As a senior at Wilkinsburg High School with no intent of going to college, any cares of what career path I would be taking and no computer experience at all; it would have been hard to imagine that I could end up where I am now.

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The InfoLink program of Southwestern Pennsylvania had a successful nine-year run, ending in 2002, as an information technogy-based, school-to-college-to-work program. InfoLink is unique because it provides a model of how universities can be key partners with schools, businesses, and government in giving high school students, who are below the poverty line, a badly needed head start in college and professional careers.

Housed at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School of Public Policy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, InfoLink was an intense summer-long information technology training program for low-income, urban high school juniors and seniors. Over the course of 16 weeks, the students were given the opportunity to learn an advanced set of software packages, participate in group projects, and also apply their new skills in paid internships with local high technology and technology-using firms and agencies. InfoLink ran an amazing nine years on grants from foundations that typically only fund starting up programs, not running them. They kept on funding InfoLink because of its obvious success in an area that has had few successes.

The purpose of this Web site is to help other universities and communities build InfoLink-like programs. We wish to pass along our program and curriculum designs, our administrative processes and materials, the results of a three-year external evaluation, and lessons learned. Ninety-three percent of InfoLink graduates pursued post-secondary education, many in information technology fields. The bottom line is that InfoLink really works. If we want our financially and role-model poor, but very smart youth to get university educations, it makes sense that universities take active roles in getting those youth on campus and helping them become successful students. That is what InfoLink does.

We invite you to learn more about the "InfoLink experience".

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