By SUSAN JONES
The Pitt Seed program, which has handed out more than $5 million in grants to faculty and staff since its inception in 2018, has been eliminated, along with two full-time positions that supported the program.
“This was a strategic realignment,” a University spokesman said. “The Pitt Seed program was designed to support the priorities of the previous strategic plan. The Plan for Pitt 2028 reflects different priorities.”
The two affected employees have been given a chance to apply for other jobs at Pitt.
Pitt Seed history
When it was created, Pitt Seed encouraged applicants to submit projects that supported one or more of the six goals in the inaugural 2020 Plan for Pitt. Chosen applicants received up to $50,000 to advance their project.
In 2022, Pitt Seed got a makeover to align with the 2025 Plan for Pitt, and to encourage more projects of institutional impact. At that time, organizers said the University was committed to three funding cycles between the spring 2022 semester and 2025, with the others starting in January 2023 and 2024.
The first round resulted in 10 projects receiving up to $75,000 in August 2022 to continue developing their proposals, and in August 2023, two of those proposals were selected to receive $500,000 to fully execute their projects within three years. These projects were fully funded.
They included:
Sexual Misconduct and Prevention and Survivor Support: Carrie Benson, senior manager for prevention and education, in the former Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
CUPID: Fostering an Inclusive Community in the Schools of the Health Sciences: Susan Graff, director of Medical Technology Education and assistant professor, Department of Physician Assistant Studies
Also in 2023, four other proposals were selected to receive $75,000 to demonstrate proof of concept. Three of the four (STEM Through Games; TC²: True Co-equal x Transformative Collaborations; and Planting SEEDs-Growing Teachers: Creating a Pipeline) received $75,000 and utilized that funding to continue to develop their initiatives. Project SOAR only requested and received $35,000. All four of these initiatives received an additional $40,000 in fiscal year 2024-25 to subsidize more work on their initiatives.
There were some unspent funds left in the Pitt Seed program, a Pitt spokesman said, which have been reallocated to a strategic pool that is used for multiple initiatives, such as the Panthers Forward program that helps address student debt.
Momentum funds
The Plan for Pitt 2028 said one of the goals was to expand Pitt’s other internal funding mechanism, the Momentum Funds Scaling Grants.
While the plan is for that program to continue, a University spokesman said that due to the financial uncertainty caused by the Trump administration’s grant terminations and efforts to cap indirect costs rates on federal awards at 15%, “we did not make any Pitt Momentum Fund awards in fiscal year 2025.”
For fiscal year 2025-26, the Momentum Funds program “will support projects tied to the Plan for Pitt’s moonshots using a portion of Pitt Seed funding. We will follow our normal cycle for application, review and pitches with an awards announcement expected in February 2026.”
The moonshot topics in the Plan for Pitt 2028 include: Lead the life sciences century; champion sustainability, thriving communities and the future of energy; transform assistive technologies; cultivate a digital future.
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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