The Secret Ingredient in PIT-UN: Collaboration

While it’s true that the 43 Public Interest Technology University (PITUN) members are a diverse set of educational institutions, PITUN members have more in common than one might think. In fact, most share one important characteristic. When asked what excites them about the network, they have many answers, but most say they are looking forward to one thing in particular: Making connections with other PITUN members.

When they join the PIT-UN, university provosts and presidents commit to collaborating and communicating regionally as well as across priority subject matter areas. Designees can join committees and working groups, too, providing a common way for schools to share information and plan new PIT initiatives. It’s that connection that many grantees and Network members say are most appealing—even if they haven’t achieved the levels of connection they were originally looking for.

“We have yet to collaborate with our colleagues at other institutions but plan to do so soon. We have relied on [other members] for specific queries and learned from their models, however,” explains Jennifer DeVere Brody, professor of Theater and Performance Studies who is also the director of Stanford University’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity. "We especially look forward to collaborating on the creation of a national graduate student network. In doing so, we hope to foster more interdisciplinary work in racial justice and technological innovation."

Opportunities for Collaboration

Christopher Berry, the William J. and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and the College, points to the fact that just knowing about what’s going on at other schools improves all PIT-related courses, including those at the same campuses.

Indeed, it’s the potential for interdisciplinary work that piques the interest of many Network members. Belonging to the PIT-UN builds connections internally for its members, especially at larger schools that may have multiple campuses or disparate departments working on PIT-related projects, explains Berry.

“Just the existence of our membership in the network has made a difference. For example, Nicole [Marwell], who is my co-PI on this grant—she and I met because there was a PIT call for the first round of [Network Challenge Grant] proposals, which went out university wide,” explains Berry, who is also a PIT UN Network Challenge grantee. “I saw that she had a proposal that was similar to something I had been thinking of so we ended up putting our heads together to do one proposal and one course, which worked out really well.”

Susan Imberman, Associate Professor at City of New York’s Staten Island campus has similar praise for having an internal PIT-UN connection. She’s been working with PIT UN professors in her school as well as fellow Network Challenge grantee, Kathleen M. Cumiskey. Although their Network Challenge grants are separate, having the PIT UN in common has helped them expand and explore their own projects, says Imberman.

“CUNY itself is huge, and even though we are one network—we are many, many different campuses and each professor has a slightly different take on PIT. We have collaborated and helped each other since joining the Network,” she says. They, like other Network members, are sharing courses, curriculum, syllabi, and other resources internally as well as with the Network as a whole.

“We have a lot of content out there now with people submitting courses and parts of courses. We see that—especially when Covid happened—a lot more people were coming to us and downloading curriculum,” Imberman adds.

People are able to connect and share information about all of these things via monthly meetings as well as the private PIT UN Slack channel. In addition, everyone we spoke to is looking to the fall and the (hopefully) in person Third Annual PIT UN Convening, taking place on November 1 and 2. Imberman says she got a lot out of the 2019 Convening.

“Convenings were wonderful. It was great meeting people with different views and being able to help each other out with projects and PIT work,” she says.

University of Chicago’s Berry says he was able to take feedback from the convening and use it to shape one of his new courses. “We shared our syllabus draft—an early version—and then invited others to comment on it and to share syllabi from their institution. We got to learn about some cool stuff that was happening in other places and bring some of those ideas into our course,” he says. “Even though we had searched for syllabi at peer institutions, at the beginning of the process there were so many new courses that we didn't know were even being offered and we learned about them through the network.”