‘A beautiful opportunity’: Pitt Seed Grant recipients discuss future of programs

First-year students are at a higher risk of experiencing sexual misconduct within their first semester at Pitt, making education and research integral pieces of sexual violence prevention, according to Carrie Benson. Benson said this is one of the many reasons she decided to pursue a Pitt Seed project and strengthen initiatives such as the “Circle Up” program. 

“We know that students are at an elevated risk in their first semester when they come to campus, so this helps us to have another prevention touch point there,” Benson, senior manager for prevention and education within Pitt’s Title IX Office and facilitator of the Sexual Misconduct and Survivor Support program, said.

In the final round of the Pitt Seed Program’s year-long reinvention initiative, two programs received $500,000 to fund their pilot projects and advance the University’s “Plan for Pitt.”

According to Pitt’s website, the Plan for Pitt identifies how and where the university wants to improve. The plan calls for “adding institutional strengths and reputational drivers in the areas of academics, research and scholarship, and community service,” “enhancing the University’s capacity to help improve lives, systems, and communities,” and more.

The winning projects include the Sexual Misconduct and Survivor Support program, led by Benson, and The CUPID (Community, Pedagogy, Identity, and Difficulty) Project, led by Susan Graff in the Department of Physician Assistant Studies.

According to Pittwire, the Seed Grant program, first introduced in 2018, underwent a revision in 2022 in order to highlight projects working to revolutionize the university and to grant ten semifinalists an award of $75,000 to develop their pilot projects throughout the 2022-2023 academic year. 

Sexual Violence Prevention Educator Dev Hayostek, who will work alongside Benson for the Sexual Misconduct and Survivor Support Program, said fostering a safe campus community is at the core of the Plan for Pitt.

“We recognize that these goals that were outlined in the Plan for Pitt are not possible if our community is not safe and free of sexual violence, so a huge part of our project moving forward is making our campus a safer place,” Hayostek said.

Benson said sexual violence prevention gives survivors the tools to reach their full potential, which the Seed Grant will help support.

“The Seed Grant has given us this beautiful opportunity to really grow some key prevention initiatives,” Benson said. “We know that too many members of our campus community are experiencing various forms of sexual misconduct, including sexual violence, and so when we think about giving people the tools to reach their full capacity, it means that we’re doing everything we can to make sure that they don’t experience violence during their time here at Pitt,” Benson said.

In addition to offering resources to sexual violence survivors, the Seed Grant will help advance the Circle Up program in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, according to Benson. She  said the Circle Up program was originally funded by the $75,000 pilot grant and consists of two 90-minute “conversation circles” where 10 to 20 students who know each other from a club or organization on campus get together to discuss topics like sexual agency, consent and intimacy in relationships.

Benson said the additional funding from the Seed Grant program will expand the Circle Up program beyond student organizations. The Sexual Misconduct and Survivor Support program will partner with the School of Arts and Science’s first year programs, running 25 to 30 conversation circles with first year students, according to Benson.

“It’s going to allow us to study how Circle Up works for first-year students as soon as they get to campus, like what these conversations do in terms of preventing sexual violence in the immediate as well as down the line,” Benson said. 

Benson said the Sexual Misconduct and Survivor Support program will expand office hours with the nonprofit organization Pittsburgh Action Against Rape (PAAR). PAAR advocates will be available during drop-in hours from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Wednesdays, and are also available to support student, faculty, and staff by appointment.

The program will also introduce student “mini-grants,” which will be available to student organizations and individuals to execute their own programs, according to Benson. She said student prevention fellows will be implemented to review Prevention at Pitt initiatives and meet regularly to give feedback on meeting the goals of the grant. 

“One of the big things that we want to shine through with our work in this grant is making sure that student feedback and leadership was woven into everything that we did,” Benson said.

Graff said the CUPID Project focuses on educating students, staff, and faculty on systemic racism, sexism, and ableism in the world of medicine, and added that social factors influencing racial issues spiked during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We [acknowledge] that the CDC had recognized racism as a public health crisis,” Graff said. “Health disparities, after COVID or with COVID, lay bare, in terms of, if you identify with a particular race or ethnicity, you are at higher risk for poor outcomes, not because of that race or ethnicity, but because of social determinants.” 

Graff said a free class from Cornell University titled “Teaching and Learning in the Diverse Classroom” inspired her to create the CUPID Project in May 2020. The course consisted of montage documentary-style interviews with Cornell faculty and students, which Graff said left a positive impact.

“Taking that course was a pivotal moment in my life,” Graff said. “It was so eye-opening and powerful, and gave me hope in a time in my personal life and also in the country’s life that was pretty dark, so it was just this beautiful light.”

Graff worked with Kathryn Reed, Vice Chair of Equity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement in the Department of Physician Assistant Studies, and Karthik Hariharan, Director of Anatomy for the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, to develop the project. Adriana Modesto Gomes Da Silva, a professor in the School of Dental Medicine, and Lilcelia Williams, a postdoctoral associate in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Science’s Department of Occupational Therapy, also contributed to the development of the project.

Graff said that John Guinane, Robin Albright, and Santa Pastorius from the Center for Teaching and Learning also had large roles in the creation of CUPID.

Graff said the CUPID Project began as an asynchronous course geared towards the 6 health sciences: Medicine, Nursing, Dental Medicine, Pharmacy, Health and Rehabilitation Sciences and Public Health. Graff said the next phase of the CUPID course will expand to 5 new areas within the university, beginning with Pitt Greensburg and the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business in the College of Business Administration. 

The original CUPID course began with 35 interviews of faculty, staff, and students, with each averaging about 90 to 120 minutes. Once interviews were conducted, Graff separated them into themes.

Graff said the second phase of the CUPID Project will interview approximately 15 people per unit. She said a lead representative for each unit will review the spliced videos to help build the course content. The project also plans to launch a podcast, which will expand learning beyond the time and money constraints and intimidation of a traditional course.

“We want to make [the course] welcoming and supportive of everybody,” Graff said. “ Maybe some don’t want to commit to a course that sounds a little bit too formal, but maybe 6 months from now you can listen to a 25-minute podcast and start to get that language and get some new ideas and perspectives.”

A previous version of this story mistakenly refered to PAAR as Pennsylvania Advocacy and Resources for Autism and Intellectual Disability (PAR Advocates). The Sexual Misconduct and Survivor Support program is partnering with PAAR, Pittsburgh Action Against Rape. The article has been updated to reflect this change. The Pitt News regrets this error.