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Get the most interesting and important stories from the University of Pittsburgh.When Shanice Yearwood thinks about the time she spent being tutored in a neighborhood center while growing up in the New York City borough of Queens, she remembers more than what she learned.
She remembers how she felt.
Her mother once worked for the community-based Harlem Children’s Zone, and Yearwood spent summers participating in its camps, trips and after-school activities. The attentive way she was treated, she said, “is one of the core memories of my elementary school years.”
Years later, those memories helped draw Yearwood, now a sophomore at the University of Pittsburgh, into PittEnrich, a Saturday tutoring program offered at Pitt’s Community Engagement Center in Homewood that helps local elementary students improve their reading and math skills.
When it came onboard in 2019, PittEnrich was one of the first programs developed under the Gismondi Neighborhood Education Program (GNEP), which is located within Pitt’s Office of Engagement and Community Affairs. GNEP is supported by The Gismondi Foundation, which was created by Pitt trustee John P. Gismondi (A&S ’75, LAW ’78) and his wife, Lisa.
Over the years, GNEP’s reach grew, stretching across communities and taking on different forms depending on neighborhood needs. In Homewood, PittEnrich combines reading and math tutoring with enrichment activities. In the Hill District, STEAM Saturdays connects young people with hands-on science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics activities. In Greater Hazelwood, a Life Sciences Immersion program has introduced middle schoolers to biotechnology, the environment and food systems. Pitt student tutors were an integral part of each additional component.
Still growing
Just this fall, GNEP launched the Gismondi Education Corps. As GNEP’s student workforce goes into neighborhoods to strengthen young minds, the Gismondi Education Corps is a special initiative that will serve to strengthen Pitt student workers by offering personal and professional development, networking and career opportunities, and activities that help student workers build relationships with one another.
Students, teachers, and Engagement and Community Affairs organizers gathered on a recent Saturday for an educational summit to kick off the corps. Gismondi was there.
“What’s a community?” he asked in remarks to the students. “It’s a support, it’s a social platform … a source of social engagement and connection.”
He said he hopes GNEP participants will leave Pitt knowing they were the person who “lights a spark” for a young person and to understand they belonged to something larger than an individual student job. He wants them to know they “belong to a group that served Pittsburgh children while supporting one another.”
When that happens, said Gismondi, “we move the needle a little bit, and that’s got to be something rewarding to say that you were a part of.”
Get involved
The Gismondi Neighborhood Education Program is still seeking Pitt tutors. If interested, contact GNEP [at] pitt.edu.
Programs of impact
GNEP’s special kind of educational support and relationship building is both personal and collective.
Yearwood, a biological sciences major with minors in chemistry and Africana Studies, plans to become a pediatrician. She learned about PittEnrich in 2025, during her first semester at Pitt. The tutoring program reminded her of the care and nurturing she received as a youth in New York.
She began spending Saturdays with elementary students in Homewood and later added an after-school program, on Tuesday, in Greater Hazelwood. At PittEnrich, she has worked with fourth graders on reading comprehension, helping them identify important details, use context clues and work through unfamiliar words. But she has also learned their names, gotten to know their families and pieces of their lives.
One child told her that his father owned a farm. So, when Yearwood saw him again, she knew to ask how the farm animals were doing.
During the 2025-26 academic year, Yearwood was just one of 123 Pitt students, leaders and athletes who supported GNEP programming and created such special connections. They provided 9,194 hours of educational assistance to 1,323 young people. Of those hours, 6,860 were spent in school and another 2,334 in out-of-school programming. Overall, 26 Pitt student organizations and campus partners also provided enrichment and exposure activities.
Tiffany Sanchez, an instructional coach with GNEP, said the model fosters relationships because it allows young people to encounter Pitt students repeatedly — in classrooms during the week, in after-school programs and sometimes again on weekends.
“It’s not like they’re just seeing them just on Wednesday for two hours,” she said. “They’re seeing them on Wednesday for two hours, and they might see them again on Tuesday evening, then they might see them again on Saturday.”
That consistency, she said, helps build relationships while showing Pitt students that education extends beyond a classroom. It teaches future educators “the importance of building community and building relationships with these students inside and outside of the classroom,” and how those connections affect their effectiveness as teachers.
At Pittsburgh Minadeo PreK-5, Principal Asia Mason can readily see what those connections look like.
Mason, now entering her second year working with the program, had four Pitt student tutors in her school over the previous academic year. When she walks into classrooms where they are working, she sees her elementary students receiving one-on-one attention, getting help staying on task and reinforcing classroom routines. The presence of the student tutors, she said, also gives teachers greater capacity to teach and to work with children in smaller groups.
“This year,” Mason said, “interest has grown: 11 Minadeo teachers have expressed interest in hosting a Pitt student.”
Photography courtesy Melanie Wieland Creative