Heinz School

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Heinz School Letterhead

Mission To advance the broad public interest through focused research and outstanding graduate education.
Established 1968 by Richard King Mellon
Official name H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy And Management
University Carnegie Mellon University
School type Private Public Policy School
Dean Mark Wessel
Location Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Enrollment 200 graduate
Web site Heinz School

The H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management (The Heinz School) at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States is one of the nation's top-ranked public policy schools. It is named after Pennsylvania U.S. Senator H. John Heinz III (1938-1991).

The Heinz School educational process integrates policy, management, and information technology course work. Coursework emphasizes the applied disciplines of empirical methods and statistics, economics, information systems and technology, operations research, and organizational behavior. In addition to full-time, on campus programs in Pittsburgh and Adelaide, Australia, the Heinz School offers graduate-level programs to non-traditional students through part-time on-campus and distance programs, customized programs, and executive education programs for senior managers.

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[edit] History

Richard King Mellon and his wife Constance had long been interested in urban and social issues. In 1965, they sponsored a conference on urban problems, in which they began discussions with the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Tech (as Carnegie Mellon University was then known) to create a school focused on public affairs. In 1967, Carnegie Mellon President H. Guyford Stever, Richard M. Cyert, Dean of the then Graduate School of Industrial Administration, and Professors William Cooper and Otto Davis met and formed a university-wide committee to discuss creating a school that would train leaders to address complex problems in American urban communities. Davis was asked to draft a proposal to create such a school.

In 1968, William Cooper and Otto Davis presented the final proposal for the School of Urban and Public Affairs (SUPA) to the Richard King Mellon Foundation. The proposal found favor with R. K. Mellon and he became strongly committed to creating such a school. The R. K. Mellon Foundation sent a proposal to President Stever to finance it with an initial grant of $10 million, and on 1 November 1968, President Stever created the School of Urban and Public Affairs with William Cooper as the first Dean. Subsequent Deans include Otto Davis, Brian Berry, Alfred Blumstein, current Carnegie Mellon Provost Mark Kamlet, Linda Babcock, Jeffrey Hunker, and current Dean Mark Wessel.

In 1992, Teresa Heinz (later Teresa Heinz Kerry) donated a large sum of money to the school, which was then renamed in honor of Mrs. Heinz's late husband, Senator H. John Heinz III. Senator Heinz, heir to the H. J. Heinz Company fortune, had been killed when his small private plane crashed a few years before.

The Heinz School is headquartered in Hamburg Hall and has a branch campus in Adelaide, Australia that offers masters degrees Public Policy and Management and Information Technology, a North Hollywood Center in Los Angeles, CA as part of the masters degree program in Entertainment Industry Management, and is opening a center in Washington, DC on Capitol Hill for students in the Public Policy and Management masters program.

The Heinz School focuses on the application of quantitative analysis, statistics, economics, operations research, decision science, and information technology to tackle public sector problems in a practical manner. The faculty of the Heinz School is often considered the best in the country in such application.

In 2007 the Heinz School received a grant from the Heinz Foundations that will integrate it with a School of Information Systems within a new college. The structure and name of this new college has yet to be determined.

[edit] Rankings

In the most recent US News and World Report Graduate School rankings, the Heinz School was ranked 10th overall among schools of public affairs. Of the 253 schools of public affairs across the nation that were surveyed, the Heinz School ranked:

  • 1st in Information and Technology Management;
  • 4th in Public Policy Analysis;
  • 10th in Environmental Policy and Management;
  • 10th in Health Policy and Management.

The Medical Management program was ranked 4th by Modern Healthcare Magazine in the 2006 rankings of the top business graduate schools for physician executives.

[edit] Education

Presently, the Heinz School has an international reputation for excellence in its educational programs:

Full-Time Master Programs

Mid-Career Master Programs

The Heinz School also offers a PhD in Public Policy and Management, an accelerated masters program for qualified Carnegie Mellon undergraduates, several joint degrees with the Tepper School of Business and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as other executive education programs.

The hallmarks of every Heinz School education is the skills-based curriculum, the integration of technology, and the required capstone final project: "the system synthesis." This final project is done instead of a traditional thesis and allows the students to apply their problem solving skills to a real-world client's problem. Graduates of the Heinz School are successful in the public sector, private sector, and nonprofit sector.

[edit] Research

The Heinz School maintains an international reputation of excellence in the fields of criminal justice policy and management, health policy analysis, information systems and technology, management science, policy analysis, and social welfare policy. The Heinz School is also affiliated with several research centers:

  • Center for Arts Management and Technology
  • Arts and Cultural Observatory
  • Center for Behavioral Decision Research
  • Center for Economic Development
  • Institute for the Study of Information Technology and Society
  • Institute for Social Innovation
  • National Consortium on Violence Research
  • Program for Research and Outreach on Gender Equity in Society
  • Software Industry Center
  • Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems
  • CyLab

Finally, the Heinz School carries on the university tradition of interdisciplinary collaboration by working with departments throughout Carnegie Mellon University.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Fenton, Edwin (2000). Carnegie Mellon 1900-2000: A Centennial History. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press. ISBN 0-88748-323-2. 

[edit] External links