{"id":301446,"date":"2026-10-07T09:16:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T09:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/301446\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T09:16:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T09:16:18","slug":"world-expanding-stories-from-pitts-nationality-and-heritage-rooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/301446\/","title":{"rendered":"World-expanding stories from Pitt\u2019s Nationality and Heritage Rooms"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Two
\nFrom left, chair Carlton Scott is joined in the African Heritage Room by committee members and past chairs Donna Alexander, a retired longtime Pitt staff member, and Richard Coleman (A&S \u201979, \u201902G). Dedicated in 1989, the room is Pan-African in concept, Drawing on Asante temple forms and centering on the concept of a courtyard.<\/p>\n

Carrying it forward<\/p>\n

As a junior at Pitt, Jenna Baron<\/a> was sitting in the computer lab in David Lawrence Hall, searching online for study abroad scholarships when her phone rang.
\u201cIt was the Nationality Rooms,\u201d says Baron (A&S \u201913), who majored in anthropology in the Dietrich School while earning certificates in African studies and global studies. \u201cThey wanted to let me know I was their winner. That phone call changed my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scholarship was for $5,000 from the African Heritage Room <\/a>Committee. Baron had been studying Swahili for three years and tutoring Somali Bantu refugee youths in Pittsburgh through a student-led group called Keep It Real.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The scholarship sent her to East Africa for 12 weeks. She divided her time between a Salvation Army school for the blind in Kenya and a Pitt-sponsored summer program in Tanzania that paired Swahili language study with East African culture and public health.<\/p>\n

At the school, Baron, then 21, lived in a building next to the dormitory for the girls who studied there. After dinner most nights, she walked to their dormitory and sat with them. They asked her questions, often about things they couldn\u2019t ask anyone else. It felt like a gift to be trusted.<\/p>\n

\"Woman
\nJenna Baron<\/p>\n

Baron would later return to Kenya as part of a Fulbright research grant through which she conducted oral histories with disability rights activists across the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After that trip, Baron came back to Pittsburgh and continued the same sort of work. She and a group of Pitt friends who also tutored Somali Bantu refugees started a summer camp for the immigrant youths they\u2019d been working with. By 2017, the work outgrew a single summer program, and Baron and her colleagues created an additional year-round nonprofit organization.<\/p>\n

Baron\u2019s cross-cultural experience and her goal to use her learning to support local African diaspora communities embodies much of what the African Heritage Room symbolizes.<\/p>\n

The room \u201crepresents memory, resilience, continuity and possibility,\u201d says Carlton Scott, who chairs the room\u2019s committee and serves as associate director of academic advising within the Dietrich School.<\/p>\n

The room, he adds, \u201cstands as a living testament to the greatness of African civilizations, the endurance of African descendants and the responsibility we have to preserve and pass on that legacy to future generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dedicated in 1989, the room was designed by William Bates, a nationally recognized African American architect from Pittsburgh, with carvings by Yoruba master carver Lamidi Fakeye. Pan-African in concept, the room draws prominently on Asante temple forms from Ghana. At its center is a courtyard.<\/p>\n

Founding member Laurence Glasco, professor emeritus of history at Pitt, recruited African students to help guide the design. They proposed the courtyard, which Glasco says plays a large role in the lives of many Africans.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s where kids play when they\u2019re young, where parents sit around in the evening and talk, where they entertain guests. It holds weddings, holds funerals \u2014 everything,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

As the students described their own home courtyards, Glasco recalls, one of them welled up with tears.\u00a0\u201cI knew this was the real thing,\u201d Glasco says.<\/p>\n

The courtyard was where the work started, not where it stopped.<\/p>\n

\u201cHeritage is not something static or ceremonial,\u201d Scott says. \u201cIt is something we must actively protect, teach, embody and extend.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From left, chair Carlton Scott is joined in the African Heritage Room by committee members and past chairs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-301446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}