R.K. Mellon 

General Richard King Mellon and his wife, Constance Prosser Mellon, were among the Pittsburgh area's most prominent civic leaders and philanthropists; the Richard King Mellon Foundation was created in 1947. The Mellons held a longtime interest in urban and social issues and hired distinguished public servant John Gardner and successful executive Robert Greenleaf as their urban affairs consultants. These innovative-thinking advisors to the Foundation stressed the importance of management teamwork, involving the broad community in decision making, and improving the caring and quality of the nation's institutions. Mr. Greenleaf urged the Mellons to fund a school for urban management, saying, "The typical American city is in need of many kinds of specialized help which university resources can provide: research, consultation, trained people."

In 1965, the Mellons sponsored a conference on urban problems. At that forum, they began discussions with both the University of Pittsburgh and the Carnegie Institute of Technology (as Carnegie Mellon University was then known) to create a school to examine those problems. The R. K. Mellon Foundation asked Carnegie Tech to "study the problem of what sort of urban affairs school they might create if the opportunity were presented."

In 1967, Carnegie Mellon University was formed through the merger of the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the Mellon Institute of Research. A year later, professors William Cooper and Otto Davis presented their proposal for the School of Urban and Public Affairs (SUPA) to the R. K. Mellon Foundation. Seeing that Carnegie Mellon was committed to such a school, the Mellons sent a proposal to Carnegie Mellon's President Stever to fund the school of urban affairs with an initial funding grant of $10 million. Through the generosity of the Mellons and their Foundation, SUPA was established on November 1, 1968. The school's purpose was to train effective public managers, administrators and community leaders who could arrive at creative solutions to the challenges facing America's changing cities.

In 1992, SUPA was renamed in honor of Senator H. John Heinz III, who had been killed a year earlier in an airplane crash. It was especially fitting, as Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Mellon and H. J. Heinz - the founders of those three families' fortunes - had been friends when they were still vigorous young men. The Mellon family and their foundations have continued to be exceptionally generous to the Heinz School and Carnegie Mellon University. As of 1999, they had contributed more than $583 million to the university, its schools and research centers in terms of 1996 purchasing power, with $47 million going specifically to the Heinz School.

At the time of the school's founding, the Mellon Foundation said, "It is the hope of the Trustees (of the Richard King Mellon Charitable Trusts) that this school which has been formed will become a nationally prominent contributor of exceptional people and ideas to the field of urban affairs. We see a great opportunity for this school to provide assistance to the city, the state and the nation in the massive effort which is needed to educate, train and motivate managers in the field of urban affairs." We have indeed fulfilled that expectation.