Faculty & Staff Campaign: Why they give
Through the Faculty and Staff Campaign, University faculty and staff can help Pitt thrive by contributing to any of more than 2,000 scholarship, fellowship and professorship funds. Payroll deductions are available, and donors of $1,000 or more are recognized through the Chancellor’s Circle program.
Annually, nearly 3,000 Pitt employees take part in the campaign, from every part of the University. Their backgrounds, and reasons for giving, are as diverse as the Pitt community.
Today, the University Times begins a periodic feature profiling Faculty and Staff Campaign donors.
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For Rosie Rinella, a 46-year employee of the School of Social Work, giving to the Faculty and Staff Campaign “is just my way of saying thank you for all that has been afforded to me, in the University and in the school.”
Rinella is assistant to the dean and manager of personnel and administrative services, overseeing the office staff, handling personnel matters and managing the office. She also is assistant editor of Bridges, the school’s biannual magazine, and coordinates the school’s speaker series.
“I really have enjoyed my job. I feel as if I’ve been very blessed [with] the opportunity,” says Rinella. In particular, she enjoys contributing to scholarship endowment funds set up by emeritus faculty, “just out of respect for those individuals,” she says. “I have a great deal of admiration for those people.
“A lot of these funds are scholarship funds for our students that we award every year,” she adds. “That makes a world of difference for our students to be able to matriculate. They’re the next generation of human services professionals.”
Her most recent contribution was toward funding a new endowment from alumnus James McDonald, whom she has known for 35 years. “I look forward to seeing the funds go to a student,” she says.
“The students who earn the scholarships are usually the best and the brightest students, and they have done remarkable things as they go out into the community to work for certain agencies.
“Social work is a helping profession,” she says, “and there are a lot of people suffering in this society. If we can help our students along in their degrees…
“If everyone would give a small donation to the internal campaign,” Rinella concludes, “what a difference it would make to our students.”
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For more information on the Faculty and Staff Campaign, go to www.giveto.pitt.edu/fsgiving.
-Marty Levine