The Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Sciences (PGSS) is a five-week summer residential program of intensive study and research for talented high school students. The primary goal of the PGSS is to encourage these talented students to pursue careers in the sciences by providing them with opportunities for enrichment not normally available through their high schools. Carnegie Mellon competed with other universities in the state for the privilege of hosting this rigorous and prestigious program and has conducted it successfully, through the Mellon College of Science, each summer since its inception in 1982.

Students are selected to participate in the PGSS based on a number of criteria, including academic rank, standardized test scores, personal essays, letters of recommendation and evidence of sustained involvement in extracurricular activities in science or mathematics. Participants take "core" courses in biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics and physics, as well as a laboratory course in one of the sciences and a number of elective courses. Each student also works on a self-guided team research project, the results of which are presented at a scientific symposium and published in the Journal of the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Sciences. The PGSS also includes a strong social component, which helps to reinforce the notion that science is an enterprise that is often performed in a community of people of diverse backgrounds.

The first director of the PGSS program was Albert Caretto, who is now professor of chemistry, emeritus. Caretto was succeeded in 1993 by Peter Berget, associate professor of biological sciences. The current PGSS director is Barry Luokkala,  teaching professor and director of undergraduate laboratories in the Physics Department. Luokkala taught the PGSS physics laboratory course and coordinated the physics team research projects each year since 1986, before succeeding Berget as director in 2001. Two other members of the Carnegie Mellon physics faculty, Professor Rich Holman and Special Lecturer Stacey Benson, have been active participants in the PGSS program in recent years. Holman has been teaching the physics core course, which emphasizes special relativity, since 1993. He has also taught various elective courses and was the advisor of a physics team research project for the first time this year. Benson has been co-teaching the PGSS physics laboratory course and has led a physics team project each year since 2001. Dennis Haggerty, who teaches physics at Beaver County Community College, is an alumnus of our department (master’s degree in instrumentation) and was recruited in 2002 to co-teach the PGSS physics laboratory. Other members of the Physics Department who have served as PGSS faculty include Professor James Russ, professors emeriti Richard Edelstein, John Fetkovich and Ned VanderVen, and former physics lecturer and electronics engineer Robert Findley (deceased). In addition to physics faculty, a number of our graduate students have been involved with the PGSS team projects, and more than 20 of our undergraduate physics majors have been teaching assistant/counselors for PGSS over the years.

The PGSS program has a profound impact on the students, both academically and socially. They find themselves, for the first time in their lives, in an environment in which everyone is academically talented and excited about math and science. They discover that they are not self sufficient, but must learn from one another. They quickly form lasting friendships, which is often difficult for them to do in their high schools. They discover (if they do not already know) which of the sciences is most interesting to them, and most of them go on to successful careers in the sciences. Alumni of the PGSS program are accepted to the best colleges and universities in the country. Although the program is not used overtly as a recruiting tool, the PGSS students are so impressed with their experience here that more of them choose to attend Carnegie Mellon each year, on average, than any other school.