Pitt and CMU share ideas at well-attended Mentoring Summit

The 2020 Mentoring and Advising Summit, co-hosted by Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University, drew 381 participants on March 5 on CMU’s campus. 

“Your role as advisors is not just critical to retention or directing a student’s curriculum, but in helping our students be more resilient. You help steer their path while still empowering them, and help them make the next best decision,” CMU Provost James H. Garrett Jr. told those gathered, according to @Pitt. “This summit also marks the beginning of what I hope will be a continuing collaboration between Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh.”

Pitt Provost Ann E. Cudd called the partnership incredibly exciting. “I think we’ve realized that we have the potential to do even more, and certainly the size and participation has grown — this year is just a quantum leap,” she said. “This partnership is an outstanding way to achieve a common mission.”

“In almost simultaneous ways, we were looking at how we address affordability and access on our campuses,” said Julia Spears, assistant vice provost for academic innovation at Pitt. “In the course of that conversation, we recognized that there’s a lot of different ways that we can band together with the supports and the infrastructure that our campuses are trying to build systematically.”

The summit featured a keynote by author and social justice trainer Becky Martinez, whose book “Straddling Class in the Academy” features stories from students, administrators and faculty from poor and working-class backgrounds and their lessons for higher education policy. (Read takeaways from Martinez’s keynote in Pittwire.)

The daylong event featured concurrent and plenary sessions featuring a wide variety of presenters from both universities. (A full list of sessions and speakers can be found in the event guidebook.)

— From @Pitt