On the grounds of a century-old hospital, the reimagined AHN Suburban is helping Northgate students and their community

In the photo above by Ben Filio for Remake Learning, Bellevue Elementary students arrive for a day of experiential learning at AGH Suburban.

Jeanelle Stiteler has a passion for engineering and design. Lately, she’s been busy working at AHN Suburban, helping to design and implement wayfinding signage so that employees and visitors can navigate this creative campus with ease.

Among the people finding their way along the hallways at Suburban is Angelo Perminter, who has been assisting Chef Darryl Robinson with prep work for his catering company – one of several food businesses based at Suburban.

On other floors of this former hospital, roboticists are innovating at BotsIQ, while engineers at Inglis and Testa Seat are designing adaptive technology, and more than two dozen other startup companies are hard at work.

Suburban has become a generator of jobs and civic pride in Bellevue. And for young people like Stiteler and Perminter— both of whom are actually teenage students at Northgate High School — it’s a powerful stepping stone toward the future.

These students and many more are now doing internships at Suburban, earning course credit at their high school while building professional skills and solid experience in jobs that interest them. The internship program is just one of the ways that Northgate School District is making the most of the unique community asset that Suburban has become.

THE POWER OF TRANSFORMATION

How did this remarkable place — a hybrid mashup of business incubator, healthcare hub and educational resource — come to be?

Suburban General Hospital served the families of Bellevue borough for a century. But when the steel mills closed, this once-booming hospital began “struggling to be supported by a depleting population,” says Matt Bauer, director of operations at Suburban, who serves as Stiteler’s internship supervisor.

Eventually, resources were pulled and the hospital was shuttered. For a decade it sat empty, looming over Bellevue like a painful reminder of the community’s struggles.

Slowly, though, an idea emerged: What if the hospital could be repurposed to offer some healthcare services to local families but also support other community goals? Allegheny General Hospital’s former president Jeff Cohen, who now serves as Chief Physician Executive for Community Health and Innovation at Allegheny Health Network, began brainstorming with community partners including Northgate superintendent Dr. Caroline Johns, realizing they had common needs.

The community’s economic struggles were impacting public health and education. What if Suburban could be used to help on both fronts?

The thinking, Bauer says, was this: “How do we bring in early startup companies or nonprofits that are very mission-focused, mission-aligned with the nonprofit health system, and how do we open the doors to the community, so they benefit? Because ultimately, all those pieces uplift Bellevue.”

MAKING SPACE FOR POWERFUL LEARNING

Northgate School District was an early tenant at Suburban and they now occupy the entire seventh floor. Since the earliest days of brainstorming the building’s redevelopment, the district has thought creatively about making the most of this resource as a site for internships and hands-on STEM learning.

One key to making impactful internships possible: The district now uses block scheduling, offering students four 80-minute class periods per day instead of the traditional day of eight or nine short periods.

“You can’t do an internship when you’re going there for 40 minutes. By the time you would get your laptop turned on, it just wouldn’t be enough time,” says guidance counselor Zack Burns, who runs the internship program. “Block scheduling helps in terms of the amount of time that students can leave.”

From there, the district began designing the internship program to ensure that students would learn real skills and earn course credit in the process.

“We changed our program of studies so that we can qualify anything that meets the 120 credit hours as an accredited internship,” says Dr. Jeff Evancho, Northgate’s director of partnerships and equity, who is based at Suburban.

“I work directly with the counselor at the high school to say, ‘OK, here’s a new partner. Here’s some of the needs that they may have — they need some help in marketing, or they need some help working statistics and crunching spreadsheets, or they need help with food service,’’ Evancho says. “Then Zack works to identify and place those kids.”

NEW GOALS AND NEW SKILLS

Not every student at Northgate chooses to do an internship. And those high schoolers who express an interest need to earn their jobs. Burns offers help preparing a resume, then the student is interviewed by a prospective employer.

Once the student is hired, they have an initial meeting with Burns and their new boss to discuss three clear learning goals for the internship. Throughout the experience, the student keeps a log of all that they’re learning.

“We don’t want students to just be interns just to put on their resume that they did an internship. We want them to get skills,” Burns says. “That said, you’re an intern. If they tell you to take out the trash, that’s OK. You can take out the trash. But we also want them to have an experience that’s not just like, ‘Hey, we’re sending kids out for free labor.’”

Not all internships happen at Suburban. “They can say ‘I know someone who is willing to hire me on. Can I do this for credit?,” Burns says. “If a supervisor and site can meet that, then absolutely, we add them to our partner list.”

But many of those who are eager for work experience do find their way to Suburban, which is just a four-minute drive from the high school. And many, like Stiteler, are thriving there.

“She’s a go-getter,” says Bauer of his intern Stiteler. “You just kind of say, ‘Hey, Jeanelle, this is what we need to do. This is where we have to get to.’ She takes it upon herself to go meet with the people and create really cool and fun looking designs.”

Recently, a staff member at Suburban met with Stiteler to create wayfinding decals for the building’s physical therapy office.

“In the conversation, she said, ‘Jeanelle, what do you do at the high school?’ She had no idea Jeanelle was a student. She assumed she was a teacher,” Bauer says. “Kudos to Janelle for being professional enough to be considered a teacher before she even graduated.”

That kind of interaction is just what Burns hopes for when he helps students find internships that spark their interest.

“At 17, my resume just had grass cutting on it,” Burns says. “These internships allow students to put something on their resume — some real quality skills and sometimes certifications, too.”