By MARTY LEVINE
Editor’s note: “Lasting Lessons” presents stories from faculty and staff about an educational moment that made the most impact on their lives — as a student or an instructor, inside a classroom or out, here at Pitt or elsewhere, formal or impromptu, between friends or even at a bad moment — something that challenged or changed them. Look for more Lasting Lessons in future editions of the University Times.
Eleanor “EJ” Milarski-Veenis, budget and facilities manager, School of Education.
For many of her 19 years as a staff member, EJ Milarski-Veenis has been volunteering to help at Pitt graduations. But perhaps her most significant Pitt graduation was her own, coming in 2021, when she saw the ceremony from the opposite angle.
“I was on the other end of the check-in table when I graduated” that year with a master’s of public policy & management from what is now the School of Public and International Affairs. She had decided in 2017 to go back to school, because her attitude toward being a Pitt staff member had finally changed.
That year, Milarski-Veenis noticed a new campus lecture series. She thought the series was likely targeted at an audience of faculty, “but I went anyway. … Even if this is not meant for me, I’m curious — I should go. Who cares if I feel like I belong or don’t belong?”
Her new attitude, she said, was “being curious about what campus has, and not just being, ‘I’m a staff member. I come to campus and then I just go home.’ I really think it comes down to being curious and not letting the definition of ‘staff’ hurt what folks think they can do.” Shortly after, she began her master’s program.
Milarski-Veenis says she had long thought “my happiest time was at college” and nearly two decades later found herself “still being curious, still wanting to learn more and still wanting to challenge myself more.”
The same impulses have prompted her to be active with the PittWomen affinity group, and simply enjoying campus amenities with her family, such as a tour of the Allegheny Observatory. Joining Staff Council in 2011 was an even earlier impulse toward campus connection, she says, since it offers “a really great sense of community. … We get to discuss staff issues that are maybe more than us and our department. I have an issue and somebody who works in the building across the street has the solution and I don’t know it,” until she hears more about it at Staff Council.
She is still volunteering to see Pitt students off into the world: “I love the graduation ceremony because for the most part everybody is happy to be there,” she says. It also should have special meaning to her fellow staffers, she asserts: “We get to see the circle. Our whole purpose to be here is just to support the students through their education.”
Now her daughter, 16, is looking at colleges. “I’m excited to see she also has that attitude and that excitement” of curiosity, and toward connection, Milarski-Veenis says. “It is great to be able to pass the torch.”
Angie Byrne, academic administrator, College of General Studies and Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences.
Angie Byrne also found attending college at Pitt (in her case, for her an undergraduate degree) to be life-changing — when she won a composition program writing prize, the Ossip Award for Excellence in Seminar in Composition, as a first-year student.
She had been working as a hairdresser and was teaching classes in this art, even travelling around the country to do so, and that used some of her writing skills. But she had long felt handicapped without an undergraduate degree. When COVID-19 temporarily squashed her business, she came to Pitt. Today she is a full-time staff member taking nine credits a semester.
“I’m a first-generation college student; it wasn’t something I ever thought I would be able to do,” Byrne says. Partly, she wanted to attend college for herself: “It is something I felt embarrassed about at times. It was something I wanted to complete.” Now, in school, “I feel more capable. I couldn’t believe I could produce anything like that” essay that won the Ossip award. “It motivated me to get out of my comfort zone” and take more writing classes, even where she is the oldest student.
“Regular life gets in the way when you are an adult,” especially one with a family, she adds. “When everyone else is relying on you, it’s hard to pick what to do first. When I talk to other people about it, I am a big proponent of ‘It’s never too late to change what you want to do.’
“There’s never a right time to do this,” she admits, but “I want to see it to the end, one way or another.” She wants to tell other people’s stories, perhaps in a podcast. “I hope people love hearing others’ stories. I know I do.”
She imagined, when she started classes, that her degree would take 10 years to complete. “Now it is looking more like five,” she says. “It can seem daunting, but it’s totally possible.”
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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