At CMU, service isn’t just the right thing to do. Nurturing and strengthening the communities where our neighbors live, work, and play is an essential part of every student’s education, from day one through graduation.

On Service Saturdays, students volunteer to help Pittsburgh non-profits such as Computer Reach, which refurbishes and donates used hardware to underserved schools and non-profits, and Family House, which offers a home away from home for families of patients visiting Pittsburgh for life-saving medical treatment.

CMU students are free to serve in the way they find most meaningful. There are more than 40 student-run organizations on campus whose primary purpose is community service. Some of these include FORGE (Facilitating Opportunities for Refugee Growth and Empowerment), which provides mentoring, tutoring, and support for immigrant families and their children; Habitat for Humanity, which builds houses for low-income families; Camp Kesem, which runs a summer camp for kids whose parent or parents have cancer; and Strong Women Strong Girls, a national mentorship program for girls and college women in the Pittsburgh area.

Learn how the Office of Student Leadership, Involvement, and Civic Engagement (SLICE) connects CMU students with service organizations and activities.

When CMU faculty and students collaborate with government and neighborhood leaders, non-profit organizations, and businesses or startups, it is an expression of our deep commitment to societal impact.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit during the last academic year, CMU faculty leveraged years of research and expertise in forecasting nationwide influenza activity to predict the spread. Through a partnership with Facebook and Google, the research team estimated the spread of the virus weeks in advance. CMU researchers used those estimates to provide forecasts that helped hospitals, first responders, and other health officials anticipate the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations and ICU admissions likely to occur in their locales several weeks in advance. As a result, local, regional, and national leaders were ready to respond and deploy resources to the communities where the virus hit hardest.

Motivated by the need to improve the region’s air quality and community health, CMU researchers were recently awarded a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to monitor regional pollution. They deployed air quality monitors in neighborhoods throughout Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, gathering hyperlocal, real-time pollutant levels for which the EPA had no existing data. The resulting data was valuable for determining exposure levels, implementing traffic control strategies, and tracking progress in reducing pollutants.