How a local nonprofit is helping parenting students earn college degrees

In the fall of 2024, LaShesia Holliday found herself in classes in Pitt’s School of Social Work.

It’s been a long road for Holliday to arrive here. A single mom of three, Holliday had her first child in high school and didn’t think a four-year college “was in the cards.”

Instead, she studied nursing, and then business in community college and finished with an associate’s degree in 2018. Along the way, she worked a range of jobs, bought a home and started a small business in natural care products.

About the same time Holliday was introduced to Pitt’s School of Social Work, she also learned of Pittsburgh Scholar House (PSH), an organization launched in 2022 that aims to assist single parents in obtaining post-secondary degrees to help disrupt cycles of poverty.

“Therapy really helped me when I needed it,” said Holliday, “and now I want to be there for someone else.”

PSH wants to be there to help Holliday meet those goals, as well.

Holliday’s earlier college credits allowed her to begin at Pitt as a junior. She plans to graduate in spring 2026 and then enter Pitt’s 12-month master’s in social work program.

There are lots of ways that PSH supports its participants. It offers scholarships that can be used toward tuition or other school-related debt. It provides housing and transportation assistance and referrals. Annually, it hosts a celebration to honor participant achievement. Holliday was able to vend her care products at one such celebration.

Pitt, too, is part of the scaffolding of support.

About three years ago, Pitt’s Office of Engagement and Community Affairs (ECA), the Johnson Institute for Responsible Leadership in the School of Public and International Affairs, and the School of Social Work came together with Neighborhood Allies, The Forbes Funds and the Program to Aid Citizen Enterprise, all groups dedicated to strengthening area nonprofits. Jointly, they developed Pitt’s Nonprofit Capacity Building Program to focus on improving economic stability in the region.

The program, a three-year pilot, soon partnered with a cohort of eight local nonprofits. The goal was to scale up the nonprofits’ service and regional impact by connecting them to Pitt’s intellectual and other campus resources that could improve their technology capacities, funding opportunities or organizational development.

PSH was one of the eight nonprofits. It is an affiliate of the three-decade old Family Scholar House, an organization in Louisville, Kentucky, that offers housing to single parents in college, as well as services that include childcare and family therapy. Pittsburgh Scholar House has offices in the Manchester neighborhood and classroom facilities in the Hill District. In Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood, Scholar House launched a pilot program that houses four of its participants.

Pittsburgh Scholar House has around 60 participants enrolled in 11 area colleges and universities, including at Pitt.

Sherlyn Harrison, PSH chief program officer, received a School of Education master’s degree in 2006 and credits her years being guided by Pitt professors in community and family engagement with giving her the blueprint that empowers her current work.

Pitt connected to PSH in the fall of 2022. For about a year now, Jamelle Price, ECA’s associate director of learning and development, has facilitated meetings with PSH leaders and Pitt educators and staff.

“Jamelle was like a co-thinker with me,” said Harrison. “If I had questions about data, measurement or program evaluation, he would connect me to somebody at Pitt who could help me. The cohort expanded my network and connected me to nonprofits who can support our work and our families. It was an awesome experience.” 

Pitt has provided PSH space for meetings and programs, information on how to access Pitt Community Engagement Centers, neighborhood educators and other services.

In addition, PSH operates Wayfinders University, courses that provide skills essential to higher education success. Shallegra Moye, an instructor in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Science’s Department of Africana Studies, also teaches with Wayfinders University, showing students how to navigate higher education and be more comfortable when they step into a classroom.

PSH also connected to April Belback, associate vice provost for student success and advising. Harrison said the nonprofit found “great synergy” there because both teams are helping students navigate the challenges of being a single parent and student at a university.

Harrison connected PSH students to Natasha Williams, senior coordinator of academic intervention, a part of the Student Success team with Pitt’s provost’s office. Williams assists students with course schedules, evaluating financial aid and plotting a pathway to graduation.

Williams also checked in with Alana Griffin, the other Scholar House participant at Pitt. Griffin first came to Pitt in 2000, after she finished school in McKeesport. During her sophomore year, after her mother passed, Griffin had to pause her higher education. In her decades away, she went to work and became the mother of two sons. A few years ago, she heard about PSH through Brown Mamas, a community support group.

It ignited her interest in returning to Pitt to complete her education. PSH paid some of her earlier school debt and helped Griffin to re-enroll. She came back in 2023 as a part-time student, a junior majoring in psychology.

“I was the Auntie in the classroom,” said Griffin, referencing that she was a nontraditional student, bringing her lived and work experience into the classroom. But she said that support from the Student Success team and PSH helped with the financial aid process and provided her a high functioning laptop, which helped with her assignments.

Earlier this year, ECA tapped Griffin to participate in one of its Engagement Intersections sessions, a discussion on how Pitt can improve partnerships. She talked about strategies for improving faculty relations with students who are parents, offering flexible deadlines and building classrooms that are welcoming to children if parents need to bring them to class.

Griffin is scheduled to complete her degree in 2027, and she plans to pursue a graduate degree in clinical psychology. She is already using her Pitt skills to offer trauma-informed wellness and healing in the community advance a healing enterprise she launched three years ago.

For Harrison, the Pitt intersections have gotten “the scholars connected to the right people in the right places.” Providing the education and opportunities, she said, is “like giving our scholars an extended family.”

Photography by Tom Altany. From left, Pittsburgh Scholar House participants LaShesia Holliday and Alana Griffin with chief program officer Sherlyn Harrison.