John Wallace

Key Areas

Faculty recruitment guidelines • faculty professional development workshops • faculty diversity and inclusion • diversity and inclusion in the curriculum • faculty leadership development programs

Professional Biography

Over the past 30 years, John M. Wallace's work has focused on the well-being of African American children, youth and communities. He is the principal investigator on the University of Pittsburgh Center on Race and Social Problems’ Comm-Univer-City of Pittsburgh Project, an integrated program of research, teaching, and service designed to investigate and ameliorate social problems that disproportionately impact economically disadvantaged children, families, and communities. He is also the principal investigator on the Healthy Living, Healthy Learning, Healthy Lives Project—a community-based participatory research project that examines the correlates, causes and consequences of disparities in children’s asthma. Wallace is also the co-principal investigator on the Pitt Assisted Communities and Schools (PACS) project—a research and demonstration project that mobilizes the resources of the University of Pittsburgh to implement and evaluate a set of two-generation (i.e., parent and child) interventions for students and their parents who live, learn, play and work in Pittsburgh’s Homewood neighborhood.

Wallace’s current work focuses on ESTEAM (entrepreneurship, science, technology, engineering, agriculture and math) education for young people, and the creation of social enterprises to address food access and insecurity, youth unemployment and economic development in low-income African American communities.

According to Research on Social Work Practice, Wallace is ranked #5 for scholarly productivity among African American faculty at the top 25 Schools of Social Work. His research has been published in numerous professional journals, books and monographs. His work has been funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, The Richard King Mellon Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, The Pittsburgh Foundation and others.

Wallace is the co-founder and board president of Homewood Children’s Village, board president of Homewood’s leading community organizing entity, Operation Better Block, and the founder of The Oasis Project—the community and economic development division of Bible Center Church.

His recent awards include being elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (2018), the BMe Leadership Award (2017) the Martin Luther King Distinguished Individual Leadership Award from Coro Pittsburgh (2017), the Racial Justice Award from the YWCA of Greater Pittsburgh (2016), the Chancellor’s Distinguished Public Service Award from the University of Pittsburgh (2015), and the Marilyn J. Gittell Activist Scholar Award (2012) from the Urban Affairs Association.

Wallace earned his AB in sociology from the University of Chicago and his MA and PhD, also in sociology, from the University of Michigan. In addition to being a professor, pastor, and social entrepreneur, Wallace is also a husband and a father. He has been married to his wife Cynthia for over thirty-one years and together they have four adult children.