Summerbridge Pittsburgh aims to provide highly motivated, under-resourced students access to quality educational opportunities. During their six-year tenure with the program, students are inculcated with resources to ensure that they fulfill their goals of competitive college matriculation. Our program also inspires the next generation of educators by mentoring bright, enthusiastic high school and college students through one of the most hands-on pre-professional teaching fellowships available.

Each year, Summerbridge welcomes between 30 and 35 new Grade 7 students from middle schools all across the Pittsburgh region – from Penn Hills to North Side, Mt. Oliver to Coraopolis. Likewise, each year Summerbridge brings together cohorts of teaching fellows, tutors, and volunteers to help support these students. Approximately 50 college students and volunteers proudly serve our students in their efforts to achieve their dreams of being their best academic selves and attending college.

The Summerbridge school-year program continued to make a positive impact on our students last year with the largest participation in our one-on-one tutoring program at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as our Super Saturday program. In addition, our college-bound program continued to expand. Ninety percent of the Summberbridge Class of 2015 are attending college this fall at schools like Northwestern, Boston College, and Morehouse.

In our summer program, we continued to make positive changes in both the teacher training and student academic realms. This summer, the program piloted the Collaboration and Leadership Framework, a set of tools that define individual success and foster community experience at Summerbridge. On the teacher-training side, we continued to employ veteran teachers as instructional coaches to encourage, nurture, and evaluate our Teaching Fellows throughout their six-week intensive teaching experience. We piloted a new tool for evaluation, Torsh TALENT, a cloud-based platform that supports the capture, upload, storage and management of in-classroom video content. Applications for Torsh TALENT are still being considered, but access to a catalog of examples for best teaching practices will improve our teacher training program.

Student summer program highlights included our annual High School Options and Career Fairs, and a reimagined Meet-the-Teacher Night. Perhaps most exciting was the launch of our new literacy initiative, #WNR “Why Not Read?” Through the generous donations of Sewickley Academy students, Summerbridge acquired a library of over 300 titles for students to borrow throughout the year. The purpose of this program is to help our students increase college-readiness through greater literacy.

Now in its 23rd year, Summerbridge Pittsburgh is dedicated to increasing opportunity for our students through college access programming, combating summer learning loss through a rigorous summer educational experience, and improving our schools through intensive teacher training. These efforts are only made possible through the shared vision and generous support of our philanthropic partners.