By Amanda O’Rourke
SUNBURY — Volunteers hoping to found the Valley’s first and Pennsylvania’s 15th community college are in search of a governmental body to champion their effort.
For two years, Lenaire Ahlum, president of the Susquehanna Valley Community Education Project, has asked all of the Valley’s county commissioners for financial support for a community college, but so far they haven’t been willing to take the financial leap.
“This is an investment in our future,” Ahlum said. “This is what will turn this area around.”
Snyder County Commissioner Chairman Joe Kantz said he would not support the project if commissioners are required to be involved.
“At this point in time, right now, this is not a good time for county commissioners to be asked to put up another large sum of money,” said Kantz, a graduate of Susquehanna University.
In Montour County, commissioners support the community college, but say the cost is prohibitive.
“We could be looking at $1 million each,” Commissioners Vice Chairman Jack Gerst said of each county’s contribution toward the new school. “There is no way we could possibly reach that monetarily.”
Ahlum estimated the operating budget for a community college expected to enroll as many as 3,000 students would hover at about $5.2 million annually — less than one-fifth the average operating cost of Valley school districts, whose 2009-10 budgets averaged $27.3 million.
Accordingly, organizers have approached commissioners in Montour, Northumberland, Snyder and Union counties for a $1.5 million commitment over the next five years — a burden that could be spread among municipalities throughout participating counties and one that is required if the community college plan is to gain approval from the state.
Sponsoring regions would see a 50 percent reduction in tuition at $80 a credit, Ahlum said, compared with about $160 a credit for students from non-sponsoring regions.
Both Misericordia University and Luzerne County Community College offer classes in Northumberland County. In Misericordia’s case, only students from Northumberland County can attend classes limited to nursing, business administration and professional services at $320 per credit.
Whether Valley county commissioners see the need for a new community college, the need and desire for one already has been established by a recently released needs assessment study that found 78 percent of respondents would consider or promote attending a new community college in the region if they or a member their household pursued higher education.
The study consisted of surveys that targeted several groups in Montour, Northumberland, Snyder and Union counties, including high school students in ninth through 12th grades and their parents; 2007 and 2008 high school graduates; adults age 21 and older, both employed and unemployed; business and industry; and the overall community.
“If our overall goal is to increase our regional assets and to invite new industry to headquarter here,” Ahlum said, “then we have to make an investment that says, ‘We believe in our people. We believe we have something to offer.’”
Organizers envision what is referred to as a higher education center, one in which a community college and four-year, public university would coexist in the same building, providing community college students a smooth transition from achieving their associate’s degree to pursuing a bachelor’s degree.
“What we’re looking at does not exist in the state of Pennsylvania,” Ahlum said.
To date, Ahlum said the college’s warmest reception has come from city officials in Sunbury, who have offered the Susquehanna Valley Community Education Project office space in City Hall.
Project organizers have been exploring property options in Sunbury at the former 36,000-square-foot Northumberland County human services building, Fourth and Market Streets, and the former 120,000-square-foot Stitches factory building, 300 Race St.
Both buildings could be used, Ahlum said, to establish a kind of urban campus setting.
“We want to be where the sponsors would have us,” Ahlum said. “In Sunbury, there’s geographic centrality and there’s also a population density here to help make enrollment consistent.”
It’s an idea city Councilman and Susquehanna Valley Community Education Project committeeman John K. Shipman likes.
“A college or university just adds a level of prestige to a community and I think it would do that for Sunbury,” Shipman said. “It would bring students into town to study and some would perhaps move there. It would bring people into town every day.”
Properties have been considered.
Surveys of possible students have shown interest.
Yet the lack of interest from county commissioners has frustrated Ahlum.
“The frustration is, Will these local leaders say it’s time to invest in our future and be proactive?” Ahlum said. “We need a champion from one of the county commissioner boards to say, ‘We need this.’”
In Cambria County, that champion was former Republican Commissioner Kathy Holtzman, who helped forward efforts there more than 15 years ago to found the Pennsylvania Highlands Community College.
Holtzman said the county’s sagging economy made her realize the community college was needed.
A 1977 flood left the county with a 14.4 percent unemployment rate, according to the state Center for Workforce Information.
“We had lost an enormous amount of steel jobs,” Holtzman said. “They were the core of the jobs here in the county and they were good quality jobs, so you were able to graduate from high school and with a high school education you were able to walk into the steel jobs and the coal mines and you were able to have a family-sustaining job.
“The need for a community college became pretty evident.”
The Cambria County commissioners voted unanimously in June 1993 to become the local sponsors for Pennsylvania Highlands Community College and in September 1993 the State Board of Education approved its establishment. The first classes were held one year later.
In 1994 and 1995, Cambria County put nearly $660,000 toward the college, and henceforth dedicated 1 mill of taxes toward the endeavor.
Initial public hearings on the college were held on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, Holtzman said, to demonstrate to them and the community that there was no competition.
“There was nothing to hide here,” Holtzman said. “We believed in it and we really didn’t have a hidden agenda and they became supporters of us.”
And Holtzman said Pennsylvania Highlands Community College also became a supporter of Pitt-Johnstown, acting as a local “feeder” to the university’s enrollment and today is located right across the street from the university and is in close proximity to the local high school.
“It’s accessible, it’s affordable and the other colleges accept their credits,” Holtzman said of Pennsylvania Highlands Community College. “Those are the keys to it all.”
n Reporters Karen Blackledge, Marcia Moore and Tricia Pursell contributed to this story.
