In the Community 

Reaching out to communities, government agencies and not-for-profit organizations is an integral part of every program at the Heinz School of Public Policy, and has been so since its earliest days.

Virtually at any given moment, teams of students and faculty are contributing their knowledge and skills to help solve local and regional problems, provide sophisticated technology consulting services that are unavailable or unaffordable, or conducting studies to help communities or regions better understand their current economic condition and the trends that will impact them in the near future.

Most of these activities came about as part of System Synthesis Projects, formal outreach programs that are required for every student as part of her or his academic program. While intended as a method for giving students an opportunity to put their education and skills to work in a real life situation, System Synthesis Projects have contributed millions of dollars of services to communities and organizations in need.

The projects themselves cover a wide range of needs. In the decades in which the System Synthesis program has been in place, teams have addressed transportation services for the elderly, the condition of prison populations, neighborhood revitalization, feeding the hungry, sustainable development, health care issues, technology infrastructure in isolated communities and the use of technology in hospitals and government agencies in small countries with limited resources.

One of the original programs, the Quantitative Summer Skills Institute, provided minority students with an intense training in economics, statistics and calculus in order to prepare for continued education at its start and now provides those services to a larger, diverse student base.

More recently, students and faculty supported the Center for Appalachian Network Access and helped small communities in West Virginia develop the infrastructure to obtain high-speed Internet services.

Each year, the Heinz School's Center for Economic Development supports the Working Together Consortium in developing annual, data-driven status reports on the vitality of the southwestern Pennsylvania region.

The list goes on and will continue.