The Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center (http://www.pghhistory.org) is  Pennsylvania's largest history museum, and operates in association with the Smithsonian Institution. Starting with the fall 2005 term, Cal U has a “strategic alliance” with The Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center to foster applications development at the prominent institution.  

A steering committee meets regularly to review progress against an IT Project Plan and identify new areas of opportunity. The committee includes CIS faculty representatives – Dr. Gary DeLorenzo, Dr. Gina Boff and Professor Lisa Kovalchick – as well as Heinz History Center administrators Bob Stakeley, David Grinnell, Susan Melnick, Lisa Lazar, Art Louderback, David Halaas and Bonnie Sanford. Paul Topolosky, owner and president of the consulting firm Gateway Resources, round out the committee.  The committee members identify specific areas of need at the Center, and projects in which Cal could contribute through student projects and internships.  This is extremely valuable where students get practical industry experience in the field.

The CIS faculty and students have implemented real-life application solutions for the Center through classroom assignments and student projects. Examples are: 

• Analyzing and designing a uniform, normalized database management system for library and archive ascensions such as books, photographs, clothing, furniture and maps;

• Merging spreadsheets and Access database files into the uniform, shared database management system;

• Design and development of the web-based volunteer application; and

• Systems analysis activities which captures the accession workflow in detail, resulting in a dataflow and process flow diagram on the whole process.

For any questions on the Heinz History Center initiative, please feel free to contact Dr. DeLorenzo.