The CESF Collaboration Champion Award is presented by CESF to recognize a member of the University of Pittsburgh community or a community partner who has made significant contributions to the University of Pittsburgh’s culture of collaboration, further sustaining and supporting the institution’s commitment to strengthening communities through teamed work.
Explore Awardees by Year:
2026 CESF
Tina Ndoh, PhD, MPA, BSCE
Associate Dean for Public Health Practice and Associate Professor, Environmental and Occupational Health, School of Public Health
Dr. Tina Ndoh is a public health scholar whose work centers on environmental justice and community-based research. She develops and evaluates public health interventions aimed at reducing environmental health disparities, with support from institutions such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and Breathe PA. Her research includes investigating public health interventions for respiratory diseases due to poor indoor air quality and public engagement in expressed environmental policy preferences.
As Associate Dean for Practice and Director of the Center for Public Health Practice, Dr. Ndoh leads programs that connect students and faculty with community organizations. These efforts focus on mentoring, curriculum development, and events like the Pittsburgh Environmental Justice Summit that she co-founded to promote collaborative research with community and academic partners.
She holds a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, an MPA, and a PhD from North Carolina State University. Her teaching includes courses such as Environmental Justice and Health Equity, How Public Policy Works, and Evidence-Based Environmental and “One Health” Policies and Practices.
Dr. Ndoh’s work continues to influence environmental health policy and practice, with a focus on equity and community collaboration.
2025 CESF
Nancy Gauvin, EdD, CCC-SLP
Associate Dean, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Community Engagement and Assistant Professor, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences
Nancy Gauvin is associate dean of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Community Engagement, and assistant professor. As associate dean of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Community Engagement, Gauvin's primary responsibilities are to infuse equity, diversity, and inclusion within all of the departments and programs within SHRS. Additionally, Gauvin will meet the requested research and programming needs of our community partners at the SHRS Wellness Pavillion in the Community Engagement Center in Homewood.
As an assistant professor in the tenure stream, Gauvin's primary academic responsibilities involve teaching in the speech-language pathology and clinical doctoral programs and the development of a systematic research program consistent with her expertise in vocal health and wellness, gender-affirming voice, craniofacial anomalies/cleft lip and palate and resonance, and cultural considerations in clinical supervision and scholarship of teaching and learning, and health equity and outcomes. As a faculty investigator, she is a member of the CSD's Research Enterprises in Voice and Swallowing (REVS) multi-investigator research initiative.
Gauvin joined the department from Molloy University in Rockville Centre, New York, where she served as an assistant professor. She previously served as a clinical assistant professor at the University of Vermont.
Ngozi Tibbs
Founder, Journey Lighter Coaching and the Pittsburgh Black Breastfeeding Circle
Ngozi Tibbs is a nationally recognized speaker and educator on maternal-child health, cultural humility, and health equity. Tibbs serves as an infant and early child mental health consultant, ordained wedding officiant, nutrition and relationship coach, and fitness instructor. Tibbs has also worked as a doula for more than 20 years serving birthing and postpartum families. She is the founder of Journey Lighter Coaching, in which she provides health and fitness coaching for clients both virtually and in person. Ngozi co-founded The Pittsburgh Black Breastfeeding Circle. She and a team of Peer Champions provide breastfeeding education and support to Black families in the Pittsburgh area.
Tibbs holds a Master’s Degree in Public Health from Benedictine University. She is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC), a Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator (LCCE) and Trainer, and a Certified Health Coach (CHC).
2024 CESF
Aliya Durham
Assistant Professor and Director of Community Engagement, School of Social Work
Aliya D. Durham has amassed 25 years of service to others—as an employee and volunteer—and is deeply committed to servant leadership, community development, equity, and philanthropy. She has worked at several health and human service organizations in the region including Operation Better Block, Inc., the Pennsylvania State University, Good Schools Pennsylvania, the National Council for Urban Peace and Justice, and Adagio Health. Most recently, she served as Vice President of Foundation and Government Relations and Core Service Executive for Social Responsibility for the YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh for nearly a decade.
Dr. Durham is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work specializing in Macro Practice. She teaches graduate courses in Human Services Management, Group/Intergroup Relations, Grant Writing, and an undergraduate course in Generalist Practice with Communities and Organizations. She manages the Browne Leadership Fellowship, one of many signature social work programs, designed to translate the core values of service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, the importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence to non-social work undergraduate students. She recently redesigned and launched a new Community and Racial Equity Leadership Fellowship aimed at preparing graduate students traditionally underrepresented in social work bridge gaps between their undergraduate studies with experiences and skills to enter careers in macro practice settings. As Director of Community Engagement, Dr. Durham facilitates and advances opportunities for the School of Social Work to deepen and expand its community-engaged practices in research, teaching, service, and learning.
Dr. Durham has volunteered on various not-for-profit boards and committees in the city and county, most notably as co-founder and Board Vice Chair for the Homewood Children’s Village. Since becoming faculty at Pitt, Dr. Durham has served on numerous university-wide and school-specific committees. She is currently a co-investigator on two collaborative grant-funded research projects.
Aliya earned a Bachelor of Arts (Africana Studies), a Bachelor of Science (Psychology), a Master of Social Work (Macro Practice), and a Master of Public and International Affairs (Economic and Social Development) from the University of Pittsburgh. She earned her doctorate in Community Engagement at Point Park University in 2020 with research interests converging at the intersections of collective impact, sense of community responsibility, and distributed leadership theories.
2023 CESF
Dr. Michael Glass is a Teaching Professor and the Director of the Urban Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh. His primary research is on city-region governance and infrastructure, including community-engaged projects in Fayette County with colleagues at Pitt. He is the co-editor of Urban Violence, Resilience and Security: Governance Responses in the Global South (Edward Elgar, 2022), Performativity, Politics, and the Production of Social Space (Routledge, 2014), Infrastructural Times (Bristol University Press, forthcoming), and is co-author of Priced Out: Stuyvesant Town and the Loss of Middle-Class Neighborhoods (NYU Press, 2016). His most recent research examines the ways that infrastructure shapes regions and influences regional equity: you can read more about his Network on Infrastructural Regionalism (NOIR) here. He serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Urban Affairs and Regional Studies, Regional Science, and is the Regional Studies Association's Territorial Ambassador to the United States.
2022 CESF
Sophie Tayade is an undergraduate student and founding director of a summer art program in partnership with the Bhutanese Community Association of Pittsburgh (BCAP). She is experienced in inspiring student involvement through her role as a Blue & Gold Society Ambassador, where she strengthened student ties to the University and alumni. As an ambassador for the European Studies Center, she assisted students in internationalizing their plans of study. Sophie began working with BCAP as Campus Director for the first Pitt cohort of the Millennium Fellowship in 2019, a sustainable and social impact fellowship put on by the United Nations Academic Impact initiative.
Sophie wanted to learn more about the Bhutanese and Nepali community, one of the largest and most organized immigrant and refugee groups in Pittsburgh, and her partnership with BCAP grew from health education and youth tutoring to a summer enrichment program. She led a team of Pitt student volunteers to provide fifteen hours a week of lessons for ukulele, acting, dance and general arts. Due to the pandemic, programming evolved in a virtual setting to engage and connect young students while alleviating some stress from their families who may be working from home. Sophie applied and received funding from the University Honors College Racism Pandemic Project grant and recently, the CESF Partnership of Distinction Award to support the summer program, allowing them to embark on their third consecutive year.
Sophie is pursuing a double degree in Rehabilitation Sciences and Interdisciplinary Studies “Multimedia Health Communication.” She plans on working as a physician while using media and storytelling to share valuable health information with audiences of different backgrounds. She credits the University for illuminating to her the value of interdisciplinary collaboration and is grateful for the support from faculty and her peers in allowing her to combine her excitement for art and service.
2021 CESF
Yvette Moore
The 2021 CESF Collaboration Champion awardee is Yvette Moore, a skilled professional and practitioner in diversity, equity, and inclusion within higher education with 19 years of experience.
Yvette has worked directly with undergraduate scholars in engineering and the arts and sciences. She is currently the director of the Pitt EXCEL program, an undergraduate diversity program within the Swanson School Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. Through her career, Yvette has held several roles in higher education at various universities and has worked with diversity, equity, and inclusion based programs in the Pittsburgh metropolitan community. She has earned various diversity awards at Shippensburg University and the University of Pittsburgh for her community engagement among the undergraduate scholars, staff, faculty, and community stakeholders.
Yvette received her bachelor of science in secondary education sociology/history from Shippensburg University, master of science in gerontology from Shippensburg University, and she is completing her doctorate in higher education management at the University of Pittsburgh. Her doctoral work focuses on understanding the importance of staff of color, the work they do, and the racial microaggressions, racial campus climate, and racial battle fatigue experienced among staff of color working to protect their undergraduate scholars in engineering.
What Yvette is most proud of and what she credits is her faith in God and being able to walk in her gift. Yvette has been blessed to influence the lives of so many that would not have had such opportunities without experiencing her programs. As a servant leader Yvette believes “mediocrity is not an option.”
2020 CESF
Holly Hickling
The 2020 CESF Collaboration Champion awardee is Holly Hickling, academic community engagement advisor at the University Honors College.
Hickling helps students to connect their academic interests to meaningful community engagement opportunities, including internships, long-term volunteer opportunities, and community-based research.
As the former chair of the Academically Based Community Engagement (ABCE) committee and associated Idea Exchange event, Hickling has been an active participant in a number of collaborative campus initiatives. Her work with ABCE and the Idea Exchange has created strong institutional interest in how engaged scholarship can be celebrated and widely shared among colleagues and across disciplines.
Hickling advises the student clubs FORGE, Pitt Prison Outreach, Global Brigades, and international service learning. She has served on the CEC Internal Advisory Council, the Senate Community Relations Committee, the Human Rights Working Group, Pitt Advocates, and Civic Pathways.