Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh has announced a $3 million grant from the PNC Foundation to enhance and expand access to the university’s summer pre-college programs in STEM, arts, humanities, and social sciences fields.

The grant will fund the university’s Summer Academy for Math and Science (SAMS), which dates back nearly 50 years but was launched as a formal program in 2000. The grant will enable 75 high school students annually to participate in an immersive, project-based summer residential experience designed to help them develop a deeper understanding of math and science. The funding also will provide financial education programming to those students and their families.

In addition, the grant will support an expansion of the Leadership, Excellence, Access and Persistence (LEAP) pilot program focused on the arts and humanities. Launched in 2021, LEAP engages underrepresented Pittsburgh-area high school students through an intensive, non-residential summer experience, as well as year-round programming that continues through the end of college.

“The highly regarded Summer Academy for Math and Science is the cornerstone of Carnegie Mellon’s dynamic pre-college programming, providing talented high school rising seniors with a learning experience that is often not available in their schools,” said CMU president Farnam Jahanian. “Through the PNC Foundation’s generous support, students will be able to envision a future in STEM fields they may otherwise would not have been exposed to, which will help increase the diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and voices in areas that have traditionally been underrepresented.”

(Photo credit: Carnegie Mellon University)