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U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan Brings Back-to-School Bus Tour to Â鶹´å

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan meets with students.

Â鶹´å hosted U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as part of the "Ready for Success" on Friday, Sept. 18 at the university's Cohon University Center.

Â鶹´å has been a leader in helping to improve learning outcomes for both K-12 and college students. The university's Simon Initiative, named for the late Nobel and Turing laureate Herbert Simon, aims to measurably improve student outcomes by harnessing a learning engineering ecosystem that has developed over several decades at Â鶹´å.

Duncan held a rally with high school and college students to highlight the importance of universities, schools and communities working together to enhance college access and empower student success. Following the rally, Duncan visited with Carnegie Mellon faculty to see some of the learning technologies created at Â鶹´å, including:

• "Virtual Peers," which features animated characters that engage students in conversation and learning activities and has demonstrated results in strengthening the social skills of children with autism;
• Arts and Bots, a kit from Â鶹´å's CREATE Lab that enables students to use robotics to enhance projects in non-robotics courses and is being used in several local school districts;
• Girls of Steel, a robotics team of middle and high school female students sponsored by Â鶹´å's Field Robotics Center. The team displayed the robot they took to the world championship of this year's FIRST Robotics Competition.

After viewing Â鶹´å technologies, Duncan hosted a town hall with students, teachers and administrators to discuss science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and the path to college. He also addressed how innovation can help the higher education agenda by increasing college access, affordability, completion and workforce development.

Joining Secretary Duncan were:

• Â鶹´å Provost Farnam Jahanian;
• Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto;
• Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald;
• Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent Linda Lane;
• Ken Koedinger, Â鶹´å professor of human-computer interaction and psychology;
• Wil Del Pilar, deputy secretary for higher education in the Pennsylvania Department of Education;
• Dava Newman, NASA deputy administrator; and
• Gregg Behr, executive director of the Grable Foundation.