Catherine Cordova

Dr. Catherine Cordova serves as Director of Community Engaged Learning in the David C. Frederick Honors College at the University of Pittsburgh.  In this role she oversees interdisciplinary service initiatives and their intersection with research and community engagement.

Catherine has over a decade of leadership and teaching experience in higher education, and has held leadership roles in the non-profit sector and a range of national organizations.  She has extensive experience in curriculum development and instruction as it relates to community engaged learning, and has developed and implemented an Honors curriculum on Mentorship and Leadership, and led the embedding of a service lab within Composition courses.  

As President Emeritus of the International Mentoring Association, Catherine conducts international mentor trainings and serves on the Board of the Peer Mentor Advisory Council for the Campbell University Rose Center for Peer Mentorship within the Lundy-Fetterman School of Business.  Additionally, Catherine has partnered with the U.S. and Bolivian Embassies to conduct mentor training, and is a certified mentoring consultant.  Her research on peer mentoring and community engagement, especially in Honors, has been published in various venues including 2023 Routledge text, Reciprocal Mentoring. 

As a first-generation student, and a former Honors student herself, Catherine understands the important intersection of community engagement, college, and career skills. She has served as Vice President of Strategic Initiatives and Educational Impact at a non-profit focused on higher education access for underserved and migrant worker communities.  She has also designed and overseen various innovative programs meant to assist students in their community engagement and has background in Honors and college student programming, orientation, first-generation research, and student engagement initiatives.