By SUSAN JONES
The University’s fifth online town hall in the past year held no big surprises but covered a lot of ground — from AI tools to commencement to budget issues.
Chancellor Joan Gabel led off the March 19 event, which was moderated by Senate President Kris Kanthak, with some good news.
Applications to Pitt for fall 2026 have once again hit a record of more than 72,000.
“There are a lot of reasons for that, but we all know that the real heart and soul of why a student wants to be here is because of how our staff support them and our faculty teach them, and our peer students support them and support each other,” Gabel said.
Almost of half of Pitt students graduate debt free, she said. One of the mechanisms to make that happen are the new Finish Line grants, which assist students who just need a little financial help in their final year to make it to graduation. The first cohort of students to request these grants was able to graduate last spring.
Gabel said as Pitt heads into a capital campaign later this year, “I think we’ll start to have even more stories that are ultimately testimonials of what the University has meant to people of means and why we are their priority when they think about how they want to be philanthropic.”
The chancellor told Senate Council on March 26 that around 1,400 people tuned in through the whole hour-plus webinar. “As a result of some very productive advocacy from our student government leadership, we will be posting an executive summary of the town hall imminently,” she said.
AI update
Mark Henderson, chief information officer, addressed questions about Pitt’s partnership with Anthropic and Amazon Web Services.
“Our partnership with AWS and Anthropic allows us to provide secure, scalable AI tools while managing costs responsibly,” Henderson said. “AWS and Anthropic are committed to assist us in efforts to expand the Cloud Innovation Center, support AI literacy, workforce preparedness and community engagement through the University’s engagement centers.”
He made clear that the University is not forcing AI on anyone. “We hope you do choose to use these tools, because the potential benefits are substantial, especially as AI increasingly becomes part of our day to day lives.”
Anthropic and its Claude for Education tool was chosen, Henderson said, because their approach in developing Claude aligns with Pitt’s goal for secure and ethical use of AI. Anthropic also excel at “providing AI for large organizations, rather than just focusing on the consumers; third, they are committed to transparency.”
The agreement with Anthropic requires the company to “adhere to an increased level of privacy and security protection and immediately inform the University of any potential incidents.”
Recently, Anthropic has been in a dispute with the federal government, because its CEO, Dario Amodei, said he would not allow Claude to be used for autonomous weapons or to surveil American citizens. President Trump then ordered all federal agencies to stop using Claude, and the Pentagon designated Anthropic as a “supply chain risk to national security.”
Last week, a federal judge issued an injunction prohibiting the government from applying the “supply chain risk” label. The judge said the designation “is likely both contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious.”
Henderson said that so far there has been “no impact to federal funding associated with our use of Claude. We will continue to closely monitor this as it develops.”
Pitt Digital is providing Claude training materials through the Pitt Worx platform. Find more details here.
“Our partnership with Anthropic is an opportunity for the University to serve as a national model for secure, scalable and ethical AI deployment in academia, so it’s benefiting Anthropic as well,” he said.
Provost’s update
Provost Joe McCarthy noted that Pitt is “sprinting to the finish line for the spring semester.”
“I want to start actually by acknowledging the difficult global and national issues impacting many, both inside and outside our University,” McCarthy said. “I’ll remind everybody that supporting our fellow community members is really critical at this time, and that Pitt has outstanding resources for both students through the University Counseling Center, as well as for faculty and staff through Life Solutions.”
The provost singled out several recent events, including one last week showcasing experiential learning and the Mentoring and Advising Summit earlier in the month, which drew thousands of people from around the world.
He said that the response rate for a recent survey of student satisfaction with advising nearly doubled, and “nearly 90% of our students say that they are very satisfied with their advisor.”
After these positive notes, McCarthy admitted there were still many challenges.
“Many in the University community have been actively engaged in advocacy around the proposed federal student loan changes that could have a decidedly negative impact on many programs that are critical to workforce needs,” he said. “One of the things that we’re doing is urging the Department of Education to reconsider their definition of professional degree and how that impacts federal loan limits.”
In the meantime, he said, Pitt is rethinking some of its financial aid strategies for those seeking graduate and professional degrees, as well as streamlining engagement with private loan entities for some students.
Speaking about Pitt and AI, McCarthy said the University Library System, the Teaching Center, and the Learning Science and Emerging Technologies group are working to create an AI Commons “to serve as a bit of a maker space for experimenting with AI for faculty, staff and students.”
McCarthy also gave the update on research, because Senior Vice Chancellor for Research Rob Rutenbar couldn’t attend the meeting.
He noted that Pitt is top 20 in the Higher Education Research and Development survey and a top 30 patent-producing university in the U.S. — “ahead of, by the way, our colleagues up the street at Carnegie Mellon, as well as ahead of an institution in the center of the state.” Globally, Pitt has been recognized in the top 50 universities and top 20 most innovative worldwide.
“I love the stat that we have 20 academic programs in the top 20 in U.S. News (and World Report), and it’s really reflective of how all of you at Pitt translate your research into real world impact,” McCarthy said.
On a less positive note, McCarthy said there continue to be challenges with federal research funding. He said over the past year the provost’s office, along with Rutenbar’s office and Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for health sciences, have allocated some temporary replacement funding for faculty whose research was critically affected.
Pitt Research also is continuing to help researchers diversify their portfolio, and engage more effectively with foundations and philanthropic sources, “so that they’re more resilient as federal changes continue.”
Financial update
Dwayne Pinkney, executive senior vice chancellor for administration and finance, said the University is continuing to keep a close eye on expenses, “especially as there are opportunities for us to reduce and to seek some budget efficiencies.”
These include possibly streamlining operations, sharing services where appropriate, emphasizing sustainability and improving productivity through system enhancements and process improvements. “We are committed to carefully assessing our expenses to ensure that our costs are kept as low as possible.”
Pinkney said he’s heard people comment several times that Pitt must be generating more revenue from the larger class sizes the past few years. And while the increase does bring in more tuition dollars, he said the effort to maintain a high-quality education and experience for students comes with real costs.
“We continue to balance those costs and those needs as we review our finances and develop our budget,” he said. “The University, like all institutions, is affected by higher expenses, and inflation continues to reduce the University’s purchasing power as costs for items such as food and utilities and housing all are increasing.”
Pitt had its largest first-year class in fall 2025, with 5,870 students, and Pinkney said 5,200 — the second larges class — are expected this fall. The University is on track to meet the Plan for Pitt goal of 22,000 undergraduates by 2028.
To accommodate these increases, Pitt is exploring several options, including a five-year lease for the recently renovated Wellington apartments in North Oakland that will add 81 apartment-style units with 148 beds.
Pitt is also in the process of a design build competition for a new residence hall in the parking lot adjacent to the Music Building. Three teams are now developing designs to be considered. Those plans will be evaluated and taken to the Board of Trustees for review in early May. If all goes well, the plan is to break ground on the new building this summer, which would open in fall 2028.
Wellbeing update
Kanthak, in introducing Clyde Pickett, vice chancellor for institutional engagement and wellbeing, said one of the questions she’s been asked most in the past year is: “How’s Clyde and is Clyde doing OK? Is his staff getting the support they need for their important outreach efforts and the other work that they do?”
Pickett said he appreciates the “concern for us. … I think I speak from the heart for all of our colleagues here when I say that our engagement, our opportunity to be together and our well being, remains the highest priority.”
He said committees across the University “have been charged with thinking about climate, with culture and, of course, accessibility and community. … We’ve heard specifically for the need for us to focus attention on the current environment and the ways for us to center these priorities.”
Pickett’s office has developed a strategic charter that provides generalized information on “how you can exercise the work of those committees, and that information will be shared … in the next few weeks.”
He highlighted some of the events his office sponsored for Black History Month in February and Women’s History Month in March, and reaffirmed support for the LGBTAIQ+ community.
“I want to reaffirm publicly the University’s commitment to sustaining and supporting our LGBT community,” Pickett said. “I want to emphasize that this isn’t a singular moment. That work remains something that we have to continue. I know that it’s important to hear loud and clear from our community the need to feel affirmed, feel supported, and that we emphasize what they bring to our community.”
Government update
David Brown, vice chancellor for government relations, gave a wrap-up of federal funding in the fiscal year 2026 budget, which passed in February.
“Given the headwinds that we were experiencing at the time, I think we landed in a pretty positive place,” he said. “There was a lot of activity and advocacy around the importance of the work we do, not just on the educational side, but the research side, and certainly the members of the Pennsylvania delegation embraced our messaging and supported the work that we do, so that’s a positive.”
But now the process has started over again for FY27, which starts in October. Brown said President Trump’s budget request should be coming soon, but might be delayed because of the war in Iran. Just because the research funding numbers were solid for FY26 doesn’t guarantee they will stay that way.
In addition, even though “we were able to include what’s called blocking language to prevent the specific agencies from lowering the indirect cost caps to 15% again, that only holds until the end of the current fiscal year.”
In total, Pitt had 94 total research awards cancelled. “Not great, certainly, if it’s one of your awards — certainly sympathetic to that — but all things considered, not too bad.”
His office also will continue to advocate for changes around graduate student loan limits, which for all but 11 programs labeled professional, would be $20,500 annually and $100,000 total.
They’ve been working with Amanda Godley, vice provost for graduate studies, to push back on this proposed loan cap, including contacting the entire Pennsylvania Congressional delegation about Pitt’s concerns and submitting a letter during the comment period. The final rule should be posted soon.
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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