former Penn State assistant professor of geography and research associate, he led a science-based study abroad program during his time at Penn State called “Parks and People.” She connected Malsch and her husband to talk about shared experiences abroad and international education perspectives, which Malsch said was very impactful.

“She enabled me to really broaden my horizons and my perspectives on how impactful that experience [studying abroad] could be in that field even though it’s kind of unconventional,” Malsch said. “She encouraged me in this side passion that I had because of my own personal experiences and helped bring it to be related to my degree.”

Samuel Cohen, a senior environmental studies major, is another student and advisee of Andrews-Brown. Cohen said she wrote him letters of recommendation for his graduate school applications and “always” tailors a student's path within the major to their own interests.

“She was more than willing and happy to basically tweak the major, write exceptions for things, get exemptions for things, so I could take classes that would be a little bit better suited for my personal goals, and she does that for everyone,” Cohen said.

Andrews-Brown is also a founder and co-chair of the environmental studies department’s diversity and inclusion committee. The committee is in the process of hosting listening sessions to derive solutions for issues brought up in a survey that was open to all members of the department.

“There’s been a recognition that things can be much better than they currently are, and myself together with the rest of the committee are all working together to make the department a place that people feel comfortable and welcome,” Andrews-Brown said.

According to Andrews-Brown, she has managed to engage in very positive interactions with students over the past five years working at Pitt, which she does by ensuring that students don’t become too overwhelmed with work.

“If something is happening in their lives, I can talk to them about what accommodations need to be made in order to ensure they have a successful semester,” Andrews-Brown said. “I know that they know that I care, and that’s most important to me.”

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Najeeb

THE PITT NEWS StoRy by Jack TRoy Photos by ClaRe Sheedy

Shafiq

EmbRacing a messy Reality

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ajeeb Shafiq studied comparative education as a child, whether he knew it or not.

His family lived in the ascendantly wealthy United Arab Emirates, where his father worked as a government accountant. They returned to Shafiq’s poorer native country of Bangladesh each year, making him perceptive to inequality at a young age.

“Many kids were not in school. Most kids did not go beyond primary school, so you saw child laborers everywhere,” Shafiq said. “So the contrast for me was something that I was always very sensitive to.”

As a professor of education, economics and international affairs at Pitt, there’s great breadth to Shafiq’s research, but he focuses on educational opportunities and non-monetary impacts of schooling in lower-income, predominantly Muslim countries. With a first-hand understanding of the complicated trade-offs many families face when deciding to send their kids to school, his experience in Bangladesh helped inform some of his early work on child labor.

“You need your girls and boys to somehow get some education, some of their basic literacy and numeracy, but you need them to support the house,” Shafiq said. “Telling that story in a quantitative way, a sophisticated way that reflected reality was important to me.”

He also serves as executive director of the Pitt-based Comparative and International Education Society — an association of researchers, policymakers and educators who focus on education outside the United States. With the help of a “small but incredibly professional staff,” he oversees the organization’s

finances, arranges conferences and advises the board.

A pair of Bangladeshi economists, Muhammad Yunus and Amartya Sen, inspired Shafiq to pursue a Ph.D. in economics and education from Columbia University in 2005, despite a career in academia being “unusual” for the time.

“They taught economics and they were also able to contribute in a positive way to the world, and I just thought that was powerful,” Shafiq said. “They were my inspirations, but none of this would have been possible without, of course, my parents. My mother and father were extraordinarily supportive.”

Shafiq’s gratitude toward America is yet another glimpse of his comparative inclinations.

“All of this, all of these dreams would not have happened if it had not been for the opportunities this country and its institutions have given me,” Shafiq said. “Universities in other countries are not as willing to provide tenure-track opportunities to foreigners from lower income countries.”

Henry Levin, professor emeritus of economics and education at Columbia University, advised Shafiq while he pursued his Ph.D. Levin said while many attend graduate school primarily to climb the socioeconomic ladder, Shafiq dedicated himself to a “kinder and more productive” society.

According to Levin, Shafiq hasn’t lost that pure intention, despite his professional workload.

“I’m sorry to have to differentiate and say that a lot of job responsibilities and organizational responsibilities are not compatible with kindness, justice, even true productivity,” Levin said. “He combines these responsibilities with

SILHOUETTES caring about other people and what they care about.”

Shafiq began teaching at Pitt in 2010, a campus he called his “favorite” in letters to friends and family when he toured as a prospective graduate student.

“There is really nowhere else I’d rather be a professor than Pitt,” Shafiq said.

“The spirit of collaboration at the University of Pittsburgh is just off the charts.”

Shafiq said interdisciplinary communication is “the most normal thing” here, something he found lacking at other institutions. Prior to joining Pitt, Shafiq said he received excited emails about his prospective arrival from future colleagues in the School of Education, but also from other parts of the University. Now a decade into his tenure, he’s presented at political science seminars and psychology labs, and regularly gets detailed feedback on his research from friends in a variety of departments.

Maureen McClure, an associate professor in the department of educational foundations, organization and policy and director of the Institute for International Studies in Education, helped recruit Shafiq to Pitt. A member of CIES, she said when working with Shafiq, “what you see is what you get.”

Shafiq excels at analyzing problems in a measured, thorough way, all while maintaining a sense of humor in good times and bad, according to McClure.

He’s a “diplomat” in his role as executive director at CIES, and a “good global citizen” across the board.

“He is a methodologist, he is a comparativist, he is a very fine statistician and he puts that to work for the social good,” McClure said.

Shafiq preaches a slow and steady strategy to his students, one that will lead them to a satisfying, sustainable career. Many doctoral students will rush to build an impressive resumé by contributing to a well-established professor’s research, Shafiq said, but this prevents students from nurturing their academic independence.

Shafiq admitted that forgoing early publications and citations in top journals may be “frustrating” for students, but it will leave them “much better equipped for the long run” — a lesson imparted by Levin at Columbia.

Nuance and integrity reign supreme for Shafiq, guiding his research de-

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spite conformist pressures.

Following the 9/11 attacks, policymakers coalesced around education as a tool to root out extremism and seed support for democratic advancement in Muslim countries, Shafiq said. His research found that while educated people tend to support a degree of democratic advancement, support for suicide bombings increased in some cases.

Governments, international organizations and journalists seek clear-cut, simple answers. Nuanced research isn’t as “readily accepted” in policy circles, Shafiq said, particularly if it contradicts the prevailing narrative.

The World Bank, which Shafiq has consulted for since 2003, asked him to contribute a study on early childhood education to their 2018 World Development Report. Despite the organization’s support for investment in this area, his results showed virtually no correlation between early childhood education and socioeconomic attainment.

When the report came out, Shafiq’s study was nowhere to be found.

“If your research does not almost entirely support the narrative that is being pushed, you don’t get to have a seat, I mean, you don’t really get to make a difference,” Shafiq said. “I’m okay with that.”

Manipulating data might have allowed him to grow his fame within academia, but honest interpretation comes more naturally to him — an instinct he tries to pass along to his students.

“There is always a way to torture the data to have it submit in a way that confirms what is socially desirable,” Shafiq said. “The pressures are intense to come up with a finding that’s tweetable, that can get a lot of attention, but in my view, it’s not worth the reputational damage in the long run.”

True to form, Shafiq finds a comparative silver lining in the tension between researchers and policymakers.

“That’s the great thing about American academia, is that it doesn’t matter if people like your findings or not –– we’ve got tenure, we still have a job and that encourages us to tell the truth,” Shafiq said. “The public trusts us to do the right thing and to present reality and the messy version that it is.”

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THE PITT NEWS

Brandon Brewster a leader who loves the climb

Story by Anna Ligorio Photos by Clare Sheedy

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alking into Market Central during his first semester at Pitt, Brandon Brewster probably didn’t expect to discover one of his passions when he stumbled upon a sticker.

“I saw a kid with a water bottle with stickers on it and I recognized the climbing brand,” Brewster said. “I was like, ‘Yo, do you know if there's climbing at Pitt or anything?’ And it turns out that he was actually on the team and that tryouts were later that day.”

Brewster tried out and made the climbing team a few days later. He has since devoted much of his time to being an active member of Pitt’s co-ed competitive climbing team, leading the organization as president since Fall 2020.

Becoming president only a year after he joined the club wasn’t his initial plan, but COVID-19 policies barred the former president from holding the position, so Brewster decided to run for the position.

“I was nervous,” Brewster said. “It's difficult to run because we do so much. Everybody loves the club so much, we want so many activities to be done, I had not run any kind of club yet and obviously, we were also going through a pandemic.”

Brewster has led the climbing team ever since, and said he enjoys the sense of community it provides to members.

“I've never felt more welcomed or supported by a group of people,” Brewster said. “Everybody that climbs, joins the climbing team or shows any interest is just very wholehearted and wholesome.”

To prepare for upcoming divisional and national competitions, the team has been practicing three times a week and doing hangboarding finger strength exercises. According to Brewster, he initially liked the intensity of

climbing to replace the competitiveness of high school swimming while he was in college.

“I really liked falling into a set training plan,” Brewster said. “When I discovered that climbing could fill that gap, I really enjoyed that, because it would give me a mental break from school, but also climbing comes along with a great connection to the outdoors as well.”

While the team holds its weekly practices at the Ascend Pittsburgh indoor climbing facility, team members also travel to parks like New River Gorge or Coopers Rock in West Virginia to climb outdoors for weekend trips.

“We can also go to these sick places, like parks and national parks, and really just hang out and enjoy the scenery,” Brewster said. “So there’s a lot of benefits besides how cool it is to just hoist yourself up with your fingers.”

Brewster has kept himself busy during his time at Pitt, studying environmental science with minors in environmental engineering and studio arts and certificates in geographic information systems and sustainability. He is also a member of Epsilon Eta, an environmental honors fraternity, and works with professors conducting undergraduate research on green infrastructure.

According to Daniel Bain, an associate professor of geology and environmental science who works with Brewster on his research, green infrastructure takes a sustainable approach to water and resource management which mimics natural environments.

“Instead of just using pipes and moving things fast through the soil, you try to put it through the soil water flow,” Bain said. “You try to push it through the ground, so it goes slower, more like what it would have been like before there was a lot of urban development.”

Working with Bain, Brewster’s research focuses on the impact of Pittsburgh’s green infrastructure on surrounding soil chemistry, specifically soil

SILHOUETTES near roads.

Green infrastructure on campus includes rain gardens at the Cathedral of Learning and Petersen Event Center. To study the concentration gradients of the elements in this soil, Brewster employed a new technique involving an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer.

“I would take a bunch of samples along the green infrastructure,” Brewster said. “Basically, it looks like a big laser tag gun. You point it at the ground for two minutes, and it tells you what's present in the first few centimeters of topsoil.”

Monitoring the impact of green infrastructure with quick results is a major implication of their research. According to Bain, Brewster’s approach to use the spectrometer with green infrastructure has made this project innovative.

“Brandon’s the first one I've seen ever to put it into the green infrastructure,” Bain said. “He's an overachiever, so he went out and shot six or seven different sites and then actually mapped the patterns of the different elements in these green infrastructure soils.”

Brewster’s academic achievements aren’t limited to his research. Leading a team of eight other students, he competed in the Environmental Protection Agency’s RainWorks Challenge, a national competition where college students design on-campus green infrastructure solutions to address stormwater pollution.

“We couldn't meet in person, and we had this huge competition to complete,” Brewster said. “I was basically awake for three days finishing it.”

Brewster’s team placed second in the nation in the competition and he said the payoff from the hard work was worth the initial turbulence.

“It was kind of nuts,” Brewster said. “I think that really shaped a lot of my work ethic, at least because it used GIS and things like that, and I hadn't really done a large project like that on my own before.”

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Although Brewster recalled the experience being somewhat chaotic, Aaron Carr, a senior environmental science major and member of the RainWorks team, said that Brewster thrived in a leadership role.

“A lot of academics and skills that we've been taught in the classroom were called forward for this project,” Carr said. “Brandon was happy to jump into that, he was excited to form a team, and throughout the whole process, he was definitely a leader in terms of effort organization and making sure everybody was on track.”

Carr, a lifelong friend of Brewster’s, has worked with him on many different projects and assignments at Pitt. He said Brewster has been a great and supportive friend along the way.

“He's always there if you need help, and because of that, it's been really awesome to go through school together,” Carr said. “We've been very supportive of each other, and I look back on the last four years, and I'm really glad that he was there for us to get through this together.”

After graduating, Brewster said he plans to do environmental and conservation work in national parks out west, possibly as an ecologist, or work for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Brewster said he sometimes wishes he wasn’t always in a leadership role.

“Sometimes I feel like I could have done a little bit more of just sitting back and participating instead of running,” Brewster said. “I wish I would have had more time to do more clubs, too, but yeah, there's only so much time.”

Even though he’s been involved in numerous other organizations and academic pursuits, Brewster said he owes much of his personal growth to the climbing wall and those who scale it with him.

“I don't know who I would have become, without the climbing team,” Brewster said. “Whether that's just being a member and a climber, or being president, and trying to provide great experiences for everybody else in the club that I loved getting as well.”

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THE PITT NEWS

Diego Chaves-Gnecco Caring for all kids

Story by Alexandra Ross Photos by Romita Das

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he most satisfying moments of Dr. Diego Chaves-Gnecco’s 20-year career as a Pittsburgh pediatrician come when his patients grow up and come back to visit him — sometimes, with kids of their own.

“When I see many of the kids that I first started taking care of 20 years ago, that now they are adults, that they have finished their high school, that they have finished college, that's huge for me,” Chaves-Gnecco said. “When they tell me what they're doing with their lives, that they're giving back to the community, that's huge. When they bring me their kids, and they say, ‘I want you to be my pediatrician for my child, because you were my pediatrician,’ that is also huge for me.”

After he became a pediatrician in his native Colombia, Chaves-Gnecco immigrated to the United States in 1998 at age 28 with the plan to train for a year in clinical pharmacology at Pitt. After his first year in Pittsburgh, he decided to stay for another year to pursue a master’s degree in public health — and then stayed for another two years because he was in the middle of conducting research.

Chaves-Gnecco said he eventually realized that he had more opportunities in Pittsburgh than in Colombia — from hospital technology to research journals available in libraries. He decided to continue

practicing medicine in the U.S. — but first, he had to redo his residency in pediatrics.

As a resident at UPMC Children’s Hospital, he joined the Community Oriented Resident Education program, where he created the first pediatric bilingual-bicultural clinic in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Since its creation in 2002, the clinic has developed into the program known as Salud Para Niños, or “Health for the Children” in Spanish.

Salud Para Niños now holds three clinics each week in Oakland at the Primary Care Center of the Children’s Hospital. It also has one free clinic each week at Casa San Jose in Pittsburgh’s Beechview neighborhood, using the Ronald McDonald Care Mobile, as well as another free clinic once a month at the Birmingham Free Clinic in the South Side.

Maya Ragavan, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Pitt’s medical school who does research on supporting immigrant and refugee communities, has collaborated on several research projects with Chaves-Gnecco in the past three years. She said this work is “a drop in the bucket” compared to all of the work Chaves-Gnecco has done for the Latino community of Pittsburgh.

“You talk to any family and they're like, ‘Oh, Dr. Diego, Dr. Diego!’ which means that he really is just one of the most trusted voices in the Latino community here in Pittsburgh,” Raagavan said. “So many

SILHOUETTES families see him, it's really, really amazing.”

To Chaves-Gnecco, an important part of Salud Para Niños is providing linguistically competent and culturally sensitive care. Besides having Spanish-speaking staff, and translation services for other languages, he emphasized the importance of having humility and curiosity about the cultures and perspectives that his patients come from. Even within the Latino community, he said there exists cultural differences between him and his patients.

“As a Colombian, for example, some of the things, some of the cultural practices that I have might be completely different than somebody from Mexico might have, or from Puerto Rico might have,” Chaves-Gnecco said. “So for us, it’s that sensitivity, that humility, to know that people come from different backgrounds, and that we need to meet them where they are coming from.”

Monica Ruiz, the executive director of Casa San Jose — an organization that aims to celebrate and advocate for Pittsburgh’s Latino community — said all five of her children see Chaves-Gnecco as their pediatrician. She said Chaves-Gnecco’s experience moving to the U.S. from Colombia gives him a stronger cultural connection to his patients.

“Many [other doctors] know the culture too, but he is an immigrant,” Ruiz, whose parents immigrated to the U.S., said. “He grew up in a different area, he knows what it's like to be new in this country … it's something that comes just so naturally from him. It comes from inside of him, it's his passion, it's his ethics, they’re his morals, and he just cares genuinely, like genuinely, about this population.”

Chaves-Gnecco said many of his patients at Salud Para Niños are either underinsured, such as health insurance that doesn’t cover preventative care, or having no health insurance at all, and that number is only growing.

“Despite the pandemic, the last few years — 2020 and 2021 — have been the busiest years, the years that we are providing the most visits to uninsured patients,” Chaves-Gnecco said. “And in 2022, we're on track already to surpass that number as well.”

Ragavan called it “unfair and unjust” that not every child in Pennsylvania has health insurance, and said Chaves-Gnecco goes above and beyond to serve children without it.

“He’s set up all these really cool collaborations with different specialists because, you know, it's harder to get children who need specialist care if they don't have insurance,” Ragavan said. “He spends hours trying to find the most — because, you know, if you don't have insurance, then medication costs a lot of money — and so for five hours trying to find the cheapest version of a medication so families can use it.”

The work doesn’t stop when Chaves-Gnecco leaves the hospital, as he said he sees himself as a doctor outside of the exam room. He uses his platform as a doctor to share information with the Latino community about important health issues such as obesity, diabetes, physical activity, healthy habits and, more recently, COVID-19 and vaccines.

This is sometimes through formal outlets, such as local Spanish news outlet La Mega Nota, but also through everyday interactions with other people. According to Ruiz, he makes announcements each week at the church they both attend.

“He's up there every Sunday, ‘Wear your mask, get your vaccine,’ you know, he'll say it to anybody that'll listen to him,” Ruiz said.

Besides hosting clinics around the City, Salud Para Niños also has Hispanic/Latino Car Seat Checks, where families can have their car

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seats checked — and sometimes replaced — for free.

Chaves-Gnecco said over the last 20 years, Salud Para Niños has checked more than 650,000 car seats, and more than 250,000 have been replaced at no cost to families. The program also created a bilingual literacy project which provides bilingual books to children to get them reading at a younger age. The program has held several classes, including CPR training, in the community as well.

To Chaves-Gnecco, many of the services provided by Salud Para Niños are about tailoring existing services to the needs of the Latino population.

“We didn't try to reinvent the wheel, we didn't try to create anything new,” Chaves-Gnecco said. “The idea was, a lot of times, connecting services that were available.”

Chaves-Gnecco and Ragavan both said the myth of Latinos as an “invisible community” persists in western Pennsylvania — despite the fact that there are nearly 35,000 Latinos living in Allegheny County alone. According to Ragavan, Chaves-Gnecco’s advocacy helps make the community more visible.

“I still hear people say to me, there are no immigrants in Pittsburgh, there are no Latino people in Pittsburgh, everyone in Pittsburgh speaks English,” Ragavan said. “That invalidates people. It makes them invisible, it makes their stories invisible and I think what Diego is doing is he makes people visible by what he does, he uplifts and amplifies people.”

One thing Chaves-Gnecco said he hopes people learn from the COVID-19 pandemic is that “we cannot leave any segment of the population behind” when it comes to health care.

“While there might be some cultural differences, like the language that we speak or the food that we eat, at the end, we’re all the same,” Chaves-Gnecco said. “We’re all human beings. And if you talk to a member of the Latino community — or any minority community, for that purpose — you probably are gonna learn that we're much more alike than what we imagine. We all have the same dreams.”

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THE PITT NEWS

Kathy Gallagher Bridging the two Oaklands

K

athy Gallagher is a rare combination — both a Pitt and Penn State graduate. After completing her undergraduate degree in elementary education in State College, she returned home to Oakland and obtained a masters degree in library sciences at Pitt.

In the years since, Gallagher has kept her roots firmly in the Steel City.

She worked for decades as a librarian at public schools in the Hill District.

She is now retired but keeps busy, serving as the president of the Bellefield Area Citizens Association, a community advocacy group that aims to improve the quality of life of residents in North Oakland.

While her degree comes from elsewhere, Gallagher has never abandoned the close ties she has to Oakland. Gallagher’s grandfather, Patrick, who was the president of the Duquesne Construction Company, helped build some of the many grand, historic churches that still stand around Pittsburgh. She still takes great pride in visiting St. Boniface Catholic Church on the North Side and Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Shadyside, both of which her grandfather built.

Gallagher said her love of historic architecture and preservation comes from her grandfather.

“My grandfather was a builder of some of the big churches in the city of Pittsburgh,” Gallagher said. “He built a number of buildings in Oakland and it’s one of the things I’m passionate about — architecture and preservation.”

Gallagher still lives in the same North Dithridge Street house that her grandparents bought for $10,000 in 1914 — a tall, Shingle-style home built in 1893 that features glass windows arranged into irregular, outcropping bays, some with intricate stained glass. The signs of age are apparent on its green and beige facade, but the old Victorian is still charming, so much so that it earned historical landmark status in May 2020.

The property was worthy of historic landmark status because it met certain criteria laid out by the City. First, it was associated “with a person or persons who significantly contributed to the cultural, historic, archi-

Story by Stephen Thompson Photos by Joy Cao tectural, archaeological or related aspects of the development of the city of Pittsburgh” — her grandfather. Evaluators from the City added that the property was an “exemplification of an architectural type, style or design distinguished by innovation, rarity, uniqueness or overall quality of design, detail, materials or craftsmanship.”

While the buildings that surround it grow, change and modernize, The Gallagher-Kieffer Estate, as it is referred to in official City records, remains a sanctuary for Gallagher’s love of intricate design. As high-rise apartments tower above the neighboring houses, the Gallagher Estate is a reminder that there is still character in Oakland and that history has a right to exist alongside modernity.

Gallagher — who is approaching her 77th birthday — is proud to still live in that old house. Her family’s history permeates it and the surrounding neighborhood, and takes great pride in protecting and conserving it.

She loves where she lives and that’s why she’s taken such an active role in making it better.

But the actual work required to create quality lives for residents is difficult because of Oakland’s diversity. The neighborhood plays host to permanent residents and year-to-year renters, college students and families, schools and businesses, museums and hospitals.

Inevitably, these intermingling groups create friction and the more residential parts of Oakland are where permanent residents and students tend to butt heads, according to Jamie Ducar, executive director of The Engaged Campus, a branch of Pitt’s Office of Community Engagement.

Ducar said Gallagher and other residents obviously want to keep noise from student parties down as much as possible, but also help find creative ways to keep the neighborhood connected.

“She’s really interested in how we can continue to build community around space,” Ducar said. “There is an old pump station at the corner of Center Avenue and Dithridge and she has been really steadfast in bringing up to the City that she’s interested in updating that space for community use.”

SILHOUETTES The plan for a new community center at the Herron Hill Pump Station, which ferries water to the City’s hilly neighborhoods is currently in the Oakland Plan — a long-term development roadmap created by the City government.

Still, Oakland is fractured culturally, practically and politically. The people and institutions that call the neighborhood home are naturally divided, making the work of bringing different Oakland stakeholders together difficult. The fact that the parts of the neighborhood are split between multiple City Council districts makes things even more challenging, according to Councilperson Erika Strassburger.

Strassburger — who represents sections of the City’s fourth ward, an area that encompasses Gallagher’s home and part of North Oakland — said overcoming divides that exist between Oakland’s different factions takes collaboration.

“From a city planning perspective, [Oakland] could be broken down into five different neighborhoods,” Strassburger said. “It is already balkanized. … but luckily the other two council members [that represent Oakland] and I work well together.”

Ducar has worked on Pitt’s community engagement team for more than four years and she characterized the competing interests of Oakland residents as simply differences in priorities.

She said while those who live on Gallagher’s street might be more concerned with noise or parties on roofs, residents on Coltart Avenue in Central Oakland would focus on new construction and development. Ducar and Gallagher agreed that many residents want the same things, so creating an Oakland that works for everyone is just a matter of connecting the separated populations.

This is where Ducar’s office, and Pitt as an institution, can help. Gallagher said Pitt has been a great asset in helping BACA and other permanent residents reach students so the two groups can close the distance themselves.

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“Every year a student says to me ‘We didn’t know regular people lived here’ and every year the residents come out of their condominiums and say ‘These students are pretty interesting,’” Gallagher said. “But then the challenge is that you have to do it all again the next year because it’s a whole new group of students and sometimes residents.”

Gallagher said relationships right now between students and permanent residents are good. Ducar said community outreach initiatives have helped bridge the gap that previously existed between short-term renters and permanent residents, and Gallagher’s an important reason why. Ducar characterized Gallagher as outgoing, and said she’s able to form personal connections that last.

“She’s surrounded on all sides by condos and apartment buildings and students and she’s been able to act as a center of gravity for the neighborhood,” Ducar said. “She is welcoming to everyone. … She pays attention … and she reaches out proactively to let us know what’s going on.”

She’s been one of the few constants in a neighborhood that’s eager to change as quickly as possible. But for as much as she loves conservation and preservation, Gallagher said she knows the neighborhood won’t stay the same forever. To that end, she welcomes students and other short-term residents into BACA, and her relationship with Pitt ensures there will always be a formal line of communication between her and the students that rotate through rental homes and apartments each year.

Like anyone, Gallagher said she just wants respectful, cooperative neighbors, and thanks in part to her work, that’s been the reality of the past few years. Now she’s able to enjoy Oakland’s convenience and culture.

“Oakland has everything — culture, beauty, walkability,” Gallagher said. “As I said, I'm an architecture fanatic and I love the beautiful architecture in Oakland. We have the parks, we have the universities, I can walk to medical appointments. I think it has just about everything anyone could want in a neighborhood.”

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ashley martin unafraid to do theater S

THE PITT NEWS

story by Richie Smiechowski photos by joy cao

itting in the back of Charity Randall Theatre, Ashley Martin took a look at her planner. While completely jampacked, it was also meticulously organized and covered just about every aspect of production that Pitt’s theater arts department needs to thrive.

“My job entails all these wild, different things that bring everybody together to make theater,” Martin said. “My students will comment that the calendar gives them anxiety when they see what I do.”

As the department’s operations manager, Martin doesn’t just have one or two responsibilities — she has a hand in almost everything. Formerly a stage manager with the City Theatre Company and Pittsburgh Public Theater, her role in day-to-day operations has expanded due to her experience and dedication.

Annmarie Duggan, Martin’s former professor and now colleague, said not much has changed since her time as a theater arts student in 2006 when it comes to her passion.

“Ashley and I go way back, she was actually in my first-ever stage management class at Pitt,” Duggan said. “Ashley was always a rock star even as a student … she was willing to learn, she was unafraid to do theater.

Sometimes you have to be unafraid because we all make mistakes, there’s no way to do it perfectly when you’re just learning.”

That mindset in a competitive and constantly changing theater arts industry is what has allowed Martin to work in theaters from Pittsburgh to South Carolina. When the operations manager position opened at Pitt in 2017, Duggan said Martin’s name jumped out among the pool of applicants, and she ended up being perfect for the role.

“When this job came up a few years back, Ashley applied, and I was extremely excited,” Duggan said. “She is a bulldog when it comes to getting things done and making sure they’re done right. … She is one of the most positive forces in the theater department that we have, and we would not be the same without her.”

For Martin, an average day includes meeting with a construction team about building a ramp for the stage, fixing one of many leaks around the theater and meeting with other operations managers to discuss logistical updates and collaborations. The rest of her day is spent in the theater, where she oversees everything from stage design to technical support, while managing budgets and licensing new shows.

Despite having these other tasks, Martin’s most pressing priority was

SILHOUETTES prepping for the production of William Finn and James Lapine’s “A New Brain,” which opened Feb. 23 and ran until the following weekend. She said because of all the adjustments the theater department has made since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the musical held extra weight.

“This one is pretty important because we weren’t sure we would be able to do a musical in this slot,” Martin said. “Because of COVID, because of safety concerns, the delay to the start of the semester delayed us in terms of rehearsal … but they’re doing it, it’s great, I’m just really excited for this one.”

While the pandemic negatively impacted countless businesses and industries, theaters were one of the sectors hit hardest. According to Martin, the arts rely on their performers and crew being able to interact closely and in person in front of packed, live audiences.

For Martin and the entire department, reeling without any production to work on wasn’t an option. Their production of “Head Over Heels” was canceled months into the building of stages, so the crew got creative. They took advantage of Zoom and virtual communication to produce a digital production of “She Kills Monsters.”

“It created an opportunity for us to revisit a show some of us were familiar with, and put it in Zoom boxes,” Martin said. “We created something that was wildly different and exciting, and we worked on it all summer. We had something to do — theater people are not good if they don’t have something to do.”

Perhaps the most devastating impact of the pandemic was recent budget cuts coming from the University. According to Martin, the theater program’s production budget was reduced about 50%. Pitt scenic designer Gianni Downs said Martin has been instrumental in finding ways to navigate and improvise on the decreased budget.

“We have tightened our belts all over, which means that we may not have the number of costumes we’ve had in the past or the size of sets that we’ve had in the past,” Downs said. “Because of that, we’ve been planning ahead, and Ashley is instrumental in that too. She offers up scripts for us to think about for the future that are appropriate for our budget levels.”

Budget cuts have caused the department to hold off on theater improvements, such as new lights, as well as cutting back on props or designs deemed unnecessary. Despite all the challenges and her theater needing to do “less with less,” Martin felt they’ve never been more creative.

“Students have to get crafty,” Martin said. “They have to get creative about where they want to put the focus and energy of their work and what priorities take place … in retrospect, I’m really proud, but it was challenging in the beginning.”

Martin’s role in production and upkeep for the theater department is a major part of her day-to-day activity, but it’s her role as a student advocate that has set her apart in the eyes of students and faculty.

“Right now we have two students who are working as COVID safety officers with various Broadway shows, Kevin McConville and Shane Smay,” Martin said. “Laura Valenti is assisting scenic designer Jason Ardizzone-West as his model builder in his studio. She did one of my favorite scenic designs in Little Shop of Horrors … I’m really impressed by all the work that she’s been doing, she stands out as one who has been consistently working and growing.”

Valenti is one of many Pitt theater arts alumni who have found success in the industry, immediately finding her footing as a scenic designer after she graduated in 2018. She praised Martin as a dedicated leader who helped her see numerous post-graduate opportunities in set design spanning from New York to California.

“She was always a very strong mentor,” Valenti said. “Especially through

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my senior year trying to apply for post-graduation jobs and internships and reading all of my resumés and cover letters. Ashley was just a really great resource for me in that year.”

Along with scenic design, Valenti has also found a passion in working with younger students and teaching technical theater, which focuses on everything that goes into a production besides acting. She discovered the niche by watching Martin interact with local high school students.

“I distinctly remember watching her being so great with the high school students,” Valenti said. “She can be an authority figure in the room, but she also has this soft side that students can really kind of sympathize with or connect with. It really kind of instilled a passion for working with high school students in me, literally just from this event.”

Even among faculty, Duggan voiced similar sentiments about Martin’s ability to resonate with people, mentioning how she was always available for support, especially during the pandemic.

“I would not have survived without Ashley, she was a touchstone for me,” Duggan said. “She was somebody that I could call, and we would walk through all the possible scenarios of the day and come up with what was going to keep the students as safe but give them as many opportunities as possible.”

Looking back on her time with the department, Martin said her role is easily replaceable — but her contributions and students' successes is something she will look back on fondly.

“I mean, if it wasn’t me, it would be somebody else,” Martin said. “But I just am very passionate about what we do here. I think that there’s a lot of opportunities that students get because everybody cares. People are everywhere doing things, you know I’m here cheerleading you on from afar …

There is a strange Pitt connection almost everywhere that you look, almost like we’re sort of taking over.”

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T

THE PITT NEWS

Colleen Krajewski

he journey into gynecology, obstetrics and family planning for Dr. Colleen Krajewski began with the promise of free pizza as a young medical student.

Krajewski graduated from Pitt’s medical school in 2007, and said students used to get emails about offers of free pizza during lectures. She and her friends decided one morning to attend a lecture on abortion care, and knew immediately that her initial interest in surgery would pivot to the gynecological field.

“I was in the back of the room eating this pizza with my friends, and this woman was at the front and she was talking about how one out of three people have an abortion,” Krajewski said. “I just remember being like, ‘Whoa, how are we not talking about this?’”

More than a decade later, Krajewski now serves as an assistant professor at Pitt’s medical school. She is also the medical director of gynecology at the VA hospital, a gynecologist and the director of the Center for Contraception and Family Planning at UPMC Magee-Women’s Hospital.

After completing her medical degree at Pitt, Krajewski went to complete

her residency at Cleveland MetroHealth Medical Center, followed by a fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. But when she was looking for a place to settle into her work, she said Pittsburgh was immediately on her mind — not just because it was familiar, but because of the region’s pressing need for abortion care. “[Abortion] access is limited in this part of the country, especially for hospital-based abortion services that we're able to do. So we have places like Ohio and West Virginia, that have quite limited abortion access in general, but then specifically limited abortion access for people that need a higher level of care,” Krajewski said. “So the reason I'm here is because I’m able to serve a lot of people. And that was important to me.”

Beatrice Chen, an assistant professor of gynecology-obstetrics at Pitt’s medical school and colleague of Krajewski’s, said strict abortion laws in surrounding states often make getting necessary care hard for patients.

“Given increasing restrictions on abortion care in the U.S., especially in surrounding states around Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh ends up being one of the few places that patients from Ohio or West Virginia can go to receive care, because of the laws within those states, and the limited number of providers who are able to provide the care there,” Chen said.

Krajewksi is one of the few providers in the continental United States who provides second-trimester abortions, which occur between 15 and 23 weeks of pregnancy. These abortions are also called surgical abortions, and are more physically invasive procedures than abortions performed in the first trimester.

Krajewski said she sometimes comes home from work covered in the tears of a patient after a particularly harrowing procedure. For those in this field of work, coming home at the end of the day can be quite jarring, but figuring out how to handle this is a part of the job.

“I used to come home covered with these smears of tears as you're holding someone as they cry. Then you get home and someone's telling you about how Aldi’s was out of tomatoes,” Krajewski said. “And I am not here to diminish someone else's struggles, but you have to find a way to make peace and find value and purpose in what we're doing.”

This can be especially hard with so many myths and misconceptions out there about gynecological health and family planning. Particularly, there’s not a lot of information people know about LGBTQ+ health in these fields, according to third-year Pitt medical student Sabina Spigner.

Spigner has shadowed Krajewski, and takes an interest in LGBTQ+ care in gynecology and family planning. She said Krajewski makes a concerted effort to be inclusive in her terminology.

“Gynecology is a field that has historically, and currently is still kind of a women's health field,” Spigner said. “You can learn a lot from people like Dr. Krajewski and others doing important inclusive work, how to navigate those spaces, and use inclusive terminology and provide affirming care, and a safe environment in a way that helps people who might not identify within the [gender] binary.”

Springer designed a project with Krajewski the summer between her first and second years of medical school, structured around surveying UPMC OB-GYN clinics on their inclusivity for gender minority patients. She said because of Krajewski’s connections in the field, the project was a success.

“Dr. Krajewski connected me with a lot of people to get the survey out there into the clinical space so that people could take it,” Spigner said. “And without that connection, the project definitely would not have even been

SILHOUETTES

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The care people deserve

Story by Diana Velasquez Photos by Nate Yonamine able to happen.”

Sarah Lim, a fourth-year resident in Pitt’s psychiatry program at UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital, has known Krajewski for 10 years. The two met when Lim worked as a research assistant at the Center for Family Planning.

Lim said she appreciates how she and Krajewski have connected, despite having specializations in different fields of work.

“Student-faculty mentorships don't always span the way that you think they would be. I'm in psychiatry, she's in gynecology, but it's been such a fruitful, rewarding relationship over the past 10 years,” Lim said. “Those relationships are out there if you find them and I just really appreciate her.

She's a great asset to our education program.”

Even more so, Krajewski isn’t ashamed to speak about her work in her personal life. Krajewski got a tattoo in 2016 on her arm of a coat hanger with the words “never again” written inside. It’s the kind of tattoo that she said is getting increasingly more common with people who work in abortion care — especially after Trump challenged Roe v. Wade by his appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“It’s actually kind of a funny story. So I got it on the day Trump was inaugurated. Those of us that have been following this for long enough knew Roe is going away in our lifetime,” Krajewski said. “So all these people that are like, ‘Oh my God, how did this happen? What can I do? How can I stop it?’ I'm like, ‘Where have you been?’”

When discussing her work in casual settings, Krajewski said people often have so many misconceptions about gynecological health that it’s impossible to address them all. But in no way is her work the same every day.

“Sometimes people think that OB-GYN is going to be like babies and balloons. And it's not — gynecology is love and sex and hope and fear and betrayal and all your hopes and fears and dreams and it can be really not

okay,” Krajewski said. “I have patients who are so traumatized, even by bleeding every month based on their past experiences. We have patients that are coming to us on the worst days of their lives.”

But whether the day at work has been terrifying or beautiful, Krajewski said she does her best to find enjoyment in the simpler things in her life. She spends as much of her free time as she can with her dogs, and often takes them on long hiking trips.

“We do backpacking, kayaking, camping, hiking,” Krajewski said. “The overnight backpacking with three dogs solo has been a great pandemic thing to do. I’ve really been enjoying that.”

Lim said Krajewski has always been open and welcoming when talking about the things she loves, and goes out of her way to support the students she becomes close with — in both their professional and personal life.

“One of the things that I just love about Colleen is how much she is an awesome mentor inside of the professional realm, and also outside of it,” Lim said. “Seeing her come to my graduation from medical school was really, really sweet. She showed up and sat in my family section and was really supportive of my graduation. I appreciated that a lot.”

When Krajewski is teaching students, she said what she wants more than anything is to emphasize the need for compassion and understanding when working with patients. Because working in this field is never straightforward, no one patient will ever be the same and everyone should do their best to provide the baseline care people deserve. “‘I would never have an abortion’ is the most common thing that you'll hear people say. And then people are sitting in my office having an abortion, and they hear their past self saying those things out loud,” Krajewski said.

“And again, I'm no therapist, I'm not going to get there with somebody in a 20-minute visit, but allowing space for that growth in a way that is non-judgmental, and not hostile is really important.”

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THE PITT NEWS

George Bandik

forming bonds

G

eorge Bandik may teach about chemical linkages like esters, ethers and epoxides, but he is always in search of another type of bond.

Over the course of his 41 years at Pitt as a graduate student and professor — during which he has taught multiple classes offered by the chemistry department, including Nursing Chemistry and Writing in Chemistry — Bandik works to form a personal connection to his students.

Bandik currently teaches organic chemistry to a large group of almost 250 students — all of whom he tries to learn the names of.

“I usually come to lecture about 10 minutes early, and just randomly talk to people so I can try to get to know the names of people in the room,” Bandik said. “On my evaluations at the end of the term, I get comments like ‘you made a large class feel small’ or ‘you made a large class feel like family.’”

He always knew he wanted to teach, but wasn’t sure if it would be chemistry or music. Bandik is proficient in the organ and piano, playing the former in his church and the latter every night before bed to relax.

Bandik, who currently serves as an assistant dean in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences while also teaching organic chemistry I and II, is a very hands-on professor. He finds the typical structure of large lectures with slides on the board uncreative. He makes his classes dynamic, walking around the room and writing examples on the chalkboard.

“I went to Penn State, so I went to a very large school, where we also had very large lectures and many of them were very boring and so I thought what could I do that’s different or to make it work,” Bandik said.

Taylor Tomlinson, a senior who took Bandik’s organic chemistry class in 2019, said there was constant motion in the classroom.

“Whenever he’s teaching, he’s always running up and down the aisles and asking questions,” Tomlinson, co-president of Pitt’s American Chemical Society chapter, said.

Even during the shift to Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bandik was able to keep the class engaged and still made an effort to learn all of his students’ names.

“I taught 250 students in organic chemistry on Zoom. I would probably say at least 80 to 100 of those kids had their cameras on,” Bandik said.

“I would scroll through and I would call people out and say, ‘Alright Joe, what do you think about this?’ So I was able to still have people engaged and people chatting.”

He knows that many of his students may not see organic chemistry as something necessary to their academic journey, so he instead tries to teach the students applicable skills for life. Bandik wants his students to know how to “think your way through solving a problem,” a skill he sees as crucial for the rest of his students’ lives.

“I always tell my kids, when you’re a medical doctor, no one’s really going to ask you to write the electron configuration of magnesium,

right?” Bandik said. “But you want to be able to explain the disease that someone is dealing with, and if it’s a complex disease, you got to be able to explain it at a level that your patient can understand.”

He still connects to his students years after teaching them — not just about chemistry but about life.

“I taught [a student] five years ago and he’s in med school here,” Bandik said. “He periodically stops in just to have lunch or say hello. …

We don’t talk about chemistry today. … But it’s just neat that somebody takes time out of their schedule to just come back and say hi.”

Sarah Kulp, co-president of Pitt’s ACS chapter, which Bandik advises, agreed.

“Anytime he is in his office, he’s always game to answer anyone’s questions. And not just relating to organic chemistry, but also with life,” Kulp, a senior who had Bandik as a professor, said.

As the ACS faculty adviser for the last 30 years, Bandik has helped plan outings into the larger community to teach about science, and participate in the Carnegie Science Center’s National Chemistry Week celebrations. The chapter has even won awards, all proudly displayed in Bandik’s office.

“I definitely think he’s a good role model, especially for the elementary school children that we go see in different local schools,” Tomlinson said. “Like just yesterday, and in the past, like we’ve been at outreach events where he really gets their minds thinking about chemistry and science and you can tell they really enjoy it and that they’re glad he’s there, sort of guiding us through the activity but also, like, giving them the space to be creative.”

Both Tomlinson and Kulp have known Bandik since their sophomore year, when he taught them organic chemistry. They joined ACS after he urged them to during class.

“He really encourages his students in his class to join it and that’s how I got involved and I also became a chemistry major that year,” Kulp said.

Bandik tries to make learning fun, even during exams. He likes to stump his students — sometimes to the point that his students laugh while taking their final exam.

“In organic chemistry, you have some mechanisms and if you don’t start in the right place, you’re going to get the entire thing wrong. So he was running up the aisle and he looks that I’m just sitting there, staring at this one mechanism and I don’t know where to start. And he goes, ‘I stumped you, didn’t I?’ and slaps me on the back,” Tomlinson said in between giggles.

Bandik cares not only about the grades his students get, or if they learn organic chemistry. He cares about their well-being, future plans and how to enjoy learning. He makes a large class feel small by learning names and being accommodating. His students feel like they obtain skills not only in chemistry but in life — and he’s there to help guide them.

“I think that learning to listen to complex ideas, to be able to think your way through solving a problem … are the big skills,” Bandik said.

SILHOUETTES Story by Rachel Soloff Photo by Nate Yonamine

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DongJo Kim

food visionary

story by Punya Bhasin photos by Romita Das

THE PITT NEWS

SILHOUETTES

W

hen DongJo Kim came from South Korea to the United States in order to attend the University of Utah, he couldn’t cook so much as a scrambled egg.

Within two years, Kim was drawing up plans to open up his own restaurant. Now, nearly four years later, he has more than 7,000 Instagram followers jumping at the chance to eat his food.

Kim brought a bite of Korea to Allegheny County through his food in October 2020 with an unconventional take on an American classic — the corndog.

Although many who taste Kim’s food would tell you his food truck, named The BoonSeek, was destined to be a success, Kim thought otherwise when he first opened for business during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After building his business for the past two years, loyal customers gather in huge lines in front of the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum to eat his food. The menu features three variations of corn dogs, as well as traditional Korean street food.

Kim majored in chemistry in college, but instead of studying the periodic table, he was far more interested in honing his newfound passion for cooking.

Kim said he was motivated to cook after longing for the food he grew up with.

“You know I first started cooking because it was cheaper, and then I started missing the food from back home,” Kim said. “I used to try to watch videos to learn Korean cooking and I began to like cooking more and more.”

Kim met his wife, SuOk Lim, while in college and moved to Pittsburgh to support her while she studied at Pitt to obtain her master’s degree in social work. During this time, Kim said he continued creating his own recipes while working at a Korean restaurant, and began dreaming of opening up his own restaurant.

“I started working in a Korean restaurant in Pittsburgh, and I had been cooking for some time, so I wanted to open up my own restaurant so I could help introduce more people to Korean food,” Kim said.

Kim decided to take a leap of faith, and attempted to open up his own restaurant in December 2019. The pandemic hit soon after and Kim said it was “painful” when he had to scrap his plans.

“It was a little painful when the pandemic hit because it was obviously a block for my goals,” Kim said. “I was not very optimistic because the pandemic started, and I saw so many restaurants and businesses go out of business because all the people stopped eating outside and were so afraid, so I thought it was not a good time to open up a restaurant.”

For a couple of months, Kim said he felt completely “lost.” His well-laid plans and dreams seemed to be at risk as he watched other restaurants fail during the pandemic.

“When the pandemic started and I saw the lockdowns, I felt really lost and I didn’t know what to do anymore,” Kim said. “I knew I couldn’t open up a restaurant then but I didn’t want to give up on my dream.”

Lim said she saw her husband lose hope, and decided she would help him beat the odds, guiding him toward opening up a food truck. Lim said she thought a food truck would be a better start for him at that time since it seemed to be a smaller risk.

“I felt really bad for him because he had worked so hard to get his restaurant and the pandemic kind of ruined so much of that hope, but I didn’t want him to give up, and so I tried thinking of ways to help him,” Lim said. “I thought a food truck would be easier to start because people still need food, and it was kind of like curbside pickup so it would be good for the pandemic, so I told him to try to start a food truck.”

Lim said she saw a newly invigorated spirit in Kim as he began recipe testing and preparing for his food truck to open.

“He started getting excited about the food truck idea, and I saw a new

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change in him,” Lim said. “He began to have more hope and started creating new recipes and ideas that would be better for a food truck.”

Kim said he was grateful for his wife’s steadfast belief in his success. He fed off her strength to conquer his fears, and ultimately spent his savings on his food truck.

“My wife helped me a lot, and because of the pandemic I couldn’t really afford to hire people, and so she offered to help me start it and it made me feel good to see how she believed in me,” Kim said.

Despite the pandemic forcing many restaurants to close, Kim opened up the window to his food truck in March 2020 during the height of lockdowns.

He set up his truck in front of Lawrenceville’s 11th Hour Brewing Company, where he awaited his first customers. Kim said the first few hours were agonizing as he waited for somebody to take a chance and try his food.

“I was really worried when I first opened because I was afraid no one would come, especially because there were no students, and while I waited I kept being afraid I had made a mistake,” Kim said.

Finally, he served his first customer, and then his second, and then a swarm of people during lunch hour. At that moment, Kim said he felt overjoyed and shared his happiness with his wife over text in the midst of filling orders.

“Then, after some time, a customer came, and then they just kept coming and there were lines because they liked my food,” Kim said. “I was so happy and I kept texting my wife while she was in class because I was just so happy they liked my food.”

Lim said she felt an enormous amount of pride when she heard that people lined up for her husband’s food.

“He kept texting me saying, ‘A customer came,’ and, ‘They liked the food,’ and I felt so proud of him because he was so happy and I just saw how his hard work paid off,” Lim said.

Kim said after that day, the lines just kept forming. His food became a new trendy spot, with customers posting his creations online.

“My customers, they really seem to like my food, and, you know, I have some very loyal customers that I see all the time, and they have really helped me on social media and on campus because they tell people about my food,” Kim said. “Every time I come back to campus I see even more people than before waiting to try my food and that is because of my customers' support.”

Kim’s business boomed and he now employs two people, and is looking to hire another employee to help with the stream of orders.

Javes Ahn, one of his employees, said Kim’s work ethic is an inspiration and sees Kim as a food visionary.

“You know I started to work at the food truck because I thought it would be fun, and I am happy I did because DongJo works so hard, and it is super inspiring because you can see how happy he is to do his job,” Ahn said. “He clearly loves food, and a lot of times he is being creative with his menu and he clearly has a good vision for what type of food people will like.”

Kim said in light of his success, he is now looking to the future and hopes to open up another food truck. But he hasn’t given up his restaurant dream, either.

“I want to open up another food truck so I can do both lunch and dinner shifts at both the brewing company and at the University,” Kim said. “I also want to hire more employees so I can work more on the business itself and opening up more trucks or even maybe a restaurant hopefully in the future.”

Both Kim and Lim said they are grateful for their loyal customers, who call themselves “BoonSeekers.” They said they couldn’t have done it without their support.

“We owe so much to our customers and our followers on Instagram, who we call BoonSeekers,” Kim said. “Because of their encouragement and advice for our business we were able to survive the pandemic.”

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THE PITT NEWS

Shenay Jeffrey

Story by Jessica McKenzie Photos by Joy Cao

G

rowing up in Guyana, Shenay Jeffrey spent her childhood surrounded by many under-resourced communities. Her multicultural upbringing helped her discover her passion for community advocacy.

“Guyana is a beautiful country and a multicultural space, but also, it was colonized and it has a lot of rich resources that have not been fully developed,” Jeffrey said. “A lot of its spaces are under-resourced — it has a lot of potential. So Guyana was where I started off my journey.”

Advocating for community members became particularly challenging during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but Jeffrey’s sense of determination did not waver.

“I think we’re living in a very exciting time where we’re always thinking about potential opportunities for the future,” Jeffrey said. “COVID took a lot of lives, but I think it also brought us a light switch and urgency for innovation.”

Her response to the pandemic reflects an aspect of her character — Jeffrey puts 110% into everything she does, imagining many possibilities for community engagement. Jeffrey is the interim director of PittServes, where she constantly seeks opportunities to improve the Pittsburgh community for young people, immigrants and women of color.

Jeffrey — a Pitt alumna who graduated in 2010 with a bachelor’s degree in health information and management — immigrated from the Bahamas to central Pennsylvania with her parents as a teenager. She received her master’s degree in public and healthcare management from Carnegie Mellon University in 2016 and recently completed her doctorate from Pitt’s School of Education.

Jeffrey has worked for PittServes since 2016 and became interim director last October. During her time at PittServes, Jeffrey was instrumental in Pitt’s first Civic Action Week, as well as the Pitt Community Tutor Collective, which officially started in fall 2021.

“We can’t be afraid of innovation and creativity,” Jeffrey said. ”Sometimes we just have to act and make the best-informed decisions with the information at hand that benefit our students and the well-being of the community.”

Jeffrey said her upbringing and the hardships she faced as an immigrant in college inspired her to advocate for change in the Pitt community.

“I struggled a lot with financial aid, due to my immigrant status, and basic needs when I was a student,” Jeffrey said. “There were many times that I would get nervous at the end of a month because I would think, ‘How am I gonna pay rent?

I don't know. How am I gonna eat?’ We didn't have a pantry.”

During her time in undergrad, Jeffrey found a support network through organizations such as Theta Nu Xi Multicultural Sorority, Caribbean and Latin American Student Association, Roberto Clemente Minority Student Association and Student Association of Health Information Management.

Besides fulfilling her role as PittServes’ interim director, Jeffrey is on the board for New Voices for Reproductive Justice, an organization dedicated to advocating for policy change in women’s reproductive health that was started by three Black Pitt alumnas.

Jeffrey said the organization is one of her favorites in the Pittsburgh area, as it always challenges her to learn something new.

“New Voices for Reproductive Justice has taught me so much about myself as a Black woman and my own agency,” Jeffrey said. “But also my choices for myself, my body, my family and my environment and how those things interplay in certain outcomes or certain choices that I have.”

Jeffrey said that the political involvement intertwined with the organization allowed her to make lasting connections with young people.

“New Voices for Reproductive Justice shows the importance of political, environmental and financial involvement — all of those kinds of health areas,” Jeffrey said. “I love being around young Black people and getting that joy and sense of understanding and mentorship and advising.”

Another way she builds connections with young people is by leading service trips through PittServes. From her first year with the organization until the pandemic, she led a group of students on a trip to Ecuador during an alternative spring break, where they performed groundwork for the local community. Jeffrey said the trip challenged her to practice flexibility, team-building and leadership skills.

SILHOUETTES

'Unmatched' energy

“That trip was so interesting because each day was so different,” Jeffrey said.

“When you're there to serve a community, you don't dictate the service, the community dictates the service for you, or even the earth dictates the service.”

After the service trip to Ecuador, two members of PittServes — who were also members of Black Action Society — approached Jeffrey with the idea for a mentorship program for Black Pitt students. She said the idea resulted in Pitt’s Black Youth Connection program, an intergenerational mentorship program for Black students.

“We were talking about our experience being Black women at Pitt — I was so struck by the similarities around our experiences, because at that point, I'd graduated years ago, and they were still going through these things,” Jeffrey said.

Jeffrey said the conversation led to a sense of shared understanding between her and the students, but they also felt the need to do something about injustices faced by Black Pitt students.

“We came up with this idea that we could have this intergenerational mentoring with Black students in Black spaces in Pittsburgh,” Jeffrey said. “We also wanted it to be managed and supported by Black staff, so as to create this pipeline.

So hence, Black Youth Connection was born, and it has since become a space of Black celebration.”

Black Youth Connection is a part of the larger Pitt Community Tutor Collective that Jeffrey set in motion after becoming interim director of PittServes. The Tutor Collective organizations include PittEnrich, America Reads, Black Youth Connection and others.

Carrie Finkelstein, the strategic projects manager for the Office of Community and Governmental Relations, works closely with Jeffrey. Finkelstein said while working together, she and Jeffrey ensure the student tutors receive top-tier training.

“Shenay is really forward-thinking in that she cares really deeply about impact,” Finkelstein said. “She’s always game to try something new that will enhance the work and she always has these amazing ideas of how we can really move our work forward and collaborate.”

Finkelstein and Jeffrey faced various challenges while setting up the tutoring program, such as ensuring the tutors had top-quality training. Finkelstein said despite the doubts she had when the two first started the program, Jeffrey was always an encouraging figure and an excellent communicator.

“Shenay is very student centered,” Finkelstein said. “She’s very good at keeping

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the work about the people we serve, whether it be the students who are tutoring or the ones being tutored. Challenges don't really feel like challenges when you're working with Shenay — they sort of feel like opportunities that you can grow from.”

Jeffrey said the goal of the tutor collective is to embody an anti-racist, equitable education framework. Jeffrey said based on her experiences surrounding the most prevalent examples of tutor-tutee relationships, many misunderstandings can arise, so the collective hosts a series of workshops in which the group discusses themes of race and culture.

“We challenge thoughts like, if you think of tutoring, why's it always a white person as the tutor and a person of color as the student?” Jeffrey said. “We’re constantly having conversations to challenge those ideas because part of our approach in the Pitt Tutoring Collective is holistic understanding of the people that we serve.”

Jeffrey’s dedication to the community inspires students like Jamal Johnson, a senior English writing major, who acts as student coordinator of PittServes’ community assistant program. He is a liaison between PittServes and various nonprofit organizations in the community.

Johnson first met Jeffrey last year when he joined PittServes as a community assistant. He said he admires Jeffrey because of her confidence in everything she does.

“Shenay is extremely strong and determined,” Johnson said. “When she walks into a room, it's like, ‘Whoa, Shenay is here.’ Whenever I'm talking to her, I’m thinking, ‘I'm talking to Shenay. Gotta make sure I'm paying attention.’”

Johnson said PittServes has heavily influenced his career goals. He began college with plans to seek a career in law, but now he wants to attain a more permanent position at Teach for America. He credits Jeffrey for acting as a mentor to him since he joined PittServes.

“Shenay has energy unmatched,” Johnson said. “She played a big role when I was deciding on a career because she helped me and mentored me through this position. PittServes opened my eyes to a whole different aspect where you can really understand how the community works.”

Jeffrey said while many of the students she works with view her as a mentor, she hopes to remind them of their own self-worth, despite struggles they may face.

“I hope to teach my students that life is joyful and they're enough,” Jeffrey said.

“I hope to teach them to see themselves as important.”

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THE PITT NEWS

TODD HARTMAN FINDING HIS VOICE

Story by Zack Gibney Photos by Pamela Smith

S

even-year-old Todd Hartman wasn’t thrilled about going to his piano lessons.

While Hartman’s friends were playing outside, he was learning an instrument that he didn’t much care for. But his father and mother made sure that their child would have music in his life at a young age.

“It wasn’t really inspiring,” Hartman said of the lessons. “But a seed was subconsciously planted.”

Clayton Hartman, Todd’s father, was the announcer for the Pitt band throughout Todd’s childhood. The elder Hartman began working with the band in 1953, and with the exception of a brief stint in the Air Force from 1957-60, didn’t miss a beat until his retirement in 2016.

Every so often, Clayton hosted band camps at Pitt-Johnstown during Todd’s middle school years. While the piano lessons didn’t stick for Todd, he developed a liking for the drumline and decided to join his father on his trips to Johnstown.

“He would take me to the band rehearsals, and when I really got the itch for drumline is when he would take me to band camp,” Hartman said.

“Wherever the drumline went, I went."

When it came time to head off to college, Hartman had little doubt about where he wanted to spend the next four years. Along with being from the Pittsburgh area, Todd wanted to play in the marching band — and he could do so alongside his father.

“I always knew I was going to go to Pitt,” Hartman said. “There was pride for the University of Pittsburgh by the time I was old enough to realize. Years and years of going to the old Pitt Stadium and seeing it packed — that did it for me.”

Hartman was initially enrolled at Pitt as an engineering major, but changed his major to music just before starting his first year. Despite being the only music major on the engineering floor of Litchfield Tower A during his first year, Hartman grew to enjoy college life in Oakland.

After graduating in 1990, Hartman enrolled in graduate school at Duquesne University, but couldn’t stay away from the Pitt marching band for too long. That summer, Hartman rejoined the program that he had spent four years with as a drumline instructor and ranger — working right alongside his father.

Working with his father helped bring the duo closer together. With all the time Todd had been spending on his studies, family time was sometimes a part of life that he had to sacrifice. Being on staff with his father had enabled the younger Hartman to get back some of that time, while still pursuing his passion in music.

“It was the Pitt connections that brought us back together. I always appreciated the time we had together and I felt proud to be on the same staff as my dad. We just really enjoyed our time together,” Hartman said. “He did his thing with the announcing and I did my thing with the drumline.”

Lou Rusiski, who has handled general operations for the band since

SILHOUETTES 1985, worked with Clayton for more than 30 years. Rusiski still holds the same role for the band today, and has been able to work alongside both Hartmans throughout his career.

Rusiski said while there are some differences between the two, they had a similar effect on those around them.

“Clay was a calming influence — and same thing with Todd,” Rusiski said. “He exhibits a lot of Clay’s personality.”

Todd would remain on the Pitt band staff until 2005, when he left to take another significant step in his life — the birth of his first two children.

Between the obligation to his family and job teaching music at Ambridge Area High School, there wasn’t enough time to continue his role with the Pitt drumline.

While Todd was away from the band, Clayton continued to do the same thing that he had since the early 1950s — announce. But after being a fixture for nearly 65 years at countless athletic events, Clayton soon stepped away and ushered in a new voice.

Todd began shadowing Clayton during the 2016 football season. Following his father around behind the scenes on gamedays not only gave Todd a better understanding of the job itself, but an even greater appreciation for his father and the impact he had on those around him.

Pitt Director of Bands Brad Townsend worked closely with bothHartmans during the transition period. Townsend said after working with Clayton, it was nice to see Todd shadowing his father and taking on the same duties that the elder Hartman had held for so many years.

“Todd is a Pitt band alumnus, so he knows all about the band,” Townsend said. “But it was kind of sweet to watch him work with Clayton as he was getting older and got to where he needed to be. That helped in a lot of ways.”

Todd noticed his father was familiar with nearly everyone in the press box, where media members and other behind-the-scenes staff gather at Heinz Field prior to kickoff. The vast quantity of people his father greeted prior to games initially surprised Todd. He emphasized this was one of his favorite parts of shadowing his father — getting to see all the connections he made over the years first-hand.

“That in and of itself was kind of cool because he knew everybody involved in the behind-the-scenes,” Hartman said. “He was a popular guy.”

Townsend also noticed both Hartmans worked well together during Todd’s time shadowing his father. Clayton was getting older, and having his son by his side in his final months on the job helped both with the process.

“You could tell he was taking care of his dad as well,” Townsend said of Todd’s time shadowing his father. “One of the things I noticed was that Todd knew exactly what to do, but what was kind of great was to watch him grow.”

Clayton eventually retired after the 2016 season. This was the beginning of not only a new job for Todd, but also not working alongside his father.

In his initial days working as the band's announcer, Todd was aware that people would question his filling the position formerly held by his father.

This led to Todd’s first obstacle as the band announcer — finding his own voice.

Hartman initially felt like he had to replicate the voice of his dad to try and sound familiar. It took time and experience for Todd, but he eventually developed his own announcing style.

“I knew how many people he impacted and how many people got used to that tone and that voice,” Hartman said. “I didn’t want to disappoint.”

As Hartman continued to gain experience, he started putting more of a personal touch on announcing, instead of attempting to replicate his father’s signature voice.

“About halfway through [the 2017 season], I started becoming more of myself,” Hartman said. “I can remember Dr. Townsend saying ‘Hey, you’re

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starting to sound like Todd now.’”

As it turned out, “sounding like Todd” ended up being the key for Hartman.

Clayton passed away last August 2021, is remembered by generations of Pitt band members, staff members and fans alike. While Todd was able to put a personal touch on his work, he still felt his father’s influence. Even today, Todd continues to emphasize the word “varsity” when introducing the band at games — just as his father did.

“One of the things Lou wanted me to keep was emphasizing the word ‘varsity,’” Hartman said. “The transition from Clayton Hartman to Todd Hartman … I think you can hear in my delivery.”

Striking this balance has helped Todd become a recognizable voice to fans, while honoring Clayton.

“What has been great is that he is more and more comfortable,” Townsend said. “He’s putting his own personality in there — his own mark on the position.”

Hartman still holds the position of band announcer and loves every minute of it. He continues to teach music at Ambridge Area High School, where he is currently in his 22nd year. When it comes to his role at Pitt, Hartman has no plans of moving on from the school that helped make him the man he is today.

“I just look forward to just doing the same thing,” Hartman said. “I really enjoy it.”

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THE PITT NEWS

Mandy Cooper Golden Girl keeps busy

Story by Sinead McDevitt Photo by Pamela Smith

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I

f you wanted to describe Mandy Cooper in one word, “social” would work well. It’s the part of medicine she’s most interested in after all.

“I volunteered at the local hospital near me, St. Clair Hospital,” Cooper said. “I like talking to the patients about their health concerns and stuff like that. I like the social interaction more than the science side of health care.”

It’s hard to describe anyone in one word, especially when they’re as involved in the Pitt community as Cooper. Besides studying as an undergraduate nursing student, she’s the section leader of the Pitt Golden Girls, philanthropy assistant for the Delta Zeta sorority and conducting independent research.

“I love being busy. It definitely keeps me motivated and keeps me organized and on schedule,” Cooper said.

Cooper's many passions include helping others and advocating for accessibility in health care, which stems from personal experience. Cooper grew up in Pittsburgh and began to notice an issue with her hearing around the time she started sixth grade.

According to Cooper, she kept failing her hearing tests at school, yet was assured by her primary care provider that there were no issues with her hearing up until she visited an audiologist in her early adolescent years.

“Sophomore year of high school, I think it was, I just went to the audiologist at Children's Hospital. And they found out, I do have severe sensorineural hearing loss in my left ear,” Cooper said. “It took almost five years to get diagnosed and get treatment. Kind of crazy.”

She has since worn a hearing aid in her left ear, which has made some aspects of life challenging.

“I’ll hear that someone's talking and I know that I should know what they're saying. But it just sounds like gibberish,” Cooper said. “It's just like little annoyances that make it difficult to understand the conversations.”

Despite the challenges, it has inspired Cooper to focus her research on people who have trouble finding treatment. She conducts research through Pitt and began her current project over the summer while she was a Brackenridge fellow.

“My work currently focuses on how patients with hearing loss who are under the age of 26 access care, and what barriers they might have to care, and what facilitates good care,” Cooper said. “I did a quantitative portion over the summer as a Brackenridge Research Fellow.”

According to Cooper, she’s observed that people living in underprivileged areas have a harder time accessing care.

“I've had a lot of common threads in my research. The biggest thing I would say is the difference between the children who live in rural areas versus the urban areas — even just in their school systems, in the more rural areas, they tend to have less readily available resources,” Cooper said. “One more thing that really stuck out was the lack of knowledge that PCPs have.”

Hayley Germack, a former nursing professor at Pitt, mentored Cooper during her first year at Pitt and helped Cooper develop research ideas.

“Her personal development of her own research interests really blossomed over her sophomore to junior year,” Germack said. “She let me know she was really interested in access to health care for people with hearing disabilities. And we ended up working together to develop a research question hypothesis and a pretty sophisticated research project to understand how people with hearing disabilities navigate healthcare resources.”

Cooper’s interest in helping people who are deaf or hard of hearing is not limited to her research. Cooper joined the Delta Zeta sorority during her first year at Pitt along with several of her friends from nursing school, and is currently the philanthropy assistant and the ASL accessibility chair. As accessibility chair, she teaches the other sisters ASL and helps organize fundraising events for groups supporting the deaf and hard of hearing community.

Cooper said she has enjoyed organizing charity events and raising money

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for the Starkey Hearing Foundation, the main organization Delta Zeta supports.

“Our major event this semester is going to be Hoops for Hearing. It's going to be a basketball tournament. And so we'll sell tickets like that, and probably sell shirts, do a raffle, things like that, like a silent auction, maybe,” Cooper said.

Cooper is also section leader for the Pitt Band’s baton twirling team, the Golden Girls. She said she joined the team because she likes to show school spirit at games, and was a cheerleader in high school.

“I think the marching band has more to do with my passion for school spirit in general. I absolutely love attending sporting events and like having a reason to be there. And to be enthusiastic and to support the team,” Cooper said.

Jessica Potez, choreographer of the Golden Girls, was amazed by Cooper’s ability to juggle so many responsibilities. Potez said Cooper once went straight from an exam in her night class to a game to perform.

“Mandy went to her exam ready to go for the game. So then she could just focus on the exam. And then she got a ride and was at the field and didn't skip a beat,” Potez said. “Her ability to juggle all these different aspects of the thing she's involved with Pitt, I think, just shows how wonderful of an undergraduate student she surely is.”

Cooper and Potez both attended the Ruby Daugherty and Sherry School of Dance — an all-ages dance studio in South Park Township, located about 30 minutes south of Oakland. Through that connection, Cooper decided to audition for the Golden Girls. Cooper had already decided to attend Pitt because unlike other nursing schools, which make you reapply as a sophomore, Cooper could be directly admitted to the nursing school, and so she reached out to Potez about auditioning for the Golden Girls.

According to Potez, Cooper’s dedication allowed her to quickly rise up the ranks after making it onto the team.

“She just has been such a smart learner and engaged and became very involved right away,” Potez said. “Becoming a squad leader, as a sophomore and then becoming a section leader as a junior is quite an accomplishment because typically, those leadership roles are things you see in the later years of your undergraduate career.”

One of Cooper’s favorite memories as a Golden Girl was attending last fall’s ACC Championship game against Wake Forest.

“The whole game was super nerve-wracking. And the Wake Forest student section was really really mean to us,” Cooper said. “And so it felt really satisfying to win in the end. And just in general, people always think Pitt fans don't travel well. But I thought that the representation at that game was awesome. The energy there was just like, super, super exciting.”

Cooper said she has many plans for after graduation, including potentially working as a nurse, getting a doctorate of Nursing Practice or going into mental health advocacy.

“Right now, I am still thinking about what I want to do. I have an internship coming up at UPMC Children's Hospital in their NICU. And I think I'd want to go into mental health — that area of care also needs a ton of advocacy and like reform,” Cooper said.“I also would love to eventually go back to school and get my DNP or become a nurse practitioner and continue with research, because I do like learning about different patient populations and how we can better serve them.”

Potez praised Cooper’s hard work and dedication, and said she has much potential moving forward due to her ability to handle so many tasks at once.

“She is someone you can always count on. She's the type of student you asked her to do something one time and it is done. She doesn't need reminders,” Potez said. “Being a young student, being in college, it's, you know, the first time you're truly on your own and adulting. So I think it's just great to see how well she's coming into her own and being able to accomplish so many great things.”

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THE PITT NEWS

Ward Allebach Rolling with the punches W

ard Allebach is a major force behind sustainability at Pitt, but beyond his groundbreaking work, students also know him for his passion, humility and Hawaiian shirts. Seth Bush, a 2012 Pitt alumnus, still keeps in touch with Allebach and thinks fondly of his wardrobe.

“One of the first classes, he's in his Hawaiian shirt — which is every class — standing up on a desk, orating about something,” Bush said.

Allebach, an instructor in the geology and environmental science department, has taught Pitt students how to make real change in their community since 2002. In his sustainability class, which he developed in 2008, Allebach guides students through projects aimed at improving sustainability on campus, which often last beyond just a semester-long course. Students pick up projects from previous classmates, so initiatives can continue even after their initial creators may have graduated.

“Our students are transient here. They're here for four years, and then they're gone. The work that needs to be done on campus is not,” Allebach said.

“Students do the work, but they build for the future at the same time. And by doing that, projects tend to morph from students to students to students as time goes on.”

Clubs and initiatives that are now campus fixtures — such as the University of Thriftsburgh, Forbes Street Market and receiptless transactions at University food vendors — started as projects in Allebach’s class. According to him, all the credit goes to the students.

“I can't even begin to tell you how proud I am of the students that I've worked with. And it really is all about the students. I do what I can to inspire

them and empower them, but really, what actually gets done is all them,” Allebach said.

Under his mentorship, several former students have gone on to their own careers as environmental advocates. Bush worked for the Sierra Club, a grassroots environmental organization, for six years, and now provides leadership coaching to activists through the Radical Support Collective. Eva Resnick-Day, also a 2012 Pitt alumna, worked as an organizer for 10 years at the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Green Corps PennEnvironment and more and now works for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.

Both Bush and Resnick-Day were members of Free The Planet, a campus environmental club, for which Allebach was — and still is — the adviser. Resnick-Day recalled that during her time in the club, she had the idea to start the Pitt Green Fund as a way to finance student projects. While her fellow students questioned whether her idea was realistic, Allebach was the only person who didn’t dismiss it.

Resnick-Day was able to successfully start the fund, which still exists today.

“At the beginning, basically everyone laughed me off, and was like, ‘We'll never be able to do that on this campus.’ And Ward was one of the people who didn't. I think he's just someone who really believes that change can happen,” Resnick-Day said.

Allebach’s own advocacy career began in the late ‘80s when he was working as a journalist in Cape May, New Jersey — a coastal town at the southernmost tip of the Jersey Shore, which at the time was suffering its own environmental crisis.

“There were dolphins washing up dead on shore, red tides, there were a

Story by Charlie Taylor Photos by John Blair

SILHOUETTES lot of sewage spills, a lot of stuff that really made a lot of news,” Allebach said. “[Since] it was an ecologically sensitive area, I wrote a lot about those things. I got very interested in it.”

Allebach left journalism and Cape May to begin a master’s program in environmental studies at California State University, Fullerton. While living and studying in southern California, he also started a nonprofit called Green Networking for Orange County and, in 1995, began teaching classes on environmental advocacy to other students at Cal State Fullerton.

Both of Allebach’s parents were teachers, but he never considered an education career for himself because he saw his father struggle to enjoy his work. But when Cal State Fullerton gave him the opportunity to teach a class, Allebach realized he loved working with students to help them reach their goals.

“I really got a bug for it. I think it's very largely because of the nature of the work, because it's really incredibly gratifying for me to be able to work with young people on things that they are passionate about,” Allebach said. “To be able to see them accomplish things is really empowering.”

Allebach moved to Pittsburgh in 2000 and began teaching at Pitt two years later. His courses have always centered around student-led projects, which oftentimes push for change in University policy. Allebach recalled the resistance he and his students felt from administrators in the early 2000s, which often made it difficult to enact change.

“Back in 2002, there was a large institutional resistance to that kind of change. And very often, students would go to University administration to advocate for change,” Allebach said. “First of all, the University was not very accessible. And when they finally did get through to people, after spinning their wheels for weeks and weeks and weeks, the response was very often ‘f— off.’”

Allebach said he has seen attitudes improve drastically over the past two decades, with higher-ups becoming much more receptive to sustainability initiatives. He attributes this change in part to the hiring of sustainability-focused staff members, from Aurora Sharrard, the University-wide sustainability director, to Erika Ninos, the sustainability program coordinator for PittServes.

“That gives students in my classes now easy access to decision makers and change makers on campus, and they can work together a lot better than they ever could before. It's not as much of an uphill struggle,” Allebach said.

As Allebach worked to change the University’s attitudes toward sustainability, his guidance also changed the way his students approach sustainability.

Simon Joseph, a senior environmental studies major, took Sustainability Flash Lab with Allebach, a class that pushes students to make sustainable changes to their daily lives.

Joseph said his experiences in the class changed how he thinks about the world.

“I didn't know anything about sustainability. At least, I thought I knew something, but Ward quickly showed me that I did not,” Joseph said. “I've never turned on a light, taken a long shower, eaten meat, anything like that without always double checking myself because of that class.”

Allebach said his classes often have a similar effect on students — making them realize the gaps in their knowledge, then working to fill in the cracks. He added that it’s hard to start new projects without understanding the work that campus leaders are already doing to improve sustainability.

“There tends to be a lot of misperceptions, students who come in and they're angry about what's not being done on campus, without really understanding what is being done on campus,” Allebach said. “I want you to pursue what you want to do. But if your ideas don't change over the first three, four, five weeks of the class, then you haven't done enough research.”

While challenging preconceived views about sustainability, Allebach also focuses on teaching students the real-world skills needed for environmental

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activism — including how to roll with the punches.

Allebach works with students to coordinate Pitt’s annual Sustainability Symposium, an event with guest speakers and student research presentations.

Resnick-Day recalled that before the 2012 symposium was set to start, campus shut down due to safety concerns from a series of bomb threats that year. The guest speakers weren’t allowed in campus buildings, so Resnick-Day and her classmates rushed to get a space on CMU’s campus at the last minute.

“Ward afterwards looked at us and he was like, ‘I didn't think that was gonna happen. You made that happen.’ And so I think there's been this mutual learning,” Resnick-Day said. “And I think that that spirit has lasted in our friendship.”

Allebach’s passion for sustainability has left a lasting impact both on campus and in the lives of his students. But he cautioned that even the most passionate people have their limits, and when it comes to activism, self-care is essential.

“If you put your heart and soul into it all the time, every single day, 24/7, you're going to burn out and then you're not going to be good for anybody.

You have to be able to take care of yourself and you have to have a level of awareness in order to keep a handle on that,” Allebach said.

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THE PITT NEWS

tyrone carter

story by Grace DeLallo photo by Alanna Reid

O

ne cold, snowy night on Feb. 5, 2006, Tyrone Carter arrived at Pitt for his first shift as a campus security guard. The Pittsburgh Steelers went up earlier that day against the Seattle Seahawks for a chance to play in the Super Bowl — and they won. Excitement brewed all around the city, but in Oakland, the celebration played out a little differently than elsewhere.

“I was on Sunday nights at the Hillman library. It was the Sunday the Steelers were in the Super Bowl. We had to start at 6 o'clock. So I was in all this mess,” Carter said. “But when they won, in Oakland, they were turning cars over … they were spinning them. Couches burning in the middle of the streets. They busted windows. We had to lock the library, and that was my first day on the job.”

Despite his turbulent first day working for the University, Carter has remained a loyal employee for the past 16 years — and still

continues to be a local sports fan. Carter laughingly declares, “Steelers, Pirates, Pitt. I’m always local,” but he will not work on another playoff game date.

Prior to his time at Pitt, Carter grew up in nearby Homewood with his five brothers and sisters. After graduating high school, Carter enlisted in the army, and was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Carter said the time he spent in active duty was a relatively stable period, so he wasn’t directly exposed to the terrors of war.

Regardless, his six years in the army still influences him today.

By the age of 23, he was a father to three young boys — Tyrone Jr., Topaz and Mike. After leaving the army, Carter took up any position he could in order to support his family, and Kaufman’s department store hired him as part of the warehouse staff. Carter later worked at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center on upper campus as a program clerk in radiology and in the housekeeping department.

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the heart of trees hall Although Carter enjoyed the work environment and nurses at the VA during his 20 years there, he decided to leave the position because the stress from housekeeping management became too tiring.

“Once I went there, everything got cutthroat,” Carter said. “Everybody’s military, so the management part, they still wanna be gung-ho. You get tired of all that.”

After a few years of working security details for Heinz Field football games, Carter made his way to Pitt — thanks to the recommendation of his nephew, Robert. Carter said he has remained at the University for so long in part because he enjoys the stability his position provides him.

“This is stress free. [The University] don't mess with us. Come to work, do your job, everything's good. Plus, I like working with the kids,” Carter said.

Although Carter has worked around campus for many years, he is most recognizable for his position as the security guard for the Trees Hall Fitness Center on upper campus, a position he’s held for so long that he's almost a part of the facility as the walls and ceiling.

Sally Sherman, an assistant professor of health and human development, began working for Pitt around the same time Carter switched his post to Trees Hall. She recalled the many ways Carter has looked after the community during the years they’ve known each other.

“He does things, like if students or faculty are leaving the building at night — many of us have taught a lot of night classes — he won’t let you walk to your car by yourself,” Sherman said. “He will even stand out there and watch you get to your car. He is always looking out for everyone. That’s just who he is.”

Sherman also described times when Carter would call after students who would come through the doors and accidentally shut them on professors. She said Carter would tell them to go back and apologize for not holding the door open.

“He’ll say, ‘That’s Dr. Sherman! You turn around and you go open that door for Dr. Sherman,’” Sherman said.

Carter’s caring nature shines through in the way he often does seemingly small things to make the people around him happy. Before his dog’s passing in 2014, Carter said he would bring Little Bow Wow with him to work on weekends when children’s groups would use the facilities.

“He would sit up here with me because I was working weekends.

And I will let him run in the back because we had little kid programs coming in. They loved him,” Carter said.

Carter’s role in Trees Hall became more appreciated a few years ago when he took an unexpected leave of absence.

Carter was playing basketball after work one day, an activity he would regularly do, but this particular game took an unexpected turn. He ruptured his quad and had to get stitches on his leg, just below his knee, and spent a week in the hospital.

Sherman said while Carter spent time recovering from his injury, Trees Hall was in a “frenzy.”

“We walk in and sure, it’s another great security personnel, but

they’re not Tyrone. It’s literally the buzz in Trees Hall. When he’s not there, it’s an enormous loss,” Sherman said.

Unlike other security guards in University buildings such as Hillman Library and the Cathedral of Learning, Trees Hall requires much more attention to detail and expended energy. Since he is the only guard for the building, Carter is responsible for making sure all faculty members and students are acting appropriately and safely.

Despite having the ability to choose a different post annually, Carter continues to renew his position in Trees.

Commander Shawn Ellies, director of security and emergency management at Pitt, has known Carter since they both attended Westinghouse High School — located in Pittsburgh’s Homewood neighborhood, a short bus ride from campus. Ellies said he has seen Carter’s dedication and eagerness to serve the community firsthand during the 16 years Carter has worked for Pitt.

“Guard Carter always volunteers for working other assignments.

If there are extra assignments on campus, he is first to step into those roles," Ellies said.

When the campus security system went digital about six years ago, Ellies said Carter was keen to learn about the different tools and equipment he would have to interact with during his daily duties.

Carter isn’t the only person in his family with a long career at the University. His nephew, Robert ‘Poncho’ Broadway, worked as a Pitt police officer for 17 years before passing away in February. Carter said Broadway, who also worked as a Penn Hills police officer for 11 years and is survived by his wife, two sons, daughter and three grandchildren, inspires him.

Carter’s role in keeping faculty and students safe goes beyond what’s necessary for his job. Though all campus security guards are trained in emergency response procedures, Ellies said Carter’s loyalty and familiarity with Trees Hall and the sports injuries that may occur allow him to handle intense situations.

“If a student is injured at Trees Hall, he is quick to contact first responders to respond to the injured student's location. He has training in CPR and first aid and has experience dealing with critical situations," Ellies said.

Carter said his job was just another part of his life, but Sherman said his presence in Trees Hall is more valuable than people, including Carter, fully realize.

“He sees what he does as unimportant,” Sherman said. “He has such an effect by being who he is, he doesn’t have to do anything crazy.”

Although Carter may describe his life as “boring,” his role in Trees is obvious to those around him. Sherman said without his efforts, Trees Hall would look much different.

“It is not a sexy building to be in. He is the only one — it is an enormous space, and when people sneak into the building, he has to go up there and chase people down,” Sherman said. “Again, it’s just about keeping the community safe.”

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THE PITT NEWS

Organic chemistry joe for the average joe del nano Story by colm slevin photos by pamela smith

W

hile he may be seen as an ultimate chemistry resource, Joe Del Nano would rather you think of him as an average Joe. “I'm not a subject matter expert in organic chemistry,” Del Nano said. “I'm that friendly neighborhood Joe, who has done enough organic chemistry to where I feel like I've seen a lot of things and I can explain things very well.”

Olivia Vogler, a junior neuroscience major, said Del Nano is excellent at chemistry.

“He is amazing at chemistry and he is such a great resource for students,” Vogler said. “I used his videos a lot in Orgo 1 and he was actually my tutor. We would meet once a week and before all of my exams. He helped so much.”

Del Nano, a 2017 Pitt alumnus, is the founder of jOechem, a website and YouTube channel dedicated to helping students do well in Organic Chemistry, a class required for many science majors, including chemistry, biology and those on a pre-medicine track.

Del Nano started off his first semester at Pitt in organic chemistry 1 as a premed major, with intentions to go to medical school. But organic chemistry 2 changed his trajectory. Del Nano said there was one reaction from the class that

made him reconsider what he wanted to do with his life — the Wolff-Kishner reaction, which turns a ketone into an alkane.

“The mechanism just speaks to me, and saying that I feel like someone should come up behind me and give me an atomic wedgie,” Del Nano said. “But that I felt like was such an ‘aha’ moment. And I was like, ‘I don't think I want to go to medical school anymore. I need to do something with chemistry.’”

According to Vogler, Del Nano is a bit of a celebrity in Pitt’s Chevron Science Center, as many organic chemistry students watch his videos to help them study.

“Everyone knows who he is,” Vogler said. “You can say ‘jOechem’ around anyone who has taken organic chemistry at Pitt and they’ll say they’ve watched his videos or found him helpful.”

Dan Koch, a 2017 Pitt alumnus and friend of Del Nano, said he was always a really friendly guy and does a great job at making people feel valued and appreciated.

“He does a really good job at making people feel seen,” Koch said. “As long as I've known him, he's had a huge friend group. He really is always someone that is very kind to other people and makes them feel like he cares about them.”

After five years of jOechem and experience as an undergraduate teaching assistant for organic chemistry, Del Nano has some experience with teaching, but

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wasn’t always the most confident about being in front of a room explaining complex chemistry.

“I'll never forget the first time I did reviews when I was a UTA. I loved organic chemistry, but it really kicked me in the pants to be in front of a room explaining things to a whole classroom of eyeballs,” Del Nano said. “I was super anxious and my voice was probably trembling and I remember leaving the room thinking, ‘Damn, I wasn’t as good at that as I expected to be right off the bat.’”

Del Nano recalled an email from a girl who attended the University of Washington who, after getting a concussion, used his videos to help her study for her organic chemistry 2 final. Del Nano said he can hardly believe people at Pitt use his videos for help, nevermind people from around the country and world. He feels it is the students who put the time in to watch his videos to study who do all the work, not him.

“Anyone who has ever said anything kind to me about jOechem or used it and it's helped them, they do all the work. I can make up to 6.022x1023 worksheets. It doesn't help anyone unless they sit down and do the work and do the learning that actually puts the knowledge in their head,” Del Nano said. “So it just felt like an incredible endorsement. And I was so proud of that.”

George Bandik, an organic chemistry professor, said he loves jOechem as a resource for students to turn to for help and can tell the students really find the content useful.

“I actually recommend it to kids in my class,” Bandik said. “And several years ago, we actually asked him to come and talk at an [American Chemistry Society] meeting, about jOechem and how he started it, why he started it and all that kind of stuff. And the room was jammed. And people applauded him, because I think undergrads really greatly appreciate what he does.”

Bandik said the videos are really helpful to so many students because Del Nano doesn’t get too much into the theory, instead explaining the content in a way that is easy for students who need extra help to understand.

“I think he's very special with Pitt students because he's a Pitt grad and I think that the jOechem stuff is very closely in line with the way we teach organic chemistry,” Bandik said. “I think it's because he was a student, he remembers what it's like to not know what something is and what explanations you need to get to get where you want to be. So I think that's the big plus.”

But jOechem is not Del Nano’s full-time job, despite the work he puts into it.

Del Nano currently works in software engineering in San Francisco — the industry both his older and younger brothers work in. He said he pretty much followed the path his older brother took to get to where he is today.

“He did chemical engineering at Pitt and became a software engineer. So at least I saw that it was possible. So whenever I started to do it, I leaned on him as well as my little brother who was a CS student at Maryland a lot because they’re such knowledgeable people,” Del Nano said. “I was the last one living in Pittsburgh, and I was looking for a new job come early 2021. And my goal was either New York or San Francisco, and San Francisco worked out. FOMO drove me to move

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to San Francisco.”

Del Nano got his first job in chemical engineering in 2015 doing a co-op at EQT, a Pittsburgh-based gas company. They hired him as a petroleum engineer, but he ended up doing a lot of “busy work.” Del Nano said he aspired to be “the change from within,” but found the job to be miserable.

“I didn’t really go out to any well sites, I got ignored a lot and it was a miserable work environment. And I just remember thinking to myself, no one is happy here. This can't be the rest of my life,” Del Nano said. “And when I did get work, it was just clunky Excel spreadsheets that people pawned off on me said, you know, ‘Please make this better.’”

In his role as a chemical engineer at EQT, Del Nano began learning how to code. He credits his brothers, both software engineers, as mentors in coding. His new software skills allowed him to develop jOechem as a website.

“It was right at that point that I kind of had the idea, I should make a set of worksheets because I'm tutoring so much, as well as the whole like I'm enjoying programming,” Del Nano said. “And that was when I started talking to my brother, I was also seeing how much my older brother enjoyed his job in software. And I thought to myself, ‘Even if this doesn't turn into a job, this seems like something I would want to do and enjoy.’”

Koch said jOechem was a passion project for Del Nano, and was really just meant for him to help students with the subject. Even if he helped Del Nano professionally, that was never the intention. “jOechem was really kicking off the first semester of my senior year. And it was really cool to see how passionate he was about it,” Koch said. “It was a selfless thing that he was doing. Not only in teaching and O-chem.”

Del Nano credits jOechem as the reason he’s now in software. He had to learn to program the website and, even though his degree was in chemical engineering, having experience in website development stood out to some employers. “jOechem is the only reason why I'm a professional software engineer. I had some lead time between when I graduated in December 2017 and when my job with AstraZeneca started in September of 2018. So I had, like, nine months and I was very, very broke. So I needed a job,” Del Nano said. “And I found this random job on Indeed for this tiny little web development company in Greensburg using the same language I used to build jOechem.”

Del Nano has helped many students, but organic chemistry didn’t come easy to him, and there are topics he too struggled with. Hydrogen Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imagery, or H NMR, was a difficult topic for him.

“So I will say I was god awful at proton NMR the first time I learned it, I was so bad at it,” Del Nano said. “I remember my O chem 1 final, I literally left a whole 10 or 15 point question blank. Also, I don't even remember how to do this reaction, but I remember it was called an enantiomer selective heck reaction and that wrecked me. I was like, ‘If this is on the final I’m just taking the L,’ but luckily it wasn’t.”

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THE PITT NEWS

PHIL PHIL WION WION Story by Neena Hagen Photos by John Blair — weathering blows from the University administration and conservative politicians who wanted to quash collective bargaining.

The bookish 80-year-old now lives a relatively quiet life with his wife Marianne in Squirrel Hill. Since retiring from teaching in 2009, he’s joined a symphonic band and tries to spend more time with his family.

But Pitt faculty’s resounding union win in October lured Wion back into his old world.

I first met Wion at an electric victory party outside United Steelworkers headquarters that same month. As the celebratory speeches wound down, Wion said the win was “thrilling.”

On an icy Saturday morning in February, we dug deeper, and Wion reflected on more than two decades of campaigning. His efforts fell short across several drives, but laid the groundwork for the most recent union campaign, which culminated in 71% of Pitt faculty voting for unionization.

For Wion, a faculty union is all about “solidarity” — bridging divides between professors across ranks and departments.

“It’s often about the haves and have-nots,” Wion said. “The way you see things often depends on where you sit, what your role is.”

That level of social awareness was inculcated in Wion early on. His dad taught a high school civics class. And his family members had strong political convictions — they were all New Deal Democrats among a sea of Republicans in his hometown of Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, located about 20 minutes northeast of State College.

Ann Wion, his sister, said some of that disagreement among peers likely helped propel her brother’s activism.

“One of the things I think you learn when you grow up in a small town … you’re going to have friends and neighbors that you might have different views from politically,” his sister said. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t be friends and you can’t get along and that you don’t share a lot in common.”

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he first time Pitt faculty voted to unionize, there was no victory celebration. Instead, many organizers feared that the supposed win threatened to destroy union organizing efforts at universities across the country.

Phil Wion, the then-president of Pitt’s faculty union drive, grimaced as he recalled the election.

It was 1987, and a state labor board decision had left Pitt’s union leaders reeling.

The hearing examiner declared that all full-time faculty at Pitt were “managers” and therefore ineligible to unionize, whittling down a potential faculty union to only part-time professors months before University faculty were set to vote on the union question. The decision came on the heels of a similar ruling by the Supreme Court, which restricted faculty union eligibility at all of the nation’s private universities.

When election day arrived in May, part-time faculty picked up the baton — 54% voted to unionize.

But the tally put Wion and other leaders in a pickle. If they accepted the win after more than a decade of campaigning, it would set a disastrous legal precedent nationwide.

As the results trickled in, Wion told himself to focus on the greater good.

With the specter of several national labor unions bearing down on him, he steeled himself, called his attorneys and swiftly filed an appeal to nullify the election’s results. All these years later, Wion said the wounds are still raw.

“It was really painful,” Wion said, shaking his head.

Few members of the public know that the 1987 election ever happened, but most professors within the Pitt faculty union orbit know Wion’s name. He spent 12 years at the helm of faculty unionization efforts — from 1980 to 1992

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Tenure gave Wion a certain immunity to the wrath of University administrators that non-tenured faculty did not enjoy, and saw it as his responsibility to advocate for the “have-nots.” He cut his teeth as a union organizer in the early ‘70s, when Pitt faculty — citing issues with pay, job security and administrative transparency — followed other universities to begin their first union drive.

The 1976 election pitted three unions with different priorities against each other — the American Association of University Professionals, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association — making the process somewhat “chaotic,” Wion said.

When the AFT won a plurality of votes among the three, there had to be a runoff election between the AFT and “no union.” But the AFT failed to gather enough support, in part because faculty who had supported the AAUP didn’t like the optics of pairing with a more traditional labor union, Wion said. “[We had] difficulty in persuading our colleagues across the University that we had common interests, whereas the administration emphasized divide and conquer … potential conflicts of interest between different groups — tenuredand non tenure-stream, full- and part-time, main campus and regional campus, Art and Sciences versus professional school,” Wion said.

University administrators and the national political environment only grew more antagonistic toward union efforts as the conservative movement reached its zenith across the country.

Ronald Reagan’s win in the 1980 presidential election marked a “real turning point,” according to Wion, and the beginning of a slew of anti-union initiatives at the federal level.

At the time, conservative officials played hardball with unions, and their sentiments trickled down to the local level, infiltrating organizations from steel

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mills to universities. “​​We can beat their union now or beat them later,” Pitt’s lawyers said to the press in 1985, a stark contrast to the most recent faculty union drive where administrators stayed publicly neutral.

By 1980, Wion had ascended to president of the faculty union drive. Throughout the ‘80s and early ‘90s, Wion had to be an academic with the instincts of a street fighter. He shepherded thousands of faculty through union elections and engaged in bitter, protracted legal battles with the University.

“It was really rough,” Wion said.

Another pivotal moment was the Yeshiva decision of 1980, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that full-time professors were “managers” and couldn’t be included in private-sector faculty unions — a death blow to labor organizing at universities.

Pitt was a test case for that ruling in the public sector, and Wion helped steer University faculty from the brink of disaster. After the state labor board handed down a 1987 ruling similar to the Yeshiva decision for Pitt’s union election that same year — excluding full-time faculty from the potential bargaining unit and forcing an election for part-time professors — Wion and other union leaders successfully appealed the ruling to reinstate full-time faculty, leading to another election in 1991.

In defeating the Yeshiva precedent in the public sector, Wion enjoyed a brief moment of fame.

The optimism didn’t last long.

When Pitt held another union election in 1991, other issues surfaced that doomed the vote. Across the state in Philadelphia, unionized professors at Temple University were in the midst of a bitter strike. And, in a last ditch effort to appease faculty, Pitt’s chancellor at the time, Wesley Posvar, issued a blanket 7.5% raise to all faculty.

“It looked pretty clear to us that that was an attempt to thwart our organizing efforts,” Wion said.

The union election failed by a wide margin, 1,243 to 719.

Five years later, Wion and other union organizers pulled the plug on a third union drive before reaching an election, suspecting they wouldn’t get a majority vote.

Pitt’s era of faculty union efforts had burned bright, but fizzled — until campaigning picked up again a few years ago.

Tyler Bickford, a prominent union organizer in the most recent drive that began officially in 2016, said Wion’s knowledge and insights were “really important” for the campaign.

“Phil has been a real inspiration and mentor to me,” Bickford said. “There are a lot of people who’ve been at Pitt for a long time and … who were excited to vote for a second or in some cases, even third time for a union.”

Bickford was the first to contact Wion after the union became official in October, and Wion promptly leapt for joy upon seeing the email notification.

Asked what made the difference during the most recent drive, Wion said the answer is simple — times have changed.

“Right now, I think, there’s an upswing for organized labor,” Wion said.

“Young people are quitting their jobs if they don’t have a decent living wage.”

At the October victory party, Wion said the win brought back a particular memory — when faculty union organizers lost the election in 1991, the drive’s vice president, who had campaigned in Chicago, quoted one of the city’s union leaders. “‘Chicago apparently just isn’t ready for reform,’” Wion remembered him saying after the Pitt results came in.

He smiled, then added that “this time around, faculty at Pitt were ready for reform … I’m glad I’m still around to see it, to celebrate it.”

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THE PITT NEWS

alex officer Story by Dalton Coppola Photos courtesy of Pitt Athletics

molding the next proud pitt men

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ormer Pitt offensive lineman Alex Officer and his family sat stunned in the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center in September 2018. After going through a routine workout with the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs, Officer’s knee swelled up to the point where he couldn’t walk. Upon further testing, doctors diagnosed Officer with osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer.

According to his partner and “high school sweetheart” Elif Erturkmen, everyone in the room was sobbing — everyone but Officer. He sat calmly listening to the doctor, preparing to tackle this new challenge the same way he did every other time life presented him with an obstacle.

“All I could do was look at him, and he's just listening and taking everything in,” Erturkmen said. “All I could think about is, the least I could do is give him the same support, the same energy that he's giving all of us.”

The diagnosis dashed Officer’s hopes of playing in the NFL. But football was the last thing on his mind — he just hoped he’d be able to walk again.

“Once I found out the severity of what I had, I wasn't worried about football,” Officer said. “I was just hoping to walk again … I had a tumor on my knee, so a lot of people lose their whole leg.”

Members of his family said it would have been easy for him to take on a mindset that the world was out to get him. But he didn’t dwell on it. Officer said all the diagnosis did was open a new door.

“Going through all that, I think it just makes you a better person,” Officer said.

“I don't think I got cheated out of anything. I just feel like another opportunity was given to me to accomplish my dreams.”

Officer’s love for football goes back to his youth, and he knew he always wanted to be around the game, he said. While he hoped he would play longer than he did,

Officer also always hoped to coach when the day came. A little more than a year later, once his cancer was in remission without needing to amputate his leg, he began chasing that dream and called his former coach — Pitt football head coach Pat Narduzzi.

“I picked up the phone, that’s it,” Officer said. “I was walking again. I was feeling good. And I was ready to get back in the world. I picked up the phone and called Coach Narduzzi. He said ‘No problem.’ I was there at Pitt, Jan. 1 [2020], ready to go.”

Narduzzi hired Officer as an offensive graduate assistant, tasked with helping develop the offensive line. Officer said one of the things he learned through his coaching experience is that showing he cares about his players can go a long way.

“I think a big thing for me also, watching these guys grow, is just that you don't realize how much the little things mean to some of these guys,” Officer said. “And those little things that you do for them, they'll remember and take them with them.”

As an offensive line graduate assistant coach, Officer also manages the defensive scout team. The team helps the offense prepare to face the opposing defense, and coaches can’t guarantee they’ll see the field come game day. But according to Officer, these players take on an important role in day-to-day preparations every week. Every once in a while, Officer will bring in snacks — sometimes doughnuts — as a token of his appreciation for the work they put in.

“They're probably the most hardworking guys in our building,” Officer said. “I mean, they do a lot of tough stuff every day … that little thing that you can do to kind of boost morale in that building once a week, it definitely helps.”

While Officer appreciates those willing to work hard, he’s always transcended his coaches’ and family’s expectations for him, according to his older brother Je-

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rome Lewis. Lewis laughed as he reminisced about Officer playing his final high school season with a torn shoulder labrum. Lewis said his brother didn’t want anyone to find out or draw any attention to himself — especially from his mother, who wasn’t aware of the injury.

“Alex was crazy when his senior year he played the entire season with a torn labrum,” Lewis said. “It just kind of shows how Alex is. He knew that they needed him to win a championship. And rather than having the surgery and losing him for the year, he decided he was going to keep quiet because of who my mom was … she would’ve said, ‘You’re done with high school football.’”

Lewis said that’s just who Officer is — someone who is always going to work to achieve great honors, but who wants to do so quietly and under the radar.

“Alex is very introverted,” Lewis said. “The reason Alex played with a torn labrum is because Alex will have the torn labrum and won't say anything to anyone.”

Officer quickly turned heads playing high school football in his hometown of Rochester, New York, rising to the No. 6 overall prospect in the state. The high school three-star recruit held offers from multiple power-five teams, including ACC foes Syracuse and Boston College. But Officer said one aspect of Pitt’s culture set it apart from the rest and made him inclined to join the Panthers — family.

“When I first got here, my official [visit] was just a big family feel here,” Officer said. “As soon as I got here, they made me feel like home, and it was close enough for me to get away [from home] but close enough to still be around and enjoy my family.”

Officer said this tightknit and family-like culture has not wavered one bit since he came back as a coach.

“Once you step in [Pitt’s football facility] and come into Pitt, you know what love and family is like,” Officer said. “You get that every day, whether it's coaches or players. I feel like we have a great atmosphere. It's a great feeling around here. I think that’s why we were so successful last year.”

Narduzzi helped lead the charge to raise awareness for Officer, putting “A.O.” stickers on the Panthers’ helmets in his honor and endorsing a GoFundMe page to help pay for cancer treatments in 2018. Similar to his family’s view on Officer, Narduzzi said his former offensive lineman is always going to get the job done and do it quietly.

“Our hearts and prayers are with that family, with [Officer] … we’re trying to help him along this process because he’s a forever Panther,” Narduzzi said in 2018, when he learned of the diagnosis. “A.O. is quiet, he’s tough.”

Family plays a large role in Officer’s life, and having a “second family” in Pittsburgh was crucial for him when he was deciding where to commit. He said coming to Pittsburgh and joining the Pitt family was one of the best decisions he ever made. Erturkmen said having a city that was “family-oriented,” on top of the

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Pitt football program, in her partner’s corner during Officer’s cancer battle helped them immensely.

“I wouldn't have wanted any other school, team or city to have gone through this with or been a part of because truly, it's been such a loving experience in its own odd way given the circumstances,” Erturkmen said. “I know that even 10, 20 years down the line if we don't live here in Pittsburgh, I know that he can walk into those halls and into that facility and feel that same sense of home and family that he feels now.”

Narduzzi did not have to bring back Officer to help with his team, but the head coach makes an effort to build a close-knit family inside of his locker room, according to Lewis. Lewis said he and his family are forever grateful for everything Narduzzi has done for Officer before, during and after his battle with cancer.

“A lot of times these coaches preach that you're more than an athlete to them, but once you graduate, or once you're done playing ball, you can't feel the love,” Lewis said. “That's the complete opposite with Pat Narduzzi. My family and myself, we're completely indebted to him and what he's done and how much he's giving my brother an opportunity to continue doing something he loves.”

According to his brother, Officer has goals of one day leading a football program himself. Lewis said a perfect ending would be for Officer to someday become the head coach at Pitt.

“I talk to him about his dreams and how he wants to potentially come back one day and be the head guy at Pitt,” Lewis said. “You know, your story being you played here, the guys you played with and just the way things happened for you.

That'd be a great story.”

The dreams and goals are lofty, but one of the sayings Officer lives by is “great things don’t come easy,” according to Erturkmen. Her partner has always had to deal with adversity from a young age, and she thinks if anyone can achieve these goals, it’s Officer.

“I just know that the greatness he wants to accomplish isn't going to come easy, it's not going to be something that happens overnight,” Erturkmen said. “I know, sometimes it gets really drawn out to say it like that, but truly he's been such a motivation and such an incredible person to really demonstrate all those things.”

His job description never explicitly says it, but Officer said one of the tasks he values the most is to guide and grow the next great Pitt men.

“I think a Pitt man is a tough guy,” Officer said. “He’s tough. He’s humble. I think he's willing to do whatever it takes to be successful.”

Lewis said his brother is just that — a Pitt man.

“We didn't know [Officer] would be coaching as soon as it was,” he said. “Just seeing the work that he's putting in and how much he loves being around the University of Pittsburgh — when they say ‘proud Pitt man,’ he is a proud Pitt man.”

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THE PITT NEWS

Story by Harsh Hiwase Photo by Patrick Cavanagh

ruthie mcdoodle

The friendly face behind The Kosher Plate

T

ucked away in a corner of the Market at Litchfield Towers is The Kosher Plate, Pitt’s go-to store for freshly prepared, warm Kosher food. The lady behind the counter, Ruth McDoodle, has been serving up delicious meals and smiles for two years.

McDoodle, who goes by Ruthie, is a mashgiach — Hebrew for “supervisor” — and ensures the food abides by Kosher laws. The Kosher Plate storefront is one of the only places on campus where students can enjoy Kosher meals. The Mediterranean-style cuisine offers a variety of delicious and familiar options like pita and hummus, to classics like turkey shawarma and falafel.

“I do feel like I have a responsibility to the Kosher community,” McDoodle said.

“Knowing that I’m there and that I’m making sure that everything is kept Kosher is important.”

More than being a supervisor of Jewish traditions, McDoodle is also a motherly figure who said she loves speaking with students and staff.

“In a previous life, I was a social worker. I’m a sociable person, and I like to talk to people, and the students don’t mind when I ask them about how their day was,” McDoodle said.

Tanvi Kumar, a first-year psychology major, said McDoodle reminds her of her grandmother, who would put a lot of love and care into the meals she makes.

“There was once when I wasn’t feeling too well and Ruthie spoke with me and gave me tips on how to feel better … she even referred me to her friend who’s a specialist doctor,” Kumar said.

McDoodle said the opportunity to work at the Kosher Plate actually “fell into [her] lap” one day in 2018. Her husband, who used to run the storefront, decided he wanted a change of profession. And after the massacre at the Tree of Life syn-

agogue in nearby Squirrel Hill, she said her husband decided to join the security industry to help keep their synagogue safe.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, McDoodle’s work as a geriatric social worker was put on hold, as infection control regulations didn’t allow her to go into work at a nursing home.

“It was really stressful for me,” McDoodle said. “I don’t like to sit around and not work.”

McDoodle’s circumstances encouraged her to take her husband’s offer to run the Kosher Plate. McDoodle loves her job, and helping students in any way she can.

She said the responsibility can be heavy some days, and the pandemic has not made this any easier.

“I used to have help when I first started, but because of COVID, things have been changed around and they didn’t get me a replacement for the person who moved on to a different position,” McDoodle said.

Jessie Dawson has worked as a staff member for 16 years at the Market at Towers. Dawson has worked with McDoodle for two years, and said she admires McDoodle’s care for students.

“Ruthie is a pleasant person who has a good heart, she’s always there for the kids, she makes them feel like they’re her kids — she’s like a mother hen,” Dawson said.

Dawson said McDoodle does her best on her own, but can always use a helping hand.

Find the full story online at

pittnews.com/silhouettes

CREDITS Cover design: Promiti Debi Layout design: Shruti Talekar Photo editors: Pamela Smith and Clare Sheedy Copy staff: Riley Kleemeier Jane Patz Livia Daggett Anna Ehlers Saajan Gandhi Juliana Morello Allison Schaeffer Aakanksha Wunnava Editorial staff: Jon Moss Rebecca Johnson Punya Bhasin Dalton Coppola Grace DeLallo Martha Layne Sinead McDevitt Rachel Soloff Stephen Thompson Betul Tuncer Diana Velasquez Digital staff: Charlie Taylor Web design: Jon Moss These profiles can also be viewed at pittnews.com/silhouettes.

TPN thanks our subjects, staff and donors for making this project possible.

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