MISSION AND HISTORY | Breakthrough at Pitt

OUR MISSION

Increase academic opportunity for highly motivated, underserved students and get them into college ready to succeed

Inspire and develop the next generation of teachers and educational leaders.

Our vision is to create an empowering educational experience that results in equitable access to higher education for our students and prepares our teaching fellows for education sector roles, enabling all of our students, teaching fellows, and instructional coaches to achieve their full potential as learners, teachers, leaders, and agents of change in their communities.

HOW WE HELP

1-ON-1 TUTORING

COLLEGE-BOUND MENTORING

VOLUNTEER FOR SUPER SATURDAY

1978

Lois Loofburrow founded the first Breakthrough program under the name Summerbridge. Summerbridge was designed as a six-week summer program for middle schoolers at University High School in San Francisco. The multi-year program was tuition-free—the cost of participation was the student’s full commitment.

1979

Summerbridge staffed its math department entirely with high school teachers, with professional teachers as mentors. The students-teaching-students and teachers-coaching-teachers model was born.

1980

Summerbridge hired its first college-aged teachers.

1990

Summerbridge New Orleans was founded with support from the directors of Summerbridge San Francisco and the affiliate model was created.

1991

Summerbridge National was founded with the intent of launching more independently-run programs across the country. A new program in Manchester, New Hampshire, and a second site in San Francisco, opened for the summer.

1992

Ten new programs opened for the summer.

1994

Twenty-six Summerbridge programs operated across the country.

2001

Summerbridge National became the Breakthrough Collaborative national office.

Now

Breakthrough Collaborative has 24 affiliate sites across the country and one in Hong Kong that collectively serve over 5,000 middle school students and over 1,000 teaching fellows each summer. The Breakthrough Collaborative national office is based out of Oakland, CA.