In the early 1970s, Robert Boudreau invited young musicians from Costa Rica, Haiti, Jamaica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Nicaragua and Puerto Rico to come to Pittsburgh , where they lived at the orchestra’s Stephen Foster House and studied at Pittsburgh universities (Pitt, Duquesne and Carnegie-Mellon). The AWSO sponsored their stays until they gained their degrees. Many returned to their home countries and became teachers and professional musicians; and a few stayed in the US, including Pedro Diaz, who became the principal English horn player with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and Fernando Meza, now head of percussion studies at the University of Minnesota.