Nationality Rooms

The Cathedral of Learning is a 42-story skyscraper that serves as the centerpiece of the University of Pittsburgh's (Pitt) main campus in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Standing at 535 feet (163 m), the 42-story Late Gothic Revival Cathedral is the tallest educational building in the Western Hemisphere and the second-tallest university building (fifth-tallest educationally-purposed building) in the world, after the main building of Moscow State University. It is also the second-tallest gothic-styled building in the world, after the Woolworth Building in Manhattan. The Cathedral of Learning was commissioned in 1921 and ground was broken in 1926 under general contractor Stone & Webster. The first class was held in the building in 1931 and its exterior finished in October 1934, prior to its formal dedication in June 1937. It is a Pittsburgh landmark listed in the National Register of Historic Places.Colloquially referred to as "Cathy" by some Pitt students, the Cathedral of Learning is a steel frame structure overlaid with Indiana limestone and contains more than 2,000 rooms and windows. It functions as a primary classroom and administrative center of the university, and is home to the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Social Work, and many of its departments, as well as the University Honors College. It houses many specialty spaces, including a studio theater, food court, study lounges, offices, computer and language labs, 31 Nationality Rooms, and a half-acre (2000 m2, 22,000 ft2), 4-story-high, vaulted, gothic study and event hall. The building contains noted examples of stained glass, stone, wood, and iron work and is often used by the university in photographs, postcards, and other advertisements.

The Center on Race and Social Problems (CRSP) at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work was designed to address societal problems through research, intervention, and education. It is the first center of its kind to be housed in a school of social work and it is unique in both its multidisciplinary approach and its multiracial focus. The mission of CRSP is to conduct solution-oriented social science research on race, ethnicity, and color and their influence on the quality of life for Americans in the 21st century. CRSP has identified seven major areas of race-related social problems: economic disparities; educational disparities; interracial group relations; mental health practices and outcomes; youth, families, and the elderly; criminal justice; and health. In 2002, the School of Social Work at the University of Pittsburgh established the Center on Race and Social Problems (CRSP) to help lead America further along the path to social justice by conducting race-related research, mentoring emerging scholars, and disseminating race-related research findings and scholarship. Today, CRSP is one of the most productive and exciting centers in the country. In 2010, it hosted the largest conference on race ever held in America. In addition, the center offers a speaker series, summer institutes, and an online directory; publishes demographics reports and the journal Race and Social Problems; and much more.

The University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Latin American Studies, commonly known as CLAS, is a National Resource Center on Latin America. The Center, founded in 1964 as part of the university's Center for International Studies, offers undergraduate and graduate students multidisciplinary training on Latin American and Caribbean studies.

The University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work, one of the 13 schools and colleges within the University of Pittsburgh, is located in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Its offices are in the world-famous Cathedral of Learning, a forty-story, Gothic style edifice that is the signature building of the university. The School of Social Work offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in social work. The master's program at the school is ranked 17th in the nation according to the US News and World Report's Best Social Work Graduate Schools. The school's doctoral program Social Work was created in 1945 and is the second oldest social work doctoral program in the nation. The school also administers the statewide Child Welfare Education and Research Programs from the Oakland Campus and the Child Welfare Resource Center for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

WPTS-FM is a non-commercial radio station owned by the University of Pittsburgh, and offers a mix of student-run programming, ranging from music programming to news and sports coverage. The station operates at 92.1 MHz with an ERP of 16 watts, and is licensed to Pittsburgh. Its transmitter is located on the top of the university's Cathedral of Learning in Pittsburgh.

Friday Nite Improvs, or Friday Night Improvs (FNI), was a long-running weekly improvisational comedy show staged on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The show functioned as an improv jam, performed by improv actors who don't normally work together. FNI was unique in that, in addition to the audience's providing improv suggestions, the performers are all pulled from volunteers in the audience. FNI ended in 2014. A student improv group, Ruckus, has succeeded FNI as a resident improv group on the University of Pittsburgh's campus. Friday Nite Improvs was the longest-running theatrical/comedic production in the city of Pittsburgh. The show regularly featured actors from every improv group in Pittsburgh, and alumni have gone on to act, write, and produce for television and film. Readers of the Pittsburgh City Paper ranked Friday Nite Improvs as the 3rd best place to see comedy in Pittsburgh in the 2004 "Best of Pittsburgh" survey behind the professional stand-up clubs The Improv and The Funnybone.College Prowler ranked Friday Nite Improvs as the ninth best thing about Pitt.

The Stephen Foster Collection and archives are the largest collection of primary source materials on the life and work of composer Stephen Foster. The collection consists of documents and other items of historical interest related to the life and work of Stephen Foster. It resides in the Stephen Foster Memorial at the University of Pittsburgh. Josiah K. Lilly donated an almost complete set of first edition music. The memorial houses sketchbooks and other memorabilia. The process of assembling the collection was methodical, well-organized and funded by various non-governmental and governmental sources. The cost of maintaining the collection is partially funded by the University of Pittsburgh.

The Pittsburgh Quantum Institute (PQI) is a multidisciplinary research institute that focuses on quantum sciences and engineering in the Pittsburgh region. It is a research-intensive cluster. The Pittsburgh Quantum Institute (PQI) was founded in 2012 with the mission “to help unify and promote quantum science and engineering in Pittsburgh”. With financial support from the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, PQI provides leadership throughout Pittsburgh in areas that impact the “second quantum revolution”. PQI members have faculty appointments from Duquesne University, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Pittsburgh in physics, chemistry, and engineering disciplines. The Pittsburgh Quantum Institute currently consists of 100 professors and their groups, a number that keeps growing every year with faculty appointments in the various departments of the member institutions. PQI sponsors and organizes research seminars, panel discussions, public lectures, and outreach activities, and a signature event (PQI20XX in April) that brings in a dozen plenary speakers and a public lecture. PQI supports graduate students with research and travel awards, and sponsors two well-attended poster sessions per year. The PQI website (www.pqi.org) highlights research and researchers, hosts multiple videos, and provides a regular feed of information relevant to the PQI community. PQI also coordinates with other important centers and facilities (Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, Petersen Institute for Nanoscience and Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University Nanofabrication Facility, and the Center for Research Computing).

The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the university's central administration and 28,391 undergraduate and graduate students. The 132-acre Pittsburgh campus includes various historic buildings that are part of the Schenley Farms Historic District, most notably its 42-story Gothic revival centerpiece, the Cathedral of Learning. Pitt is a member of the Association of American Universities, a selective group of major research universities in North America, and is classified as an R1 University, meaning that it engages in a very high level of research activity. Pitt was the third-largest recipient of federally sponsored health research funding among U.S. universities in 2018 and it is a major recipient of research funding from the National Institutes of Health. According to the National Science Foundation, Pitt spent $1.0 billion on research and development in 2018, ranking it 14th in the nation. It is the second-largest non-government employer in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. The university also operates four undergraduate branch campuses in Western Pennsylvania, located in Bradford, Greensburg, Johnstown, and Titusville. The campus is situated adjacent to the flagship medical facilities of its closely affiliated University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and its flagship hospital, UPMC Presbyterian, as well as the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, Schenley Park, and Carnegie Mellon University. Pitt traces its roots to the Pittsburgh Academy founded by Hugh Henry Brackenridge in 1787. While the city was still on the edge of the American frontier at the time, Pittsburgh's rapid growth meant that a proper university was soon needed, and Pitt's charter was altered in 1819 to confer university status on it as the Western University of Pennsylvania. After surviving two devastating fires and several relocations, the university moved to its current location in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood, and by act of the state legislature was renamed the University of Pittsburgh in 1908. Pitt was a private institution until 1966, when it became part of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education. Pitt has produced eight Rhodes Scholars, ten Marshall Scholars, and 297 Fulbright Scholars. Past and present faculty and alumni at Pitt include six Nobel laureates, three Pulitzer Prize winners, three Academy Award winners, various members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, seven United States senators, three United States cabinet officials, and five U.S. state governors. In athletics, Pitt competes in Division I of the NCAA as the Pittsburgh Panthers, primarily as members of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Pitt athletes have received a total of five Olympic medals.

The Stephen Collins Foster Memorial is a performing arts center and museum which houses the Stephen Foster Archives at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. It is dedicated to the life and works of American songwriter Stephen Foster. It is a contributing property to the Schenley Farms National Historic District, is designated as a Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation Historical Landmark, and is a landmark whose significance is designated by a Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission Historical Marker. It is located along Forbes Avenue in the Oakland neighborhood on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh, often referred to as Pitt. The main structure houses the two theaters that serve as performance spaces for the university's Department of Theatre Arts: the 478-seat Charity Randall Theatre and 151-seat Henry Heymann Theatre. The left wing of the building houses the Stephen Foster Memorial Museum and the Center for American Music which contains the University of Pittsburgh's Stephen Foster Collection and archive that includes manuscripts, copies of over 200 of his musical compositions, examples of recordings, songsters, broadside, programs, books, various memorabilia, and several musical instruments, including one of Foster's pianos. The memorial is also home to the university's Ethelbert Nevin Collection and the Society for American Music.

The Log Cabin at the University of Pittsburgh, located near Forbes Avenue, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania adjacent to the school's Cathedral of Learning, serves as a landmark that symbolizes the university's origins on the 18th Century western frontier of the early United States. The current log cabin, estimated to date from the 1820s to 1830s, was reconstructed on the university's campus for its bicentennial celebration in order to represent Pitt's original log structure that served the institution through the school's founding in 1787 to the construction of a brick building sometime in the 1790s. The Log Cabin often appears in images and promotional material, particularly when relating to the history of the university.

Stephen Foster is a landmark public sculpture in bronze by Giuseppe Moretti formerly located on Schenley Plaza in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Formerly sited along Forbes Avenue near the entrance of Carnegie Museum of Natural History, in the shadow of Dippy, a life-size sculpture of a Diplodocus dinosaur, and in close proximity to the University of Pittsburgh's Stephen Foster Memorial, the Foster statue is one of the city's best known and most controversial. It was removed on April 26, 2018 on the unanimous vote of the Pittsburgh Art Commission.The work of art is composed of two figures: a seated Stephen Collins Foster, the famous Pittsburgh-born songwriter who is depicted with a notebook in hand, and an African American man at his feet strumming a banjo, thought to represent "Uncle Ned," a fictionalized slave featured in Foster's song of the same name. The sculpture's pedestal is four feet, three inches, and the figures measure ten feet.