From the classroom to the real world
Sam Franklin knew two things after he wrapped up a two-year stint in the program: He wanted to help improve educational opportunities for students in underresourced districts and he needed some help to do it.
Franklin found the chance to accomplish both things after he enrolled in the graduate public policy program at Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. Early in the program, a guest lecture by Mark Roosevelt, then the superintendent of the Pittsburgh Public Schools, prompted Franklin to organize a team of students to complete their required consulting project with the struggling district.
“All students at Heinz have to do a consulting systems project with a team in order to graduate,” Franklin said. “It’s one of the great things about the Heinz program. The lecture sparked an idea to work directly with the Pittsburgh school district.”
The eventual result? The establishment of the , a school specializing in STEM education for students in grades 6 through 12, in 2009.
The goal of the Heinz College consulting project was to design a school capable of accepting students at many different academic levels and providing all of them with the necessary amount of support to succeed. The group examined everything from student outcomes to curriculum to scheduling, and once the project was completed and presented to the district, Roosevelt was ready to implement the students’ work. Franklin, who completed his master’s at Heinz in 2007, signed on with the district as project manager to shepherd the concept to fruition.
Pittsburgh SciTech, as the school is known, graduated its first class in 2013. Its enrollment for the 2023-2024 school year was 610.
