Pitt provides myriad services for students’ needs

Academic Resource Center

Location: G-1 in the Gardner Steel Conference… Academic Resource Center

Location: G-1 in the Gardner Steel Conference Center

Hours: Monday-Friday 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and tutoring 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Phone: 412-648-7920

The Academic Resource Center offers free-of-charge tutoring to students in a number of subjects.

The ARC has more than 30 tutors that can aid students in several courses, which mainly include the natural sciences, humanities and social sciences. Tutoring is for students looking to improve their grade in a course, improve their study habits, review their understanding of topics, review assignments, or learn how to prepare for an exam.

As midterms and finals creep up on students, the ARC has study skills sessions to help students learn time management, reading strategies, test-taking strategies and test preparation methods.

Career Development Office

Location: Second floor of the William Pitt Union

Hours: Monday-Friday 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Phone: 412-648-7130

While it may seem like an eternity away, freshmen should begin preparing for graduation as soon as they arrive on campus.

The Career Development Office doesn’t exist just to serve upperclassmen looking to avoid the bread line. It offers a variety of services, including career counseling, help with resumés and cover letters, planning for graduate school, practice interviews and learning how to network.

Computing Services and Systems Development

Location: Software can be picked up at 204 Bellefield Hall

Hours: Help desk is available 24/7

Phone: 412-624-4357

There are horror stories about students’ laptops breaking down in the middle of finals week when their 15-page papers were saved on them and nowhere else.

Pitt’s Computing Services and Systems Development provides myriad services, from help with troubleshooting a personal laptop to providing software, such as the Microsoft suite package, at low costs.

Counseling Center

Location: 334 William Pitt Union

Hours: Monday-Friday 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended hours Monday and Wednesday until 9 p.m.

Phone: 412-648-7930

The University Counseling Center is equipped with about 20 employees that provide mental health service to Pitt’s undergraduate and graduate students.

Tevya Zukor, the director of the Counseling Center, said a few months ago that the three most common concerns university counseling centers see are depression, anxiety and relationship issues, and emergency cases are always given top priority.

Services include, but are not limited to, group counseling and individual counseling with a mental health professional, such as a psychologist, social worker, licensed professional counselor or advanced-level graduate trainee in psychology.

Another UCC service is the Stress Free Zone, located on the lower level of the William Pitt Union, which has activities such as crafts and games to provide students a respite from their busy schedules in a calm environment.

The center schedules students to see a health professional in less than a week. For emergency crises that occur outside of business hours, the UCC provides emergency on-call service 365 days a year. Students can call 412-624-2121 and ask to speak with the on-call counselor.

Math Assistance Center

Location: Room 215 in the O’Hara Student Center

Hours: Monday-Thursday 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Website: mathematics.pitt.edu

The Math Assistance Center provides walk-in services to students in need of math help.

Graduate teaching assistants provide the tutoring service, and they post their hours online. All of the tutors have the capacity to help teach students any of the undergraduate mathematics courses. Undergraduate teaching assistants can help with sub-calculus classes.

Office of Disability Resources

Location: 216 William Pitt Union

Hours: Monday-Friday 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Phone: 412-648-7890 / 412-383-7355 (TTY)

The Office of Disability Resources accommodates students’ academic needs for their mental or physical disabilities, such as attention deficit disorder or deafness.

Students who require test-taking accommodations based on a disability are encouraged to contact the Office of Disability Resources as early as possible in the term.

Services included offering a disability shuttle, specific housing accommodations and assistive technology, such as different formatting of texts.

Office of Student Employment and Placement Assistance

Location: 200 William Pitt Union

Hours: Monday-Friday 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Phone: 412-383-4473

The Career Development Office prepares students for what the Office of Student Employment and Placement Assistance provides: pairing up Pitt students with employers seeking interns or employees.

SEPA connects businesses with Pitt students through career fairs, on-campus interviews and information sessions. It also provides the FutureLinks online system for employers to post jobs, schedule interviews and come to campus.

SEPA hosts two large career fairs each fall and spring, and those dates will be available once school is back in session.

Student Health

Location: Medical Arts Building, 5th Floor

Hours: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday 8:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Wednesday and Friday 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Phone: 412-383-1800

Student Health’s mission is to ensure the wellbeing of the student population by providing the health services college students need.

Student Health offers students primary care services for acute and chronic medical conditions, substance abuse counseling, gynecological services and other student-health-related services. Other services provided at a nominal fee include allergy injections, immunizations and complete physical exams.

Study Abroad

Location: 802 William Pitt Union

Hours: Monday-Friday 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Phone: 412-648-7413

Pitt’s Study Abroad Office can help get students to whatever country they want to go: Denmark, Finland or Kenya, just to name a few.

The Study Abroad Office will help with providing affordable international opportunities to interested and qualified students.

Students are encouraged to come in early to explore studying abroad because the process requires months of preparation and an application process.

University Library System

Location: Various libraries around campus

Hours: Varies by library

Phone: 412-648-3330

Looking for a specific book, newspaper, academic journal or piece of music? The University Library System is here to help.

The ULS provides resources both in person at the various libraries around campus and online, such as a search function and the “Ask a Librarian” online help feature. With nearly a million books and numerous scholarly articles, newspapers and other various media, students will need the help.

Hillman Library provides services such as map collections, the Stark Media lab, which houses a film and video collection, and the microforms collection, which has millions of archived newspapers that are almost impossible to access anywhere else, due to their rarity and age.

Writing Center

Location: 317B in the O’Hara Student Center

Hours: Monday, Tuesday and Thursday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Wednesday 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., and Friday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Phone: 412-624-6556

Don’t go the Writing Center to get someone to edit a paper for grammar, and then hand it back to you. The people at the Writing Center want to help you so you can do that yourself.

Writing Center staffers are trained to help students in every step of the writing process and to ensure a student has the best revisions with correct citations and proper grammar. A consultant will help make the writing clear and that the paper answers the assignment.

Students can reserve a time to meet with a consultant by reviewing an online schedule or calling to set up a time.

The Writing Center also hosts the Writers’ Café, which provides informal peer workshopping for students interested in creative writing. It also provides a dissertation boot camp to provide doctoral students a week of intensive preparation as they prepare to write their dissertations.