April 27, 2026
Creating your community at Pitt can start earlier than the first day of classes, as Makayla Chang (SCI ’28) and Ifemi Olojo-Kosoko (SCI ’26), found out during their experiences at SCI UBelong.
UBelong is a week-long program allowing incoming first-years to get a taste of the city, University, and SCI prior to Welcome Week. Chang explained that the UBelong itinerary includes events with Pitt alumni, SCI upperclassmen and faculty.
“It was a really unique experience. A group of SCI students spent a week together getting to know each other and the school,” Chang said. “Our days usually started with breakfast together, followed by different events like alumni speakers talking about their careers in the industry, upperclassmen introducing us to CS basics, and faculty members presenting campus resources. We also did some fun mini hackathons and a bus tour of Pittsburgh.”
One integral activity for students participating is hearing from Pitt alumni speakers. Chang and Olojo-Kosoko, who both participated in UBelong in August 2024, each remembered hearing from different speakers as an event that stuck with them. Olojo-Kosoko said she found hearing from these alumni extremely helpful.
“I think it's nice to see someone who goes to Pitt and then see them being successful,” Olojo-Kosoko said. “It’s nice to see people who went here and what they do now. I thought that was really great."
The relationships students are able to foster at UBelong also stay with them throughout the rest of their undergraduate career. Chang said the relationships she built at UBelong are everlasting.
“I actually met some of my closest friends at Pitt during that week,” Chang said. “We still study together and work on projects today, so UBelong really helped me find my group early on.”
Olojo-Kosoko, who transferred to Pitt from Pitt-Johnstown in Fall 2024, said UBelong was specifically beneficial because she was a transfer student.
“[Pitt-Johnstown] is completely different; it’s smaller and more rural. And coming here, there's more things to do and it's a bigger campus,” Olojo-Kosoko said. “So doing UBelong one week before everything helped me get used to campus and what to expect. You can read about it online, but that's not the same as actually experiencing it.”
The experience students get at UBelong helps to lay the foundation of the rest of their time at SCI. Chang said her participation in the program helped her build skills in collaboration, communication, and problem-solving, which she later drew on in her first-place finish at the Hacking4Humanity Hackathon. It also helped her become more familiar with campus resources and opportunities, supporting her later involvement with Pitt’s HATLab as a research assistant.
“We had mini hackathons during UBelong where we designed apps for Pitt. That experience helped me practice quickly generating ideas, building a prototype, and presenting it in a short amount of time. It also helped me learn how to collaborate effectively with a team,” Chang said. “I [also] first learned about research opportunities during the UBelong panels and knew that I wanted to get involved since then.”
UBelong also helped Olojo-Kosoko in a similar way. Since her UBelong experience, she has become a student success assistant and peer tutor, earned second place at SheInnovates 2025, won the Spork Award for Innovation at Pitt Design Jam Competition with her team, and become the president of Phi Eta Sigma and the Minority Association in Computing.
“UBelong was my first step at trying to get integrated in the community,” Olojo-Kosoko said. “And then I took those positions and participated in these competitions because I knew that I could get more integrated within SCI and that's what I really wanted.”
UBelong may have been both of these students’ beginnings, but they have taken what they learned and gone so much further. Chang and Olojo-Kosoko, like many other UBelong participants, took the opportunity to get a headstart on life at Pitt and since then haven’t stopped achieving.