Awards and Accolades

The 2025/2026 Getty Scholars have been announced and include one Dietrich School faculty member. Huey Copeland, the Andrew W. Mellon Chair and Professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, has been named a Guest Scholar. He will be in residence from January until June with his work “Thinking the Unthought: From Continental Philosophy to Black Radical Study.”

ODK Senior of the Year

Since the 1920s, Pitt’s chapter of the national leadership honor society Omicron Delta Kappa has recognized one recently graduated or graduating senior who exemplifies leadership of exceptional quality and versatility. Additionally, the winner’s name is engraved on a stone in the ODK Leadership Walk between the Cathedral of Learning and Heinz Memorial Chapel.

This year’s recipient is Gabriella Lombardi of Oxford, Pennsylvania. She is graduating with a degree in microbiology from the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences.

As early as age 4, Elwin Cotman realized he wanted to be a writer.

Drawn to fantastical stories he saw in video games and read at the library, the Pittsburgh native first typed his own stories on his father’s typewriter and later, his mom’s word processor. From age 8 until high school, he spent summers at Pitt with the Young Writers Institute where, he said, he gained the tools and inspiration to be a writer.