Nonprofits Archives - Page 12 of 16

Late last year, the University of Pittsburgh quietly marked an economic milestone when NanoVision Diagnostics became the 100th start-up company to launch through Pitt’s Office of Technology Management. The promising cancer detection system teams a decade of faculty research with an executive-in-residence, and so far the new company has attracted $1.5 million in investment. Beyond …

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Region

Pittsburgh Today & Tomorrow 2014 Regional Annual Report

by PQ Staff

How does Pittsburgh compare with these 14 similar cities?: Denver // Kansas City // Milwaukee // St. Louis // Minneapolis // St. Paul // Indianapolis // Detroit // Cincinnati // Cleveland // Charlotte // Richmond // Washington, D.C. // Philadelphia // Boston The 2014 Pittsburgh Today & Tomorrow report, produced by Pittsburgh Today, analyzes recent …

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Education

A Question of Duty

by PQ Staff

Editor’s note: Pittsburgh Quarterly invited the heads of the region’s top independent schools to address, in 150 words or less, the following question: Your students are fortunate to be receiving an education at one of the region’s finest schools. What message of responsibility for the greater society does your school seek to instill in them? …

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Region

Considering a Pittsburgh Tradition

by Douglas Heuck

It was two years ago that Bill Dietrich, our longtime Pittsburgh Quarterly history writer, died and left $500 million to community institutions. I mentioned Bill to out-of-towners recently while explaining Pittsburgh’s unusual social fabric. He’d studied Pittsburgh’s industrial titans and the legacies they left that still shape our city. If he’d grown up elsewhere, Bill …

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Region

Raising a Glass (and a Local Industry)

by Tim McNulty

It is near mayhem inside the headquarters of Pennsylvania Pure Distilleries, a drafty warehouse next door to a glass factory along an industrial stretch of Shaler. A forklift topples over a pile of cardboard boxes waiting to be filled with vodka bottles. Giant fermentation tanks are hot with bubbling CO2. A leg of pantyhose—stuffed with …

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Region

Voyaging through the hollow

by Adam Eisenstat

Pittsburgh’s Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway doesn’t exactly rank among the eight manmade Wonders of the World. It may not even rank among the eight wonders of Pittsburgh. But even busways have birthdays, and its 30th is a fine occasion to consider this distinctly local specimen of infrastructure and urban curiosity. It’s basically a …

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Region

Public Interest Radio

by Ben Schmitt

Marco Cardamone offered a blunt assessment in recalling the transformation from Duquesne University’s radio station WDUQ to 90.5 FM WESA, an all-news National Public Radio format: “We got pretty clobbered,” he said with a chuckle. “The backlash was much greater than we anticipated. You always lose part of an audience in a radio ownership transition, …

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Region

The Path to Sustainability

by Julia Fraser

Bike lanes and buses, clean water and clear skies, and prosperity without poverty and its corrosive effects—the vision of a sustainable city and region can seem like a Sim City blueprint for the ideal future. Until the nagging obstacles of reality are considered. And nowhere is that more true than in older, former industrial regions …

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Region

Visions of Pittsburgh’s Future

by PQ Staff

Twenty-five years ago, Pittsburgh hosted the Remaking Cities Conference, an international gathering of architects, visionaries and dignitaries, including England’s Prince Charles, the honorary co-host and keynote speaker. This year, Oct. 15-–18, 2013, Carnegie Mellon University will host the Remaking Cities Congress, with 300 invited urbanists and thought leaders who will again focus on the post-industrial …

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Region

What we say (and do) about the environment

by Jeffery Fraser

Lori Rieger and Kim Haynes are strolling Point State Park on a July afternoon that is sunny, hot and humid enough to notice. It’s the kind of day that invites ozone pollution to accumulate at levels that violate federal air quality standards, which is something Pittsburgh and the region do on an annual basis. But …

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Education

Grading the Scorecard

by Matt Stroud

Although Sarah Twing showed diverse talents in high school in Penn Laird, Va., she knew her passions would need to be tempered by financial considerations as she looked toward college. Originally from Uzbekistan, her adoptive parents agreed to pay half of her college tuition. The other half would rest on her shoulders. Those who were …

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Education

The STEM Gap

by Evan Pattak

In the decade ending in 2020, United States employers will create about 2.1 million jobs in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) as well as the professional sector, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. As America moves to assert or retain leadership in such fields as robotics, unconventional energy plays and next-generation computers …

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Nonprofits

For the children and the community

by Charles Rosenblum

Mist emerges with an audible hiss from the vertical stainless steel poles of “Cloud Arbor,” the new artwork by Ned Kahn in the redesigned Buhl Community Park on the North Side across from the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. A delighted toddler runs toward it, to assess the wafting, San Francisco-like fog that collects and disperses …

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Education

Raising the Bar

by Ben Schmitt

Going to law school as a get-rich plan? Maybe you’ve come to the wrong place. That’s the message the University of Pittsburgh’s new law school dean, William M. “Chip” Carter Jr., relays to incoming students or existing ones seeking guidance. This is no cliché in Carter’s mind: The law is a calling. He’s serious, driven …

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Education

The Challenge of Independent Education

by PQ Staff

Whether it’s the tepid economy or how to adapt to changing technology, educational institutions across the country face a changing landscape. In this issue, we ask the heads of some of the region’s top independent schools to respond to this question: “What are the most significant challenges facing independent schools and how is your institution …

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Education

Putting Pitt to the Test

by PQ Staff

At the University of Pittsburgh, 2012 will be remembered. It was a year of celebration—with Pitt’s 225th anniversary being commemorated with reflections on the past and focus on the future. It was a year of ordeal—with a series of bomb threats that threatened the lives and fabric of the Pitt community. It was also a …

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Education

The Arts Equation

by Marianne Davis

Bouncing, energetic, at times maddeningly social college students erupt into their academic class on Friday morning wearing black leotards topped with layers of pastel tank tops and an odd assortment of what can only be called shoes because they are on their feet. They seem to verge on dancing every minute as they walk fresh …

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Region

African Americans in Pittsburgh: The data in black & white

by Jeffery Fraser

Some 1,800 Greater Pittsburgh men and women spent a half hour on the phone late last year answering an expansive battery of questions about themselves, their circumstances, and views on everything from how tax dollars should be spent to how happy they are. It was, by any standard, the most ambitious attempt in more than …

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Region

African Americans in Pittsburgh: The newcomer experience

by Ben Schmitt

In 24 years, Marisa Bartley had never heard the “n-word” hurled at her by a white person. One day, it hung in the air in the lobby of a Verona bank, where she worked as a branch manager. A disgruntled male customer stood on the other end with an enraged expression. “It was the n-word, …

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Education

A Crisis in Higher Education

by PQ Staff

The headline is the same across the nation, and it describes a seemingly inexorable vise that is tightening on colleges and universities. They are attacked for being too expensive and their relevance is questioned as students graduate with higher debt and lower prospects in a tight economy. As public aid is slashed and private donors …

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Region

Pittsburgh’s Newest Immigrants

by Christine O'Toole

Blackberry in hand, Tek Rimal counts the minutes as he rides the bus from his job at BNY Mellon to his Bellevue apartment. Like many young families, Tek and his wife Chandra tag-team the care of their son, Anuj, with precision timing. Tek rushes home from his day shift so his wife can work a …

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Region

The Young People Myth

by Jeffery Fraser

In the not-too-distant past, Border Guard Bob was thought to have been a good idea. He was the amusing face of a short-lived marketing campaign to staunch the flow of Pittsburgh’s young to other cities, a problem perceived by some of the region’s civic-minded to be grave enough to warrant aggressive action. Bob, a fictitious …

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