Photo courtesy of M. Bond Nickles III Patricia Moore- Pastides In August 1998 Patricia Moore- Pastides and her husband, Dr. Harris Pastides, moved to Columbia, as Dr. Pastides was becoming dean of the School of Public Health at USC. Their daughter Katharine stayed behind in Amherst, Mass., to finish her senior year in high school. Their son Andrew made the move to begin his four years of high school in Columbia.

Patricia Moore- Pastides was born in Middletown, Conn., between Hartford and New Haven, where her father was a career employee of Southern New England Telephone Company (SNETCO). She has an older brother, John, and two younger brothers, Richard and Robert.

After eight years in Middletown's public schools, Moore- Pastides spent her four high school years in an all- girls Catholic school, also in Middletown. In high school, she was active in the Christian Action Coalition and the musical theater.

As a sociology major, Moore- Pastides attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. While in college, she took a summer internship in Providence, R.I., organizing a neighborhood association among tenants in the Federal Hill area.

Immediately after graduation, Moore- Pastides worked in the Worcester Public Inebriate Program, which is when she decided she needed to earn a master's degree in public health.

Moore- Pastides enrolled at Yale University for her MPH, and on her first day of class, she met her future husband. He was attending Yale for his PhD in public health.

With her master's degree, Moore- Pastides worked at the Peter Claver Child Care Center. Her daughter Katharine was born then, and Moore- Pastides stayed with the child care operation as their planner.

She became the executive director of Health Line Corporation Wellness Services in the Sisters of Providence Health System in Holyoke, Mass.

She went with her family on her husband's first sabbatical at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. They stayed in Papagou, Greece, just outside Athens. Moore- Pastides took language lessons and cooking courses, which is when she began to appreciate the health considerations of the Mediterranean diet.

On her husband's second sabbatical, Moore- Pastides and her family lived in Geneva for nine months, while her husband worked with the World Health Organization.

After the move to Columbia in 1998 when her husband became dean of USC's School of Public Health, her daughter Katharine interned with Trustus Theater and enrolled at Emory University as an art history major.

After graduation from Emory, Katharine earned a master's in museum education at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She interned at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. She works in the Getty Villa in Malibu, Calif., as an education specialist. The Getty Villa is connected with the nearby Getty Museum, the world's richest.

Son Andrew is an equity stage actor in New York City. This week he is reading for a part in an Aaron Posner play at the Two River Theater in Redbank, N.J.

Moore- Pastides has taken on illiteracy, and she is active with Cocky's Reading Express, an outreach project began in 2005. Her USC students have volunteered to visit elementary schools in every corner of the state, reading books aloud to children, and sharing the importance of learning to read.

The children receive a book to take home and make a promise to Cocky to read the book to their families and friends. Cocky's Reading Express, the only university mascot- sponsored literacy program in the country, gave away its 10,000th book last winter.