Published on: September 30, 2026
An ATIXA Tip of the Week by Ketwana D. Schoos, Ed.D., M.S.Ed., M.A.
As Vice President for Institutional Compliance at the Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC), and on behalf of my incredible Title IX team, I want to thank ATIXA for recognizing our work with the 2026 ATIXA Best Practice and Institutional Impact Award for “Building Safety, Stability, and Success: A Community-Based Domestic Violence Survivor Support Model.”
We are humbled by this honor and proud of the strong community partnerships that have made this work possible. We are grateful for the opportunity to share our model with the broader ATIXA community.
The Immediate Support Survivors Need
For my team, a support gap became especially clear during the COVID-19 pandemic. Domestic violence reports increased significantly, while survivors faced circumstances that made accessing safety and support even more difficult. At the time, our response at CCAC largely centered on providing resources and helping students seek academic flexibility. But we recognized that those measures alone could not address the circumstances survivors were navigating. An email and a resource guide weren’t enough.
With funding from Pennsylvania’s It’s On Us grant program, we began concentrating resources on domestic violence survivor support. What might someone need during the first 72 hours after leaving a domestic violence situation? We developed the New Beginnings bundle, an idea from our graduate intern, with input and support from the Women’s Center and Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh.
The bundle includes immediate resources such as a cell phone and service plan, a Visa gift card, toiletries, affirmation cards, and information connecting survivors with college and community resources. We are grateful to Goodwill for donating gift cards to the initiative.
Closing the After-Hours Support Gap
We soon identified another gap. A community college office operating primarily during business hours can’t replicate the around-the-clock crisis infrastructure available in a residential setting. A survivor might need emergency housing at 3:00 a.m., not the next business day.
Rather than trying to replicate crisis services we were not equipped to provide, we partnered with Crisis Center North to close the after-hours gap. Through a grant-supported hoteling agreement, Crisis Center North connects our students with emergency accommodations using its established crisis response practices and resources when our staff members are unavailable.
We knew where CCAC could respond directly and where community expertise could fill the gaps. We built a model around what survivors need, what our college can provide, and where community partners can offer specialized support beyond our expertise or capacity.
Building the Infrastructure Behind the Model
Building a sustainable model also required investing in the people and capacity behind it. Title IX Coordinator Alyssa Pietropaolo, J.D., brought legal and survivor-advocacy experience and helped expand our college’s community partnership strategy. CCAC also added two Civil Rights Investigators and Deputy Title IX Coordinators, Zachary Hodgerson and Shanai Sloan, M.Ed., while grant-funded graduate interns provided additional capacity for programming, outreach, and partnership development.
We also integrated community partners into the college’s broader prevention and response efforts. Organizations such as Pittsburgh Action Against Rape participate in training, programming, and outreach so students and employees can learn about available resources directly from the organizations that provide them. CCAC has also increased awareness through mandatory reporting education, expanded web and campus resources, and tabling events.
A Best Practice Other Institutions Can Adapt
The most transferable part of CCAC’s approach is not any one resource or partnership. It is the process we used to build the model: identify what survivors actually need, assess what the institution can provide directly, establish community partnerships to fill remaining gaps, and develop the internal infrastructure needed to coordinate and sustain that support.
Institutions can adapt this approach to their size, resources, community, and existing services. The goal is not to recreate a crisis center or provide every service internally. It is to know where institutional capacity ends, identify community partners with the expertise to meet additional needs, and create clear pathways connecting survivors to that support.
Leadership That Makes Innovation Possible
Building that kind of model also requires institutional support. CCAC President Quintin B. Bullock, D.D.S., created an environment in which our team could identify needs, pursue new approaches, and build the partnerships and capacity to support our students.
We are fortunate to have a president who helps remove barriers and publicly champions this work. He even rearranged his schedule to join me in Baltimore to accept the award.
Removing the Choice Between Survivors’ Safety and Their Future
I ground our work in a simple principle: survivors should not have to choose between their safety and their future. For CCAC, putting that principle into practice meant moving beyond providing resources to building a coordinated support system around survivors’ needs.
We are honored to receive the 2026 ATIXA Best Practice and Institutional Impact Award, and I look forward to celebrating with the ATIXA community at the 2026 ATIXA Annual Conference in Baltimore this October.
To learn more about CCAC’s programs and resources, visit our Dating and Domestic Violence Resources. Please feel free to contact me directly with any questions.