School of Education

Overview

The School of Education will focus its campaign fundraising efforts to enhance student and faculty excellence in the following other areas: 

Scholarships and Fellowships to Prepare the Best Educational Professionals and Support Doctoral Training

• Teacher preparation programs provide especially strong grounding in the ways in which the most important content of the curriculum is constructed in each child’s mind and in how a teacher can assure that these constructions take place and are complete.
• Leadership preparation efforts focus on leadership of teaching and learning processes.
• Scholarship needs among students in our Departments of Health and Physical Activity and Psychology in Education.

Urban Education

The Helen S. Faison Chair in Urban Education honors the lifetime achievements of Dr. Helen S. Faison, and the creation of this chair is a highlight of the capital campaign for the School of Education. The Helen S. Faison Chair in Urban Education is the first fully endowed chair in the school’s nearly 100 year history. Dr. Louis Gomez, the first holder of the Faison Chair, will direct the School of Education's recently established Center for Urban Education.

The Center for Urban Education serves as an important school liaison to the regional K-12 educational community, leading the school’s initiatives in urban education research, training, and practice. The center’s mission is to research and disseminate methods for improving urban education in the Pittsburgh region and nationally. Building a strong program of research and service requires substantial funding, both for major programs and to do the preliminary work needed to evaluate the potential of new ideas.

 

Research and Policy

The School has made particularly strong progress in two of the newer areas of research, namely:

• Health and physical activity and
• Factors that enable school success

There is good work all over the School. We have existing expertise in the following broad areas:

• Learning Environments & Learners
• Content Disciplines & Pedagogy
• Organizations & Policy

We have added a policy center to coordinate our efforts and to better bring our knowledge to those who shape public policy in education.

All of these areas need private support both to supplement work that can be funded through government programs and to permit initial evaluation of ideas that, once sharpened and subjected to preliminary testing, can become candidates for competitive funding.

Regional Educational Improvement

We have had several large outreach activities in the School in recent years, including

• The Principals’ Academy
• The Western Pennsylvania Superintendents’ Forum
• The Tri-State Area School Study Council
• The Educational Leadership Initiative

In addition to these projects, the School is working with The Watson Institute and the Pittsburgh Schools to help teachers and principals learn how to keep schools safe from violence and peer cruelty. We have a special focus on middle schools because so much of the pattern of safe and respectful schools that can help keep all children focused on learning either succeeds r fails at that level. 

We also are working to better coordinate our outreach efforts and better connect them with our academic programs. 

Donor Spotlight

McGrevin Gift Benefits Many

Carol Zord McGrevin (EDUC ’64) and Eugene McGrevin (A&S ’66) have dedicated their lives to working within the fields of education and medicine respectively. Their passion has guided the creation of funds providing opportunities for motivated students to follow similar ambitions. In order to achieve their mission, they have created a trust split equally between a scholarship for the School of Education and the School of Medicine in addition to other gifts they have given.
As a second generation Pitt graduate, Carol’s love for education led to establishing the Lois Lyden Zord and the Honorable Joseph Zord, Jr. Endowed Scholarship in the School of Education in honor of her parents. These funds are provided to students from western Pennsylvania enrolled in the elementary education program with aspirations of a career in teaching and are being enhanced by the funds that have been designated from the aforementioned trust.
Gene’s interest in health care was the catalyst for the portion of the trust benefitting the School of Medicine. It provides the much needed support for cancer research and scholarships for students majoring in cancer treatment research or radiology.  In addition, the McGrevins established the McGrevin Post Doctoral Award, which is awarded to a current University of Pittsburgh Post-Doctoral Student working as an Intensivist within the Department of Critical Care Medicine. “The University does phenomenal things with health care,” Gene expressed. “I have personally seen tremendous progress and I want to help that continue.”
To attend the University of Pittsburgh, it was critical for both Carol and Gene to receive scholarships. Helping others in similar situations was a key motivation to create these funds. “We hope that our scholarship recipients will make an impact on the world by becoming dedicated to helping people,” Carol explained. “It’s about helping others and then them wanting to do the same.”

Contact Us

Gary V. Pollock

Director of Constituent Relations
Office:  5613 Wesley W. Posvar Hall
Phone:  412-648-1789
Fax:  412-648-1825
E-mail:  gvp@pitt.edu

Gary Pollock joined the School of Education in March 2006.  He was previously the Director of Development for St. Edmund’s Academy, and formerly the Director of Administration and Development at the Allegheny County Bar Foundation, where he coordinated the annual fund, special events, corporate and foundation relations, and individual gifts, and administered the foundation’s charitable, educational, and pro bono initiatives.  Prior to his career in development, he was a curator for the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, where he worked on exhibits and
collected artifacts and archival materials to document the region’s history.  He authored A Contested Land, an essay in the exhibit catalogue for Points in Time:  Building a Life in Western Pennsylvania.  A native of western Pennsylvania, he earned his master’s degree in history from Temple University in 1992 and his bachelor’s degree in English-writing from La Roche College in 1989, where he currently serves as an adjunct instructor in the history department.  He is an avid runner and volunteer fundraiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.  Through the organization’s Team in Training program, he raised funds for the society, while training to run his first marathon.  He completed P.F. Chang’s Rock ‘N Roll Arizona Marathon in Phoenix in January 2008.