Gelfand Center

AI Scholars (AIS), a CS Pathways initiative, is a grant-funded, merit-based program. AIS provides rising high school seniors who have historically been excluded from STEM fields the opportunity to explore artificial intelligence with Carnegie Mellon faculty, staff, and researchers who are leaders in the field.  AI Scholars will take a deep dive into the world of artificial intelligence through a combination of classroom instruction, hands-on research projects, faculty lectures, and industry engagement with leading tech companies around the country.

Contact: Natalie Hatcher, Program Director
Email: nhatcher@andrew.cmu.edu
Site: https://www.cmu.edu/pre-college/academic-programs/ai_scholars.html 

Alice is an innovative block-based programming environment that makes it easy to create animations, build interactive narratives, or program simple games in 3D. Unlike many of the puzzle-based coding applications Alice motivates learning through creative exploration. Alice is designed to teach logical and computational thinking skills, fundamental principles of programming and to be a first exposure to object-oriented programming.The Alice Project provides supplemental tools and materials for teaching using Alice across a spectrum of ages and subject matter with proven benefits in engaging and retaining diverse and underserved groups in computer science education.

Alice is used by teachers at all levels from middle schools (and sometime even younger) to universities, in school classrooms and in after school and out of school programming, and in subjects ranging from visual arts and language arts to the fundamentals of programming and introduction to java courses.

The Architecture Explorations program encourages Pittsburgh youth to look closely at their built environment, be open to creative expression, ask questions, think critically, and understand civic responsibility - all through the lens of architecture. Architecture Explorations is a collection of architecture-based extracurricular and academic enrichment programs for students in kindergarten through high school, offered through Carnegie Mellon's School of Architecture. Our organization partners with several Pittsburgh communities, schools, and museums to provide an array of architecture education programs. Whether you are a student, parent, counselor, teacher, or community organization, we would love to hear from you and help devise a plan to provide a program that is tailored for each appropriate age-group and organization.

The Arts Greenhouse is a hip-hop music education program for Pittsburgh teens that is affiliated with the Carnegie Mellon’s Studio for Creative Inquiry. With the help of faculty and students, as well as local hip-hop performers, teens write, compose, and then record songs in a state-of-the-art recording studio. Through the process teens develop musical and verbal skills, gain familiarity with historical and contemporary issues, and form connections that open new routes to community participation and to higher education.

A variety of camps and clinics are offered each summer. Programs include FITT Camp for children aged 7-14, soccer camp for children ages 5-14, Learn to Swim Classes and more!

Are you a high school student who is interested in pursuing a future in engineering? Do you want to learn more about it? Then join us at Be an Engineer! This Fall semester program designed especially for students in 9th through 12th grades comprises an overview of Engineering at CMU, a panel discussion and Q&A with CMU Engineering students, and lab tours with current students who are involved in co-curricular organizations and activities. Come get a first-hand look at a variety of engineering disciplines at Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering.

Contact: Rita Canton
Email: rcanton@andrew.cmu.edu 
Site: https://engineering.cmu.edu/education/outreach/programs/be-an-engineer.html

Each spring the Department of Biological Sciences Outreach Program hosts high school students from several local districts in southwestern Pennsylvania to participate in hands-on experiments such as a Molecular Biology Transformation Experiment, or designing a project to determine the quantity of protein in a variety of food items. 

The experiences are designed and coordinated by Dr. Carrie Doonan. Carnegie Mellon graduate and undergraduate students assist the high school student teams as they work through each experiment.

CMU CS Academy began when co-founders, and professors in SCS, David Kosbie and Mark Stehlik were approached by Pittsburgh Public School teachers, asking for a computer science curriculum to meet their students' needs.

From those conversations, David and Mark set out to achieve one goal - access for all to high-quality computer science education for anyone who wants it. For that reason CMU CS Academy is, and always will be, free for schools to offer to their students.

The project was initially run as a course on CS Pedagogy in SCS but after the first year that model transitioned to our current model as a non-profit organization at CMU that employs CMU students.

Contact: Erin Cawley
Email: ecawley@andrew.cmu.edu 
Phone: 412-268-3117
Site: https://academy.cs.cmu.edu/, https://www.cs.cmu.edu/outreach/programs/cs-academy

Carnegie Mellon’s Pre-College Summer Programs mirror the undergraduate experience, giving rising high school juniors and seniors the opportunity to explore their interests and passions while receiving instruction from acclaimed Carnegie Mellon faculty and staff. We provide a holistic and robust student experience that includes academic and personal development both inside and outside of the classroom in order to prepare students for the future.

Email: precollege@andrew.cmu.edu
Phone: (412) 268-5914
Site:https://www.cmu.edu/pre-college

Computer Science Scholars (CSS), a CS Pathways initiative, is a grant-funded, merit-based program. CSS provides rising high school juniors who have historically been excluded from STEM fields the opportunity to explore computer science with Carnegie Mellon faculty, staff, and researchers who are leaders in the field.  CS Scholars will take a deep dive into the world of computer science through a combination of classroom instruction, hands-on research projects, faculty lectures, and industry engagement with leading tech companies around the country.

Contact: Natalie Hatcher
Email: nhatcher@andrew.cmu.edu
Site: https://www.cmu.edu/pre-college/academic-programs/computer-science-scholars.html

This learning management system offers hundreds of hours of research-based, outcomes-driven curriculum. Students and teachers can freely use the site to learn and earn badges in a variety of topics, including robotics, computer science and related fields. The site has nearly 27,000 users who have earned more than 2 million achievements.

Contact: Jesse Flot
Email: jbflot@cmu.edu
Site: https://www.cs2n.org/curriculum

The Educational Technology Community is a unique project of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center made possible through the generous support of the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation and Grable Foundation. The network focuses on exploring and developing experimental educational initiatives in Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Eastern OH through collaboration. 

The goals:

• Transform teaching and learning approaches by sharing educational applications and curricular innovations developed at the ETC with the community.
• Co-create, develop and deliver teacher and student training in the use of ETC crafted applications and experience.
• Grow Professional Learning Communities of teachers who share their experiences, ideas and expertise while they try new pedagogy, applications, and e-tools.
• Work with school districts, their teachers, and students already using ETC educational application to expand and improve their use in their schools.

Every academic semester the ETC holds a Playtest Day when graduate student teams make available their project work for guests for playtesting. The work is “in progress” with the playtests useful to help improve the final project delivery. The term playtest indicates the use of an experience or game by a guest to see whether it is performing as expected. Guests have in the past tested from three to six projects over the course of two hours, along with an optional tour of the ETC and a meal break that starts off or ends the visit. Some projects have experiences requiring two or more guests at once, while others are meant to be used alone.

FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team 3504, the Girls of Steel, was founded in the fall of 2010 at Carnegie Mellon University's Field Robotics Center. Initially, the team consisted of 24 girls from 12 different schools, and 4 different educational options (homeschool, public school, cyber school, and independent school). The FRC team welcomes applications from girls in grades 9-12 in the greater Pittsburgh area, regardless of financial status. Mentored at CMU by faculty, staff, students, and parent volunteers, the team competes in annual regional FIRST robotics competitions, has received numerous awards, and regularly participates in community outreach events with robot demonstrations and/or activities for children.

The FRC team is running its 12th season this year (2021-2022) with 46 girls from 20 different schools and offers multiple programs such as the 8th/9th grade FIRST Tech Challenge team opportunities as well as FIRST LEGO League Challenge and Explore teams for elementary and middle school students in greater Pittsburgh.  

Mission statement:  Girls of Steel strives to empower everyone, especially women and girls, to believe they are capable of success in STEM.

Mission: The Girls of Steel is more than a robotics program. Our mission goes past building robots for competition; we work hard to give students the skills that will last far beyond their high-school years. *For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology 

Email: girlsofsteelrobotics@gmail.com
or Elizabeth Kysel, Lead Mentor kysele@andrew.cmu.edu
Site: https://girlsofsteelrobotics.com/

The Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Sciences (PGSS) was established in order to provide a summer enrichment experience in the sciences and mathematics for talented Pennsylvania high school students and to encourage them to pursue careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering or mathematics. The program provides instruction in biological sciences, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and computer science, with emphasis on collaborative learning and team research.

PGSS is an ungraded summer enrichment program which is in session for five weeks, seven days per week. All students are required to live on the CMU campus in a college dormitory. It is an intense program in which the students take lecture courses in biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and computer science. In addition, they are expected to participate in their choice of one laboratory course in either biology, chemistry, physics, or computer science, and to engage in team research projects in one of the above five major discipline areas. The students also have the opportunity to take elective courses which may vary from year to year, to participate in several field trips, and to be further enriched by a distinguished guest lecture series.

The program costs are supported by the PGSS Campaign, Inc. - alumni, parents, and friends of the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Sciences who have generously provided funds to make this year's PGSS program possible.

LEAP is an educational partnership between Carnegie Mellon University and City Charter High School that uses the arts, humanities, and social sciences to empower under-resourced high school students to become agents of social change. It provides a supportive, non-hierarchical learning environment for students to engage with issues of equity and justice in their lives and communities. 

In this year-round program, students learn with and from local artists, activists, and CMU faculty who are working to create positive change in the world. They participate in hands-on learning experiences focused on personal reflection, artistic expression, and civic engagement. Students work individually and collectively to cultivate self-efficacy, a love of learning and creating, and the confidence to envision and build a better future. LEAP works alongside City Charter High School to help students construct a plan for their lives after high school and then acquire the resources they need to achieve their goals.

Contact: Sarah Ceurvorst
Email: sceurvor@andrew.cmu.edu
Site: https://www.cmu.edu/leap/

This olympiad is a contest in which high-school students solve linguistic puzzles. In solving the problems, students learn about the diversity and consistency of language, while exercising logic skills. No prior knowledge of linguistics or second languages is necessary. Professionals in linguistics, computational linguistics and language technologies use dozens of languages to create engaging problems that represent cutting edge issues in their fields. The competition has attracted top students to study and work in those same fields. It is truly an opportunity for young people to experience a taste of natural-language processing in the 21st century.

There is NO participation fee!

The National Robotics Engineering Center provides tours for schools and groups to show kids the real-world application of the robotics concepts they learn in school. Participants see all of the robots and technology that the centers develops for use out in the world from different sectors like agriculture, defense, maintenance and more. *NREC has restrictions and a process to sign-in due to it being a secure research facility.*

Contact: Vu Nguyen
Email: vnguyen@nrec.ri.cmu.edu
Site: https://www.nrec.ri.cmu.edu/index.html

Improve learning outcomes for individual learners while collectively advancing our larger understanding of human learning.

The vision behind OpenSimon is a more integrated and easier-to-use toolkit, used and expanded by a larger community of educators to drive deliberate, iterative improvements in education. This approach supports educators as citizen scientists, and helps the people who support them — at universities and companies that make educational products — provide help that is grounded in the science of learning.

Contact: Erin Czerwinski
Email: eczerwinski@cmu.edu
Phone: 412-268-8577
Site: https://www.cmu.edu/simon/open-simon/toolkit/tools/index.html

The  CMU Physics Department offers a variety of Outreach opportunities for high school students that can be done remote, onsite at schools, and/or onsite at CMU. Topics include: General Physics Topics, Astronomy and Cosmology, Biology & Physics, Coding & Computational Physics, and Partical & Nuclear Physics. 

This free computer security gamified education program offers original educational content built on a capture-the-flag framework created by CMU security and privacy experts. Learners of all skill levels gain access to a safe and unique hands-on experience as they reverse-engineer, break, hack, decrypt, and think creatively and critically to solve challenges and capture digital flags. They learn and practice cybersecurity principles with picoCTF's noncompetitive features, then put their skills to the test in one of picoCTF's hacking competitions.

Contact: Megan Kearns
Email: mkearns1@andrew.cmu.edu
Site: https://picoctf.org/

Project Ignite is a student-run outreach organization at Carnegie Mellon University offering an interdisciplinary project-based educational program for high school students in the greater Pittsburgh area. Ignite provides a valuable opportunity for students to work in a team and gain hands-on experience planning and executing a project with funding for materials provided to each group. The vision is that all students, regardless of socioeconomic standing or prior academic achievement, will have the opportunity to participate in the program. The ultimate goals are to expose students to subject areas that they would otherwise be unable to explore, and to allow students to pursue a new or existing interest that they lack the knowledge and/or support to engage with on their own.

High school students meet with their project advisors for a weekly 3 hour workshop over a 10 week period during the spring semester. The majority of project work is done during these workshops, though students continue to work on the project throughout the week. At the end of the 10 week program, the high school students present their projects to friends, family, and the Carnegie Mellon and Pittsburgh communities in a project showcase.

Email: projectignitecmu@gmail.com
Site: https://projectignitecmu.org/

Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy (CMRA) is a research, development, and outreach component of the Robotics Institute. CMRA studies how educators can use robots to teach Computer Science, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (CS-STEM). Their mission is to use the educational affordances of robotics to create CS-STEM opportunities for all learners. They fulfill their mission by developing research-based solutions that are classroom-tested and foreground CS-STEM concepts.

CMRA offers programs that include teacher training, curriculum, virtual tools, and certifications for both K-12 Robotics Education and Workforce Development. They collaborate with regional and national community to bring their programs to underserved populations in sustainable ways. All programs are delivered through their CS-STEM Network learning management system which enables educators to create free accounts and track participant progress.

Contact: Jesse Flot
E-mail: jbflot@andrew.cmu.edu
Phone: (412) 681-7160
Site: https://www.cmu.edu/roboticsacademy/

The Robotics Education Lab is a central resource to support courses and individual projects. Equipment includes manipulators, mobile robots, electronics & mechanical fabrication benches, Lego, a video editing workstation, machine vision systems, and more.

Anyone affiliated with CMU and interested in robotics is welcome. Stop by and see what the lab has to offer. Lab address: Newell-Simon Hall 3206 x8-5561.

This programs gives young BSA scouts the opportunity to earn the Robotics Merit Badge as part of Alpha Phi Omega's Merit Badge University days.

Contact: Vu Nguyen
E-mail: vnguyen@nrec.ri.cmu.edu
Site: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/outreach/programs/robotics-merit-badge

As SAMS Scholars, students engage in a rigorous curriculum taught by CMU faculty and staff who are deeply committed to student success. The program allows students to develop a deeper understanding of STEM via traditional classroom instruction, through hands-on projects, and sustained engagement with world-renowned faculty and skilled staff mentors. In addition to their academic experiences, students also have the opportunity to collaborate and develop meaningful relationships with peers from across the country.

High school students must apply. High school sophomores and juniors from underrepresented communities will develop a deeper understanding in areas such as mathematics, biology, and physics at SAMS. 

Contact: Roshawn Lang
E-mail: rowshan@andrew.cmu.edu 
Site: https://www.cmu.edu/pre-college/academic-programs/sams.html 

The Summer Engineering Experience (SEE) is a week-long summer experience for students between the ages of 13-16 who are interested in math and science. SEE gives students hands-on experience in different forms of engineering.

SMART-ER works with local Pittsburgh community organizations in underserved areas to train members of organizations to teach youth and young adults the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for robotics technician positions. This PA Registered Pre-Apprenticeship Robotic Technician program consists of five microcertifications focusing on five foundational areas: mechanical, electrical, software, fabrication and robotics integration. Programs include free training for the trainers, initial materials and support for a successful program. The program has reached over 200 participants in more than eight communities.

Contact: Vu Nguyen
E-mail: vnguyen@nrec.ri.cmu.edu
Site: https://www.cmu.edu/roboticsacademy/Research/SMARTER.html

SPARK Saturdays is a Saturday workshop series created by volunteers studying Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University that aims to introduce beginners to concepts about electrical and computer engineering and expose them to engineering as a potential career choice.  Topics include, but are not limited to, Mechanical Logic, Programming, Smart Light, and Radio Building.

SPARK Saturdays is structured to be six sessions, held on campus about every other Saturday. Each session lasts two hours and consist of a learning portion and a hands-on activity, led by CMU students. The entire SPARK Saturdays series is held once every semester, and aimed at high school students. No prior knowledge on the part of the students is assumed. The sessions are structured to introduce students to a wide variety of electrical and computer engineering concepts to help them decide whether this might be a good career path for them.

Mobile Labs is an adaptation of SPARK Saturdays, still geared toward high school students, but brought to schools. The labs are typically held after school for interested students.

Dozens of students participate in each program annually; approximately 20 each semester for SPARK.

Email: eceoutreach@gmail.com
Site:http://eceoutreach.ece.cmu.edu/

SCS partners with this annual student-run symposium at Fox Chapel Area High School. It has a focus on computational biology.

Contact: Phillip Compeau
E-mail: pcompeau@andrew.cmu.edu
Site: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/outreach/programs/stem-junction

SUCCEED is a 5-day program for rising 10th graders that is designed to complement what students have studied in school and provide you with opportunities to expand your understanding of energy, the environment, and how those relate to climate change. At the end of the program, the student will be able to answer a variety of question related to these topics, such as: What is climate change? What is the role of engineering to solve the climate change challenge? Where & how is your electricity generated? What careers could you have in climate, energy, or the environment? The program includes a variety of experiments, field trips and activities organized by PhD students from Carnegie Mellon University.

Contact: succeed-program@lists.andrew.cmu.edu
Phone: (412) 256-8162 
Site: https://cedmcenter.org/succeed/ 

High School Day is an annual event in which approximately 250 Pittsburgh high school girls are invited to CMU’s campus. It is one of our largest outreach events and collaborates with CMU professors and students from various campus organizations. The girls are able to participate in activities related to electrical, mechanical, civil, biomedical, material science, and chemical engineering. The event aims to help young girls get a better idea of what engineering entails and offers them guidance and advice for pursuing engineering. At the same time, it allows CMU students and faculty to share their knowledge and passion for engineering and inspire young women. The event has been a great success in the past and continues to grow. Each year, we have had more and more students participate in the event and we expect the trend to continue for next year.

VAV delivers a beginner and intermediate robotics course to summer camp participants. The students also learn elementary programming skills, which they continue to learn throughout the year via in-school and after-school delivery. The program develops digital literacy while providing safe spaces for vulnerable youth during out-of-school time.

Email: cspathways@andrew.cmu.edu
Site: https://www.vavpgh.org/