February 2, 2026
The Learning Research & Development Center is proud to announce a new research-practice partnership with the Office of the Provost (OTP). The partnership is with the Student Success Action Research Collaborative (SSARC). SSARC is a university-wide initiative housed within the Student Success Team (SST) and the OTP.
SSARC is dedicated to strengthening Pitt's capacity to improve student success outcomes by coordinating how the university designs, implements, and learns from student success initiatives. The partnership launches new efforts, supports existing work across campus, connects interventions, builds shared measurement, and intentionally drives the dissemination of innovative practices that have the promise of enhancing student success. The LRDC aides this partnership through providing research rigor, methodological expertise, scholarly credibility, access to external networks, psychological theory, intervention science, and connections to national collaborative networks.
SSARC uses the Action Research cycle, a disciplined approach to institutional learning where research and practice inform each other continuously. SSARC prioritizes five domains where coordinated inquiry can have institutional value:
- Psychology of Student Success
- Teaching and Curricular Innovation
- AI in Student Success
- Advising Innovation
- Graduate Student Experience
Leo Omid Schumann, Director of Action Research, Office of the Provost, and LRDC Center Associate heads this initiative. The SSARC builds upon his previous work in studying belonging interventions. When Schumann was a professor at Stanford, he co-founded Stanford's College Transition Collaborative, which studied interventions to increase belonging across 22 higher education institutions. Schumann has also been involved in Pitt-wide belonging interventions, assisting Pitt faculty in redesigning elements of the undergraduate transition experience.
If you've designed or piloted an intervention, course redesign, or advising innovation, SSARC would love to learn from your work and help it gain broader recognition across the university. SSARC is also looking for faculty interested in collaborating on new research-practice partnerships through SSARC. If you are interested in collaborating with SSARC, please take three minutes to share your interest and experience here.