In Pittsburgh’s steel making heyday, coal heated to superhot temperatures inside beehive ovens produced coke, which created the intense heat inside the blast furnace necessary for the raw iron, limestone and other ingredients to react and remove impurities and create a stronger metal. When the heat is turned up by student entrepreneurs strengthening their business ideas inside the Pitt Blast Furnace, another kind of Coke is needed. Your donation at this level helps us provide food and drinks during Blast Furnace classes and guest lectures.

When a steel mill’s blast furnace is tapped, the result is a steel ingot that is then rolled, milled or cut into a finished product. At the Pitt Blast Furnace, student entrepreneurs learn that their initial idea must undergo continual refinement before it can be a viable business. Your donation at this level will help fund materials for Blast Furnace coursework where students learn and apply the fundamentals of starting a business.

Braddock is home to one of the last remaining steel mills in the Pittsburgh region. It’s named after a colonial-era British general who was killed at the hands of French and Indian fighters in the Battle of the Monongahela. His aide, a 23-year-old Virginian named George Washington, had two horses shot from beneath him that day. How different would our history be had one of those lead balls took him out instead? Your donation at this level will help us host receptions and events across Pitt’s campus and develop promotional materials to help recruit students into the Blast Furnace who have ideas that can help change the course of history and help places like Braddock get back on its feet.

Once the crown jewel of the U.S. Steel Corp, steel from Homestead Works is in the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower and countless other skyscrapers, bridges and ships around the world. Today, it’s the site of the Waterfront shopping center. Your donation at this level can help us shop for much-needed supplies – white boards, printers, monitors and other technology upgrades to the Blast Furnace space inside Webster Hall.

We were going to call this the Andrew Carnegie Level, but the university next door has dibs, so we chose Carnegie’s former business partner turned competitor and rags-to-riches entrepreneur in his own right, Henry Clay Frick. After Frick’s falling out with Carnegie, he built the Frick Building in Downtown Pittsburgh right next to Carnegie Steel’s office and intentionally made it taller so Carnegie’s office would be in its shadow. At the Blast Furnace, our student entrepreneurs support each other, but also have a fierce competitive drive. Your donation at this level will help our student startup teams to participate in business plan competitions outside the region.