The Tracy Soska and John Wilds Outreach and Engagement Leadership Award is presented by CESF to honor a faculty member or staff engagement professional who serves the University of Pittsburgh through their outstanding dedication to University-community connections. Through their contributions, the awardee strengthens our institution’s knowledge, understanding, practice, and reflection on the opportunities of community-based collaboration.
Explore Awardees by Year:
2026 CESF
Celeste Welsh
Director of Community Engagement, Pitt Athletics
Celeste Welsh joined Pitt Athletics in 2004. She began by serving in the capacity of Media Relations Coordinator before being promoted to Director of Media Operations and Community Engagement. She has since transitioned into the role of Director of Community Engagement for Pitt Athletics. Welsh’s primary mission is to encourage, educate, and coordinate community engagement opportunities with more than 500 of Pitt’s student-athletes. Special emphasis is placed on providing help to the individuals in neighborhoods surrounding the Pitt campus.
Welsh presently works in community engagement with communities in Homewood, Greater Hazelwood, and the Hill District, as well as the Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Vitalant Blood, Voting Matters, Boys and Girls Club Western PA, ALS Association, Special Olympics, Department of Veteran Affairs, UPMC Magee Women’s Hospital, and many other non-profits in the Pittsburgh region. Recently, she coordinated many events with Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, where the Pitt Football Team raised more $130,000 throughout various events. She also works directly with JMI Sports Marketing with key sponsorships, collaborating on community events.
In her role, she has been recognized by the NCAA for several Community Champions Awards. In 2023, Pitt ranked fifth in the nation among all Division I community service Champions Awards and ranked first overall in the awards among Power Five conferences in 2022 with Pitt Football ranked first among all Division I football programs. In 2021, Pitt Athletics ranked first in NCAA Division I schools.
Welsh has had crucial community involvement that has provided great financial benefit to UPMC Children’s Hospital and other non-profits:
- She assisted in raising $135,000 with the “Cal’s Kids” initiative, with Cal Adomitis, former Pitt long snapper, currently with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
- Welsh worked side by side with Deslin Alexandre, former DL with the New York Jets, on a 5th Down Campaign which raised $55,000 for the children of Haiti, Deslin’s native home.
- Welsh assisted David Green with his efforts to raise $22,222 for the Boys and Girls Clubs.
- Coordinated a campaign with LB Foster Railroad and Pitt Football raising $50,000.
Welsh has shared in five “Super 11” sports information recognitions from the Football Writers Association of America (FWAA), which honors those offices deemed the best in the NCAA Division I Bowl Subdivision and her skills have been highly sought at various high-profile sporting events beyond Pitt. She has worked on such national-caliber events as the Kentucky Derby (2017), US Golf Open (2016, 2024) the men’s basketball NCAA Tournament (2012, 2015, 2018, 2021) and the women’s basketball NCAA Tournament (2007). Welsh has recently been named to the advisory board of AD99 Solutions, former Pitt player Aaron Donald’s non-profit.
2025 CESF
Aaron Henderson
Associate Professor, Department of Studio Arts, Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences
Aaron Henderson is an Associate Professor in the Studio Arts Department at the University of Pittsburgh. His current project, Future Studio, focuses on collaborations between artists and communities to inspire dialogue and foster change. By working directly with local communities, Future Studio creates projects that amplify voices, raise awareness, and address pressing issues.
For the past five years, Henderson’s work highlights the ongoing struggle to clear the air and water from decades of pollution and industrial mismanagement. His recent initiatives include large-scale projections in East Palestine, Ohio, addressing the humanitarian crisis following a toxic train derailment and a sculpture designed in collaboration with University of Pittsburgh students to capture the attention of lawmakers. Future Studio has also used projection mapping to bring visibility to the health struggles of those living near U.S. Steel facilities and is beginning a project in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, where a new ethane cracker plant raises fresh environmental concerns.
2024 CESF
Kelsey Voltz-Poremba
Assistant Professor, Department of Occupational Therapy, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences
Kelsey Voltz-Poremba is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (SHRS). She has been an integral member of the SHRS team in building and promoting the community-based work the school is doing at the SHRS Wellness Pavilion, part of the Pitt Community Engagement Center (CEC) in Homewood.
Dr. Voltz-Poremba has expertise in designing programs in communities that promote health and mitigate health disparities. At the Pitt CEC in Homewood, she has designed health and wellness programs, as well as a handwriting tutoring program for grade school students. She has facilitated groups for older adults on falls prevention and began a collaboration with the local Primary Care Health Services (PCHS) Alma Illery in sponsoring health focused programs including a monthly Bingo night at the Pitt CEC in Homewood. Dr. Voltz-Poremba recently received support from the Pitt Seed Program where she and colleagues from the School of Pharmacy, the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences Departments of Mathematics and Studio Arts created an interprofessional program to support faculty and staff to engage in community-based work. Through the funding, the team piloted a middle school health and wellness program at the Pitt CEC in Homewood, developed Magical Math at the Pitt CEC in the Hill District, supported community blood pressure education and screening events, and funded three art shows, showcasing local artists at the Pitt CEC in Homewood.
As an educator, Dr. Voltz-Poremba facilitates and mentors graduate occupational therapy students to partner with community collaborators in developing and implementing community, occupation-based programs throughout the greater Pittsburgh area. Current projects include collaborations with Homewood Children’s Village, Beacon Communities-Moorhead Tower, Cancer Bridges and HEARTH. Dr. Voltz-Poremba consistently demonstrates leadership in community outreach and engagement through her teaching of future rehabilitation practitioners and service to Pitt and surrounding communities in the region.
2023 CESF
As associate vice chancellor for diversity, equity, and inclusion, health sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, Paula K. Davis and her team aim to increase engagement among all health sciences stakeholders through a number of initiatives that examine the intersection of health, race, marginalized populations, and social justice.
As the founding assistant vice chancellor for health sciences diversity (in 2007), Davis has led the Office of Health Sciences Diversity (now the Office of Health Sciences Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) in coordinating the recruitment and retention of diverse faculty and students in the health sciences schools. Davis lectures on organizational cultural competence, creating inclusive environments and eliminating structural and implicit bias.
Davis has worked in a variety of student support fields, including academic advising, admissions, financial aid, alumni relations, and has worked with pre-college, undergraduate, graduate, and health professions students. Prior to transitioning to the Schools of the Health Sciences, Davis served the School of Medicine as assistant dean for student affairs, and director of diversity programs, as well as assistant dean for admissions and financial aid.
In 2003, Ms. Davis was the first individual given the Chancellor’s Affirmative Action Award. Her recent efforts, partnered with the Provost’s Office for Faculty Diversity and Development, netted the 2023 campus UPSIDE award for the Race and Social Determinants of Equity, Health and Well-being Cluster Recruitment and Retention Initiative.
Davis’s professional and service activities have included two terms as director of the northeast region of the National Association of Medical Minority Educators, vice president of the board of the FISA Foundation, board service for the Pittsburgh Community Broadcasting Corporation and M-Powerhouse of Pittsburgh, and vice president of the Greater Pittsburgh Higher Education Diversity Consortium. She is a passionate advocate for disability issues. Davis earned her BA in English Writing and MA in Speech, Rhetoric and Communications at Pitt and is a student in the School of Education’s Education Doctorate program.
2022 CESF
Jeff Shook is Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Pittsburgh. Broadly, Jeff’s scholarship focuses on the intersections of law, policy, and practice in the lives of children and families, with a focus on youth in the justice systems and child and family poverty. His commitment to using his research to affect change is apparent in his long-standing university-community connections through which he partners with community members and organizations to limit criminal legal system involvement of young people and combat poverty and income inequality.
Since becoming a member of the Pittsburgh community in 2005, Jeff has partnered with legal advocates and families of incarcerated youth, City Council members, and labor leaders, among others. In this work, he has not only lent his time and expertise to furthering community organization and policy change but has also mentored numerous social work students so they may learn, contribute, and engage in community change efforts. As such, Jeff demonstrates leadership in community outreach and engagement across the roles of an engaged social work scholar: research, teaching, and service.
2021 CESF
David Sanchez
Assistant Professor, Swanson School of Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Assistant Director, Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation
David Sanchez is an Assistant Professor in the Swanson School of Engineering’s Civil & Environmental Engineering department, the Assistant Director for the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation, and the Program Director for the Master’s in Sustainable Engineering, the Undergraduate Certificate in Sustainability and the John C. Mascaro Faculty Fellows program.
Focused on co-creating long-term partnerships that synergize community vision with Pitt’s core competencies of research and education, David has built up Pitt Hydroponics in Homewood, founded Constellation Energy Inventor labs for K-12 students, and re-created the Mascaro Center’s Teach the Teacher sustainability program for science educators in the region.
As a teacher he designed and created the Sustainability capstone course which has annually partnered with community stakeholders to address sustainability challenges at all scales. Past projects have included evaluating composting stations in Wilkinsburg, building infrastructure resilience in Homewood, enabling community solar in PA, improving energy efficiency in McCandless Township, and improving water quality in our rivers.
2020 CESF
Sabina Deitrick
Associate Dean and Associate Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs
As an avid proponent of community outreach and engagement, Deitrick has led numerous research efforts as well as the development of partnerships like the Pittsburgh Neighborhood and Community Information System.
Dietrick’s work as codirector of Pitt’s Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC) led to a close working relationship with both Soska and Wilds to mobilize students, faculty, and staff members to address problems identified by community partners in COPC neighborhoods, including housing, economic development, employment, neighborhood revitalization, education, and health and wellness.