FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Doug Root
412-338-2657

Pittsburgh, Oct. 25, 2007 – In a strong endorsement of the contributions made in education and regional economic development by one of the country’s most prominent universities, The Heinz Endowments has committed more than $22 million to Carnegie Mellon University to create a new School of Information Systems, expand teaching and research in green chemistry, and encourage more innovations in robotics and computer science.

The package of grants for the new school and for green chemistry, a total of $21.5 million, responds to the university’s capital campaign and will be paid out over the next seven years. The school will be included in a new college that also will house a restructured H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management. The goal is to enable the university to provide highest-quality, graduate-degree programs that study the strategic implications of technology in business and in important social issues. A total of $13 million in new support and previously approved grants will go toward increasing the new college’s endowment, allowing the hiring of new faculty and renovating classroom and conference facilities.

In the green chemistry field, new funding and previously approved grants will allow $8.5 million to go to an endowment increase and program expansion.

“This significant level of support for Carnegie Mellon points out the degree to which we believe Pittsburgh’s universities hold the key for moving the region forward in several important areas,” Endowments Board Chairman Teresa Heinz said today in an announcement of the approved grants. “This is not just a general gift to a university capital campaign. It is the result of a considerable effort working with Carnegie Mellon officials to choose programs that best fit our strategies for getting the benefits of technology and research into communities, for environmental protection and for sustainable economic development.”

The capital campaign-support funding was the largest of 219 grants totaling $45.4 million approved at a two-day meeting of the foundation’s board, which ended today. This grant making brings the total awarded by the Endowments this year to more than $83 million.

Other significant grants to Carnegie Mellon that fall outside the capital campaign include $650,000 to enable faculty, students and working professionals from the university’s Field Robotics Center to refine innovations they have developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Urban Challenge Robotics Competition. The prestigious event, drawing university-corporate teams from around the world, is designed to spur world-class technology development and commercialization of that technology for community benefit. In another bid to strengthen the university’s leadership position in research, a $400,000 grant will go to the Department of Computer Science to support the emerging field of human-centered computing, where the most advanced science also has strong market potential.

In other significant funding approved in this week’s meeting, the Endowments reaffirmed its longstanding support for cultural and performing arts institutions in the city, especially in Pittsburgh’s downtown Cultural District. More than $3.7 million in grants will go to the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and eight other organizations: the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, City Theatre, Pittsburgh Ballet, the Pittsburgh Opera, Children’s Museum, Mattress Factory, River City Brass Band and the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania. In addition, the historical society will receive a $2 million increase in its endowment.

While most of these grants help to ensure that Downtown will continue as the region’s center for arts and cultural offerings, a new funding strategy aimed at improving the numbers and diversity in downtown residency as well as preserving older buildings also was approved.

A $1.75 million Program Related Investment will go toward a $3 million loan fund run by a division of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership in an attempt to address the problem of much of the condominium and apartment construction boom being directed to the high-income market. The loan fund will provide gap financing to owners of smaller buildings who commit to renovating vacant upper floors to provide housing in line with more moderate incomes.

The program will begin with a pilot project of 6-8 buildings that will supply potentially 60-70 attractive rental units for more moderate incomes in the Downtown market. Since many of the buildings are architecturally significant, a side goal of the program is to protect them by increasing their value. The funding effort comes through the foundation’s Downtown Now Strategic Alliance, where several program areas are collaborating to more effectively reach the goal of a thriving Downtown with benefits extended to outlying neighborhoods.

A similar neighborhoods-connection goal is in play on the city’s North Side where operating support was renewed for Sarah Heinz House, the youth development center that recently completed an $11.4 million addition and updating of its facilities. The $1.3 million approved today will help fund operations and pay for educational materials that explain the green features of the building. Founded by the Heinz family in 1913, the center has been a significant force in the life development of thousands of Pittsburgh children from city neighborhoods and suburbs throughout Allegheny County.

The Endowments also continues its strong support for the Pittsburgh Public Schools with $825,000 in new funding directed through the Pathways to Educational Excellence Strategic Alliance, which is dedicated to supporting the district’s academic-reform plan through a complimentary-learning strategy. The work of the alliance includes grants for a health-and-wellness program, an audit of preschool programs and parent-education materials. The largest chunk of funding – $500,000 – will go to support culturally responsive education demonstration projects in several schools that will enable artists to engage students in art forms that reflect their culture and ethnicity. The program will target African-American children.

On a higher-education track, the Endowments has recommitted to a decades-long program benefiting women attending regional colleges and universities. Students at 15 university-college campuses throughout the region will now benefit from an updated and greatly expanded program that has been renamed as the Vira I. Heinz Scholarship Program for Women in Global Leadership.

The program, which had changed little since its beginnings in the 1950s, has been redesigned to foster more leadership skills in women in their sophomore and junior years of college. A $325,000 appropriation will be used to fully implement the program, which provides $5,000 scholarships for three women at each of 15 university campuses. Also added is the requirement that the women scholars complete a travel-study plan to increase their knowledge of intercultural differences and global issues. They also will test their favored career track in an international setting.

In Environment Program grant making, the Endowments continues its work moving the region forward beyond being known for numbers of certified green buildings to stand as an international model for using those buildings to educate users on the benefits of sustainable living. Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, along with the Carnegie Science Center, have each received $100,000 grants to pursue community education work on the value of greening. Phipps will use the money to fund a design phase of a project to turn the facility into the world’s first “Living Building,” which involves creating self-sustaining structures that eliminate the building’s impact on the environment, including zero net-energy and water usage, and a contaminant-free, indoor environment. The science center will use its grant to support a selection process for an architect to design an Eco.Experience Project, an interactive exhibit focusing on the region’s rivers to engage visitors on topics of sustainable living, ecology and biology.

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