During its meeting on Tuesday in 2700 Posvar Hall, the Faculty Assembly heard a report from the Campus Utilization, Planning and Safety Committee regarding pedestrian safety on campus following a woman’s death from a hit-and-run incident last month.
“Pitt does not directly control every factor. It doesn’t own the streets, and it can’t dictate how people drive or walk,” CUPS chair David Salcido said. “However, [Pitt] can and should influence improvements to the pedestrian infrastructure that thousands use every day.”
This is the second meeting in the past year concerning an accidental pedestrian death on campus, the first relating to construction work happening on Darragh Street in May 2024.
“The landscape of risk to pedestrians in Oakland is shockingly complex,” Salcido said. “Every intersection, sidewalk, street, vehicle and driver are all very different … The complexity is daunting.”
An Office of Public Safety and Emergency Management representative announced several changes to the intersection where the December accident occurred. Updates include installing “no turn on red” signage and increasing the pedestrian crosswalk interval.
“Information from Pitt pedestrians about dangerous conditions must get reported so that action can be taken,” Salcido said. “Pedestrians have to be vigilant. Treat every intersection like it’s a threat to your life, because every single one is.”
The assembly heard an update on the General Education Reform Task Force, an initiative that began in the summer of 2023. The project aims to “recommend a more unified model” for general education requirements across all Pitt schools and campuses
“There’s a declining confidence that students actually understand the value of a liberal arts education,” Torres said. “Many students and professors see the general education curriculum as something that’s demanding, dull and unavoidable.”
Each first-year-admitting school within Pitt sets its own general education requirements, which Torres describes as “lacking any connection to actual learning outcomes” — the learning benchmarks students are expected to achieve. Torres highlighted key goals, including increasing scheduling flexibility and shortening the time required to graduate.
“Learning outcomes are becoming outdated. They’re very misaligned with workplace expectations,” Torres said. “We’re exploring how we can be innovative in ways that allow students to develop things they’re passionate about.”
Torres said the project is still in its first phase, which involves gathering student feedback and analyzing processes at similarly ranked universities such as Carnegie Mellon University and Virginia Tech.
“We’re looking closely at each institution’s processes for general education reform,” Torres said. “We’re finalizing our work to come up with a comprehensive overview of the strengths and opportunities of Pitt.”
A “significant motivation” for the reform, Torres said, is the University’s “accreditation vulnerability,” which is a university’s ability to meet required standards to maintain funding and degree credibility.
“When accreditors ask us ‘what are the foundational learning outcomes that students are achieving through general education requirements,’ we can’t, as an institution, answer that question,” Torres said. “Some schools do a phenomenal job, and others, not so much.”
Torres said the “ultimate goal” is to gather additional feedback before moving into the project’s second phase, which involves testing scenarios and designing new student learning goals.
“Our hope is to begin phase two soon because our learning outcomes are really not reflecting the innovation and creativity happening in our classrooms,” Torres said.