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• Jan 29

  BC3 joins “It’s on Us PA” movement; campus initiatives in works

  

  Dr. Nick Neupauer, second from left, president of Butler County Community College, stands with Gov. Tom Wolfe and others at Elizabethtown College after the announcement of Pennsylvania’s dedication to the "It’s On Us" campaign.

  “Did you do the right thing?”
  
  That is the recurring rhetorical question on this Friday in Elizabethtown, where education officials meet to sign Gov. Tom Wolf’s “It’s On Us PA” pledge, the first statewide campaign to address the crisis of sexual assault in schools and on college campuses. Read more...

  “When you were in college, can you recall a time when you witnessed something that was just over the line, or approached being over the line?”
  
  “Did you do the right thing?”
  
  Twenty percent of women and 6 percent of men are sexually assaulted in college, according to NotAlone.gov.
  
  Forty percent of survivors fear reprisal by their attacker.
  
  Only 2 percent of incapacitated rape survivors and only 13 percent of rape survivors report the assault.
  
  Eighty percent of survivors knew their attacker, a friend or significant other.
  
  “As the father of two female college students, 21 and 19 years old, I think that this is bringing an awareness to a large social issue,” says Dr. Nick Neupauer, president of Butler County Community College.
  
  Neupauer signs the pledge on behalf of Pennsylvania’s 14 community colleges.
  
  Signers agree to recognize that nonconsensual sex is sexual assault; to identify situations in which sexual assault may occur; to intervene in situations where consent has not or cannot be given; and to create an environment in which sexual assault is unacceptable and survivors are supported.
  
  Wolf understands the demographic served by Pennsylvania’s 32 public institutions, 14 community colleges, 14 state-owned universities and four state-related universities, Neupauer says.
  
  “Pennsylvania is home to some of the best schools in the country, and sexual assault should not be part of any student’s school or college experience,” Wolf says. “Ensuring our students' safety and well-being is paramount not only to their success, but the success of Pennsylvania as a whole.”
  
  500 schools, 1,100 events in 16 months
  Nationally, more than 275,000 individuals have taken the “It’s On Us” pledge since President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden launched the campaign in September 2014. Nearly 500 schools in 48 states have hosted a total of 1,100 “It’s On Us” events.
  
  “It's On Us PA” will engage education leaders as well as students, teachers, families and communities to make a personal and public pledge to play a role in preventing, addressing and responding effectively to sexual violence, according to Wolf’s office.
  
  Specific goals of “It’s On Us PA” are to:
  
  –Improve awareness, prevention, reporting and response systems in schools, colleges and universities to better serve all students.
  
  –Remove or reduce barriers that prevent survivors from reporting and-or accessing vital resources by creating a more consistent, empowering reporting process for student survivors of gender-based violence.
  
  –Demonstrate significant, proactive and sustainable leadership to change campus culture by challenging Pennsylvania’s education leaders – college and university presidents, superintendents, students, teachers, staff and families – and communities to pledge to improve their institutions’ climate.
  
  BC3 in 2017 will engage in a multi-pronged approach to address sexual violence issues, according to Dr. Case Willoughby, vice president for student affairs and enrollment management. That approach will include measures to create a campus climate that reduces the likelihood of sexual violence, to support survivors of sexual violence, to raise awareness of the nature and prevalence of sexual violence, and to increase knowledge of college policies, procedures and supports for those who may have been harassed and/or assaulted, including Title IX and anti-discrimination policies.
  
  In the first approach, with the goal of reaching as broad an audience as possible, BC3 plans to launch an online tutorial for all students, faculty and staff. Those taking the tutorial will know basic information on sexual harassment, sexual violence, their Title IX rights and campus procedures and resources, Willoughby says.
  
  “Students will recognize that sexual violence is a significant problem facing college students,” Willoughby says, “and will be presented with information about sexual violence, resources for survivors and others, Title IX and campus procedures.”
  
  In the second approach, VOICe – the Victims Outreach Intervention Center – will host a “Clothesline Project” in the main lounge of BC3’s Student Success Center, according to Willoughby. Shirts decorated by survivors of violence will be displayed.
  
  “It is a moving, powerful way to make the issue very real,” Willoughby says.
  
  Resources will be available on site.
  
  Willoughby and his staff are also pursuing grants as part of the “It’s On Us PA” campaign to make awareness even more visible on campus, Neupauer says.
  
  “This is going to be strategically woven into Welcome Days, to student gatherings and student life,” Neupauer says. “We want to be a good partner in the commonwealth, support the governor’s initiative, understand the significance of the demographic we serve and go forward in increasing awareness on our campus.” Show less...

  BC3 President’s Blog: It’s On Us Pledge

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• Feb 8

  BC3 president, trustee stress financial aid importance to federal lawmakers

  

   

  Dr. Nick Neupauer and Ray D. Steffler are among 1,200 representatives of U.S. community colleges to lobby and educate federal lawmakers in Washington, D.C., on the significance of Perkins loans, Pell grants and congressional reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. Read more...

  The Association of Community College Trustees’ National Legislative Summit provides a forum for educational leaders such as Neupauer and Steffler – Butler County Community College’s president and chairman of its board of trustees, respectively – to stress the importance of educational legislative issues to members of the 114th Congress.
  
  Issues, Neupauer says, “that very much affect the college.”
  
  As the nation emerges from the worst economic recession since the 1930s, as for-profit colleges close nationwide, Neupauer says his goal was to “let those people on the other side of the table know” about the thousands of BC3 students who depend on financial aid to finance career goals.
  
  44% of BC3 students receive financial aid
  Two-thirds of community college students have a household income – that would include their parents’ earnings if the student is a dependent – of less than $50,000 a year, according to the Community College Research Center at Teachers College at Columbia University. Half of those students have a household income below $30,000.
  
  Such students would qualify for federal Pell grants, which give low-income students up to $5,730 a year for tuition, fees and books.
  
  “We are arguing that you cannot play around with Pell grants,” Neupauer says.
  
  Pell grants had once been available to students for up to 18 semesters. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012 limits that availability to 12.
  
  “You need to allow students to use Pell grants over a longer period of time,” Neupauer says. “We have part-time students. It’s not like with some students who are taking full-time loads and graduate in four or four-and-a-half years.”
  
  Fifty-three percent of BC3’s students attend part-time, and 44 percent receive financial aid.
  
  The National Legislative Summit, Neupauer says, “is a very good opportunity to educate very important people.”
  
  Show less...

• Feb 19

  Low costs keep community colleges in vogue, BC3 president says

  The pendulum has swung in favor of community colleges, Dr. Nick Neupauer tells a crowd assembled for a program hosted by the Pittsburgh North Regional Chamber in Cranberry Township.
  
  While students at other institutions graduate with an average debt load of $30,000 and have difficulty finding high-paying jobs, 80 percent of Butler County Community College students leave debt-free, says Neupauer, BC3’s president. Some enter the work force immediately with an associate degree while others pursue a bachelor degree from numerous senior institutions without leaving BC3’s Butler Township campus. Read more...

  It’s for those reasons, Neupauer says, that community colleges are popular.
  
  Neupauer, Quintin Bullock, president of the Community College of Allegheny County, and Chris Reber, president of the Community College of Beaver County, tout the successes of their schools and of community colleges nationwide.
  
  An increasing number of first-generation college students are attending theirs schools and other community colleges.
  
  “The nation’s landscape is changing and our students are becoming more and more diverse,” Bullock says. “At the same time our students are becoming economically savvy, meaning understanding the value that a community college can provide them – access to education as well as preparation for the work force.”
  
  Each college considers the needs of the work force and local economy when planning programming and curriculum. The schools have high-priority occupation lists from the state that show the needs locally, regionally and across Pennsylvania. They also work with advisory boards to adjust to the work force. BC3 recognized a trend toward heating, ventilation and air conditioning professionals who wanted to start their own businesses, Neupauer says. The school then changed its programming to teach more business skills.
  
  The presidents later discuss the changing role of their institutions in society and how they can help businesses and workers.
  
  CCBC, Reber says, is working to expand its high school academy programs.
  
  In these programs, students in grades 10 through 12 spend half of their time in high school and half of their time getting training and taking classes toward an associate degree. The college launched an aviation program in 2015 and plans to start similar programs in health care, manufacturing, criminal justice and performing arts.
  
  CCBC is located near the site of a proposed ethane cracker plant in Monaca and is considering adding more programs in petrochemicals and process technology to prepare students for jobs.
  
  His school is placing an emphasis on training people to become medical technicians and paramedics, Bullock says. Neupauer adds that BC3, with branches in Cranberry Township, Hermitage, New Castle, Ford City and Brockway, is working to bring educational opportunities to underserved areas.
  
  “Why should we be contained within imaginary county lines?” he says. Show less...

  Article: Cranberry Eagle: College leaders discuss changes

• Feb 26

  KDKA’s expansive audience hears of BC3’s advantages

  Shelley Duffy, a radio host at the “pioneer broadcasting station of the world” and a Butler County Community College graduate, interviews another Pioneer, BC3 President Dr. Nick Neupauer, about President Barack Obama’s America’s College Promise proposal. Read more...

  In his State of the Union address days earlier, Obama reiterates his plan to make two years of community college free for responsible students. Nearly 9 million students would benefit if all states participated, according to a White House statement.
  
  Duffy is a 1982 BC3 graduate and 2005 distinguished alumna. She and Robert Mangino host an afternoon news show at KDKA-AM, the world’s first commercial radio station.
  
  They call “literally out of the blue” for his reflections on Obama’s plan, Neupauer says.
  
  The trio talks for 10 minutes, “about the bang for the buck you get by going to a community college,” Neupauer says. “Not only do we have a low, affordable tuition, but we also have a very proactive and creative use of our BC3 Education Foundation.”
  
  Community colleges are a popular and inexpensive option in Pennsylvania, collectively enrolling the highest number of students and representing the least-expensive public postsecondary option in the commonwealth, with annual tuition averaging $4,132 in sponsored districts.
  
  The average household income of a Pennsylvania community college family with a dependent student is nearly $20,000 below the state median of $55,000. As such, many of Pennsylvania’s 318,000 community college students rely on federal and state financial aid programs, some receive scholarships and some pursue loans.
  
  Neupauer’s promotion of BC3’s advantages is being carried on the 50,000-watt metropolitan station that can be heard as far away as Ontario. The school’s proactive Education Foundation, Neupauer says, is tied to a larger vision.
  
  “If our mission is affordability, and we have to raise tuition, the strategy with the foundation is to get more foundation dollars coming in so that the foundation could theoretically buy down that tuition,” Neupauer says.
  
  BC3, Neupauer says, takes that affordability very seriously.
  
  “But when you have governmental cuts, and you have to literally cut so much from the purse strings at the college in terms of personnel and supplies and from other areas, where else can you go? If you have greater foundation support you could buy down that tuition,” he says. “It really does work hand-in-hand.” Show less...

• Feb 27

  Reign follows drought for BC3 women’s basketball team

  The 2010-11 Butler County Community College women’s basketball team, his first at the helm, may have been the school’s best ever, Coach Dick Hartung says, but it did not have Julia Baxter.
  
  The same Julia Baxter who led the 2015-16 Pioneers to a 16-8 record, their second Western Pennsylvania Collegiate Conference crown and two victories in the National Junior College Athletic Association Division III Region XX tournament. Read more...

  The same Julia Baxter who passed on an offer to play at the University of Akron, an NCAA Division I program in Ohio; who is “so good,” Hartung says, “she can dunk a tennis ball” and who, he predicts, will become BC3’s all-time leading scorer and rebounder in women’s basketball.
  
  “She’s an animal,” Hartung says with a laugh.
  
  The 5-foot-11 forward from Butler Area High averaged 24 points and 13.9 rebounds as BC3 rebounded itself in 2015-16, snapping a streak of four seasons in which it won only 10 total games.
  
  “We became very thin,” Hartung says.
  
  Behind Baxter, BC3 returned to prominence for the first time since that 2010-11 squad, which also finished 16-8 – but ended No. 6 nationally.
  
  “It all came together last year,” says Hartung, named the WPCC women’s basketball coach of the year.
  
  The Pioneers, 13-7 in the regular season, topped Westmoreland County Community College 64-46 to capture the WPCC title. BC3 faced – and beat – Westmoreland again in the first round of the NJCAA Division III Region XX tournament in Maryland, then edged Montgomery College 68-65.
  
  Season ends against No. 4 team in U.S.
  The Pioneers advanced to the NCJAA Division G tournament, where – despite 23 points from Baxter – its season ended with an 87-55 setback to West Georgia Technical College. West Georgia went on to finish No. 4 in the nation.
  
  BC3 “learned how good you have to be to play at the national level,” says Hartung, who returns most of its players from that squad – including Baxter, who ranked seventh in the NJCAA in points with 488 and seventh in rebounds with 291.
  
  There’s Christina Davis, a point guard from Ford City, BC3’s second-leading scorer with a 14 points-per-game average; and Kaylnn Callihan, a guard from Butler, third with 12 and “a tough son of a gun,” Hartung says.
  
  “We got the core back,” Hartung says. “And Baxter is not by herself. She is surrounded by other players who will get her the ball.”
  
  Hartung is having a ball after inheriting a program that he says was “in shambles.”
  
  “We had some tough years,” he says. “Even when we lost, we represented the school well and we were organized. There’s a right way to lose and wrong way to lose.”
  
  Not that BC3 did much losing in 2015-16.
  
  “Last year, no,” Hartung says. “The first year, no. In between we lost a lot.”
  
  He asks aloud: “Can we make it back that far again?
  
  “We’re a year older,” he says, “and we will see what happens. There are some tough kids here. These girls have a bit of an edge on them. They will not back down.”
  
  Members of the 2015-16 squad were Macy Smolic, of Freeport; Miranda Williams, of Oil City; Saydie Moore, of Karns City; Alycia Brehm, of Moniteau; Shelby Campbell, of Butler; Hunter Berneburg, of Mars; Baxter, Davis and Callihan. Show less...

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• Mar 9

  BC3 spreads sunshine at “unique” Florida receptions

  

  Cindy Rosellini, Ruth Purcell and Nancy Hunter Mycka are shown at a 2014 reception for Butler County Community College in Bonita Springs, Fla.

  Why, Nancy Hunter Mycka wondered, had Butler County Community College never hosted a “Butler County reunion” in Florida to assemble vacationing snowbirds, promote the school’s accomplishments and identify its goals? Read more...

  “Community colleges don’t do that,” says Ruth Purcell, executive director of the BC3 Education Foundation Inc.
  
  “Uncommon for community colleges,” says Dr. Nick Neupauer, BC3’s president.
  
  Yet Mycka, who with her father, Robert L. Hunter, was co-chair of the Pioneer Proud Campaign, was undeterred.
  
  “We have experience in sales, marketing and past fundraising,” says Mycka, executive vice president of The Hunter Family of Companies.
  
  “I have a lot of friends in higher education fundraising. After talking with them about some of the alumni activities done by the larger educational institutions, it made me wonder why BC3 never did a Florida reception event.”
  
  When she worked at a university, Purcell says, officials went (to the) South “all the time.”
  
  “Florida in March is filled with development officers from big schools,” she says. “We ran into each other at the airports. (Nancy and Bob) were pushing us a little bit out of the comfort zone of a community college.”
  
  Mycka and Hunter pushed.
  
  And prevailed.
  
  “I convinced the (board of trustees) and Dr. Neupauer to have three events in Bonita Springs, where all the snowbirds came to a happy hour to learn about the events of the college,” Mycka says.
  
  The third was held March 9 at the Colony Bay Club.
  
  “Game changers,” Neupauer says. “I could never thank the Hunters enough. Bob (and his wife) Gail and Nancy are the definition of servant leaders. They were certain these gatherings would connect with a new audience. They were right.”
  
  Forty people attended the first reception in 2014, in which Neupauer conducted 20-minute PowerPoint presentation on plans for modernizing the John A. Beck Library, one of three initiatives included in the Pioneer Proud Campaign’s $5.5 million goal.
  
  “We talked about what we hoped to accomplish,” Purcell says.
  
  Brian Opitz, BC3’s executive director of operations, followed with a discussion of the library’s designs and its high-tech functionality, Mycka says.
  
  Neupauer also updated the crowd “on various facets of the college and what initiatives he had for the coming years,” Mycka says.
  
  Each attendee received a bag of BC3 information and gifts.
  
  “We specifically did not make any requests that day,” Mycka says. “Just good public relations.”
  
  She and her father attend many charity functions, Mycka says, “and it is annoying to be bombarded by fundraisers immediately when you walk in. My only strong recommendation was that we would make no formal ask for a donation of anyone. They thought I was nuts! My strategy was to get the information out to these movers and shakers and only ask them to up the chatter about what was going on with the (library) project and BC3.”
  
  Her idea worked, she says.
  
  “It really brought everyone together and started the chatter in the community,” she says.
  
  “Wonderful doors” open to BC3
  By the time of the second reception, in 2015, the chatter was about Robert R. Heaton, the Butler Township real estate developer who had announced a $1 million contribution to renovate and rename the Beck Library as the Heaton Family Learning Commons.
  
  Megan Lowery, a 26-year-old alumna, spoke at the Hyatt Coconut Point reception about the importance of her BC3 education and that she fully supported the Pioneer Proud Campaign.
  
  “And we say, ‘Here’s where we are. So far, this is what we’ve done. And this is who we’ve talked to,’” Purcell says. “We thanked the people who were there, and who had made contributions.”
  
  More than 70 people – some snowbirds, some Butler County natives-turned-Floridians – attended the third reception at the Colony Bay Club. Within months, the Pioneer Proud Campaign would reach $6.8 million, a 24 percent increase over its goal.
  
  “The third year we go back and say, ‘Wow, we did it,’” Purcell says. “And ‘Thanks!’”
  
  The receptions, Purcell says, were unique.
  
  “They really opened some wonderful doors for us. It was part serendipity, part strategic,” she says. “Sometimes those things happen and they’re magic and they make all the difference.”
  
  As did Robert L. Hunter and his daughter, Purcell says.
  
  “Nancy,” Purcell says, “is big-think. And so is her father. They are two of the reasons this campaign was so successful.” Show less...

• Mar 11

  Kids, foundations dig BC3’s Green Garden Park

  

  Gina Rajchel, assistant director and preschool teacher at Butler County Community College’s Children’s Creative Learning Center, prepares to release Elsa and Anna, butterflies named after characters in the movie “Frozen” by the center’s 3- to 5-year-olds.

  The metamorphosis of Elsa and Anna rivals that of the outdoor space at Butler County Community College’s Children’s Creative Learning Center, which has earned national certification as a Nature Explore Classroom. Read more...

  Elsa and Anna are characters in the movie “Frozen.” They are also the names bestowed upon two butterflies by 3- to 5-year-olds at the CCLC who watched the movie, and the butterflies’ journey from caterpillars to chrysalis to brightly colored insects ready to be released in the outdoor space and flutter among the musical instruments, gardens, hillside slide, sandboxes, art areas and dirt-digging piles that comprise Green Garden Park.
  
  The 7-month-old park, funded in part by a $25,000 grant from The Alcoa Foundation, opened in fall 2015 and has earned its national certification from Dimensions Educational Research Foundation and the Arbor Day Foundation.
  
  Two years ago, Judy Zuzack, CCLC director, learned about outdoor spaces for children while attending a leadership conference at the Arbor Day Farm in Nebraska City, Neb.
  
  “Research shows that children do not spend as much time outdoors as they have in the past,” Zuzack says. “And it’s certainly something that they need. They need to make a connection to the natural world and to the Earth in order to be good stewards of it in the future. So that was our motivation to pursue the (Nature Explore Classroom) designation.”
  
  Elsa and Anna will hover over children unearthing and bringing to their teachers an interesting rock from Green Garden Park’s digging-dirt piles, or creating music on Pagoda bells or a stationary xylophone, or kneeling aside plants, watching the growth of daffodils, and of pumpkins and sunflowers they helped to plant.
  
  “They get very excited in seeing something that they were involved in helping to plant actually grow,” Zuzack says. “And they will take care of it, water it. We have talked to them about having to weed around the plants and they will help with that. It’s good for them to see the entire growth process. For some children, this is the only exposure they have had to a garden or growing things on their own.”
  
  Children who learn and grow in certified Nature Explore Classrooms enhance concentration, develop creativity and problem-solving, relieve stress and improve skills in many areas of development.
  
  “It allows the children to be much more creative in their play,” Zuzack says. “It allows them to interact more with natural materials. To be in a space that is a little more natural is calming to children, especially children who might have some special needs. We’re very excited to be able to provide children the chance to make a connection with nature. We’re fortunate to be on a campus that has beautiful trees and a meadow near us, so we wanted to capitalize on that environment and make sure that we made a space for children that mirrors that kind of scenery.”
  
  “The pumpkin has changed colors!”
  The CCLC is a state-licensed preschool and child-care center for children of BC3 students, employees and community members. It is also a Keystone STAR 4 Facility, the highest licensing rating given by the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services. Since 2011, the CCLC has been occupying a temporary space after a tree fell during off-hours on Armstrong Lodge, where the program had been held.
  
  Thirty children spend their weekdays at CCLC and its Green Garden Park, located on a hillside behind the temporary building, and are animated when they discover the natural world, Zuzack says.
  
  “They’ll say, ‘Hey, look at this!’ when they see something different,” Zuzack says. “‘The pumpkin has changed colors!’ It’s just so exciting for them to see the changes.”
  
  Even rocks can capture their attention. Just ask any of the three CCLC teachers or Zuzack herself.
  
  “They’ll find an interesting one that they’ve dug up, and they love to show the teachers what they have found,” Zuzack says. “Honestly, just about any rock they would find themselves (is interesting). They are looking at the shape of it. They are looking at the color of it. If it has any bumps or pieces missing from it. They’ll look at that detail and talk about it.”
  
  Sometimes those rocks will become the painting canvas for children in Green Garden Park’s outdoor art space.
  
  Susie Wirth, Nature Explore outreach director, lauds BC3’s accomplishments.
  
  “Butler County Community College has shown tremendous leadership in growing the next generation of environmental stewards,” Wirth says. “Their commitment to providing research-based and nature-rich learning offers a wonderful example to educators throughout the country.”
  
  Miracles, inside and out
  Elsa and Anna provided a nature-rich learning experience for CCLC and Green Garden Park.
  
  “We raised them from the caterpillar stage and released them in our outdoor classroom,” Zuzack says. “That is something that we’ve done to combine our indoor learning with outdoor learning and they were very excited about that.
  
  “They saw (Elsa and Anna) from the very small caterpillar stage and saw them build the chrysalis and (later) the butterflies came out and then we released them outdoors after the children had a chance to observe them.”
  
  The miracle taking place inside that mesh-enclosed viewing box, Zuzack says, is also taking place within the 3- to 5-year-olds.
  
  “It’s amazing how that happens,” she says. “Just to see the looks on the children’s faces when they notice there are butterflies in there instead of the caterpillars.” Show less...

• Mar 17

  BC3 stars in cable TV show

  Dr. Nick Neupauer, Dr. Case Willoughby and Lisa Campbell tell host Larry Berg about Butler County Community College’s past, present and future during a 30-minute episode of ArmstrongOneWire’s “Faces & Places,” a cable television show broadcast to viewers in five states. Read more...

  Butler County’s community college was the first in Western Pennsylvania as a result of the Community College Act of 1963, which was to “encourage and facilitate the development of community colleges within reasonable commuting distances of every citizen” in the state.
  
  BC3 was established in 1965 and opened Sept. 27, 1966, with 133 day students and 266 evening students. Since then, Neupauer has become its eighth president; Willoughby, its vice president for student affairs and enrollment management; Campbell, its interim director of workforce development; and the school, one of the least expensive in Pennsylvania with its in-county tuition.
  
  “This has been an amazing transformation from the very beginning,” Berg says.
  
  Neupauer, in his ninth year as president, tells Berg the concept of community colleges was born in the 1950s, after World War II ended and as a result of the 1944 GI Bill, which granted stipends for tuition and expenses to veterans who sought to further their education.
  
  “There was a movement in our country for affordable, accessible and quality education for all,” Neupauer says. “If you think about it, the history of higher education in the United States started with the elite. ... And then as time moved on, there was a larger national movement for open-access education in the 1950s.”
  
  Pennsylvania’s 14 community colleges – BC3 in particular – are highly responsive to community needs, Neupauer says.
  
  “We offer different programs than other community colleges or even universities in the state,” he tells Berg. “We are known for our metrology program, precision weights and measures. We are one of the few institutions in the commonwealth that helps with emergency training, fire training, EMS. We do have our own unique flavor here. And we do a fantastic job not only with the training, but an incredible job when it comes to our academic offerings.“
  
  Those academic offerings number more than 50 at BC3, Willoughby tells Berg.
  
  “About 70 percent of our students intend to go on to a four-year-degree after they finish here,” Willoughby says. “But the other 30 percent are looking for some sort of occupational or career program to start in the work force right after college.”
  
  Many of those occupational-program students begin their job search in the Butler area, Willoughby says.
  
  Programs evolve to meet needs
  BC3 provided primarily vocational-type programs in its infancy, Neupauer says.
  
  “What has happened over time is that it’s not only technical programs that we offer, but also liberal arts and transfer-type programs, where students can take advantage of our wonderful, affordable tuition and then transfer to a senior institution,” Neupauer says.
  
  A 3,500-member student body validates BC3’s affordability, accessibility and quality, and illustrates that higher education in the United States is no longer the dominion of a select few, Neupauer says.
  
  “Today we are getting so much leverage out of being an open-access institution,” he says. “And by no means does that mean we have a lesser quality of student. We have students who want to be here. Students can take advantage of the affordable tuition that is provided to them, particularly if they are Butler County residents, to either go directly into the work force or transfer credits toward a bachelor’s degree.”
  
  BC3’s second-lowest in-county tuition in Pennsylvania represents “a lot of savings,” Willoughby says.
  
  If a student whose ultimate goal is to obtain a four-year degree from a senior institution attends two years at BC3, “You’ve already saved so much money,” Willoughby says, adding that BC3 is proud that about 80 percent of its graduates have not taken student loans.
  
  “So in the event you get to that four-year institution for the second half of your degree and you need student loans, you haven’t racked up debt yet,” he tells Berg.
  
  The college’s financial aid office goes to great lengths to make sure students pursue loans only if needed.
  
  “Some schools will do the easy thing and auto-package a loan,” Willoughby says. “So when students fills out their financial aid paperwork, and they are eligible for this much loan, we take a few extra steps. We force them to check in with financial aid before they take the loan out. It’s their choice. They can do it. We help them think, though, ‘Why are you doing this? Do you need it?’”
  
  BC3 partners with employers in eight counties
  Campbell and her staff also work to identify needs – those of the business community and its employees.
  
  “We develop contracted, customized training” for employers in an eight-county area, Campbell tells Berg. “We also work with economic development organizations, such as the chambers of commerce, the (community development corporations), the work force investment boards. They work with companies in their areas and identify training needs, and then they come to us or we work with them in partnership to develop classes.”
  
  Employees who train at BC3 can be entry-level or upper-management, Campbell says, and attend classes on business communications, customer service, computer usage, time management, business etiquette, industrial math, leadership and supervision.
  
  All of which illustrates BC3’s importance and reach, Neupauer says.
  
  “We are the community’s college,” he says, referencing the Heaton Family Learning Commons, the Shaffer Walking Trail and Succop Theater.
  
  “We reach out,” he says, “whether it be with academic courses, noncredit offerings, or what have you, and we meet the community’s needs.”
  
  “Faces & Places” has broadcast 300 episodes – “two a month,” says Matt Lutz, producer – on topics ranging from businesses to nonprofits to interesting residents and large events. The show, which profiles interesting parts of Butler County and its rich history,” Lutz says, can also be seen in Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland and New York. Previous segments have profiled BC3’s science, technology, engineering and math programs, its Guitar Building 101 course and public safety-training programs, Lutz says. Show less...

  Video: Faces & Places - Butler County Community College

• Mar 18

  BC3 adds Chatham, IUP to degree-completion lineup

  

   

  Butler County Community College signs degree-completion partnerships with Chatham University and Indiana University of Pennsylvania, bringing to six the number of senior institutions students can attend from the Butler Township campus. Read more...

  BC3 President Dr. Nick Neupauer announces that Chatham will offer a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications-public relations and IUP, a Bachelor of Science in early childhood (Pre K-4) and special education (Pre K-8).
  
  “These agreements complement our existing collaborations and speak to our role as the community’s college,” Neupauer says. “Our students can earn an associate and bachelor’s degree and save tens of thousands of dollars without leaving our campus.”
  
  Students earning an Associate in Arts degree in general studies from BC3 can transfer all 60 credits to Chatham in pursuit of a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications-public relations. Students can also earn and apply an additional 30 credits from BC3 toward the bachelor’s degree, resulting in an additional cost savings.
  
  “Chatham is excited to expand our degree-completion programs with BC3 to now offer the BA in communications and RN to BSN programs on the BC3 campus,” Chatham President Dr. Esther Barazzone says. “These type of partnerships provide convenient and affordable pathways to a bachelor’s degree, and are an important way to help increase bachelor-degree completions in Western Pennsylvania.”
  
  Students earning an Associate in Arts degree in early childhood education (Pre K-4) from BC3 can transfer all 63 credits to IUP in pursuit of a Bachelor of Science degree in early childhood (Pre K-4) and special education (Pre K-8). Students have the opportunity to earn dual certification in Pennsylvania for both.
  
  “IUP is very pleased to enter into this partnership with BC3 to allow place-committed students access to IUP’s quality teacher preparation programs,” IUP President Dr. Michael Driscoll says.
  
  Franklin, La Roche, Pitt and Clarion also on board
  BC3 also offers bachelor’s degree-completion programs in business administration, online, from Franklin University; in psychology from La Roche College; in administration of justice from the University of Pittsburgh; and in accounting from Clarion University of Pennsylvania.
  
  From BC3’s Butler Township campus, students pursue advanced degrees from senior institutions through video conferencing, in face-to-face classes with visiting instructors or online.
  
  Briana Yoursh, 22, of New Castle, has never stepped foot on Clarion’s campus.
  
  “I don’t even know what it looks like,” she says with a laugh.
  
  Yet the BC3 alumna, along with Lawrence Weaver, are among those pursuing a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Clarion – 54 miles and 75 driving minutes away – while taking courses in BC3’s state-of-the-art Heaton Family Learning Commons.
  
  “It saves quite a bit on room and board,” says Weaver, 21, of Renfrew.
  
  Minimum room and board costs for an academic year at Clarion, Chatham, IUP, La Roche and Pitt range from $9,500 to $11,582. Franklin University, in Columbus, Ohio, is a commuter college.
  
  Weaver also doesn’t want to commute to Clarion in the 2014 Honda Civic he leases.
  
  “I wouldn’t want to put all the miles on it,” he says.
  
  Yoursh earned an associate degree in accounting from BC3 and is taking five Clarion courses from the BC3 campus.
  
  “I can stay at home and save a lot of money,” Yoursh says. “If I was staying on campus, it would be like 10 grand more. I can save the money. I like staying at home.”
  
  Senior institutions are represented in the University Partnership Center in the Student Success Center on BC3’s main campus.
  
  The number of credits a student must complete at the senior institution varies, according to Bob Morris, BC3’s dean of admissions.
  
  “All will accept a minimum of 60 credits – the entire associate degree,” Morris says. “Some go beyond that and accept up to 90 BC3 credits. Those who take advantage of these programs can do so without having to travel to the senior institution, which saves time and money.”
  
  It is advisable, Morris says, for a BC3 student to identify that he or she would be interested in taking advantage of this opportunity “as early as possible to ensure that they are in the correct BC3 program, and are taking the appropriate courses.” Show less...

  Flickr Photo Album: Chatham/IUP Signing

• Mar 20

  Middle States reps visit BC3

  Butler County Community College passes 13 reaccreditation standards following a four-day visit by Middle States Commission on Higher Education peers and announces efforts to improve its general education program. Read more...

  The Middle States Commission’s review of schools every decade begins with a self-study, a survey conducted over the past 18 months at BC3 by Alex Gladis, director of BC3 @ Cranberry, and Sherri Mack, associate professor of business. Their submission is followed by an on-site visit from Middle States representatives.
  
  While at BC3 from March 20-23, Middle States representatives evaluated the school in two sets of seven standards.
  
  The first set assesses the institution itself: mission and goals; planning, resource allocation and institutional renewal; institutional resources; leadership and governance; administration; integrity; and institutional assessment.
  
  The second set gauges educational effectiveness: student admissions and retention; student support services; faculty; educational offerings; general education; related educational activities; and assessment of student learning.
  
  BC3 remains accredited while the college moves forward in enhancing and improving its general education curriculum. Show less...

   

• Mar 22

  XTO’s $30G donation fuels BC3 energy programs

  XTO Energy’s $30,000 donation will help Butler County Community College keep the pipeline to entry-level employment in the natural gas industry flowing with qualified candidates, says Matt Kovac, BC3 Dean of STEM. Read more...

  The natural gas and oil producer’s $260,000 in gifts since 2013 to BC3’s energy technology initiatives have helped the school implement a 24-credit certificate program, a noncredit program and, Kovac says, purchase a “huge list” of equipment to facilitate hands-on education.
  
  “They want to ensure they have an ample number of qualified potential employees,” Kovac says. “They are interested in making sure that enough people are going through our program and, as their need in terms of employees rises, that they have qualified people they can bring in for existing operations or expansion of operations. Some of their positions really require an educational foundation that they can’t provide internally.”
  
  Two compressor stations feed XTO Energy’s natural gas liquids facility in Butler County, where approximately 125 million cubic feet of natural gas is treated daily.
  
  XTO Energy, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil, is based in Fort Worth, Texas. It employs 233 workers in 15 Pennsylvania counties, and, Mike Johnson says, “is committed to helping develop the next generation of skilled workers” for its industry.
  
  Johnson is vice president of XTO Energy’s Appalachia Division, which encompasses Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia and has headquarters in Warrendale. “In addition to providing funding,” Johnson says, “XTO worked closely with Butler County Community College for the past three years providing knowledge and leadership from our technical experts to help develop programs for those interested in pursuing careers in the energy industry.”
  
  Lisa Campbell, BC3’s interim director of workforce development, met with XTO Energy after it expressed interest in funding educational programs.
  
  “XTO believes in education and educating our community about the natural gas industry,” she says. “They are great stewards of education in our community. So it made sense for us to partner with them.”
  
  Intern: BC3 made me think analytically
  Five BC3 students have served as XTO Energy interns, Kovac says. Four had earned the 24-credit Energy Technology Workplace Certificate and the fifth is completing work to obtain his. That would bring to six the number of BC3 students obtaining the certificate since 2014, Kovac says.
  
  Among those interns is 19-year-old Clayton Chaffee, of Sarver.
  
  Chaffee earned the Energy Technology Workplace Certificate and is working toward an associate degree in applied industrial technology at BC3.
  
  The courses have “geared me toward more of the technical side,” says Chaffee, who this fall served a three-month, 35-hour-a week internship at XTO Energy’s Mountain Gathering location in Renfrew.
  
  “My job is to learn about all the different systems and how they work and why they work,” he says. “Where it comes from and where it goes.”
  
  He says he’s gained “the basic knowledge of plant operations and compressor station work habits.”
  
  BC3 “pretty much made me think in an analytical way,” Chaffee says. “Coming into this internship, not too many things were unfamiliar to me.”
  
  Upon graduation, he’ll seek a job specializing in the gas and oil industry.
  
  “Operations, specifically,” he says.
  
  Following XTO Energy’s initial $100,000 donation to the BC3 Education Foundation Inc., and with a federal Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training grant, BC3 in 2013 developed a three-part noncredit Energy Production Technology Certificate.
  
  That noncredit pathway to employment included courses in industrial mechanics, introduction to petroleum and natural gas, and a 120-hour roustabout program that participants could also address separately.
  
  BC3 produced for XTO
  Nine individuals have completed the Energy Production Technology Certificate, Campbell says, and 232 the roustabout program. Of those in the roustabout program, 187 were placed in employment, Campbell says. BC3’s workforce development office administers both.
  
  “We produced for (XTO Energy) and I think they saw that and they kept investing,” says Ruth Purcell, executive director of BC3’s Education Foundation. “They are a great friend of BC3. We worked together very early on. They came in 2013 when Marcellus was booming. We were doing a lot of roustabout training then, training people to work directly on the wells.”
  
  BC3 then expanded its commitment to developing an energy program, Purcell says, one also buoyed by a $25,000 donation from MarkWest Energy.
  
  In 2014 BC3 launched its 24-credit Energy Technology Workplace Certificate that incorporates courses in industrial mechanics, and introduction to petroleum and natural gas, from the noncredit program.
  
  Students earning the certificate can work in areas such as exploration, drilling, natural gas processing and pipeline construction – and in jobs such as landman, construction project technician, materials procurement agent, electronics technician and equipment maintenance technician.
  
  The Energy Technology Workplace Certificate also includes courses in technical writing I, process control instrumentation, technical mathematics I, introduction to process control and programmable logic controllers, and industrial safety in the petroleum and natural gas industry.
  
  “I would say that I’ve gotten to know many people from the industry over the past three years and what impresses me about the industry is that it is all about safety,” Kovac says. “And that’s a top-to-bottom philosophy and culture. It’s really a culture of safety.”
  
  The emphasis on safety is also stressed in the classroom, where BC3 used XTO Energy funds to purchase hydraulic pumps, mechanical gearing and drives, and electrical equipment.
  
  Hands-on training follows lecture
  “It gave us the opportunity to do a blended instruction,” Kovac says. “The instructor will go over a theory and then the students get a hands-on experience. It really is a highly effective way of teaching material and concepts.”
  
  The coursework also gives students a “good foundation,” Kovac say, in the energy terms of MICE – measurement, instrumentation, calibration and electronics.
  
  “It’s a very fundamental view in,” Kovac says. “And it’s a good building block so that when they do go out, or send a resume in or apply for positions, they are able to compete for upstream and some of the midstream opportunities.”
  
  Campbell and Kovac say they are grateful to XTO Energy, to the academic and business leaders who developed curriculums or served on advisory boards, and to the BC3 employees who worked to create programs within a year of the donations.
  
  “When you bring everyone in and listen to what they need, about the jobs available that companies are trying to fill, you come down to the skill sets,” Campbell says. “That’s when we are able to respond.”
  
  XTO Energy, BC3 President Dr. Nick Neupauer says, has become a great partner of the college.
  
  “They understood a need in our credit and noncredit programs,” he says, “and stepped up to make it happen.”
  
  As did BC3.
  
  “It’s literally the all that makes this kind of thing happen,” Kovac says. “But we’re just honoring what we say we’ll do. It’s built right in to our mission statement, talking about meeting the needs of the community. And, of course, the community is the citizens as well as the companies providing employment to it.
  
  “We were able to work through things quickly. We have developed good relationships with a number of companies in the industry, but XTO in particular, in terms of their financial generosity and also their willingness to be consultants. They have just been stellar.” Show less...

   

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• Apr 1

  BC3 signs pact to award reverse-transfer associate degrees

  The 43 percent of former Butler County Community College students who in 2015 enrolled in a Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education university without having attained an associate degree are now eligible to participate in a new reverse-transfer agreement that could award them the certificate. Read more...

  The granting of an associate degree while students pursue a bachelor’s degree or any other certification or credential at a PASSHE university could result in their having “a greater potential for employment and increased earning potential,” says Dr. Bruce Russell, BC3’s interim vice president for academic affairs.
  
  The pact among Pennsylvania’s 14 community colleges and 14 PASSHE universities – which include Slippery Rock, Clarion and Indiana – allows students who have earned at least 60 credits to apply for an associate degree from the community college where they started.
  
  Those who have earned fewer than 60 credits but at least 45 at a Pennsylvania community college can continue working toward an associate degree at their PASSHE university. Eligible credits may include those earned through Prior Learning Assessment (PLA), Advanced Placement (AP), College Level Examination Program (CLEP), Credit by Exam and the military.
  
  A student must have enrolled at a PASSHE university within five years of leaving the community college and earned at least 15 additional credits at a state system institution to be considered for the program. A student must have earned at least a 2.0 grade-point average at the community college and PASSHE institution to be eligible, and only grades of “C” or higher will be considered.
  
  State system credits will be transferred back to the community college and applied to the requirements for the associate degree.
  
  PASSHE schools will identify eligible participants once students complete the 60 credits and invite them to consider the reverse-transfer program. If interested, eligible students will complete a release form and their PASSHE university transcript will be sent to the community college for review and evaluation.
  
  A student who earns an associate degree is more likely to complete the work necessary to receive a bachelor’s degree, says Elizabeth Bolden, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges.
  
  “If their studies toward a bachelor’s degree are interrupted for any reason, with this program, they will still have their associate degree, which will benefit them as they prepare to enter the work force or will help enable them to move up the career ladder,” Bolden says.
  
  83 BC3 students eligible in fall 2015
  Of the 191 students who transferred from BC3 to a PASSHE university in the fall of 2015, 83 are eligible for the reverse transfer because they did not graduate with an associate degree, Russell says.
  
  The option may be enticing for students whose progress toward a bachelor’s degree has been delayed, or as a complement to a student who earns a bachelor’s degree, he says.
  
  “This is a wonderful opportunity for those individuals to complete their associate degree utilizing the courses they take at the four-year institution,” Russell says.
  
  In addition to Slippery Rock, Clarion and Indiana, other PASSHE universities are Bloomsburg, California, Cheyney, East Stroudsburg, Edinboro, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Mansfield, Millersville, Shippensburg and West Chester.
  
  In addition to BC3, other community colleges in Pennsylvania are Bucks County Community College, Community College of Allegheny County, Community College of Beaver County, Community College of Philadelphia, Delaware County Community College, Harrisburg Area, Lehigh Carbon Community College, Luzerne County Community College, Montgomery County Community College, Northampton Community College, Pennsylvania Highlands Community College, Reading Area Community College and Westmoreland County Community College. The colleges operate 26 campuses and 84 instructional sites and centers, serving students from every county in Pennsylvania. Show less...

  Article: Butler Eagle: Agreement will benefit students

• Apr 4

  BC3’s New Century Scholar uses verse to help others

  

  Butler County Community College’s first New Century Scholar, Maizee Zaccone, 20, of Butler, speaks during the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges’ Lobby Day at the Capitol in Harrisburg in April 2016.

  As an avid reader, Maizee Zaccone prefers novelist Jane Austen “because of her strong and dynamic characters.”
  
  As an avid writer, Zaccone prefers poetry “because it is an outlet, my way to reach other people.” Read more...

  Like Emma Woodhouse in Austen’s “Emma,” Zaccone is a strong and dynamic character who will use her platform as Butler County Community College’s first New Century Scholar to change her life and reach other people who, like her, have been diagnosed as having depression.
  
  Zaccone, 20, of Butler, has been chosen as Pennsylvania’s 2016 New Century Scholar by achieving the state’s highest score in the All-USA Community College Academic Team competition.
  
  More than 1,900 students from 1,000 community colleges nationwide were nominated. Each state, like Pennsylvania with Zaccone, recognizes its top-scoring student in the event sponsored by, among others, Phi Theta Kappa. Members of the international honor society of two-year colleges and academic programs have at least a 3.5 grade-point average.
  
  The honor caps a BC3 career that will end with Zaccone speaking before state legislators in Harrisburg, attending the American Association of Community Colleges’ convention in Chicago, becoming the first student editor of BC3’s art and literary magazine and addressing fellow students at commencement, where she will receive an associate degree in English.
  
  The honor also caps a BC3 career that has changed her life, her outlook and the literary form she discovered in English Professor Eric Pedersen’s survey of poetry and creative writing-poetry classes.
  
  Her first works, she says, were “deep. I wrote about mental illnesses. I’ve struggled with depression.”
  
  Zaccone’s “Isolation,” published in the 2015 edition of Facets, the art and literary magazine for which she would later serve as its first student editor:
  
  “Is ice an illness, that numbing
  Stillness crystallizing
  Oceans succumbed in mourning?
  Legions of memory spilled over
  Abide in chilled reflections
  To embitter the emptiness.
  I wait in the intimate in between
  Overdosing thin air and starving stars.
  No pain there: in the surrender.”
  
  Surrendering the themes of her poetry to the realization that she is successful challenges Zaccone, who says her depression and low self-esteem date to age 11.
  
  “I think it’s because of the tone I adopted for so long,” she says. “You don’t believe in yourself. You don’t believe you are capable of many things. That you don’t have any worth. And that can be a difficult thing to deal with. It is actually hard to switch over and see yourself as a successful person. That can sometimes be difficult to accept after struggling with depression.
  
  “So having something like this happen to me is like, ‘Wow. God has blessed me and these people chose me. Why not fight this? Why not do something different with your life?’”
  
  “Sometimes I’ll text myself poems”
  Poetry is her way of communicating feelings “beautifully, in a way that other people could pick something up from it or take for themselves... I want to make it relatable to them. I have found that I always feel so much better after it in that I’ve actually contributed something to my depression and not just staying there. I am actually doing something about it.”
  
  When inspiration strikes, she grabs whatever is at hand.
  
  “Sometimes it’s an old receipt in my purse and sometimes I have my favorite leather-bound journal with me,” she says. “Sometimes I’ll text myself poems that were in my head before I forget them.”
  
  They all end up on her blog, which she uses as a platform “to inspire other people.”
  
  Shown prominently at newbornrose.wordpress.com is 2 Corinthians 3:3.
  
  “And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts."
  
  Zaccone, who will continue her English language and literature studies at Slippery Rock University, says attending BC3 “was almost like a turning point. These were really big moments in my life and I definitely feel my life changed because of BC3.”
  
  Recognition “for the whole college”
  Because of Pederson, who encouraged her to take chances with her poetry; because of instructor Christopher Bondi, who will spend hours with Zaccone after class working on the speeches she will give as a result of being named a New Century Scholar – a recognition she wants to share with BC3.
  
  “It is for the whole college,” she says. “It is a great way to recognize BC3 and a great way for me to pay back for everything BC3 has given to me.” She may give back to BC3 again in the future, if she realizes a dream of obtaining a doctorate in English and becoming a professor.
  
  “If I do pursue that route I want to teach at a community college,” she says. “That’s where I fell in love with school and that is where I felt I excelled best, in learning and even teaching others. I felt like I was a benefit to people at BC3. I was an English tutor. I had so many different opportunities where I feel like I wasn’t just taking. I was also able to give a lot.”
  
  Zaccone, says Dr. Nick Neupauer, BC3’s president, “will no doubt take those lessons learned at BC3 and pay it forward as a professor of English someday.” Possibly at BC3, she says, but definitely at a community college.
  
  “That was my best experience,” she says. “And that’s why I want to go back and hopefully create that for other kids.” Show less...

  YouTube Video: 2016 New Century Scholar: Maizee Zaccone, BC3 Student

• Apr 5

  Civic work key as BC3 sends scholars to Capitol for All-PA awards, Lobby Day

  

  BC3 President Dr. Nick Neupauer, second from left, and BC3 students stand with PA State Representative Jaret Gibbons and Brian Ellis in the PA Capitol on Lobby Day in April 2016.

  History buff Alysha Federkeil was concerned that headstones didn’t properly identify military veterans buried in the cemetery of Middlesex Presbyterian Church near Butler. Aspiring professor Maizee Zaccone feared a home-schooled Deer Lakes eighth-grader might fall behind in his English studies after his mother became ill. Read more...

  Butler County Community College took notice of their efforts. As did Phi Theta Kappa, the world’s largest and most prestigious honor society for two-year college students. As did the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges.
  
  Federkeil, 19, a history major from Saxonburg, and Zaccone, 20, an English major from Butler, were chosen to represent BC3 on the All-Pennsylvania Academic Team, an honor that also awards a full-tuition scholarship toward a bachelor’s degree at a Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education institution – and a seat at a state Capitol gala.
  
  The members of Rho Phi – Phi Theta Kappa’s chapter at BC3 – were joined in Harrisburg by BC3 students Aaron Zang, Olivia Terwilliger, Shannon Hemphill and Cory Lautenschlager, who had been selected to attend the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges’ Lobby Day.
  
  Federkeil and Zaccone will graduate magna cum laude in May and were named to the BC3 president’s list. Both will attend Slippery Rock University in the fall.
  
  Endeavor Essay: Volunteering to identify veterans on headstones
  Their academic and civic achievements, says Morgan Rizzardi, “definitely show the type of student that they are. Their GPAs are absolutely phenomenal, off the charts.”
  
  As was their work off campus, chronicled in the Endeavor Essays they submitted to Phi Theta Kappa as part of their application to the All-Pennsylvania Academic Team. Phi Theta Kappa members must have at least a 3.5 grade-point average.
  
  “We evaluate the applications with a rubric and we’re looking for certain things,” says Rizzardi, BC3’s associate director of admissions who also serves as Rho Phi adviser with Arlene Gardopee.
  
  “And one of the most important things we are looking at is the Endeavor Essay. That holds a lot of weight. Students are basically connecting what they’ve learned inside the classroom to an outside-of-classroom experience.”
  
  In her essay, Federkeil wrote about volunteering to identify 60 military veterans, from the Revolutionary War through the Korean War, at that church cemetery during the summer of 2014. She would also write and present to the church a one-page biography on each veteran.
  
  Researching backgrounds on veterans dead for 200 or more years took, she says, “a lot of work.”
  
  How much?
  
  “A year,” she says with laugh.
  
  “I went to Knoch High School and the history club put flags on veterans’ graves in a couple of the cemeteries,” Federkeil says. “This was the first time they had done this cemetery and it was just a mess. We didn’t know exactly who was a veteran and who wasn’t.”
  
  Knoch teacher Brad Pflugh suggested history club members spend time before Federkeil’s freshman year at BC3 “figuring out who was a veteran,” Federkeil says.
  
  “And it just evolved into my writing a one-page bio” on each, she says.
  
  Middlesex Presbyterian Church parishioners, she says, “were very enthusiastic about it.”
  
  Federkeil and Zaccone are “amazing,” says Dr. Nick Neupauer, BC3’s president. “Two great examples of our ‘finished products’ as a college.”
  
  Endeavor Essay: Volunteering to tutor boy with sick mom
  Zaccone’s Endeavor Essay reflected her volunteering to help that home-schooled eighth-grader.
  
  “His mom was suffering from some medical issues so I offered to help with his writing,” Zaccone says. “I helped grade his papers and kind of directed him.” An excerpt from her Endeavor Essay: “I felt compelled to assist in any way I could, and as I was already studying English in hopes of teaching one day, I decided to offer my services. I drew up a syllabus of sorts in the areas of grammar, vocabulary, literature and writing, particularly focusing on the writing element.”
  
  She also taught to him Modern Language Association formatting.
  
  “He wouldn’t have been exposed to that too much in home-schooling,” she says. “I knew that he would need that for college.”
  
  Zaccone also tutored 12 fellow BC3 students in English 101, English 102 and literature during her sophomore year.
  
  “There were times where I think I never had a break between classes,” she says. “Sometimes I had to eat lunch while I was walking.”
  
  Helping others also helped her to refine her own language-teaching skills, she says.
  
  “Sometimes you know things but you don’t remember why you know them, like with grammar,” she says. “For example, ‘Why are these rules the way they are?’ So I had to teach myself those things so that I would be able to teach someone else.”
  
  That approach should be emulated by all educators, says Zaccone, who one day hopes to become an English professor. “To be learning yourself,” she says, “so that you can help other people.”
  
  The Harrisburg experience: “Beyond my comprehension” ... “incredible”
  Rho Phi each year submits two students’ names for inclusion on the All-Pennsylvania Academic Team after examining their applications, Rizzardi says.
  
  That Phi Theta Kappa application asks specific questions about the students’ academics, their involvement on campus – especially within the honor society – and their community service, Rizzardi says.
  
  Endeavor Essays factor strongly, Rizzardi says.
  
  “And the way a student can tie their whole educational experience together is very important,” she says. “So even though Alysha and Maizee were involved in Phi Theta Kappa, they did take it to the next level because they were on committees within the organization. They helped with events like the Community College Completion Corps, with the Honors in Action project, and they really made themselves stand out, not just because of their grades, but because of how involved they were on campus.”
  
  As part of the process, Zaccone would be chosen and praised at that Capitol gala as BC3’s first New Century Scholar. Yet her praise was for those around her.
  
  “They were announcing each student who won the All-PA Academic Team award across the state, and I was thinking that everyone there had just such an amazing resume of the things they had done,” Zaccone says. “Some of those people were foster parents, and one woman had come back from (serving in the military in) Afghanistan. I just felt so honored to be able to lead these people, completely humbled being around them. The fact that I got to be one of them was just beyond my comprehension.”
  
  “We have amazing people in Pennsylvania and in community colleges and we often don’t get recognized. That day was really special for community colleges.”
  
  As it was for Federkeil.
  
  “That was incredible,” she says. “I had never been to the Capitol before. The building was impressive and seeing the process of a session of the government, that was really neat.”
  
  The event, she says, was the highlight of her BC3 career.
  
  “Being in that building was really cool because when they built it there was a lot of controversy around it, like how it got paid for,” Federkeil says. “It was very impressive.”
  
  The Harrisburg experience: Stressing the importance of community colleges
  Lobby Day was equally impressive, according to Neupauer and Sherri Osborne, BC3’s assistant director of student activities.
  
  Approximately 275 Pennsylvania community college students visited with their local legislators at the Capitol to advocate on behalf of the community colleges’ 2016-17 budget request. Trustees, faculty, staff and students supported the budget proposed by the Wolf administration, which called for an additional $11.3 million in operations funding and $49 million in total capital funding for community colleges.
  
  The schools also exhibited displays highlighting the varied, cutting-edge subjects that Pennsylvania community college students are studying, including nursing, aquaponics and STEM programs.
  
  “I know the students said that community colleges were economical, the classes are smaller and the ability to transfer into other schools was easy,” says Osborne, who attended Lobby Day with Zang, a radiology major; Terwilliger, an elementary education major; Hemphill, a medical coding major; and Lautenschlager, an engineering major.
  
  “Those were some of the things they felt really good about. They got to talk to state officials not only about the importance of community colleges, but why community colleges were important to them.”
  
  The best way to tell the story of BC3 and Pennsylvania’s 14 community colleges, Neupauer says, is through students. “This group of students impressed many,” he says. “They articulated what BC3 meant to them. Elected officials listened intently.” Show less...

  Flickr Photo Album: 2016 Annual Dinner
  Flickr Photo Album: 2016 Lobby Day

• Apr 10

  Rho Phi’s banner year ends with a flag-waving before 4,000

  

  Members of Butler County Community College’s Rho Phi chapter of Phi Theta Kappa receive a certificate for achieving four-star status at the academic honor society’s national conference in April 2016 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Md. From left, Rho Phi President Sarah Kasunic; Noémie Broussoux-Coutard, Phi Theta Kappa’s 2015-2016 Middle States Region president; Rho Phi Vice President Jennifer Harris and Co-Adviser Morgan Rizzardi.

  Being a five-star member of Butler County Community College’s academic honor society carries a lot of weight. Specifically, that 10-pound wooden flag pole longer than she is tall and further encumbered with a 5-foot-long Pennsylvania state flag, which Jennifer Harris does her best to balance while marching through a crowd of 4,000 at Phi Theta Kappa’s national conference. Read more...

  Think Olympics opening ceremony.
  
  “It was kind of one of those big deals,” she says.
  
  Lights swirl inside the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Md.
  
  Music thumps. Scholars dance.
  
  “Very dramatic,” Morgan Rizzardi says. “Almost like you’re watching the Academy Awards, but it’s for Phi Theta Kappa.”
  
  And there’s 5-foot-4 Jennifer Harris, chosen to tote that 7-foot-long flag pole in a procession toward the stage, the focal point of where the celebration of the world’s largest and most prestigious honor society for two-year college students is about to begin. Like representatives of 49 other states, and of other countries, Harris will wave her flag when her delegation is announced.
  
  “We had to hold it on our hip and my arms were incredibly sore after one day of rehearsal,” Harris says. “Going to the opening ceremony, my arms were still incredibly sore.”
  
  The flags even looked heavy, Sarah Kasunic says, “because they were huge, but definitely visible throughout the entire, huge convention room.” The opening ceremony closes a banner year for Kasunic, Harris and Rho Phi, the Phi Theta Kappa chapter at BC3 they labored to elevate two levels, to a four-star ranking, within one year.
  
  Rho Phi “pushed it forward as much as they possibly could, and really held true to their commitment, and I think that was due to Sarah and Jenny’s leadership in getting everyone amped up,” says Rizzardi, BC3’s associate director of admissions.
  
  Some chapters, according to Rizzardi, never attain a four-star status.
  
  When Rizzardi and primary adviser Arlene Gardopee assumed responsibility for Phi Theta Kappa six years ago, a strong effort was made to emphasize the pillar of scholarship and work toward the goal of four stars.
  
  “We were a no-star chapter,” Rizzardi says. “Certain chapters may choose not to participate in the five-star chapter development plan, only holding one or two induction ceremonies in a year.”
  
  That’s not all they did
  Rho Phi is celebrating a banner year: Its four-star ranking. Its creation of a Stress Busters event so popular that BC3’s student activities office will implement it as a regular feature. Its leadership in a Community College Completion Corps week that resulted in 500 students signing a pledge to obtain their degree. Member Maizee Zaccone being named a New Century Scholar, the first in BC3’s 50-year history. And the notification that member Rhiannon Martin’s poem was one of only 28 works selected among 750 submissions for inclusion in “Nota Bene,” Phi Theta Kappa’s national literary anthology.
  
  That kind of banner year.
  
  “We had a lot of success,” Rizzardi says. “It’s hard to top this year.”
  
  Kasunic serves as Rho Phi’s president and Harris, as vice president. Before their final year at BC3, these individual five-star members representing a then-two-star chapter attended Phi Theta Kappa’s regional leadership conference at Moravian College.
  
  Kasunic and Harris had received individual five-star recognition by Phi Theta Kappa because “They went above and beyond what a normal member would do,” Rizzardi says.
  
  Kasunic and Harris are among only five five-star Rho Phi members in Rizzardi’s tenure of co-advising a chapter that has averaged 185 members each semester. They returned from Moravian College energized and enthused – “I think that is what really lit them on fire,” Rizzardi says – convinced in not what they wanted to do, but had to do.
  
  “Our ultimate goal was to become a four-star chapter,” Kasunic says.
  
  As a two-star chapter, Rho Phi “didn’t go into the depth of what Phi Theta Kappa had to offer to us,” Rizzardi says. “A four-star chapter has to meet certain expectations, in part, the Honors in Action project.”
  
  Rho Phi members met to discuss the project, Kasunic says.
  
  “That is actually how we ended up getting to our four-star,” Harris says.
  
  Their topic, selected after research and discussion at membership meetings? Stress.
  
  “And the effect it can have on students and their success,” Kasunic says.
  
  Yet pursuing the arduous Honors in Action project added to their own.
  
  “Everyone has other things going on in life,” Kasunic says of her Rho Phi colleagues. “We all had our own classes and other responsibilities. Someone would complain about time management and I’d say, “Really? You want to go there?’”
  
  Kasunic, pursuing an associate degree in nursing, devotes 70 hours a week to academics and six to Rho Phi.
  
  Harris, pursuing associate degrees in business management, business administration and accounting, devotes 30 hours a week to academics, works 40 hours a week with two part-time jobs, performs as second violinist with the Pittsburgh Philharmonic and, like Kasunic, spends six hours a week on Rho Phi.
  
  Along with Kasunic and Harris, other officers of Rho Phi are Shane McCaslin, treasurer; Trista Smith, secretary; Bryson Fox, vice president for membership; and Katie (Grantz) Speranza, vice president for membership at the BC3 @ Lawrence Crossing. They are among Phi Theta Kappa’s nearly 3 million members on more than 1,000 campuses nationwide who have at least a 3.5 grade-point average.
  
  Like holding that flag pole, Rho Phi’s plan stresses balance
  Too many people wrongly believe community college students have less stress than those at universities, Harris says.
  
  “Not only are some of us college students, but we are nontraditional students, so we either have jobs outside of school or we are going back to school,” she says. “And as community college students, we are not living on campus, so we do have a life outside of our classes that involves our families, our jobs.”
  
  Bill Miller, BC3’s dean of humanities and social sciences, estimates 75 percent of BC3’s students have a full- or part-time job.
  
  “So many of these students are working 10 to however many hours a week,” Miller says. “They are juggling family responsibilities, and possibly going to school with 15 credits.”
  
  Community college students “definitely” balance more responsibilities than does a university student, Rizzardi says, adding that many hold jobs so they can graduate debt-free.
  
  “Sometimes we have so many stressors that it just continues to pile on,” Harris says. “Sometimes community college students will have so much stress they won’t come to school, and that tacks on more stress, whenever they lose track of their classes.”
  
  Seventeen percent of students surveyed in select college writing classes, part of Rho Phi’s Honors in Action research, stated they would be interested in workshops to help them acknowledge and cope with stress, Rizzardi says.
  
  Enter Stress Busters week, Rho Phi’s Honors in Action project and the first-ever such event at BC3.
  
  Stress Busters key to four-star ranking
  It’s a week before finals. Flames jump in the hearth of the fireplace at the Student Success Center, where students find tables of crayons, and coloring markers, pencils and pages – “an intricate peacock, some flowers, a cat picture. Really calm things,” Harris says.
  
  “We had a nice ambience going on,” Rizzardi says.
  
  There’s a display of essential oils – “with each one, we wrote down what it helps to do, if it helps to calm you down or get rid of stomach aches,” Kasunic says.
  
  And canisters of Play-Doh, healthful snack foods, herbal teas, yoga classes, massages and, Kasunic says, “a light-hearted movie playing.”
  
  “‘Inside Out,’” Rizzardi adds. “A cute, animated movie that explains emotions and feelings.”
  
  Did it help students unwind?
  
  “It was helpful for me,” Kasunic says with a laugh.
  
  Did she observe others working the Play-Doh or coloring between the lines?
  
  “I might have been one of them,” she says with a laugh.
  
  BC3 President Dr. Nick Neupauer stops by.
  
  “A couple of us involved with PTK ended up having a good relationship with him,” Kasunic says. “He actually walked in just to check it out and he jumped in for a couple rounds of Apples to Apples with us. That was pretty cool, playing Apples to Apples with the college president.”
  
  Harris recalls a student who said she didn’t do anything other than homework between classes.
  
  “So she was incredibly stressed and didn’t know what to do and she happened to walk past the event and she just decided to sit down and color and she lost track of time coloring. She just found it incredibly relaxing and she was able to study with a clear mind that evening because she was somehow able to just find peace during that hour, hour and a half that she didn’t have class.”
  
  Administrators reward Rho Phi’s tenacity
  Attending the national conference qualifies Rho Phi to become eligible for a five-star ranking.
  
  “That is what was missing,” Kasunic says. “Attending a national conference.”
  
  Dr. Bruce Russell, BC3’s interim vice president for academic affairs, and Neupauer saw the work that went into making this a successful year, Rizzardi says, “and said they wanted to reward the students for the work they had done.”
  
  Kasunic, Harris, Rizzardi and Neupauer are among the throng at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, where Phi Theta Kappa students share stories of success and discuss ways to attract new members and more involvement from their own.
  
  The most impressive thing about the conference, Kasunic says, is not the light show. Not the music. Not the dancing. Not even Jennifer Harris balancing that flag pole for 20 minutes which, Rizzardi says, she did “with grace and honor.”
  
  Without a doubt, Kasunic says, it is the people. “Their enthusiasm,” she says. “I thought that Jenny and I were very enthusiastic about PTK. And there, it was like PTK on steroids.”
  
  “Our ultimate goal was to become a four-star chapter,” Kasunic says, “and we did. It was so incredible to know we had done that much and were recognized for it.”
  
  Rho Phi is now among the 6 percent of Phi Theta Kappa chapters in four states and Washington, D.C., to attain four-star status, according to Rizzardi. “It was definitely a lot of work to get there,” Harris says, “and I would say for our chapter, one of our brightest moments in our career at BC3.” Brighter than a two-star, and shooting toward a five. Show less...

• Apr 12

  BC3 lauds hundreds at Student Awards Day

  

  BC3 students pose for a photo with their awards at the spring 2016 Student Awards Day in Founders Hall on main campus.

  As he extends his hand to shake theirs, Dr. Nick Neupauer’s eyes meet those of students who on this day – “one of my favorite days of the year” – will be recognized for academic achievements at Butler County Community College. Read more...

  It’s Awards Day, when hundreds of BC3 students and their parents, grandparents, spouses and children gather inside Founders Hall, a celebration and veritable who’s who, literally and figuratively, of academic and extra-curricular achievers.
  
  BC3 honors the 408 students named to the dean’s list and the 771 to the president’s list in 2015; the 21 who earned BC3’s Leadership Series certificates and the 42 selected for Who’s Who Among American Colleges and Universities.
  
  “I see great pride,” says Neupauer, BC3’s president. “I’ve seen students moved to tears. I see a belief, a reinforcement of, ‘Yes, I can do this.’”
  
  It’s a time “to feel good about the sacrifices they’ve made,” says Rob Snyder, BC3’s director of student life.
  
  “A lot of the students have children and jobs,” Snyder says. “They have a lot of other commitments they have to juggle while being academically successful. It takes a lot of time and this is their day.
  
  “They should enjoy it and be proud of themselves. These are the fruits of their labor.”
  
  Dr. Case Willoughby, BC3’s vice president for student affairs and enrollment management, announces students nominated by faculty and staff and chosen for the Who’s Who list. Those students earned 12 college-level credits, have a semester grade-point average of 3.0 and are involved in athletics, student clubs and organizations or community service.
  
  “Who’s Who recognizes not only students who do well academically, but who are involved on campus or off campus,” says Sherri Osborne, BC3’s assistant director of student activities. “We are recognizing students who might be involved in athletics, clubs or might be volunteering in their community.”
  
  BC3 offers 16 clubs and five organizations on its Butler Township campus, and others at its Lawrence Crossing, Cranberry and LindenPointe sites.
  
  Involvement “aids learning”
  Her office also coordinates a Wellness Expo and an Involvement Fair, which annually draws nearly 150 BC3 students Founders Hall, where up to 30 campus clubs, organizations and community groups solicit new members.
  
  Involvement, she says, “aids their learning process. And they get experience that they may not necessarily get in a classroom. But they are also able to keep their grades up while getting out there and being involved. Statistics show that students who get involved in something outside of the classroom actually are more successful.”
  
  That would also include the 21 students who received certificates after voluntarily completing BC3’s Leadership Series.
  
  “They have to focus on leading with a purpose, professional development, team building and community and cultural awareness,” says Joshua Novak, BC3’s dean of student development.
  
  “Students can commit on their own to attending these sessions with the goal of building their own personal leadership skills,” Novak says. “So it certainly speaks highly of them, that they are going through this particular structured series and committing their time when they are not required to.”
  
  Honing talents for the work force
  Employers, he says, tell BC3 they are seeking graduates with skills in leadership, of being able to work in teams, of being able to work in diverse environments and understanding and being able to leverage their strengths.
  
  “And so we are trying to help students move forward in their own personal and professional development, prepare them for the jobs they are looking for,” Novak says. “And we are trying to get students engaged on campus. This gets them connected to other students outside the classroom, gives them a small cohort of individuals who are working toward a common goal.”
  
  Dr. Bruce Russell, BC3’s interim vice president for academic affairs, announces the dean’s list students, those who have a 3.5 to a 3.74 grade-point average while carrying at least 12 credits.
  
  Neupauer announces the president’s list students, those with a grade-point average of 3.75 or higher while also carrying at least 12 credits.
  
  Juliann Sheptak, BC3’s coordinator of executive and board services, and Renee Piovesan, BC3’s vice president for academic affairs secretary, say that 180 students were named to the dean’s list and 385 to the president’s list in the spring of 2015. In the fall, 228 students were named to the dean’s list and 386 to the president’s list.
  
  “These are the accomplishments of the students,” Osborne says. “These are things that we want to celebrate and to give the students recognition. They can invite their parents, or significant others or their children.
  
  “They can walk up and shake the president’s hand or the vice president’s hand and get their certificate.”
  
  And walk away with great pride, sometimes with tears in their eyes. Show less...

  Flickr Photo Album: 2016 Student Awards Day

• Apr 23

  BC3 now armed with seven star pitchers in defense of WPCC title

  

  The Butler County Community College women’s softball team won the WPCC Championship defeating both Westmoreland and the Community College of Beaver County. Team members include: Morgan Deal, Saydie Moore, Belle Chiodo, Shy McCommon, Kasey Jones, Darian Gruver, Maddie Brice, Maddie Shaffer, Alycia Brehm, Kelsie Anderson, Tyara Johnson, Kalynn Callihan, Haley Fox, and Sarah Omstead.

  It’s no longer difficult for Roni Mall to make a pitch for players to join a Butler County Community College softball team that lacked pitchers in 2016.
  
  An improbable 11-3 season, behind an outfielder and infielder thrown into emergency pitching duties, and a Western Pennsylvania Collegiate Conference championship, has a way of enticing new players. Read more...

  “Good,” says Mall, the coach, “breeds good.”
  
  “Good,” she repeats, “breeds good.”
  
  She’s reluctant to say great.
  
  “We could have gone to regionals” after the Pioneers crushed Westmoreland County Community College 14-6 in the WPCC championship behind fence-clearing home runs by Morgan Deal, of Karns City; Haley Fox, of Knoch; and Kasey Jones, of Mars Area.
  
  BC3 qualified for the National Junior College Athletic Association Division III Region XX tournament with the victory over Westmoreland, but Mall chose against the berth.
  
  “I did not feel we had the pitching depth,” Mall says. “I did not want the college to put up the funds until I could give back their funds with a team.”
  
  She’s not so reluctant to say great today.
  
  “We are not only going to go to regionals,” she says. “We are going to go to nationals. This team will be amazing.”
  
  A season filled with thrills
  Outfielder Saydie Moore, of Karns City, and infielder Bella Chiodo, of Grove City, return, as does Kaylnn Callihan, of Butler, from a squad that won 11 of its final 12 games – five by staging last-inning rallies.
  
  Moore and Chiodo carried BC3 in the circle in 2016 after star pitcher Codi Reed, of Knoch, was declared ineligible after a credit-load mixup left her a part-time student.
  
  “Pitchers are built through years of pitching,” Mall says. “To ask girls to come out and pitch game after game can really do some damage.”
  
  There were games in which Moore would start and Chiodo would close in relief. There were games in which Moore or Chiodo would start, the other would come in relief, and the starter would return to the circle to close.
  
  “It depended on how much arm they had,” Mall says. “And how the team was fielding, how many hits the other team was getting. Basically both pitched each game. That was very difficult to figure out. We didn’t have huge curves. We did not have big dropballs. We didn’t have the high movement pitches and we didn’t have a lot of speed.”
  
  Realizing their plight, the Pioneers overachieved and overcompensated in all other facets of the game.
  
  “The girls just fought from within,” Mall says. “And they were determined to make themselves better, and to help the problem. Girls were making diving catches because they knew that they had to make the plays out in the field.”
  
  Mall has landed five more hurlers following BC3’s first WPCC championship since 1999 and third overall. Including Moore and Chiodo, the Pioneers are now armed with at least seven pitchers: Jessi Reed and her sister, Codi Reed, of Knoch; Taylor Downs, of Karns City; Samantha Milky, of Seneca Valley; and Alexis Schmeider, of Butler.
  
  “When I talk to a player and they hear who else is on the team, the team itself is selling itself,” Mall says. “We have many pitchers. I go from zero to 60. And I still have Bella. And Saydie.”
  
  Specialists in the circle
  Codi Reed throws “almost like a knuckleball,” Mall says. “You can read the print on the ball when it is coming across the plate.”
  
  And Jessi Reed?
  
  “A dropball that drops off the table,” Mall says. Each of Mall’s 2017 hurlers will have her own go-to pitch.
  
  “We might have four girls pitching in a game just to strategize against other teams,” she says.
  
  To aid in that strategizing, Mall can now also call on Dan Beebe.
  
  Beebe, who led Moniteau High’s 2016 softball team to a 24-2 record and the PIAA Class AA title game in 2016, has joined Lisa Smith and Paul Smith as a Mall assistant.
  
  The state title game appearance in 2016, in which the softball team fell 9-3 to Holy Redeemer of the Wilkes-Barre area, was Moniteau’s first in any sport. Beebe’s softball teams won four District 4 Class AA championships in his six years, including one in each of the past three. His squads were 109-20 overall.
  
  Members of BC3’s 2016 team were Shy McCommon, of Knoch; Darian Gruver, of Redbank Valley; Maddie Brice, of Ford City; Maddie Shaffer, of Seneca Valley; Alycia Brehm and Kelsie Anderson, of Moniteau; Tyara Johnson, of Franklin Area; Sarah Omstead, of Butler; and Callihan, Chiodo, Deal, Fox, Jones and Moore.
  
  Show less...

  Article: BC3 Pioneer Softball Team WPCC Champions
  Article: Butler Eagle Pitch perfect Pioneers' softball program flourishing

• Apr 26

  Farmers National Bank’s fourth donation shows compounding interest in BC3, financial literacy

  If there’s one thing elementary, middle and high school students playing the Stock Market Game disagree about, it’s their teams’ strategy. But none will disagree about Farmers National Bank of Emlenton’s investment in their financial literacy. Read more...

  Farmers National Bank’s $15,000 gift to the Butler County Community College Education Foundation Inc. will continue to support innovative initiatives that include BC3’s College Within the High School program and BC3’s Center for Economic Education, which coordinates the Stock Market Game played by 1,648 students in grades 4 to 12 at 30 regional schools. The donation funds two workshops held to educate teachers, who in turn educate their students about the game, says David C. Huseman, a BC3 professor of humanities and social sciences and director of the BC3 Center for Economic Education, which coordinates yearlong, fall, spring and 10-week competitions.
  
  “One of the things we do,” Huseman says of the workshops, “is to bring in a financial adviser, who gives teachers tips to pass on to their students about what might be good stocks to invest in.”
  
  Not that the students may heed the advice.
  
  Sit in on the annual Stock Market Game recognition luncheon, also funded by Farmers National Bank of Emlenton, and listen to members of winning teams addressing the crowd of 100.
  
  “One student will start off by saying, ‘This was our strategy...’” Huseman says, “and another student will interject, ‘Yeah, but I really had to fight them hard on this because I believed this stock was stronger.’ So there is a lot of debate, even after the contests are over.”
  
  Hypothetical $100,000 pays off with skills
  Students on teams of up to five members begin the Stock Market Game with a hypothetical $100,000, make buy-and-trade decisions and track how those decisions would have played out in the markets had they been real. The game also introduces many students to the importance of saving, and develops math, English and history skills, according to Huseman.
  
  “Teachers,” Huseman says, “can’t say enough good things about it.”
  
  Teacher Amy Bocci serves as a Stock Market Game adviser at Knoch Middle School, where her sixth-graders scrutinize their investments on smart phones as soon as they arrive in class each day.
  
  “They all have a stock app,” Bocci says. “They check their stocks and have discussions about which companies are doing well, which aren’t, maybe why. And then they have discussions, ‘Should we sell it? Should we hold on and see?’”
  
  Some days, she’ll hear students exclaim, “We’re losing $500!” Other days, “They are so excited, jumping up and down and high-fiving each other.”
  
  Teaching financial literacy early, Bocci says, “is super important.”
  
  “Studies show Americans have very little to no savings, and credit-card debt is so high,” she says. “I talk to them about investing earlier in life rather than later, about compounding interest.”
  
  Bank takes stock in students
  Ruth Purcell and Dr. Nick Neupauer laud Farmers National Bank of Emlenton’s interest in BC3.
  
  “They have just been so very supportive of the college,” says Purcell, executive director of the BC3 Education Foundation Inc.
  
  Adds Neupauer, BC3’s president: “We are fortunate to have the outstanding backing of Farmers National Bank for these programs. This partnership has benefited countless number of students and we are grateful for the bank’s confidence in the college.”
  
  Like Farmers National Bank of Emlenton, NexTier Bank, First National Bank of Pennsylvania, Peoples TWP, PPG Industries and Maher Duessel also support BC3’s Stock Market Game. The word “community” sets the playing field, says William C. Marsh, board chairman, president and chief executive officer of Farmers National Bank.
  
  “It’s in the name of the college and we view our bank as a full-service community bank – both our bank and the college serve local people with local people,” Marsh says. “We strive to take advantage of the great region where we work, learn, play and just live to provide a value prospect for our respective constituencies.”
  
  Along with general education, health and being productive in one’s community, financial literacy and engagement are critical to one’s success, Marsh says.
  
  “In addition to the professional competencies that an individual might pursue, understanding personal financial management, investment and savings is paramount to being a productive member of society,” Marsh says. “Learning to save is important. Our bank spends a significant amount of time each year teaching financial literacy through Pennsylvania Bankers Association-sponsored programs and otherwise.”
  
  Farmers National Bank of Emlenton has made a gift to BC3 for four consecutive years through Pennsylvania’s Educational Improvement Tax Credit program.
  
  Its donation also benefits BC3’s College Within the High School program, which began in 1997, is offered in eight regional counties and whose enrollment has increased 98 percent since 2006-07, says Erin Cioffi, BC3’s assistant director of high school programming.
  
  The EITC funds pay the $25 admissions application fee for the 334 public high school juniors or seniors currently enrolled in college-level BC3 courses, according to Cioffi.
  
  A “jump-start” on college
  Thirty-eight classes – from American national government to principles of sociology to 20th-century world history – are held at 21 high schools or career centers, before, during or after school, in libraries or in classrooms, Cioffi says.
  
  “It’s an opportunity to give them a jump-start on their college education and address some of the core credits,” Cioffi says.
  
  It also introduces students to time-management, studying and note-taking skills, Cioffi says.
  
  And general psychology, says Owen Zablocki, a senior who is taking the college-level course that meets for three hours on Thursdays in Armstrong Junior-Senior High’s library.
  
  “I have enjoyed it,” the Ford City resident says. “It’s a long period of time (to meet), but it is definitely worth it.”
  
  As was his sons’ taking university-level classes while in high school, Marsh says.
  
  “Not only does this save on post-secondary education costs for parents, in most instances, it sets the stage for students to be prepared for college, earn college credits and get a step ahead in understanding college-level coursework,” Marsh says. “Our bank is committed to all types of educational endeavors, including college in high school programs.” Show less...

• Apr 27

  BC3 pact with Westminster an option for 115 students

  Butler County Community College’s 90 early childhood education and 25 child development education students may benefit from an articulation agreement with Westminster College that allows BC3 students to smoothly transfer credits toward a bachelor’s degree. Read more...

  The agreements provide a seamless transfer of credits and give BC3 students the opportunity to complete the second two years of a four-year degree, says Bill Miller, BC3’s dean of humanities and social sciences.
  
  Students earning associate degrees in early childhood (pre-K) can transfer to Westminster’s early childhood-special education program; and in child development education to Westminster’s child and family studies program.
  
  “The uniqueness of both of these programs will allow our students excellent options to further their education,” Miller says.
  
  It may be also beneficial to students who would have to travel only 10 miles from BC3’s Lawrence Crossing site in Union Township to reach Westminster in New Wilmington, says Bob Morris, BC3’s dean of admissions.
  
  “This agreement provides a great opportunity for BC3 students, especially those who attend BC3 @ Lawrence Crossing,” Morris says. “Early childhood education is one of the associate degree programs available at Lawrence Crossing, so this agreement gives students an outstanding transfer option that allows them to stay close to home.”
  
  Amy Camardese, chair of Westminster’s School of Education, agrees.
  
  Westminster is “pleased to be able to provide an avenue for BC3 students... to transition into a four-year degree-granting program without losing any credits,” Camardese says. “We believe the partnership is especially attractive because students in the early childhood/special education program will be dual certified upon completion of graduation requirements.”
  
  While BC3 students can obtain an associate degree in early childhood education without leaving Lawrence Crossing, according to Susan Davis, the location’s student services-technology support specialist, those pursuing an associate degree in child development education must take several courses at BC3’s main campus in Butler Township.
  
  Dr. Bruce Russell, BC3’s interim vice president for academic affairs, met with Richard H. Dorman, Westminster president, to sign the agreement at BC3 @ Lawrence Crossing. Show less...

• Apr 27

  BC3’s international water-rescue expert wins Red Apple Award

  

  Winners of the 2016 Red Apple Awards, presented by the United Way of Butler County, are shown April 27, 2016, at The Atrium in Prospect. Seated, from left, Carin Rasp, Butler County Community College Professor Chris Calhoun, Shawna Peters, Dr. Jennifer Willford and Laura Campbell. Standing, from left, Rebecca Suesser, Kimberly Thomas, Timothy Parish, Matthew Bates, Michael Losk and Amy Ellison.

  Water, says internationally renowned rescue-instructor trainer Chris Calhoun, is predictable.
  
  “If,” he cautions, then pauses, “you understand it.”
  
  It can also be relentless.
  
  His relentless efforts to help others understand water, and possibly survive in it, are among the reasons that on this night he receives a Red Apple Award from the United Way of Butler County. Read more...

  Calhoun, a parks and recreation management professor at Butler County Community College, is among 11 educators the United Way honors for exemplifying leadership and for outstanding dedication to students and the community.
  
  “GIVE. LEAD. TEACH” is written on the program distributed to the 100 guests attending the 12th annual awards ceremony, part of the 2016 Education Summit at The Atrium in Prospect.
  
  “The committee really liked him,” says Lisa Leonhard, executive assistant of the United Way of Butler County. “There were a lot of different nominations that said he was doing a great job and wanted to acknowledge him for that. I know we had quite a few praising the work he puts in and the effort.“ Calhoun was instrumental in the formation of the all-volunteer Butler County Team 300 Water Rescue Team four years ago, says Steve Bicehouse, director of Butler County emergency services.
  
  The unit, composed mostly of volunteer firefighters, responds to water emergencies ranging from flash-flooding to ice rescues to search-and-rescue to recovery operations in Butler County and surrounding counties.
  
  Calhoun a “catalyst”
  “Chris brought his knowledge to the table, and gave them a good strong foundation to begin with,” Bicehouse says. “Chris has been kind of the catalyst for the team, took it upon himself all the education, wrote the standard operating guidelines, and really, without him, the team probably would not have gotten off the ground at the county level.”
  
  That squad today has 25 members, Calhoun says, each in varying stages of learning from his own experiences, expertise that has made him a featured speaker for three consecutive years at the International Association of Water Rescue Professionals conference.
  
  Mark Lauer, a Unionville volunteer firefighter, was the primary driver in creating the Butler County Team 300 Water Rescue Team, Calhoun says, “and I was one of the stakeholders because of my experience.”
  
  His experience tells him to “work with the power of the water,” be it on the Slippery Rock or Connoquenessing creeks or the murky depths of Lake Arthur at Moraine State Park.
  
  “Understand that it is relentless and never stops,” he says, “so if you respect what you’re working with and you learn as much as you can about it, you can take what somebody looks at as chaos and unrelenting force and you can use those dynamics to your advantage.”
  
  Water levels of the Slippery Rock Creek, he’ll tell fellow rescuers and his parks and recreation management students, can fluctuate rapidly.
  
  “It is such a narrow gorge that water levels can go up or down very quickly,” he says. “And people truly underestimate how fast and powerful that water is, that there are holes out there that are very deep. The other thing they underestimate is the cold water and how it can incapacitate you rapidly.”
  
  Red Apple Award winners are selected from nominees from each public school district, the Butler County Vocational-Technical School, Butler County Community College, Slippery Rock University and preschools in Butler County.
  
  “The best of the best”
  Calhoun has been a professor and program coordinator at BC3 since 1984. He has worked as a wildlife conservation education specialist and a lead water rescue instructor trainer with the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission. He is a member of the Pennsylvania Helicopter Aquatic Rescue Team and is the assistant chief for Team 300.
  
  “I’ve worked at a lot of institutions – research universities, state universities, privates and, of course, a community college,” says Dr. Nick Neupauer, BC3’s president. “Professor Calhoun is the best of the best. An expert in the classroom, his reputation in the state, region and country correlates to a passion in his field and knowledge that is second to none.”
  
  Jessica French, 20, a BC3 parks and recreation management major from Prospect, echoes Neupauer.
  
  “I think he is the best teacher I have ever had in all of my schooling,” French says. “He’s a straight-forward guy and you can tell he is out to help you pursue the career that you are passionate about. He has amazing experience working in multiple different agencies. And he can teach you from experience, and not just from a book, which I respect a lot.”
  
  Calhoun is an “extremely hands-on professor,” says Justin Flick, a 2011 BC3 graduate and ranger at Moraine State Park in Portersville. “Most other schools don’t get the hands-on training like the swift-water rescue training and the wildland firefighter training, and first-aid and safety courses.”
  
  Calhoun, a native of Clinton County, was drawn across the state in 1979 to BC3’s parks and recreation management program because he knew the Kettle Creek State Park superintendent – himself a graduate of BC3. Calhoun later attained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Slippery Rock University.
  
  A “boots-on-the-ground guy”
  After serving as a law enforcement ranger with the National Park Service, he developed boating and water safety programs in Western Pennsylvania for the state Fish and Boat Commission, and became the lead water rescue instructor trainer for the commonwealth.
  
  He’s helped to save dozens of lives, individually or as part of a team – “It’s a lifetime of fate,” Calhoun says, “being in the right place at the right time” – and searches for those who have lost theirs.
  
  And often, Bicehouse says, putting his own at risk.
  
  “He’ll go out with the team any time they get called out,” Bicehouse says. “He’s available. He’s out there. Not only directing them, but he’s a boots-on-the-ground guy. If he needs to get in the water, he gets in the water. That’s awesome. It’s good for those guys to see somebody with his experience and expertise right beside them working with them.”
  
  A GIVER. A LEADER. A TEACHER, Chris Calhoun says he is driven mostly by trying to find someone lost in the water for relatives waiting on the shore or banks.
  
  “They want their loved one brought home,” he says. “My drive is not the challenge or the adrenaline of being out there. My challenge is to walk up to that family and be able to tell them, ‘We’re going to bring your loved one home.’” Show less...

  Article: Butler Eagle Red Apple Awards praise teaching, community work
  Flickr Photo Album: Chris Calhoun – Recreational Leadership

• Apr 28

  BC3 hails 9 who go above and beyond

  

  BC3 President Dr. Nick Neupauer, left, presents Sherri Mack, associate professor for business, and Alex Gladis, director at BC3 @ Cranberry, with the Above and Beyond Award for 2016.

  Butler County Community College praises Sherri Mack and Alex Gladis, and the staff of Lawrence Crossing, for going above and beyond, recognizes 25 employees on their service anniversaries and bids farewell to 10 retirees at a Founders Hall banquet. Read more...

  Mack, associate professor of business, and Gladis, director at BC3 @ Cranberry, were the “right people” to lead BC3’s Middle States Commission on Higher Education self-study efforts as co-chairs 18 months earlier, says Dr. Nick Neupauer, BC3’s president.
  
  Lawrence Crossing staff members Susan Davis, Garrett Nogan, Joyce Shafer, Jodie Parson, Sean Carroll, Steve Lockovich and Jenn Loue assumed extra tasks, worked longer hours, learned new responsibilities, attended additional meetings “and the list goes on,” Bill O’Brien says, after the death in March of the location’s longtime director, Diane DeCarbo.
  
  “When a department is shorthanded it can take a toll on all others,” says O’Brien, BC3’s vice president for continuing education and off-campus sites and director of BC3 @ Armstrong.
  
  “One of our dearest colleagues battled a cruel disease during the 2015-2016 academic year that saw her eventually lose the battle. During this time of despair, the Lawrence Crossing staff made sure Diane could battle this disease without the day-to-day worries of running the Lawrence Crossing site.”
  
  “They rallied behind their leader”
  The Lawrence Crossing staff made sure Diane’s hours were covered, her responsibilities distributed and her meetings attended, O’Brien says.
  
  “They all worked behind the scenes to make sure Diane could stay home and get the rest that she so desperately needed,” he says. “The unselfishness and maturity of this staff kept Lawrence Crossing running on all cylinders while Diane fought.”
  
  Never once did staff complain or ask for help, O’Brien says.
  
  “They rallied behind their leader and made sure the operation of the center never missed a beat,” O’Brien says. “Diane spoke very highly of this staff and it is now clear to us all why. They are a team and great teams always find ways to overcome adversity... And I am sure that somewhere in heaven, Diane is smiling and thanking them as well.”
  
  Neupauer developed a strong relationship with DeCarbo, who worked 27 years for BC3 and was instrumental in the Lawrence Crossing move in 2008 from its location in Shenango Township to one in Union Township.
  
  “Diane had a presence and confidence about her,” Neupauer says. “Those characteristics along with an incredible work ethic and love of our students helped build our BC3 @ Lawrence Crossing to the success that it is today. Her dedication is something I will never forget.”
  
  Nor that of Mack and Gladis, whom he asked to lead BC3’s Middle States Commission on Higher Education self-study efforts.
  
  “It was one of the very best decisions I have made in my time as president,” Neupauer says. “Frankly, they have even exceeded my high expectations.
  
  Tireless, dedicated, detailed and excellent ambassadors are just a few of the words that come to mind in describing Sherri and Alex.”
  
  Both, he says, have the unique ability to convey messages with enthusiasm while understanding the larger picture.
  
  “I am blown away that they have been able to do so while maintaining their full-time – and then some – workloads,” Neupauer says. “That alone speaks to both of their skills and abilities. The average person probably has no idea as to the depth of their co-chair assignments. Not only do they need to convey messages and motivate the entire college community, but their knowledge of Middle States has become vast and thorough in doing so.”
  
  Above and Beyond Awards are presented to those who demonstrate outstanding customer service, according to Linda Dodd, BC3’s executive director of human resources and Equal Opportunity compliance officer.
  
  Qualities may include a willingness to assist others by going the extra mile, acts of kindness related to the job, outstanding work, new or innovative ideas or practices initiated at BC3 or diligence in helping someone or a group of people at BC3, according to Dodd.
  
  BC3 celebrates services anniversaries, retirees
  BC3 also honors 25 employees for up to 35 years of service and 10 retirees at the banquet.
  
  Staff recognized for years of service receive a framed certificate of appreciation adorned with BC3’s logo and crest and signed by Neupauer and Ray D. Steffler, chair of the board of trustees. They also receive a catalog from which they select a gift.
  
  BC3 also presents retirees with gifts such as glass bowls or vases, according to Juliann Sheptak, coordinator of executive and board services.
  
  Scott Campbell, Amy DeVore, Jim Hrabosky, Lynn Ismail, Autumn Kelly, Lockovich, Dottie Los, Mack, Jessica Matonak, Janice Reiter, Marcia Ringeisen, Kim Smith and Steffler, also of the BC3 Education Foundation Inc. board, are honored for 10 years of service.
  
  Tina Fleeger, Jake Friel, Renee Piovesan and Scott Richardson are recognized for 20 years of service, and Joyce Voland, for 25.
  
  Steve Catt, Dodd, Natalie Price, David Schiebel and Kathy Wood are lauded for 30 years of service, and Denton Dailey and Sandy Woods, for 35.
  
  Mike Aikens, Susan Changnon, Rosemary Keasey, Rich Laughner, Pat Massaro, Joe Matthews, Pat Mihalcin, Nancy Jean Rose, Lois Trimbur and Charmaine Wulff are recognized as retirees.
  
  Guests enjoy an appetizer social followed by a buffet dinner of stuffed steak, chicken marsala, mashed potatoes, rice pilaf, dilled baby carrots, green beans and a tossed green salad.
  
  Show less...

  YouTube Playlist: 2016 Employee Recognition
  Flickr Photo Album: 2016 Employee Recognition Dinner

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• May 10

  BC3 “expertise” key in inaugural leadership series, chamber boss says

  

  Graduates are shown in May after completing the inaugural Nonprofit Leadership Professional Development and Management program sponsored by Butler County Community College, Butler County Chamber of Commerce and NexTier Bank.

  So widespread was the interest in the inaugural Nonprofit Leadership Professional Development and Management program that for every executive director or chief executive officer who participated, nearly one was turned away. Read more...

  “We had to cut it off at 20 because we wanted them to have personal attention,” says Stan M. Kosciuszko, president of the 800-member Butler County Chamber of Commerce which, with Butler County Community College and NexTier Bank, sponsored the series that culminates with graduates receiving certificates in May.
  
  “There was a bigger response,” Kosciuszko says. “We probably could have had 30 to 35 people. It was very successful.”
  
  BC3 hosted the seven sessions that feature presentations by Dr. Nick Neupauer, the college president, and Ruth Purcell, executive director of the BC3 Education Foundation Inc.
  
  “A lot of my board members, and a lot of business people who are on boards of nonprofits, thought as though a lot of times the nonprofit agency is run by somebody who is passionate about their mission, and who perhaps was promoted up through the ranks, but has not received very much management training,” Kosciuszko says.
  
  “So what the chamber of commerce wanted to do was to provide management training.”
  
  BC3 offered its Steffler Board Room for the six-month series. Kosciuszko estimates Butler County is home to 250 nonprofit organizations, 50 of them under the United Way of Butler County umbrella.
  
  The series “gives them some basic skills that they would not have had, and puts them in touch with business people,” Kosciuszko says. “The most important thing they learned is that they need to run their nonprofit like a business. They need to have certain skills or people on their boards that will provide those skills to them.”
  
  BC3 president delivers two presentations during series
  Neupauer opened the series with an overview on topics such as knowing your agency, knowing how it is positioned, identifying your plans as its leader, and setting priorities through vision and mission statements.
  
  “BC3 not only had the facility, but they have the expertise,” Kosciuszko says. “Dr. Neupauer is just exceptional at public relations and marketing. So he was the perfect person to do that. Plus, they are BC3, so when you say that you are partnering with BC3, a very reputable certification program, a good reputation, it gave our program some credibility.”
  
  Neupauer concludes the series with a presentation titled “Your Future,” which includes success and failure “war stories,” strategic planning and setting goals and succession plans.
  
  “People are thirsting for additional information and knowledge about leadership, about management, about strategic communications,” Neupauer says. “There are a lot of nonprofits in western Pennsylvania, in Butler County. Often times there is not specific training that is geared toward nonprofits. This was geared toward the great curriculum that the chamber put together in partnership with the college. It was an absolutely packed house.”
  
  Among the graduates are Heidi Artman and Becky Rosenblum, Victim Outreach Intervention Center; Jennifer Bindernagel, The Blind Association; Cindy Cipoletti, The Lighthouse Foundation; Amy Dolan-Strano, Achieva; Steven Green, Butler County Children’s Center Inc.; Cindy Harbison, Community Care Connections; Denna Hays, Butler County Alliance for Children; Kierston Hobaugh, United Way of Butler County; Ave Jack, The Gaiser Center; Mary Kay Kelly, Butler Memorial Hospital; Mindy Knappenberger, Community Foundation Serving the Heart of Western PA; Kathy McDonnell, NAMI PA Butler; Bette Peoples, Grapevine Center; Kimberly Reamer, Community Health Clinic of Butler County; L. Michelle Reefer, Progressive Workshop of Armstrong County; and Valerie Snyder, Center for Community Resources Inc.
  
  “I very much enjoyed talking about leadership, management, strategic public relations, how to work with boards, the difference between a mission, vision and strategic plan, and funding that ties to each, and your personality predispositions and traits that would enable you to be a better manager, a better leader,” says Neupauer, the chamber’s past board chairman.
  
  Purcell spoke at a February session titled “All about the Money.”
  
  As executive director of the BC3 Education Foundation Inc., her responsibilities are to secure major gifts in support of the mission of BC3, manage the Pioneer Proud Campaign, provide leadership to the foundation’s volunteer board, manage foundation planning and staffing, develop collaborative relationships with corporate community and serve on the President’s Cabinet.
  
  Her presentation addressed annual giving and board roles, events, major gifts and campaigns.
  
  Presentations at other sessions were titled “Branding,” “Operations,” “People” and “Collaborations and Networking.”
  
  Brian Opitz, BC3’s executive director of operations, serves on the chamber’s board.
  
  “We consistently have board representation,” Neupauer says. “Community colleges are all about partnerships. We truly are. We do that better than any sector of higher education.” Show less...

• May 12

  Candles, faces glow as 56 BC3 nurses receive pins

  Diane Cyphert waits her turn, as Harold Fleeger spends 30 seconds affixing a pin onto the white nursing scrubs of Amanda Ansell, 30 seconds for Charles Boyles, 30 seconds for Chelsea Clark... Read more...

  The awarding of 56 nursing pins at Butler County Community College on this mid-May night, six evenings before commencement exercises, will take 30 minutes.
  
  Enough time for Cyphert to think about what she’s endured to secure an Associate of Applied Science degree, to think about having that half-dollar-sized symbol secured to her lapel, to think about how it will secure her future as a registered nurse.
  
  “There were times,” Cyphert says, “when I actually wanted to quit. There are moments when you think, ‘This is crazy. I don’t know why I am doing this.’”
  
  BC3’s program, says Patricia Annear, dean of nursing and allied health, is that difficult, that rigorous.
  
  If it weren’t, BC3 could not boast 90 percent success rates of graduates passing the post-commencement nursing boards, of 91 percent success rates of graduates finding employment in the field after passing those boards.
  
  Up to 300 applicants seek admission to BC3’s nursing program each year, Annear says. All but 70, many who failed to achieve at least a 3.2-grade-point average in high school, are turned away.
  
  “That’s just getting in the door,” Annear says.
  
  While many will eventually entertain thoughts of dropping out, somewhere during those 70 credits, somewhere during those two years, 30 percent actually will.
  
  Her nursing program, Annear says, is by far the most competitive at BC3.
  
  “There is,” she says, “no question.”
  
  “A long, hard journey”
  The passing grade for nursing students like Cyphert – and like David Crispen, Tina Denardo and Sara Dietrich, up next in the pinning ceremony – is 75 percent, higher than that outside the program.
  
  From her seat on stage, Cyphert scans the audience at Succop Theater for her husband, Craig, who bore the financial hardship while supporting his wife’s decision to leave her job as a mental health and drug and alcohol therapist to concentrate on nursing studies.
  
  “There were times during school when I really didn’t do a whole lot with my husband, because I was studying or had assignments to do,” Cyphert says.
  
  She looks for her sons, Dean and Nicholas: “I missed a lot of sporting events and activities that my children were in,” she says.
  
  She looks for her mother, Cindy Sarno, who traveled to Butler Township from Connecticut to witness the achievement of her 46-year-old daughter. Both persevered after the death of Cindy’s husband and Diane’s father, Michael Sarno, near finals week of Diane’s second year of nursing school.
  
  ...Jessica Donie... Colby Hika... Miriam Scheller...
  
  “It’s a long, hard journey,” Annear says. “The students almost become like each other’s supporting families. And they support each other all through the process.”
  
  Through courses ranging from human anatomy and physiology I and II to general microbiology to pharmacology I, II, III and IV.
  
  “Through late study nights, study groups,” Cyphert says.
  
  Through many boxes of tissue.
  
  “We, all the faculty, keep tissues, many tissues, in all of our offices,” Annear says. “There are times when a student comes through and says, ‘I can’t do this anymore. This is too hard.’ And we try, we really try to mentor them, to facilitate them, but some of them are having social issues, too. Some of our nontraditional students are working, or taking care of children, maybe some of them are taking care of older parents or grandparents.”
  
  ...Jacob Smith... Carolynn Amsden... Diane Cyphert...
  
  “You did it!”
  The Sarver resident finally stands before Fleeger, the popular lab instructor chosen by the nursing Class of 2016 to place the pins.
  
  “It finally came down to that moment,” Cyphert says, “of ‘Yeah! This is done!’”
  
  Fleeger secures the silver pin on Cyphert’s lapel, opposite her white corsage adorned with a splash of baby’s breath.
  
  “The reality of it just hit me pretty hard,” Cyphert says. “I knew what was at stake and obviously I didn’t quit. I had just pushed myself even harder to get through everything and stay focused, and my family was very supportive of that. They gave me time. They allowed me to do what I needed to do to get the job done.”
  
  Four-inch long candles are distributed to the 56 graduates.
  
  The first is lit, and each student shares his flame with the next student as Sarah Kasunic speaks about Florence Nightingale, the 19th-century social reformer and “how she began nursing, and how during the night she would go out with a lamp to the battlefields and help all the wounded soldiers,” Kasunic says.
  
  Wicks glow in the dark.
  
  Faces, ones Annear is so accustomed to seeing wrought with tension, glow in the dark.
  
  “I’ve seen these students for the past two years, and when I see them on stage I don’t recognize them because I am seeing maybe a softer side of them,” Annear says. “They have gotten all their work done.”
  
  Pins have been distributed, nurse’s pledge recited, and candle flames blown out.
  
  Cyphert finds her husband in the audience.
  
  “You did it!” he says. “You did what you set your mind to do.”
  
  His biggest concern through her two years of schooling, while she missed family events, while she lost her father, while she studied incessantly, was “Do something you love,” she says.
  
  “If this is what you want to do,” he told her, “then just do it.”
  
  And, she says, “I did.” Show less...

• May 18

  BC3’s academic stars shine on stage

  

  Maizee Zaccone, 20, of Butler, Butler County Community College’s first New Century Scholar, is shown on Wednesday, May 18, 2016, the day of BC3’s commencement exercises. Zaccone graduated with an associate degree in English.

  Robert Thomas Jr. walks across the stage inside the Butler County Community College Field House and into the future clutching in his 72-year-old hands an associate degree that took 48 years to earn, while Maizee Zaccone and Jennifer Harris march out of BC3’s spotlights and into those awaiting them at Slippery Rock and Baldwin Wallace universities.
  
  The trio is among 533 to receive degrees or certificates and among the 235 attending BC3’s 48th commencement.
  
  They are listening on this Wednesday evening to keynote speaker Wil Del Pilar, the acting deputy secretary of postsecondary and higher education with the state Department of Education, who tells them to not undervalue their work or their colleagues, to never be afraid of risk or failure and to make sure they consider more than the salary. Read more...

  Dr. Nick Neupauer, BC3’s president, introduces Zaccone, the English major named Pennsylvania’s 2016 New Century Scholar. He stresses during his opening address that Zaccone received the honor by scoring higher in the All-USA Community College Academic Team competition than any other student in the commonwealth.
  
  Zaccone, 20, of Butler, tells her fellow graduates: “We leave here today with more than a piece of paper that tells us we are qualified. As you celebrate, know that I am proud of you.”
  
  She leaves BC3 with an associate degree in English and sets her sights on Slippery Rock University, where she will pursue a bachelor’s degree. Zaccone hopes to attain a doctorate and become an English professor.
  
  Thomas Jr., of Butler, is the oldest graduate in the Class of 2016. The retiree, who began his BC3 studies in 1968, receives an associate degree in business administration.
  
  “There are so many people like that at BC3,” Zaccone says later. “We are all very different from one another. We’re not just your traditional students that you would see at four-year schools. I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this guy never gave up.’ And that’s something that I totally respect. You can do anything at any age. You have to set your mind to it. And he is completely proof of that.”
  
  Harris, a 21-year-old from Renfrew, graduates with three associate degrees – in accounting, business administration and business management – while working three part-time jobs during her career at BC3.
  
  She credits “lots of coffee and energy drinks” as assisting her over the past three years. She plans to study art management and entrepreneurship at Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio. Show less...

  Article: Butler Eagle 533 earn BC3 diplomas
  Flickr Photo Album: 2016 Commencement
  YouTube Video: BC3 Commencement Live Stream
  

• May 20

  BC3 officials among 200 to honor Purvis

  Jean Purvis, who served for decades on the Butler County Community College Education Foundation Inc. board, believed a tribute dinner recognizing her lifetime of volunteer efforts in public healthcare would be unpleasant.
  
  “I was not very happy about it, frankly,” she says. “I don’t like the attention.” Read more...

  The 94-year-old is more comfortable working behind the scenes, as she did in helping to found The Community Health Clinic of Butler County and to establish the Visiting Nurses Association of Butler County.
  
  “What’s interesting about Jean,” Larry Berg says, “is she does these things and she wants no credit for it.”
  
  Berg, a noted radio personality and host of ArmstrongOneWire’s “Faces & Places,” is master of ceremonies at the event held at the Butler Country Club. Dr. Nick Neupauer, president of Butler County Community College, is among the speakers to praise Purvis to a crowd exceeding 200.
  
  Her contributions, Neupauer says, “have been incredible over the years.”
  
  Yet the mother of five wanted no part in a party held to acknowledge her work, specifically, on this night, in creating The Community Health Clinic of Butler County – figuratively, her baby.
  
  “It could be my baby without that (recognition),” she says.
  
  The seven-year-old clinic in 2015 reported more than 1,200 medical appointments and more than 700 dental appointments utilized free by Butler County’s working poor.
  
  “Passion for community unmatched”
  Purvis, Neupauer says, “is one of a kind. Her passion for the community is unmatched. She is giving, caring and a true visionary.”
  
  It was that vision that led to the formation of The Community Health Clinic of Butler County. While vacationing in Hilton Head, S.C., Purvis was intrigued by a Volunteers in Medicine newspaper ad that acknowledged its donors for participating in a Day of Giving.
  
  “And that made me curious, so I went to see the Volunteers in Medicine clinic that signed the ad,” Purvis says. “And that was the very first clinic and it was started by a doctor who had retired to Hilton Head.”
  
  That retired physician was the son of a minister who advised his children to help transport those who needed rides to his religious services. In doing so, Purvis says, the minister’s son “realized and learned that there were all those wonderful service people in Hilton Head who had no insurance and no health care. And actually, the only hospital on Hilton Head is a for-profit hospital.”
  
  The minister’s son would later start the first Volunteers in Medicine clinic.
  
  “Jean comes back and says, ‘We need to do something like that in Butler,’” says Ruth Purcell, executive director of the BC3 Education Foundation and, like Morgan Rizzardi, BC3 associate director of admissions, serves as a health clinic board member.
  
  “It’s for working people,” Purcell says.
  
  “For people who fall through the cracks,” Berg says. “Too young for Medicare, they make too much money for Medicaid, and it’s for people who have no other insurance whatsoever. It’s not provided by their employer, and it’s for people who would really fall through the cracks. So they are the ones who are eligible for care.”
  
  The clinic opened Jan. 8, 2008. Within two years, it added dental services.
  
  “It’s for the kind of care that you ought to have,” Purvis says. “Cavities filled, extractions when necessary. And we had 800 people on our waiting list when we started. And all of them had multiple cavities and a few of them had to have complete extractions. They had badly infected teeth.”
  
  A surprise $50G donation
  Up to 150 volunteers – physicians, dentists, nurses and clerical staff – donate their time and services to the clinic, which employees only one full-time worker, Purvis says.
  
  Meeting the clinic’s $500,000 annual operating budget – “They have to pay rent,” Berg says, “and they have to pay utilities” – is a challenge. Every year.
  
  “We have to raise every single penny,” Purvis says. “And yes, it is very hard.”
  
  Raising those funds “comes up” every year, Berg says. “The community has been really generous. Larger companies, smaller companies, individuals. They have been really generous. But it’s a fight every year.”
  
  It’s a fight that, on this night, becomes less arduous when the final speaker of the evening stands before the microphone.
  
  That’s Rex Knisley, senior vice president of First National Bank and a BC3 Education Foundation board member. He announces a $50,000 donation to the clinic on behalf of the A.J. and Sigismunda Palumbo Charitable Trust.
  
  “That,” Purvis says, “was wonderful.”
  
  And off-script, says Berg, who was among a small group to pitch to Purvis the idea of a tribute dinner in her honor.
  
  “When we had coffee with Jean one morning, some people from the clinic and I, we knew she didn’t want the recognition,” Berg says. “We just knew going in she didn’t want the recognition. We told her two things. Number one, you deserve it. And number two, please accept it.
  
  “Many times when there is a tribute to somebody, it’s usually a fund-raiser,” Berg says. “It’s, ‘We’re going to pay tribute to XYZ person, and come here and give us $150 and if you want to donate more, that’s fine.’ We told her this was not going to be a fund-raiser out of respect for her. We are not going to use her to raise funds. And I think that is what tilted it.”
  
  The ticket cost basically covered the cost of the dinner, Berg says.
  
  “But as it turned out, many of the people who came donated considerable money, several foundations and several individuals,” Berg says. “It was honestly set up not to be a fund-raiser.”
  
  Among the $1,000 to $5,000 sponsors of the event are the BC3 Education Foundation, Butler Health System, Concordia Lutheran Ministries, First National Bank, NexTier Bank and Lutheran SeniorLife – which incorporates the Visiting Nurses Association of Butler County that Purvis helped to establish in the mid-1960s.
  
  Those who made individual gifts to the clinic in honor of Purvis were Ann and Dennis Baglier, Ken Bennett, Fred Bennitt, Jim and Jeanette Cunningham, Terri Edgar, Kim and Curt Fleming, Ronald and Ruth Novak, John and Linda Reichart, Tim and Kim Reamer, John Righetti and Cyndy and the late Jim Sweeney, and Berg and his wife, Judy.
  
  “I will say this. In the end, I enjoyed it thoroughly,” Purvis says. “Larry is wonderful. He made it very painless. And it was nice to see a whole lot of people who I haven’t seen for a while.” Show less...

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• Jun 6

  BC3, student-veterans exchange salutes with Green Zone, 3rd military-friendly designation

  

  A placard identifies Jennifer Dumbaugh, a financial aid assistant, as a member of Butler County Community College’s Green Zone. She is shown Nov. 3, 2016, in the Student Success Center.

  In civilian terms, “I’ve got your 6” – military lingo shared by Iraqi war veterans James Manning and Robert Charette – means, “I’ve got your back.” Read more...

  While its 150 student-veterans look straight ahead, at 12 o’clock, in registering for classes, in accessing GI Bill benefits, in adapting to a less-regimented lifestyle or in addressing combat-related issues, Butler County Community College has got their “6” – their backs – with the Green Zone.
  
  Long before June, when BC3 implemented its Green Zone – its initial 24 members identified by the 9-inch by 3.5-inch placards posted near their office doors inside the Student Success Center, certifying that they have undergone three hours of training about the military experience, about student-veterans’ strengths and challenges, about resources and basic referral techniques and even military lingo – long before that, Staff Sgt. Robert Charette was already convinced BC3 had his “6.”
  
  It was late 2015, before Victory Media would announce BC3 as a Military Friendly college for a third consecutive year, when Charette moved with his wife and two young sons to Butler.
  
  Charette had just served 10 months near Amman, Jordan, with the North Carolina National Guard. Five years earlier, as a 23-year-old, he was stationed for a year in Ramadi, Iraq, with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division out of Fort Bragg, N.C.
  
  Butler, his wife’s hometown, is where the Charettes would begin the next chapter of their lives.
  
  Three days before BC3’s 2016 spring semester began, Charette – a 30-year-old Syracuse, N.Y., native responsible in combat for “strategically moving my men from Point A to Point B” – first walked onto a campus and into the offices of those who were “ready to drop everything” to assist him.
  
  “It was a last-minute decision between my wife and me,” he says.
  
  While being deployed in Jordan he had missed a year of his elder son’s life.
  
  “So, to think about coming home and jumping right into another commitment such as school was a bit scary,” he says.
  
  BC3, his choice to advance a dream of becoming an engineer, alleviated that fear.
  
  “It was an instant acceptance from them.”
  
  In more ways than one.
  
  “Veterans have a place in my heart”
  Long before she became a member of the quartet that launched the Green Zone, Stella Smith would be waiting to assist student-veterans such as Charette.
  
  As associate director of financial aid, she helps student-veterans access the GI Bill benefits to which they are entitled. As adviser of the 150-member Student Veterans Association, daughter of a 30-year veteran who served in Korea and sister of a younger brother who during his 25 years of active duty volunteered to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, she has an affinity for those with military histories.
  
  “Veterans,” she says, “have a place in my heart.”
  
  Minutes – minutes – after admission to BC3, a student-veteran will find himself meeting with Smith to access GI Bill benefits, says Dr. Case Willoughby, another member of the initial quartet of Green Zone coordinators and BC3’s vice president for student affairs and enrollment management.
  
  “She’s great about doing it,” Willoughby says. “But she is also clearly a friendly person and an ally.”
  
  As is Manning, whose veterans’ work-study office is a few doors down from Smith’s in financial aid.
  
  Manning, 30, of Butler, served two tours in Iraq – as a 20-year-old beginning a 15-month deployment to Mosul in 2006 followed by a yearlong deployment in Nasiriya in May 2009 – and obtained two associate degrees from BC3. The guest student is now pursuing bachelor’s degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and from Franklin University while serving as president of the Student Veterans Association.
  
  “That area becomes a little bit of a center of gravity,” Willoughby says. “They get to know a couple of veterans who are working for the college, part time as work study. They get to know Stella, and they know, ‘OK, I’ve got some allies here.’ And that’s a really important piece.”
  
  No sooner does a student seeking admission identify as a veteran than “I am called right away,” Smith says. “Or they are given my name, to contact me. And we help them through each step of the process. What grants to seek. And if they have a disability, I introduce them to our disabilities coordinator. And I give them an information booklet that tells them all the resources that they have here at BC3. We work hard to assist them and to make sure that they are successful.”
  
  After being accepted for admission to BC3, Charette says he immediately “went over and saw Stella and she helped me to fill out my paperwork in getting GI Bill funding. Then I went right to another person who was in the middle of doing something. She dropped everything that she was doing to get me signed up.”
  
  BC3 administrators quickly contacted Durham Technical Community College in North Carolina to obtain the results of Charette’s 2014 placement tests.
  
  “They didn’t hesitate to reach out and drop things they were doing in a moment to help me get into class,” Charette says.
  
  New student-veteran briefing fosters connections
  BC3 also offers early registration for student-veterans and conducts a new student-veteran briefing before the fall semester “to help them to start to connect with each other, let them know there are resources on campus, resources in the community,” Willoughby says.
  
  Barbara Calvert, 43, of Butler, served in the Navy from 1991-1994 and is pursuing an accounting degree.
  
  “They let us register prior to everyone else because we’ve done service to the country and they give us prior registration along with a couple of other groups,” she says. “That makes it less difficult to get the classes that we have to get, to get around, the schedule because we are not just out of high school and normally our parents aren’t just covering for us. It makes it easier for us.”
  
  Easier for student-veterans like Charette, who trains monthly with the Army National Guard and for up to 21 days in the summer. That’s while he’s carrying 13 credits, working up to 35 hours a week in the service industry, being a husband and rekindling relationships with sons Lucas, 2, and Jackson, 6 months.
  
  More than 1 million veterans have enrolled in U.S. colleges or universities since 2009 as a result of the post-9/11 GI Bill, the National Conference of State Legislatures reported in 2014. Veteran undergraduates, the majority of whom are non-traditional students, make up about 4 percent of the national student body.
  
  Fifty-five percent of BC3’s student-veterans – like Manning, Charette and Calvert – are 30 or older.
  
  Green Zone helps adjustment from few choices to many choices
  The Green Zone also familiarizes its members with the unique circumstances a student-veteran may face, such as a Reservist receiving orders for a weeklong training to occur during mid-terms, after his or her instructor has stated in the syllabus that makeup exams are not permitted, writes Dr. Ann Nichols-Casebolt, associate vice president for research at Virginia Commonwealth University and who created the Green Zone program in 2010.
  
  It also recognizes that some student-veterans must adapt to a life no longer as disciplined or strict as it was in the military.
  
  “If you are used to a very regimented structure, a very clear chain of command, a very clear way of doing things, you get into a college situation where you have 14 different choices to fulfill this one requirement,” Willoughby says. “It’s suddenly all about choice.
  
  “You are used to all of your fellow military members having a high work ethic and being very serious. And now you are next to a 17-year-old who sleeps through some classes and doesn’t seem to care and is more concerned about getting a new iPhone than about what really matters. These are big adjustments.”
  
  Student-veterans, Smith says, “come from such a regimented background, and they are told what to do and this is how you do it. And then they come here to school and it is so relaxed, that they don’t have the discipline anymore, they don’t have that person telling them what to do. They don’t have to follow orders any more.
  
  So there’s that, and they don’t want to question anybody, their faculty or instructors, because you did not question your higher-ups when you were in the military.”
  
  Work under way to minimize stressors
  The Green Zone is not a counseling service. It does refer to counselors student-veterans who are dealing with combat-related issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder.
  
  Civilians, Calvert says, “don’t know what it’s like. They have never heard gun spray coming over their head in Afghanistan or anywhere.”
  
  Watching a movie in a U.S. history class about war in the 20th century could be detrimental to a student-veteran, Willoughby says.
  
  “That is so powerful and such a good learning experience for most students,” he says. “But for some student-veterans that hits incredibly close to home.”
  
  Says Manning: “It’s not uncommon for us to have vets on campus who have done four or five tours, depending on branch of service.”
  
  As a result of the Green Zone, a history instructor will now discuss in advance what might be seen in the film, Willoughby says. “This is what it’s going to be,” the instructor will say without identifying any student-veterans in the class. “And if you need to step out of the class, I’m not going to question you about it.”
  
  Her brother, today a retired lieutenant colonel, suffered from combat-related stress after volunteering to serve in Afghanistan and Iraq, Smith says.
  
  “He saw a lot more over there than he would ever tell us,” Smith says.
  
  As part of the Green Zone, “If a veteran comes in, or if another person comes in, and all of a sudden they are acting different, we know what to look for,” Smith says. “We have them come in to our office and we speak with them privately and let them know that while we are not counselors, we can give them the resources. So at the training we were all given resources that we can give a veteran for help, for assistance.”
  
  Some needs are specific and some resources are specific to them, Willoughby says.
  
  “For some student-veterans possibly dealing with PTSD or traumatic brain injury, the intensity of being in our standard orientation of 700 people in the field house, that’s not going to work out for them.”
  
  But the new student-veteran briefing “is fully appropriate,” Willoughby says, “and we invite them to the other as well.”
  
  Lounge can serve as a haven
  BC3’s student-veterans lounge, which opened in November 2013, can provide a haven for some.
  
  “I had a vet come into my office and share that he had to leave class because the topic triggered an experience he had while deployed, so he got up and left the class, but had nowhere to go to de-escalate or calm down, Smith says. “And a lot of times, they could come down here and use the office, but they were going to the bathroom, and sitting in a stall trying to calm down, and that’s really not a good place.”
  
  Inside the veterans lounge, “Only a veteran will understand what another veteran is going through,” Smith says. “So if you go in there and they feel like talking to you, they will talk to you. If you go in there and they say, ‘Hey, not now,’ they understand. We developed the veterans lounge as another safe place for them to go if they need to be alone or if they feel a trigger coming on.”
  
  Student-veteran lauds BC3’s efforts
  BC3 built on VCU’s Green Zone program, says Willoughby, whose nephew served in Afghanistan and in Yemen with the Marines.
  
  “It was tough for him but he is doing well,” Willoughby says. “These are people who are putting their lives on the line, and when they come back, I think we have a moral obligation as a society to make that pathway back into civilian life as smooth as possible.”
  
  BC3 is doing just that, Calvert says.
  
  “To my understanding there are not a lot of colleges that are even interested in even advertising that they even have any kind of veterans programs,” she says.
  
  VCU reports that 100 universities and organizations in the United States have implemented a Green Zone.
  
  “So for BC3 to be as willing as it has been,” Calvert says, “helping us out with even the smallest things, like being able to register, or scheduling conflicts to be addressed, has been really nice for me.”
  
  Victory Media Military Friendly designations in 2014, 2015, 2016 ...
  Victory Media’s Military Friendly ratings were established for two reasons: First, transitioning military personnel need a trusted source that helps them make good choices in determining where to work and where to go to college. Second, companies and colleges need a benchmark to gauge where their program stands versus other institutions in competing for that renewable talent.
  
  “It is not a generic phrase or moniker that an organization can self-assign,” Victory Media states. “Nor is it a term that is owned, controlled or defined by the federal government. It’s the trusted compass for post-9/11 candidates seeking civilian opportunities.”
  
  The Military Friendly designation, says BC3 President Dr. Nick Neupauer, “is so important in so many ways.
  
  “We have a wonderful cohort of students,” he says, “and Dr. Willoughby and Stella Smith have just done a phenomenal job.”
  
  The Military Friendly designation is also one that BC3 has earned, which delights Willoughby.
  
  “I am really proud that we didn’t say, ‘Oh, we met their minimum criteria so let’s stick with it.’ We met the minimum criteria and we kept doing more,” Willoughby says. “Minimum criteria and getting a badge was not enough for us. We kept saying, ‘There is more we can do, and we are going to keep going, on a slow and steady pace, building this.’ And the Green Zone will be our vehicle to keep building.”
  
  To which Manning and Charette and Calvert, in their military lingo, would say, “bravo zulu.”
  
  In civilian terms, “Well done!” Show less...

• Jun 13

  BC3 president: Education opens new paths to success

  Butler County Community College President Dr. Nick Neupauer is the keynote speaker at a Butler County Housing Authority scholarship awards program in which six students from low-income backgrounds receive financial gifts toward continuing their education. Read more...

  A BC3 graduate pursuing a bachelor’s degree in human resources at Geneva College in Beaver Falls, and a BC3 student enrolled in an associate degree program are among those to receive scholarships administered by the housing authority.
  
  “What our scholarships do is to help make up for some of the things that don’t get covered, such as books, that help people who really don’t have the money,” says Edward Mauk, the housing authority’s chief executive officer. “A thousand dollars here, a thousand dollars there. But we are able to help a good many students. We have companies that do want to help, and we help match them with a student.”
  
  Applicants must participate in the housing authority’s Section 8 program or live in a housing authority-managed property and maintain a 2.5 grade-point average.
  
  Their criteria also consist of an essay, academic references and extracurricular activities.
  
  Among those to be presented are the PNC Bank-Cohen and Grigsby Scholarship; the Dollar Bank Scholarship; the Armstrong-Stepanian and Menchyk LLP Scholarship, the Alliance for Nonprofit Resource Inc.-NexTier Scholarship; the Affordable Housing Accountants Scholarship and the Northwest Bank-Robert Hartnett Memorial Scholarship.
  
  Neupauer speaks of his own journey, from a “marginal” high school student convinced success would be measured only by his love of sports and interest in writing, to that of BC3’s eighth president.
  
  “He talked about where he’s come from,” Mauk says, “and how the path doesn’t always lead in the direction you think it’s going to lead. Sometimes it morphs and you end up in places you never intended as a younger person.”
  
  “Affordable cost extremely important”
  That might be BC3, for some students from low-income backgrounds.
  
  “It’s extremely important to have a community college and one of the quality of BC3 so close by,” Mauk says. “A lot of folks who come from a disadvantaged backgrounds can’t go off to a four-year college right away. For a lot of them, the ability to get those first two years in at an affordable cost is extremely important for them to continue their education.”
  
  Mauk says he himself came from an impoverished background and as a youth “would never have considered going to college.
  
  “I had one parent with a GED and another who graduated only from high school. I had no intention of going to college.”
  
  He disliked the factory job he landed after high school.
  
  “I quit and was in college the next semester” at Penn State’s Altoona campus, Mauk says.
  
  He obtained an associate degree and later, while attending night school and working in finance, earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from St. Francis University in Loretto at age 26.
  
  Today he recognizes the confidence that scholarships inspire in low-income students pursuing their dreams.
  
  “It’s a huge benefit,” he says. “Some of these folks have been out of school for a while and are going back and trying to further their career, just to get ahead in life,” Mauk says. “And having Butler County Community College here is also a huge benefit.”
  
  That is what BC3 as a community college does best, Neupauer says.
  
  “We have the full spectrum of students,” he says. “We have individuals who are first-generation college students, individuals who have the resources, students who don’t have the resources, and we are giving them an opportunity for an entrée to higher education.” Show less...

• Jun 28

  Diane DeCarbo: A pioneer among the Pioneers

  

  A framed portrait of Diane DeCarbo, former director of Butler County Community College’s Lawrence Crossing site, is shown Nov. 11, 2016, on the location in Union Township.

  Diane DeCarbo beams as she views that nook off the main lobby of Butler County Community College’s Lawrence Crossing site.
  
  Hers is a welcoming smile over a welcoming spot, a comfortable waiting area she designed for students who can’t wait to meet with her at BC3’s largest off-campus location.
  
  That nook, Susan Davis says, is one that DeCarbo has succeeded in making “a little special.”
  
  Diane DeCarbo beams as she views that thick, glass vase with swirling dark- and light-blue vertical striations that she chose to adorn a low-lying table, creating, Davis says, “an air of an art gallery.” Read more...

  Around the corner, out of her sightline, an Easter lily, a gift from DeCarbo’s mother-in-law that adds greenery to a Union Township location that itself has blossomed since opening in 2008.
  
  From this framed portrait overlooking that nook, Diane DeCarbo beams.
  
  It’s a smile that still attracts everyone to her, even to this day, three months after her death and at a ceremony dedicating the portrait and celebrating her dedication to BC3.
  
  “My gosh, it’s like the best picture of her,” Davis, student services-technology support specialist, says of the former director of Lawrence Crossing. “It’s her smile. That’s the first thing that you see.”
  
  And what Bill O’Brien misses most.
  
  “The one thing about Diane is that she always met you with a smile,” says O’Brien, BC3’s vice president for continuing education and off-campus sites and director of BC3 @ Armstrong. “Not only me, but every one of her students and staff. We miss that smiling face.”
  
  BC3 President Dr. Nick Neupauer developed a strong relationship with the director who, Davis says, “basically started this campus.”
  
  “Diane had a presence and confidence about her,” Neupauer says. “Those characteristics along with an incredible work ethic and love of our students helped build our BC3 @ Lawrence Crossing to the success that it is today. Her dedication is something I will never forget.”
  
  Neither will O’Brien.
  
  “Not only do directors have to know about academic counseling, but they also have to do personal counseling, placement testing, admissions work,” O’Brien says.
  
  Opening the building. Assisting in applications. Helping with registrations. Consulting with financial aid. Scheduling classes. Organizing student activities.
  
  Shoveling snow. Moving classroom furniture. Closing the building.
  
  Diane DeCarbo, O’Brien says, did all of these things.
  
  “Without ever complaining,” he says.
  
  Someone, Neupauer says, once told him that the last things a college president wants to hear about are problems.
  
  “In my time at BC3 as a president – or even dean or vice president for academic affairs, for that matter – never once did a single problem from Lawrence Crossing reach my desk,” he says. “Why? That’s simple: Diane DeCarbo.
  
  “She was tenacious, never missed a deadline, always followed up on assignments and never griped. I used to chuckle when I heard stories about how she would enforce our tobacco-free policy. Didn’t matter if the student was a 6-foot-4, 20-year-old young man, Diane had no problem carrying out the college’s rules.”
  
  Narrow room served wide interests
  Diane DeCarbo worked 27 years for BC3, her first office inside a “janitor’s closet,” Davis says, within the Lawrence County Area Vocational-Technical School in Shenango Township that initially served as BC3’s Lawrence County site.
  
  “Honestly,” Neupauer says, “a closet.”
  
  The narrow room served as headquarters of a woman with wide interests – in Lawrence County’s adult literacy; as an advisory board member of the Career and Technical Center; with CareerLink; the chamber of commerce; the Council of Community Services and with economic development; with School to Work programs; in promoting tourism; in assisting the United Way; and with the State Correctional Institution at Mercer’s Vocational Advisory Council.
  
  All while maintaining that smile, even after learning she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
  
  “Her death hit me hard,” O’Brien says. “Obviously because she had been reporting to me for 20-some years, but we just had a rapport. It was not uncommon for Diane to call and make me laugh about something that happened at Lawrence Crossing. We had many good laughs over the years.”
  
  O’Brien chuckles while recalling those memories.
  
  Then he chokes up.
  
  “She was ill for a year. She didn’t miss too much work. She would go in for her chemotherapy and might take a couple of days off because she got sick, but she always came to work. And she worked right up until the last month of when she got really sick. She had so many sick days that she could have taken, but she felt comfortable at work. It took her mind off things and she never missed a beat.
  
  “And she fought. And she fought. She fought until the last day.”
  
  Diane DeCarbo passed away March 2 at age 59.
  
  “I always felt like she didn’t get to close the door there,” says her husband of 36 years, Ricky. “We had plans for the end of her career and I know how she wanted to end her career. I was with her during her last two days there. She kept trying to work. She didn’t get to retire and say goodbye and leave her workers, who felt like family to her, in the way that she wanted to. I never felt like she closed the door to the building she helped to put there.”
  
  The portrait, Ricky DeCarbo says, does just that.
  
  “I used to like to say there was an angel inside of her,” he says. “And you could see it through her smile.”
  
  Diane DeCarbo beams as she views her nearly 400 students at Lawrence Crossing.
  
  “Her smile was huge,” Davis says. “If you were talking with her, it would have relaxed you, put you at ease. It just lit up the room.”
  
  And, to this day, it still does. Show less...

  BC3 President’s Blog: Remembering Diane M. DeCarbo
  Flickr Photo Album: Diane DeCarbo Dedication

• Jun 30

  Out of this world response to BC3’s first campaign in 14 years

  Members of Team BC3, the 11 Butler County Community College employees whose mission it was to promote awareness and participation in the school’s first fundraising campaign in 14 years, decided early that Penny Wars didn’t make sense. Read more...

  Three years and $6,816,226 later, good thing.
  
  Converted to pennies, the most successful fundraising campaign since BC3 was established in 1965, since Butler County was founded in 1800, would weigh 1,878 tons – the equivalent of 75 of those 30-foot-tall sarsen sandstone and bluestone rocks at Stonehenge. Stacked atop one another, those pennies would soar 633 miles into the atmosphere, or to the international space station, return to Butler Township and climb halfway back.
  
  Equally sky-high about the success of the Pioneer Proud Campaign are its 900-plus donors, its steering committee, co-chairs, education foundation, the college president and Team BC3, which scrapped that jump-starter Penny Wars competition with its donation jugs in the student book store in favor of a distinctly visible and highly mobile “100 percent Pioneer Proud” bracelet idea.
  
  That $6.8 million, whether in dollar bills piled 700 feet higher than the top of One World Trade Center in New York or in 681 million pennies, has changed lives. With Robert R. Heaton in July 2014 gifting $1 million, at that time the largest single donation in BC3’s history, to renovate and rename the former John A. Beck Library as the Heaton Family Learning Commons.
  
  With John L. Wise III and family in September contributing $1 million in September 2015 to expand and rename the Children’s Creative Learning Center in honor of his late sister, Amy Wise.
  
  With the establishment of 50 new scholarships – and increased support for the College Within the High School and Petroleum and Natural Gas Certificate programs, for the BC3 Center for Economic Education, and for BC3’s digital fabrication lab – BC3, under President Dr. Nick Neupauer, has changed lives.
  
  “He and his team have taken the college to a new level of respect for a community college education in Butler,” says Nancy Hunter Mycka, who served as a campaign co-chair with her father, Robert L. Hunter. “BC3 has been a huge support of the citizens of Butler County through highs and lows of the local economy.”
  
  Securing donations “very often an easy sell, really”
  BC3 changed lives when rail-car manufacturer Pullman Standard closed in 1982, Mycka says.
  
  “(The closing) left so many unemployed who had no skill set to make a new career,” Mycka says. “BC3 stepped in and offered both blue- and white-collar educational paths so that those displaced workers could reinvent themselves.
  
  “Conversely, when the oil and gas industry boomed during the 2012-2014 years, BC3 quickly adapted programs for those industries like welding and safety to address the needs of the new employers that were in the area.”
  
  As a result, convincing residents of Butler County and other counties to give back to BC3 was, Mycka says, “very often an easy sell, really.”
  
  Robert L. Hunter and his wife, Gail, were early donors of a leadership gift toward the initial $5.5 million goal.
  
  “There are certain tipping points where you think, ‘We’re going to do this,’” says Ruth Purcell, executive director of the BC3 Education Foundation Inc. “Bob and Gail Hunter made the first significant gift. And that is when it kind of started, ‘We can get there.’ It really is a tremendous amount of gratitude to the Hunters. It would not have happened, sincerely, without them.”
  
  Everywhere she went to discuss the campaign, Mycka says, BC3 had somehow touched that person or his or her family.
  
  Agreed, says Bruce Mazzoni, a BC3 trustee and member of the Pioneer Proud Campaign steering committee.
  
  “It was a good example of going out in an organized manner and meeting with the people,” he says. “It was a great cause and it was identified properly as a great cause and sure enough, people wanted to support it.”
  
  Blue bracelets golden idea
  Among them, 82 percent of BC3’s employees – “really the result of Team BC3,” Purcell says.
  
  “That enabled Nick and I and Nancy and other people who were out in the community talking to others about supporting the campaign to say, ‘Look, our staff is participating at this level.’ Even the Ivys, even the big leagues, 40 percent is like, you’re golden.”
  
  As were those blue bracelets given to contributing employees, the idea of Team BC3 members Ruthi Orloski, Jake Friel, Dottie Los, Polly Goettler, Patty Annear, Kathy Sommers, Ivory Dunlap, Melissa Philson, Kevin Loomis, Maggie Slater and Ann McCandless.
  
  Donate. Receive blue bracelet. Be seen wearing blue bracelet on campus by Team BC3’s Pioneer Proud Prize Patrol on “Wear It and Win It Wednesdays.” Win prize.
  
  “Our main mission was to increase employee participation,” says Orloski, a staff member with the Education Foundation. “That was the most important thing to us.
  
  It didn’t matter how much they gave, as long as an employee gave. And they gave at 82 percent, which is more than double the national average.”
  
  A memo at the bottom of the large cardboard sign the Pioneer Proud Prize Patrol toted, along with balloons, to announce their presence: “Don’t Make Us Go to the Next Building.”
  
  Gifts ranged from $5 gift certificates for the campus café to Pittsburgh Steelers tickets to a Kindle.
  
  “We took pictures of people,” Orloski says. “We had posters. You’d think people won the lottery. It was so exciting.”
  
  As was the campaign, Neupauer says.
  
  “I continue to be blown away,” he says. “The support across the board was mind-boggling. It hits me each and every time I walk into The Heaton and see all of those names. People love this college ... and I am forever grateful.”
  
  “People like to back a winner”
  Nearly 200 donors, led by Heaton, a Butler Township real estate developer, contributed half of the funds needed to create the $5 million Heaton Family Learning Commons.
  
  “Finding out that we had secured the $1 million donation from Mr. Heaton was certainly an unbelievable accomplishment,” Mycka says. “He is such a blessing to the college.”
  
  And BC3 a blessing to its communities, Neupauer, Mycka and Purcell say.
  
  “People like being associated with a winner,” Neupauer says. “Our college is a winner and people jumped on board. They believe in our mission and vision of being ‘the community’s college.’”
  
  With less than a year left in the campaign, BC3 was named the No. 1 community college in Pennsylvania, according to Schools.com.
  
  “One thing that the campaign has showed us,” Purcell says, “is that people like to back a winner. BC3 is the hallmark of the community. I think people are very glad we have this institution in Butler, that there is a certain pride that a community the size of Butler can support a higher education institution.
  
  “It’s one of those things that you know it is available, even if you aren’t taking courses. You know it is there if you need it.”
  
  As are the cultural aspects that BC3 offers its communities – Succop Theater, the Shaffer Walking Trail, the Concert Series and Kids On Campus summer programs, in addition to business and industry training and lifelong learning classes, Mycka says.
  
  “And many come to BC3 for the first time because they host the local high school proms,” Mycka says. “This really rounds out and enhances the community.” Show less...

  Photos: "Wear It and Win It" Wednesday

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• Jul 25

  BC3’s Info Sharing Days draw 142

  Nearly 150 Butler County Community College employees attend one of three Information Sharing Days, designed, Linda Dodd says, so that “everyone is working toward the same goals.”
  
  Dr. Nick Neupauer, BC3’s president, updates staff on the Middle States Commission on Higher Education’s reaccreditation process, on its strategic plan and reset efforts at meetings July 25, July 26 and Aug. 18. Read more...

  Fifty-four employees attend the first session, held for supervisors, according to Dodd, BC3’s executive director of human resources and its Equal Opportunity compliance officer. A session the next day, for nonsupervisors that include professional and technical employees, draws 28 employees. The third is attended by 60 secretarial and clerical; maintenance, shipping and receiving services; custodial; and campus police workers.
  
  “I think it is important that we do this every year because we want to make sure that the message is being shared from the president, the President’s Cabinet through all levels of employees,” Dodd says.
  
  She is a member of Neupauer’s cabinet, along with James Hrabosky, vice president for administration and finance; Jessica Matonak, executive director of communications and marketing; Bill O’Brien, vice president for continuing education and off-campus sites; Brian Opitz, executive director of operations; Ruth Purcell, executive director of the BC3 Education Foundation Inc.; Dr. Bruce Russell, interim vice president for academic affairs; Juliann Sheptak, coordinator of executive and board services; and Dr. Case Willoughby, vice president for student affairs and enrollment management.
  
  Communication, Neupauer says, “is the backbone of my presidency. So is transparency. It is crucial that the entire college be on the same page. Our Information Sharing Days are used for this purpose. It is also a great way to bring employees from different parts of the college together.”
  
  Dodd agrees.
  
  “It’s an opportunity for us to get together and share information about what is going on in the different departments,” Dodd says. “We also get a message from the president, what his objectives and goals are, and where we are headed for the year.”
  
  The informational sessions also serve to prevent duplicative efforts within BC3’s departments, Dodd says.
  
  “If one office has certain information,” she says, “now we know there is a resource we can go to to pull that information if we need it.” Show less...

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• Aug 5

  BC3 golf outing a fair way to raise $52G

  

  Members of the Farmers National Bank of Emlenton team at the BC3 Education Foundation Inc.’s 21st annual golf outing at Olde Stonewall Golf Club near Ellwood City on Aug. 5, 2016, are, from left, Dr. Nick Neupauer, BC3’s president; Bill O’Brien, BC3’s vice president for continuing education and off-campus sites and director of BC3 @ Armstrong; Matt Lucco and Matt Vernick.

  John Anke shifts his weight in the tee box on No. 10 – “hardest hole on the course,” assistant golf pro Matt LeDonne says – and stares south, toward a flag 427 yards distant.
  
  It’s the day of the 21st Butler County Community College Education Foundation Inc.’s tournament at Olde Stonewall Golf Club. The cause, the 90-degree temperature, the high sky and a Friday round of 18 holes at one of the Top 50 public courses in the United States attracts 96 golfers to the 7,103-yard layout. Read more...

  It’s his first time playing on this par-70 near Ellwood City, and Anke soon realizes what LeDonne already knows about No. 10.
  
  “Most of the time you’re playing into the wind,” LeDonne says. “There’s a gust of wind coming at you, from the green to the tee.”
  
  Not to mention those four bunkers squeezing the fairway.
  
  “You have trouble all within your landing zone,” LeDonne says.
  
  Anke is a senior institutional investment adviser at PNC – and a right-handed shot.
  
  The fairway is wide but slightly uphill, he notices.
  
  He tightens his grip around his 10.5-degree-loft driver as PNC teammates Faith Matous, Mary McFadden and Katie Bohnke observe in silence.
  
  Anke shifts his weight again, raises his club and back-swings.
  
  “I certainly knew upon hitting the ball that I connected well with it,” he says. “I didn’t know how hard or where it was going off the tee, but I did know I hit a pretty good shot.”
  
  Anke loses sight of the ball in the sun, then notices its flight 100 yards out.
  
  “I saw that the ball had a slight fade, and that it was tailing to the right,” he says. “There was a bunker that was tucked up in the landing zone, and I just cleared that bunker.”
  
  A masterful drive
  His shot is the tournament’s longest on No. 10, and his first victory in such a contest.
  
  Still, Anke has no idea how far it went.
  
  “No clue,” he says. “Maybe 260, 275 yards.”
  
  He does know that he, Matous, McFadden and Bohnke started the scramble on No. 5, a 159-yard par-3 that, LeDonne says, ends with “a challenging green” – one that oozes forward between sand traps left and right.
  
  “On the whole right side there is a lake,” LeDonne says.
  
  On the whole left side, 30 yards of rough, woods and the Connoquenessing Creek.
  
  “There’s nowhere to miss,” LeDonne says. “Short, left, right, there’s trouble all around. ... You can’t see the back left of the green from the tee box, so it’s a very challenging look into the hole.”
  
  Hitting the green is an accomplishment.
  
  Staying on it is another.
  
  “It slopes from back to front, toward you,” LeDonne says. “It’s very challenging and very undulating.”
  
  Says Bohnke: “It’s pretty narrow. If you’re short, you’re in the trap. If you’re right, you’re in the water and on the left, you’re out of bounds. You don’t have much of a choice there.”
  
  Bohnke’s choice is a 6-iron on her first shot of the day during her first trip to Olde Stonewall.
  
  “I was just kind of getting warmed up and I wasn’t sure what to expect on the green, and I thought, ‘Oh, shoot. I’ll just go for it.’”
  
  The right-hander’s shot arcs toward the green – “You just know that sound when you hit it clean and how it feels,” she says. “It didn’t feel fat or thin” – and lands 10 feet from the pin.
  
  “It pretty much sticks right there,” she says.
  
  Her PNC team birdies the hole.
  
  “I thought maybe the rest of the day would pretty much go like that,” she says.
  
  That honor went to Mike Hnath, Mike Gentile, Richard Goldinger and John Anderson – the Dillon, McCandless, King, Coulter and Graham foursome that shoots a tournament-best 59.
  
  But Bohnke wins the closest-to-the-pin competition, her fourth victory in such contests.
  
  “It was a fantastic tournament,” says Bohnke, a talent acquisition partner for Combined Insurance Co. “Everything was very well done. The location itself was phenomenal and the weather was gorgeous. A beautiful day and event.”
  
  “A top-notch outing”
  During and after play, golfers congregate on the shaded patio of Shakespeare’s Restaurant and Pub, where with its castle-life motif they are treated like royalty while enjoying a lunch, reception, dinner and hors d’oeuvres.
  
  “BC3,” says Renee Foust, “is an amazing organization with a dedicated staff who truly cares about offering a wonderful education program.”
  
  Foust and Kyle Hilfiger serve as co-chairs of the BC3 Golf Committee and are executives with Farmers National Bank of Emlenton, the title sponsor of the tournament since 2011.
  
  “Throughout the entire organization, Farmers has treated us as a partner,” says Dr. Nick Neupauer, BC3’s president. “This is a reflection of its president, Bill Marsh. Their contributions on various committees, with the golf outing and, of course, with donations are appreciated.”
  
  Foust says BC3 Golf Committee members “are committed, hard-working individuals who give it 110 percent to ensure that the day is filled with fun, great prizes and a true overall positive experience.”
  
  It was, Anke says.
  
  “A top-notch outing,” he says.
  
  Agreed, says Ruth Purcell, executive director of the BC3 Education Foundation.
  
  “Everyone says we have a premier event,” she says.
  
  And one that raises $52,000 on this sunny Friday, bringing the 21-year total to $752,000. Show less...

• Aug 10

  Underserved areas a focus of presidents’ retreat

  Presidents of Pennsylvania’s 14 community colleges discuss Gov. Tom Wolf’s education priorities, partnerships with work force investment boards and with four-year institutions, and how their schools can reach additional students during a retreat in Tannersville, Monroe County. Read more...

  Dr. Nick Neupauer, president of Butler County Community College, cites the school’s Brockway location as serving those in Pennsylvania’s Northern Tier.
  
  BC3 expanded its off-campus sites to include Brockway in May 2013. Nearly 100 students attend classes at BC3 @ Brockway, which serves Clarion, Clearfield, Elk and Jefferson counties.
  
  In addition to their main campuses, Pennsylvania’s 14 community colleges have a combined 12 branch campuses and 84 instructional sites and centers in 44 counties. These locations serve students from each of the commonwealth’s 67 counties.
  
  Elizabeth Bolden, president and CEO of Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges, also attends the retreat, held at Northampton Community College’s Monroe County campus.
  
  Bolden and the community college presidents also discuss partnerships with four-year institutions, Neupauer says. Credits from more than 350 BC3 associate degree programs will transfer to four-year institutions across the commonwealth, including those in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, such as Slippery Rock, Clarion and Edinboro universities.
  
  Wolf signed a 2016-17 budget that allocates $232 million to Pennsylvania’s community colleges, a 2.5 percent increase over the previous fiscal year.
  
  In Wolf’s first two years in office, Pennsylvania has increased funding to schools by nearly $640 million, including an additional $16.4 million for community colleges. Show less...

• Aug 19

  Donors dodge storm, shower praise on BC3’s Heaton Family Learning Commons

  

  Nancy Hunter Mycka, Ruth Purcell and Dr. Nick Neupauer listen as Robert R. Heaton speaks during the donors-only dedication event for the new Heaton Family Learning Commons at Butler County Community College on Aug. 19, 2016.

  Everyone, from Butler County Community College President Dr. Nick Neupauer to the school’s custodial staff, mobilizes as an untimely downpour threatens the invitation-only lawn party meticulously planned for five months for the 200-plus Heaton Family Learning Commons donors. Read more...

  There are chairs to be lifted and carried into state-of-the-art $5 million facility. Then the tables. The public address electronics. Even the trays of mini-pepperoni and cheese poppers, the spinach and feta cheese pies, the fresh-fruit skewers, the antipasto with fresh mozzarella, the sun-dried tomatoes and the artichokes.
  
  “Everything,” Ruth Purcell says, “goes into the Heaton.”
  
  All within 30 minutes.
  
  “This speaks to the ‘whatever it takes’ attitude of the BC3 community, to do what is best for our beloved college,” Neupauer says. “This effort is truly something I will never forget.”
  
  Neither will Purcell, executive director of the BC3 Education Foundation Inc.
  
  “We are in heels” while lifting and carrying, she says. “We are all dressed up.”
  
  The unexpected late-summer storm proves unexpectedly serendipitous.
  
  “It was so fun, so crowded,” Purcell says. “I like to give a party where everyone is shoulder-to-shoulder and everyone looks like, ‘Hey, I’m glad I got invited to this.’”
  
  The 200-plus donors who gifted at least $1,500 to the Heaton Family Learning Commons, including major benefactor Robert R. Heaton, are now mixing and mingling inside the very building their generosity built.
  
  They’re standing in those heels or in polished black wingtips on carpeting whose soothing, striated dark-blue-gray tones subtly dissolve into a burst of bright yellow or rust, and then back again, and lead to Stephen Joseph, who is christening the new era with a eulogy.
  
  “Before I begin my remarks,” the dean of library services says, “I’d like to ask you all to join me in a moment of silence in memory of ... the orange carpet.”
  
  Lest no one forget the flooring of the former John A. Beck Library, which after a $1 million donation from Heaton, a Butler Township real estate developer, became the Heaton Family Learning Commons.
  
  “Old school,” Neupauer says of the carpeting. “Very old school. It was time to go.”
  
  From “Brady Bunch” to “Jetsons”
  Guests are about to witness a spectacular metamorphosis, Joseph continues.
  
  “The building you are in in almost no way resembles the building it was before,” he says. “You are here because you are the ones that planted the seeds, in some cases many, many seeds, for this transformation.”
  
  Where opaque walls once stood are now glass half-walls or glass sliding walls, allowing visitors to behold the panorama before them without visual interruption. Wood-grained casings now border glass doors, replacing those once painted purple. Or orange.
  
  “It was,” Joseph says, “very ‘Brady Bunch.’”
  
  Now it’s very “Jetsons.”
  
  Against a dominant theme of tranquil blues and grays, visitors relax in high-backed, eggshell chairs with rust cushions or plunge into lounge chairs boasting USB ports, 110-amp outlets and armrest trays suitable for laptops. They gather among the mint-green accents in the Logan Café, aside high, pub-style tables next to floor-deep windows. They slide into restaurant-style multi-media booths, with flat screens, and headrests offering a splash of turquoise.
  
  Others bask in natural light from the pyramid skylight centered atop an open staircase flanked by cozy study areas on two landings.
  
  “People were just, ‘This can’t be BC3,’” Purcell says. “This can’t be a community college. It just wowed them. The overwhelming comment was that this was beyond expectations.”
  
  Natural light and enlightening surroundings
  As was the Pioneer Proud Campaign, Neupauer tells guests, adding that the fundraising effort that ended June 30 was BC3’s most successful ever.
  
  The $6.8 million raised also represents the largest fundraising campaign Butler County’s history, according to campaign Co-Chair Nancy Hunter Mycka.
  
  In addition to Heaton, more than 200 donors contributed to the Heaton Family Learning Commons. BC3 also received a $2.5 million state grant toward the building, according to Jim Hrabosky, vice president for administration and finance.
  
  While a formerly dark building is now flooded with light and glass, Joseph says, the physical change is only part of it.
  
  “The real transformation will take place when a math professor stops in for a cup of coffee at the Logan Cafe and runs into one of her students, too shy to ask for help in class, and ends up explaining trig functions using a pen and a napkin,” he says.
  
  “The real transformation will take place when a group of nursing students gathers in a study room to go over a presentation together using a laptop and the room’s monitor.
  
  “The real transformation will take place when a history professor uses the digital media room to record a polished lecture on the causes of the Civil War that his students can watch anytime, anywhere, freeing up class time for in-depth discussion.
  
  “The real transformation will take place when a reference librarian is able to help students discover the world of information beyond Google at any of the 39 work stations or the multipurpose classroom.
  
  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he later pronounces, “I give you the Heaton Family Learning Commons.”
  
  Picture-perfect end to evening
  Donors will later have their photographs taken aside wood-grained plaques bearing their names near the 34 sponsored spaces – suites and study rooms and reading areas and offices, which the public and student body will see for themselves during open houses to follow.
  
  Show less...

  Article: Butler Eagle: New learning center anything but common 900-plus gave to campaign
  Flickr Photo Album: Heaton Family Learning Commons Opening Celebration

• Aug 21

  BC3 pulls strings to book top violinist, guitarists at Succop Theater

  

  Larry Stock, director of the Cultural Center at Butler County Community College, is shown on stage at Succop Theater on Nov. 3, 2016.

  It’s not what did happen in his first 14 years as director of the Cultural Center at Butler County Community College that takes center stage in Larry Stock’s mind.
  
  Not the cellist running 40 minutes late in 2004 after his automobile experienced a flat tire, forcing Mr. McFeely and Joe Negri to keep rolling by ad-libbing on the Succop Theater stage to fill time during “A Requiem for Fred Rogers.” Read more...

  Not that December ice storm on show night back in 2005 that closed Route 8 and prevented 20 members of the Pittsburgh Philharmonic from reaching the Butler Township campus and, dapperly attired, stranded and milling around at a gasoline station 12 miles away miles away as Succop Theater was slowly filling for the performance.
  
  Not even the hundreds of plays, concerts and musicals by community groups such as the Greater Harmony Chorus, the Hob Nob Theatre and Butler’s Musical Theatre Guild, or of BC3’s own Performing Arts Series – the ethereal symphonies of the Pittsburgh Philharmonic, the anatomically-impossible movements of contemporary ballerinas or of ethic dancers from all corners of the globe.
  
  Not even them.
  
  Not even Stock booking his beloved guitar-playing country music stars Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers, or Sammy Kershaw, to Succop Theater.
  
  No, it’s what didn’t happen to what the Gatlins and Kershaw might call a fiddle – but what Stock knew full well was a Stradivarius violin – that he just can’t forget.
  
  Nothing.
  
  And that, he says, was music to his ears.
  
  “I thought, ‘If something happens to that violin. ...’ Oh, God. I didn’t even want to think about it,” Stock says.
  
  Stock was at the rear of Succop Theater, behind its console, when he was told a female violinist, awaiting a sound check before a 2010 Music for Medicine concert to benefit The Community Health Clinic of Butler County, had lifted the rare instrument from her case.
  
  “I said, ‘What?!’” Stock says.
  
  “She’s got a Stradivarius!” he was told again.
  
  “I couldn’t believe it was on my stage,” Stock says.
  
  Expensive violin used in priceless performance
  The foreign-made violin would be 250 to 300 years old, one of only 650 remaining in the world, crafted by the Italian Stradivari family – possibly Antonio himself – and worth “several million dollars,” Stock says.
  
  “That violin,” Stock says, “cost almost as much as the theater. I was a nervous wreck, and I was a nervous wreck until they got it out of here.”
  
  But not before it gave its audience a priceless performance.
  
  Katie Hyun, the New York violinist – part of a trio with a pianist and French horn player – created some of the most transcendent music to ever waft from his stage, toward the 25 laser-tuned acoustic ceiling panels and 46 wall panels, and into the ears of Succop Theater’s mesmerized audience, Stock says.
  
  “That concert was as good,” he says, before punctuating his words: “as any you’d hear in any large city in the world.”
  
  Succop Theater, which draws 7,000 visitors annually to roughly 75 community and BC3’s Performing Arts Series events, is celebrating its 15th anniversary season. BC3’s Performing Arts Series – the only to be offered in Butler – will feature four philharmonic concerts, four performing artists and four community artists through May.
  
  Succop Theater “has become a gateway to our campus,” Stock says. “I don’t have the numbers to prove it, and I wish I would have kept them when I started here 15 years ago, how many students we’ve had matriculate here to BC3 whose first experience at BC3 was coming to this theater as a performer in shows with kids or as an audience member.”
  
  Dr. Nick Neupauer, BC3’s president, says it’s important the college embrace and reinforce the significance of the arts and the cultural series.
  
  “I love when people come to campus for the first time,” he says. “One of the key things is you need to get people to the campus. Once you get them to the campus, and I am hearing this more often, that it reminds them of a liberal arts institution.”
  
  “How long has this been here?”
  Stock sits on stage, dwarfed under the 20-foot high proscenium arch, glancing toward 442 darkened, quiet seats, whose occupants on any of his 12 show nights will erupt with applause – between “Rhapsodic’s” Hungarian and Romanian compositions performed by the Pittsburgh Philharmonic, or “Bodiography’s” body-bending contemporary ballet movements, or local musicians covering songs by George Jones, Willie Nelson and Neil Young in “Grand ’Ole Radio.” Or, on any of the 65 nights, ovations after community groups’ staging of everything from the Summer Dramatics Project to the Musical Theatre Guild’s Broadway-style musicals to Miss Butler County-Miss Moraine State Scholarship Pageants.
  
  “Everyone who comes in here says, ‘Wow. This is really nice,’” Stock says. “I’ll invariably get ‘How long has this been here?’ and they are amazed that it has been here for nearly 15 years.”
  
  Can’t-miss 2016 events through May include Teresa Walters on Feb. 10; The Tornado Big Band on March 12; Presidio Brass on March 31; Grand Romanza on April 21; and An Afternoon with Lindsay Fisher on May 7. The Pittsburgh Philharmonic will perform “Bringing it All Together!” on March 24 and “Tchaikovsky” on May 19.
  
  Students who visit Succop Theater, according to Stock, say, “‘Wow! This is really good! I’ve never seen an orchestra concert before! I’ve never seen a musical before! I’ve never seen a play before!’
  
  “They love it. And I think it’s an important part for our student community,” he says. “We offer the student ticket prices and student rush prices 15 minutes prior. They get a ticket for five bucks if there are seats available. You can’t go to the movies for that. This is live entertainment.”
  
  Live entertainment, he stresses to his technical theater production class, “isn’t going to go away.”
  
  Someday, though, those Stradivarius violins will. Good thing Stock’s audience was able to hear one at Succop Theater.
  
  “There were only so many manufactured and only so many left in the world,” he says. “The Stradivarius violins are just so valuable. The tone they have is just remarkable. It’s just such a warm, rich sound. Nothing approaches the tone. Everyone who had made a violin since has tried to approximate it and they can’t even come close to it.”
  
  Neither did Stock.
  
  “I didn’t get anywhere near it,” he says with a laugh. “I stood about 10 feet away. I didn’t get any closer. I didn’t want to be responsible.”
  
  He was, however, responsible for what he calls a “heavenly performance” that night.
  
  “It was spectacular,” he says. “You couldn’t have heard anything better at Lincoln Center in New York or the Kennedy Center in Washington.” Show less...

• Aug 25

  Convocation speech: The mission, the goals, the reset

  In his convocation speech, Butler County Community College President Dr. Nick Neupauer addresses the Middle States Commission on Higher Education’s review, the Pioneer Proud Campaign, the school’s strategic plan and a “reset” in positions and responsibilities following the school’s highest number of retirements in 16 years. Read more...

  Nearly 40 BC3 employees will enter the fall term as new or promoted staff members, with some positions reflecting a reset that “comes along every couple of decades,” Neupauer says. “It is a chance to evaluate vacant positions due to retirements, match them with strategic priorities going forward and save money coming off a period of decreased governmental support and enrollment declines.”
  
  Mike Aikens, Susan Changnon, Rich Laughner, Rosemary Keasey, Pat Massaro, Joe Matthews, Pat Mihalcin, Nancy Jean Rose, Lois Trimbur and Charmaine Wulff were recognized as retirees during an April banquet. They represent more than 215 years of service to BC3.
  
  Changnon was executive director of communications and marketing; Keasey, dean of business; Massaro, executive director of campus police and security; and Mihalcin, dean of nursing and allied health.
  
  “The last time the college had such a large number of retirements occurred back in 1999-2000,” Neupauer says. “I understand the fact that we are losing lots of good people who have given their lives to our college. I am forever thankful to each of these outstanding professionals.
  
  “But as we move forward with a new strategic plan and the landscape of higher education very much changing, I have let our entire college community know that we are using this as a reset for BC3.”
  
  Eight assume leadership roles
  Patricia Annear, Sean Carroll, Jessica Matonak, Dr. Christian Ola, Dr. Bruce Russell, Kelly Jordan, Scott Richardson and William Stegner were named to interim or permanent positions.
  
  Annear became dean of allied health; Carroll, director of BC3 @ Lawrence Crossing; Matonak, executive director of communications and marketing; Ola, dean of business; Russell, interim vice president for academic affairs; Jordan, interim coordinator of professional education and certificate programs; Richardson, interim director of campus police and security; and Stegner, interim virtual systems specialist.
  
  Different links in chains of command
  With the reset, public safety employees now report directly to the vice president for continuing education and off-campus sites; its training facility oversight to the executive director of operations; and its training programs, to the new interim director of workforce development, Lisa Campbell. The public safety secretary was to be reassigned.
  
  Erin Cioffi becomes assistant director of high school programming, a positon that now reports to the director of admissions.
  
  The dean of student development now supervises adult literacy; and the executive director of external relations and the BC3 Education Foundation Inc. now oversees event management and grants.
  
  The vice president for academic affairs now administers business and industry training programs, while supervisors for lifelong learning and off-campus sites had yet to be determined. Also under academic affairs, the medical coding program moves from the business division to that of nursing and allied health.
  
  Under student services and enrollment management, Kelly Flis has been hired in a newly created position of associate director of academic and career planning after Laughner retired as academic adviser and transfer counselor and Trimbur, as career services specialist.
  
  Under operations, Katie Badura-Duke becomes custodial hospitality coordinator; Kevin Loomis, maintenance foreman, Darlene Young, full-time custodian and Tim Martin, custodial coordinator.
  
  Looking ahead to strategic plan, back on Pioneer Proud Campaign
  Neupauer also reiterates BC3’s 2017-2022 strategic plan.
  
  In its mission statement, “BC3 is dedicated to providing quality education, training and enrichment opportunities that are affordable, accessible and responsive to the needs of the communities we serve. The college is committed to fostering a supportive, student-centered environment that values integrity, diversity and excellence.”
  
  Its priorities are students, communities, resources and excellence; and its goals are student success and learning; communication and community engagement; college environment and fiscal stewardship; and employee development and continuous improvement.
  
  For student success and learning, BC3 will provide programs and services that enable diverse students to explore, clarify and achieve educational goals; and will foster active and lifelong learning through innovative and effective teaching strategies.
  
  For communication and community engagement, BC3 will provide timely, transparent and relevant communication for internal and external audiences; and strengthen community connections through economic/workforce development, public safety training, lifelong learning, and educational cultural partnerships.
  
  For college environment and fiscal stewardship, BC3 will maintain a safe, secure, accessible and welcoming environment for students, faculty, staff and visitors at all BC3 sites and locations; and will ensure sound ?scal planning, innovative solutions and the pursuit of alternative resources.
  
  And for employee development and continuous improvement, BC3 will offer professional and personal development options that support work performance and employee well-being; and will sustain regular evaluation and improvement of programs and services.
  
  Neupauer lauds the success of the recently completed three-year Pioneer Proud Campaign, which raised $6.8 million, 24 percent more than its $5.5 million goal.
  
  The Middle States review
  The college will remain accredited while spending the 2016-17 academic year improving its general education curriculum.
  
  Other personnel moves
  Kevin Smith enters the fall term as interim coordinator of fire and hazardous materials programs; and Curt Suprano, as full-time officer, and Bryan Costanzo, as part-time officer, with campus police.
  
  Steven Shaffer becomes instructor in humanities and social sciences and Kristine Allen, temporary full-time instructor.
  
  Nichole Tiche becomes instructor in nursing and allied health, and Aaron Schlott, Melissa Griffie, Jessica Lasanich and Kristine Kenny, temporary full-time instructors.
  
  At BC3 @ Lawrence Crossing, Jodi Parson becomes biology and chemistry lab technician; and at BC3 @ Armstrong, Heidi Afton becomes part-time student services specialist and Kristine Santiso, student services and technology support specialist.
  
  Tina O’Donnell becomes a temporary full-time industrial training secretary; Tim Martin, custodial coordinator; Matthew Miller, associate director of information technology; Rhiannon Baron, adult literacy instructor and distance coordinator; and Jennifer Taylor, business instructor.
  
  Others receiving promotions were: Ivory Dunlap, a counselor and retention specialist with student affairs and enrollment management, to assistant professor; and Greg Mason, an academic counselor and disabilities coordinator, to associate professor.
  
  In natural science and technology, Dr. Melinda Ripper and John Ripper, to professor; Stephen Mayfield, to assistant professor; and Denise Karavias, to associate professor.
  
  In the business division, Sherri Mack, to associate professor; and Erika Nail, to tenured instructor.
  
  In humanities and social sciences, Joy Walsh, to professor; and Lorri Shuber, to tenured instructor. Show less...

  YouTube Playlist: 2016 Tenures, Promotions, New Hires & Changes

• Aug 29

  “BC3 cares about its students”: New fall Fast Track courses a hit

  Weeks, even months, into the fall semester, Butler County Community College students will be able to benefit from an innovative scheduling approach that allows them to begin a course on time and one that showcases BC3’s response to their dynamic needs. Read more...

  With the unveiling of its fall Fast Track selections – three five-week sessions held consecutively – BC3 now schedules four course options within a semester – Session 1, spanning 14 weeks; Session 2, for 12 weeks; and Session 3, for 10 weeks; and the five-week Fast Tracks.
  
  The options enable students who drop a course to add another within the same semester. That’s important for those who must maintain full-time status to remain eligible for financial aid. The online-heavy Fast Tracks also allow students – up to 75 percent of whom have a full- or part-time job, according to Bill Miller, BC3’s dean of humanities and social sciences – to pursue their education off campus while addressing other responsibilities.
  
  “So many of these students are working 10 to however many hours a week,” Miller says. “They are juggling family responsibilities, and possibly going to school with 15 credits. Time is valuable for them.”
  
  Dr. Bruce Russell, BC3’s interim vice president for academic affairs, agrees.
  
  “The whole approach of society now is that things are on demand and when you need it,” Russell says.
  
  Traditional education required the student to work around a college's schedule, adds Bob Morris, BC3’s dean of admissions.
  
  “These new options change that to some degree, as BC3 can now work more around a student's schedule,” Morris says, adding that Fast Track students will find the five-week workload to be concentrated and that the course may have the same requirements and expectations as those lasting 14 weeks.
  
  BC3’s scheduling, says Courtney Clark, a first-year student from Sarver, is very flexible.
  
  The school is taking into consideration “everyday life, like kids, working,” Clark says. “There are so many different accommodations here already. There were 20 different day and time options for college writing 101, so many different options for classes. It’s an example of how BC3 cares about its students.” Show less...

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• Sep 19

  BC3 rescues hopes of students after for-profit college closes

  

  Dr. Stacy Boyer-Davis, left, meets on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2016, with DuBois Business College Teach-Out students Alyssa Whitehead and Nancy O’Donnell inside the Parkside Complex building that houses Butler County Community College’s Brockway site.

  Within two weeks, their own fall semester unfolding and spring semester being crafted, leaders at Butler County Community College – Dr. Case Willoughby, Dr. Bruce Russell, Bill O’Brien, Jill Martin Rend, Dr. Christan Ola, Julianne Louttit, Jake Friel, Amy Pignatore, Stella Smith, Paula Crider and Renee Piovesan among them – mobilize and create a teach-out to respond to DuBois Business College’s closing. Read more...

  “It wasn’t even two weeks,” Martin Rend says.
  
  Pennsylvania’s 14 community colleges reach out with teach-outs to students of DuBois Business College, Cambria-Rowe Business College and ITT Technical Institute, for-profit schools that have announced their closures. Teach-outs provide for equitable treatment of students should their college or university shutter.
  
  BC3 reaches out to DuBois Business College. Financial aid would have to be transferred. Curricula matched or exceeded. Extinct syllabi located and revived. Course numbers created and logged. Institutional knowledge tapped.
  
  And an available instructor to be found to administer final courses necessary for DuBois Business College students to graduate on time with Associate in Specialized Business degrees.
  
  Within two weeks. Or less.
  
  The creativity, diligence and compassion of Willoughby, Russell, O’Brien, Martin Rend, Ola, Louttit, Friel, Pignatore, Smith, Crider and Piovesan, and others – including instructor Dr. Stacy Boyer-Davis – will benefit those DuBois Business College students on the cusp of graduation and in crisis.
  
  All two of them – Nancy O’Donnell and Alyssa Whitehead.
  
  “For two students, yes,” says Martin Rend, director of BC3’s location in Brockway.
  
  Both of whom plan to graduate in December – not from BC3, but from the 131-year-old DuBois Business College, which as of Sept. 22 would no longer offer courses but could grant degrees through year’s end.
  
  “There’s a real sense of obligation here,” says Ola, BC3’s dean of business. “And I think the emphasis is on the word community college. BC3 gets it. We truly get it. The overlying theme, every time a phone call or email was made, or meetings were held about this situation, always it was, ‘What about the students? What about the students? What about the students?’ This is really what it is about. ‘Can we accommodate these students?’ We realize this is not the problem we created. It’s one we were asked to come in and solve.”
  
  Problem solved?
  
  “For these two students?” Ola asks. “Yes.”
  
  BC3 shines light where there is darkness
  Founded in 1885, DuBois Business College had 180 students in 2011, and 80 in 2016 – including 40 at its DuBois campus, one of its four locations and a 20-minute drive from Brockway.
  
  Issues with the Accrediting Council of Independent Colleges and Schools forces its closure.
  
  “They did not pass their accreditation,” says O’Brien, BC3’s vice president for continuing education and off-campus sites and director of BC3 @ Armstrong.
  
  “The cost of getting the school back in compliance was just too great, so they shut down. That affected their students. Not only the ones who were ready to come in, but also the ones who were in the midst of taking classes there.”
  
  It’s Sept. 19, three days before DuBois Business College’s classrooms would go dark, when BC3 holds an information session to enlighten DuBois students about its Brockway location, which opened in 2013 and serves residents of Clarion, Clearfield, Elk and Jefferson counties.
  
  DuBois Business College provided eight degree programs and charged $11,505 a year in tuition and fees. BC3 @ Brockway offers five as of this night, including business management. Students in sponsored districts at Pennsylvania’s community colleges pay an average of $4,132 annually in tuition and fees.
  
  “We had 17 students come here that night,” Martin Rend says. “And we did get nine applications.”
  
  BC3 also waives a $25 application fee on this evening.
  
  DuBois was also developing teach-out plans South Hills School of Business and Technology in State College, Altoona, and Lewistown; with Pittsburgh Technical College and with Laurel Business Institute, Meadville.
  
  “When students were going to those other places, which are farther away than Brockway, they were finding out that really none of their credits were transferring,” Martin Rend says, “and those places were sometimes twice as much as DuBois Business College.”
  
  Four students chose to immediately enroll at BC3, whose traditional fall semester had begun Aug. 29, three weeks earlier. Two – O’Donnell and Whitehead – cling to hopes of graduating in December.
  
  “They had one more semester to go,” O’Brien says. “So we went in and evaluated what courses they needed to take, to see if we had an equivalent course, and if we didn’t have an equivalent course, could we maybe bring back a course that we had on the books that’s no longer on the books that we could resurrect for that student?”
  
  Extinct syllabi unearthed, implemented
  Ola, O’Brien says, has to examine the courses needed by these two students, and to get those classes “up and running here” so that they could graduate in December.
  
  Problem was, three of those courses didn’t exist at BC3.
  
  “It’s really interesting how Bill O’Brien was able to spearhead this, to try to help these students out, and we got really creative,” Ola says.
  
  BC3, according to Ola, “resurrected from the dead” intermediate accounting I and intermediate accounting II.
  
  “Bill O’Brien came to me and said, ‘Hey, I think we offered these. Let’s try to figure out if we have in the past.’ So we went backwards through catalogs and we found 2002-2003 was the last time we offered it.”
  
  They also find archived syllabi.
  
  But BC3 had never had a corporate taxation class, one needed by those two students.
  
  “That,” Ola says, “really presented a challenge for us.”
  
  Ola summons the advice of a friend who teaches accounting at California University of Pennsylvania, and is told to review online corporate taxation courses offered by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
  
  “And we did that,” Ola says.
  
  BC3 then purchases an online corporate taxation course from a vendor that covers the creation of a limited liability corporation, a corporation and an S corporation, and, Ola says, “what tax laws come into play with those.”
  
  BC3 is also able to substitute its managerial accounting class for DuBois Business College’s cost accounting course.
  
  “We actually went to DuBois Business College, looked at the syllabus for their cost accounting class and matched it up,” Ola says. “Everything they covered there we covered in managerial accounting.”
  
  With O’Donnell and Whitehead’s futures in the balance, BC3 has fewer than two weeks to address the transfer of financial aid, write a curriculum, create course numbers and find an instructor for those four business courses, an English course and a career planning course.
  
  “The heavy lifting on all this came from my assistant, Paula Crider,” Ola says of BC3’s business division secretary. “She did so much of the heavy lifting. ‘We’ve had this. We’ve done that. We can do this. We can do that. And here is how it has been done.’ If that didn’t happen, none of this would have happened. I can’t tell you how many times I walked out to Paula and asked, ‘What do we do here to get these kids even scheduled?’”
  
  Piovesan, the vice president for academic affairs secretary, had to create course numbers.
  
  “Sounds simple,” Ola says, “but it’s not.
  
  ‘“To get this train out of the station,’ Paula said, ‘you can do this, but only when these 99 steps are done.’ It was unbelievable coordination,” Ola says.
  
  After a first meeting in September, among Martin Rend, Ola, O’Brien and Russell – BC3’s interim vice president for academic affairs – “We had to call a bigger meeting,” Martin Rend says.
  
  With Jake Friel, BC3’s controller; Pignatore, its registrar; Willoughby, its vice president for student affairs and enrollment management; with Louttit, its director of financial aid; with Smith, its associate director of financial aid.
  
  “For just two students,” Martin Rend says. “Trying to get them transferred here. We had to get their financial aid transferred. Trying to get those classes in the system. We all worked together. We were under a lot of stress because our regular semester was in full swing and we were trying to get spring classes in. It was a busy time.”
  
  Courses-by-appointment on menu at cafe
  It’s 8 on Saturday morning inside the 77,000-square foot Parkside Complex building that houses BC3 @ Brockway, along with a hair salon, senior living apartments, physical therapy and physicians’ offices, the Brockway Center for Arts and Technology and the Wood Street Deli.
  
  Like BC3 @ Brockway, the café is closed for the weekend, but its public-area tables and high-backed stools serve nicely as desks and chairs.
  
  It’s here where Boyer-Davis, director of accounting services at Clarion University of Pennsylvania, and an adjunct BC3 instructor who is already teaching business law and principles of management this fall, will instruct until noon O’Donnell and Whitehead – the two students intent on graduating in December.
  
  They are taking BC3-created courses-by-appointment, for intermediate accounting I and II, for corporate taxation and for managerial accounting, to fulfill their business requirements. They’ll meet for four hours on eight Saturdays.
  
  Course-by-appointment instructors must meet with each student at least one hour eight times per course. Boyer-Davis will spend one hour each Saturday on intermediate accounting I; one hour on intermediate accounting II; one hour on corporate tax; and one hour on managerial accounting.
  
  O’Donnell and Whitehead will also take courses-by-appointment in English II and career planning with P.J. Piccirillo and Gene Samanka.
  
  Two other DuBois Business College students took advantage of BC3’s 10-week Session 3 classes that began Sept. 26, and its five-week Fast Track courses that began Oct. 3 and Nov. 7.
  
  Degrees of satisfaction
  Boyer-Davis, Martin Rend says, “has gone way beyond.”
  
  “She is making a special time meeting with them,” Martin Rend says. “She has photocopied material for them. She has gone three times above, really out of her way, to be able to help them out. She is covering a lot with them, with the four business classes. I just can’t say enough good about her.”
  
  O’Brien, Martin Rend and the instructors, Ola says, “have gone so far over the mountain it is remarkable. Stacy volunteered to come forward and do these courses by appointment. She meets with them every single week, and will do so between now and the end of the year to ensure that those students can actually pass the exams required to get the degree.”
  
  The effort for O’Donnell and Whitehead, Boyer-Davis says, “showcases just how valued and important each and every student is to BC3 – to the staff, faculty and administration.”
  
  BC3 @ Brockway in the spring will offer business administration and office administration executive degree programs to appeal to former DuBois Business College students, Martin Rend says.
  
  Those will augment associate degree programs in early childhood education, general studies, psychology, social work and business administration, and first-year pre-nursing courses toward a degree that can be finished on the main campus in Butler Township.
  
  For now, O’Donnell and Whitehead “are so thankful” for BC3, Martin Rend says.
  
  For BC3’s creativity, its diligence and compassion.
  
  And its teamwork. Within two weeks. Or less.
  
  “This whole effort speaks to who we are as an institution,” says Dr. Nick Neupauer, BC3’s president. “The Pennsylvania Department of Education has thanked me for our agility and rapid response with how we have helped this students. The BC3 team did so, while always keeping an eye on the integrity of our academic offerings.”
  
  O’Donnell and Whitehead continually show gratitude, Martin Rend says.
  
  “Every time I talk to them, they just tell me how thankful they are to our school for helping them and taking care of them,” Martin Rend says. “We’re helping these students and that is the most important thing. We’re helping to get them to where they need to be.” Show less...

  BC3 President's Blog: BC3 President signs "Teach-Out Plan" with DuBois Business College

• Sep 21

  BC3 better than 103 Pennsylvania schools in distance education, national survey finds

  

  Lindsey Sweetland, a Butler County Community College business management major, is shown Oct. 26, 2016, at her home in Volant, where she is taking two online courses, leadership and accounting for managers. To focus on her online studies in her bedroom, she often locks out pet dogs Sophie, Max, Sadie and Bella, and cat, Callie. Missing from photo is pet dog Lucy.

  Twenty-two-year-old Lindsey Sweetland is one of 850 Butler County Community College students taking online courses and can testify why BC3 has been ranked No. 13 among 117 Keystone State schools in distance education. Read more...

  If only the Volant resident could get a little distance from Sophie, Max, Sadie, Bella and Lucy – her family’s five dogs, and Callie, the cat, when she opens her laptop, closes her bedroom door and signs on for class after finishing a 25-hour workweek in the food service industry.
  
  In its inaugural national study, OnlineColleges.com surveyed, scored and ranked 117 accredited colleges and universities in Pennsylvania in 11 areas. Its findings show BC3 rated higher than 103 schools in distance education.
  
  It is students such as Sweetland who benefit from BC3’s commitment to online opportunities.
  
  “I work a lot,” said Sweetland, who this fall is taking two online courses – leadership and accounting for managers – and two traditional classes – microcomputing and labor relations.
  
  Until she graduates in December with an Associate of Applied Science Degree in business management, she will reserve her Saturdays and Sundays for distance education.
  
  “My room is the quietest place,” she said. “I lock myself in alone. It works better if I can take classes online. I can work at own pace and get way ahead.”
  
  Just over 23 percent of BC3’s students took distance education courses in 2014, according to OnlineColleges.com, a Foster City, Calif., firm that helps students find affordable, high-quality online colleges that meet their specific needs.
  
  Nearly 300 take only online courses
  Of the 850 students enrolled in at least one online course this fall, 292 are taking online courses only, says Sharla Anke, BC3’s coordinator of institutional research. The 292 sign on from as far away as Washington and Westmoreland counties in Pennsylvania’s southwest, Centre County in the midstate, Erie and Crawford counties in the northwest and Elk and Potter counties in the Northern Tier.
  
  Bill Norris, 40, of Sarver, is among BC3 students taking online courses only.
  
  “The online offerings are most important,” says Norris, who signs on late at night during his 50-hour workweek as a manufacturing manager. “I’ve got a family, a home, a job. Taking online courses doesn’t interfere with having a full-time job and a family. I can go online at midnight and study or take my test. I like BC3’s flexibility. BC3 is very user-friendly to take college classes that don’t disrupt my life.”
  
  OnlineColleges.com used the National Center for Education Statistics’ Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, and considered only colleges and universities that were at least two years through four years or more, and that at least 1 percent of its students took at least some of their classes via distance education.
  
  To continue to meet student needs, BC3 recently expanded its online course options with the unveiling of fall Fast Track courses. Three five-week sessions, held consecutively, debuted this fall and each offers six online-only courses. That brings to 84 the number of online-only credit courses and to 10 the hybrid credit courses BC3 offers among its 735 classes this autumn.
  
  “Our Fast-Track offerings are a great example of another component of our mission statement - being responsive to the needs of the communities we serve,” says Dr. Nick Neupauer, BC3’s president. “A traditional fall and spring 15-week schedule frankly doesn’t meet the needs of our 21st-century student body. The Fast Track not only provides greater flexibility in scheduling for our students, it does so without losing the quality of our education.”
  
  OnlineColleges.com also reported that BC3’s in-state tuition was lower than 113 of those schools, and its out-of-state tuition lower than 112.
  
  “Affordability is paramount at our institution,” Neupauer says. “Despite all of the challenges that face today’s institutions of higher education, affordability is taken very seriously in our student-centered environment.” Show less...

• Sep 21

  $1 million donation to create more learning space for children

  The low-lying flat rock crowned with a plaque listing the name of his father and other members of Butler County Community College’s first board of trustees is hidden by nature and may not catch one’s eye.
  
  The children’s center to be created in honor of his sister on the same campus certainly will – while incorporating nature. Read more...

  John L. Wise III and his family, it is announced during a board of trustees meeting, will donate $1 million to BC3 to fund the expansion of the Children’s Creative Learning Center in honor of his late sister, Amy Warburton Wise, who died Nov. 11, 2014, in Williston, Vt.
  
  The $1 million donation was the second given to BC3 during its Pioneer Proud Campaign. Robert R. Heaton in 2014 gifted $1 million toward renovation of the John A. Beck Library, which was later renamed the Heaton Family Learning Commons.
  
  The contributions are the largest in the 50-year history of BC3, and the $6.8 million donated to BC3 during the campaign is the most given during any such campaign in Butler County.
  
  “I understand that Amy was a preschool teacher and was very much nature-oriented,” says Judy Zuzack, director of the CCLC. “So I think that is what he is looking for, a preschool with that same kind of focus.”
  
  Wise III, the son of original Trustee John L. Wise Jr., “wants to put in what he calls a ‘wow factor’ that makes the building nature-friendly and exposes children to the outdoors and nature,” says Ruth Purcell, executive director of the BC3 Education Foundation Inc. “Kids today who are 3 months old know how to swipe a cell phone. Here they will be able to appreciate the outdoors.”
  
  A 60-foot oak tree that fell on Armstrong Lodge, original home of the CCLC, during off-hours in May 2010 forced the relocation of the program into the former bookstore. In fall 2015, the CCLC created Green Garden Park – funded in part by a $25,000 grant from The Alcoa Foundation – near a hillside adjacent to its temporary facility.
  
  That park, which offers musical instruments, gardens, a hillside slide, sandboxes, art areas and dirt-digging piles to 3- to 5-year-olds enrolled in the child-care center, has earned a national certification as a Nature Explore Classroom from Dimensions Educational Research Foundation and the Arbor Day Foundation.
  
  “When John saw what we had done with that outdoor classroom behind the CCLC, he said, ‘This is what my sister would love,’” Purcell says. “She was dedicated to the outdoors and to children. We can really make an incredible contribution to the community.’”
  
  The expanded CCLC, which could open in 2017, will add much-needed space for the 30 children and four staff members, provide elementary education students with observation areas, and will augment Green Garden Park by bringing nature indoors.
  
  “Some of it will be in the design of the space,” Zuzack says. “And we are happy that there will be some natural elements included, such as some stone and wood and things that would support nature.”
  
  As part of the CCLC project, a walkway between two original classroom buildings will be enclosed to provide additional space.
  
  “What is truly remarkable about this gift is that the buildings that will be joined for the new child-care center were constructed as temporary buildings when the college opened,” says Robert L. Hunter, who with his daughter, Nancy Hunter Mycka, was a co-chair of the Pioneer Proud Campaign. “Here we are 50 years later with a successful community college and a gift that will forever recognize the support of the Wise family for BC3.”
  
  Wise III and his family have been part of the college since its founding.
  
  “This gift from Mr. Wise connects the past with our future,” says Dr. Nick Neupauer, BC3’s president. “Mr. Wise’s father was on the original board of trustees when the college opened in 1966. The Wise name will live forever at BC3 and our Children’s Creative Learning Center will benefit. Generations of children will enjoy this facility.”
  
  Adds Purcell: “This is his family’s legacy.”
  
  That legacy will benefit generations of preschoolers, their parents and future teachers, Zuzack says.
  
  The current CCLC is confined to one large classroom, one small classroom that doubles as the children’s lunch area, an office, bathrooms and a small kitchen area. The new CCLC will be twice the size, Zuzack says.
  
  “We will have a lot more space for the children and it will also allow observation rooms where the college students can come in and observe the children, or even the families, without entering the classroom directly, which is what is happening right now,” Zuzack says. “That’s exciting for us because the college students will be able to observe when they need to without interrupting what’s going on in the classroom.”
  
  Additional space will also allow more area for indoor movement during inclement weather.
  
  “That’s one of the challenges in our current space, trying to have enough room for them to get that energy out when we can’t go outside,” Zuzack says. The CCLC is a state-licensed preschool and child-care center for children of BC3 students, employees, and community members. It is a Keystone STAR 4 Facility, the highest licensing rating given by the state Departments of Education and of Human Services.
  
  Purcell recalls that walk across campus with Wise III and toward Armstrong Lodge when he spotted that low-lying flat rock bearing his father’s name. “He said, ‘Look. There’s my dad’s name,’” Purcell says. “For some reason, it caught his eye.”
  
  Within a year, the building bearing Amy Wise’s name will be much easier to see. Show less...

• Sep 21

  BC3's smallest site shows biggest spike in enrollment

  

  Students at BC3 @ Armstrong congregate in the outer office of Karen Zapp, student services and technology support specialist, on Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2016. From left, Quentin Fox, of Ford City; Ciara Stone, of Dayton; Joshua Gregory, of Freeport; and Sam Biesinger, of Ford City.

  It’s nearly noon on the last day of summer, and Karen Zapp stands on tiptoes to glance through her open window at a quartet of Butler County Community College freshmen practicing for a cornhole tournament being thrown by upperclassmen. Read more...

  Sounds of those red and blue bags softly smacking inclined wooden targets on the front lawn and tires stirring the gravel-sprinkled parking lot off Armstrong Street cut the still, otherwise quiet air.
  
  Beyond Zapp’s outer office – where students will congregate between any of six to seven daytime classes, where they munch on snacks or are reminded to continue reading their David Sedaris novel – are three classrooms at Lenape Tech’s NexTier Adult Learning Center that represent BC3’s newest and fastest-growing site.
  
  “I enjoy being around the students, and I want them to succeed,” says Zapp, student services and technology support specialist at BC3 @ Armstrong in Ford City. “They will come in and ask, ‘Karen, are you busy? Can you proof my paper?’ They come first. I try to make them come first.”
  
  Last fall, when BC3 @ Armstrong opened, there were 24 students enrolled in five courses. Only a year later, any one of 81 students in 18 classes may poke his head in Zapp’s office door.
  
  Butler County Community College’s year-old site in Ford City illustrates the school’s outreach to students who would otherwise have to drive 28 miles or 41 minutes to the main campus in Butler. And now the Armstrong County site is attracting those students in droves.
  
  Students can earn associate degrees in general studies, business administration and psychology at the Ford City location, says Bill O’Brien, vice president for continuing education and off-campus sites and director of BC3 @ Armstrong.
  
  BC3 holds six 85-minute daytime courses on Mondays and Wednesdays, and seven on Tuesdays and Thursdays inside three classrooms at Lenape Tech’s NexTier Adult Learning Center. Five evening classes, held on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, last three hours and 10 minutes.
  
  BC3 recognized the number of Armstrong County students attending BC3’s main campus in Butler was dwindling, according to O’Brien.
  
  “And after a little research,” O’Brien says, “we found that students were becoming less and less interested in driving the distance to attend college.”
  
  Shayla Lloyd and Courtney Bishop are taking advantage of BC3’s commitment in Armstrong County.
  
  “It’s right here,” says Lloyd, 18, a pre-nursing freshman from Kittanning. “I live five minutes from here. Since I don’t have a driver’s license yet, it is easier for my mother to bring me here and drop me off and come back later in the day to pick me up. It’s not as much money for gas if we had to drive to Butler.”
  
  Proximity and transportation savings also resonate with Bishop, who works 20 hours a week at a convenience store and doesn’t care to spend more than she must while pursuing her pre-nursing curriculum.
  
  “I don’t have a lot of money for gas,” says Bishop, a freshman from Vandergrift. “It’s easier for me to drive six miles instead of 30.”
  
  While BC3’s fast-growing site, Armstrong remains the smallest with 81 students. It joins BC3 @ Lawrence Crossing in New Castle, Lawrence County, which has 391 students; BC3 @ Cranberry in Cranberry Township, Butler County, which has 317; BC3 @ LindenPointe, in Hermitage, Mercer County, which has 249; and BC3 @ Brockway, in Jefferson County, which has 98. The Brockway site also serves Elk, Clarion and Clearfield counties. Show less...

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• Oct 10

  BC3 golfers stay course with 2nd state invitational crown, 7th WPCC title

  

  The Butler County Community College men’s golf team in fall 2016 won its second Pennsylvania State Invitational title since 2014, its fourth consecutive Western Pennsylvania Community College crown and seventh overall. Coach Bill Miller was named WPCC coach of the year for the second season in a row and third time since 2013. Members of the team were, front row from left, Matthew Benson, Britton Simmons, Carmen Oliva and Miller. Rear, from left, Justin Hildebrand, Michael Rozzi and Alex Witouski. Missing from photo are Collin Hyatt, Sam Isacco, Bryan Peterson and Kaden Rock.

  Because the Butler County Community College men’s golf team adjusted to Hurricane Matthew-spawned 25 mph wind over two October days in southern Pennsylvania, the Pioneers breezed to their second Pennsylvania State Invitational crown since 2014. Read more...

  “That,” Coach Bill Miller says of the wind, “was a tough two days.”
  
  “Pretty brutal,” adds Carmen Oliva, one of 10 players on BC3’s all-freshman fall squad. “Left, right, into your face. Constantly changing directions.“ Unlike that wind, BC3 hasn’t changed direction. It has maintained course as a top community college golf program in Pennsylvania.
  
  The Pioneers this fall also captured their fourth consecutive Western Pennsylvania Collegiate Conference crown and seventh overall. Miller was named WPCC coach of the year for the second season in a row and third time since 2013. And Oliva battled wind – and 17 other golfers – to win the Pennsylvania State Invitational individual crown at Fayetteville’s Penn National Golf Club.
  
  BC3 finished the 36-hole tournament Oct. 10 with a composite score of 505, 18 strokes ahead of Bucks County Community College and 21 better than the Community College of Allegheny College-North.
  
  Oliva fired a tournament-best 167 over two rounds on the blustery par-72 course.
  
  Like other players, Oliva, a Neshannock High School graduate, became frustrated early by the gusts. His initial arcing tee shots “would end up short or wide of the green,” he says. “I put some off the fairway.”
  
  By the fifth hole, he choked up on his club – and his shots stayed down.
  
  “I just started hitting lower shots,” Oliva says. “When I came down through the ball I didn’t complete my swing so it didn’t go as high as it normally does.”
  
  His shorter follow-through created low line drives that escaped the gusts.
  
  What Oliva lost in distance he gained in accuracy.
  
  “He hits the greens,” Miller says. “He’s very solid with his approach shots. If you hit fairways and greens, typically you score.”
  
  BC3 posts eighth consecutive winning season under Miller
  Oliva and Michael Rozzi, another Neshannock High graduate, were named to the WPCC’s all-conference team after leading BC3’s fall squad to an 8-1 record. That’s the eighth consecutive winning season under Miller, who took over in 2004.
  
  “Carmen predominantly was our No. 1 man throughout the year,” Miller says. “A close second was Michael. They were really the 1 and 2 positions. They were our top two golfers throughout the year. We would flip-flop them. Sometimes Michael would go out as a 1 and Carmen, 2, but, for the most part, Carmen was playing in the 1 spot.”
  
  BC3 then won its fourth straight WPCC tournament with a 3-stroke victory Oct. 2 over Westmoreland County Community College at The Links at Spring Church, Apollo. Oliva led BC3 with a two-round score of 161 on the par-72 course and finished third overall.
  
  Successful program sparks interest of freshmen
  That his fall squad was composed entirely of freshman shows an even higher-than-normal interest level, Miller says.
  
  “Typically I will have two or three returning players and probably five or six freshmen, give or take,” says Miller, BC3’s dean of humanities and social sciences. This year it just happened that we were loaded with freshman players. It’s a nice situation.”
  
  Members of the squad were Justin Hildebrand, a Freeport Area High graduate; Collin Hyatt and Sam Isacco, Slippery Rock; Bryan Peterson, Shenango; Kaden Rock, Butler; Britton Simmons, Moniteau; Alex Witouski, Eden Christian; Matthew Benson, Shenango; and OIiva and Rozzi.
  
  That they may all return for the fall 2017 season bodes well, Oliva says.
  
  “It was a good year,” Oliva says. “We have a great team, a great coach. We will be even better next year. Sometimes at the matches I felt like some of the players were a little bit nervous. I think next year they won’t be as nervous. So maybe we can do even better than we did this year.”
  
  Possibly as early as this spring, when BC3 chases its fourth National Junior College Athletic Association Region XX team title after having been crowned champs in 2009, 2013 and 2015.
  
  Chase begins for fourth NJCAA Region XX title
  BC3 will face community college opponents from Western Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia in the spring season, which culminates with a chance to participate in the NJCAA national tournament.
  
  In spring 2016, Butler High graduate and All-American Tommy Dimun won the individual NJCAA Region XX tournament at The Links at Spring Church, topping 25 others in the two-day tournament. In doing so, he qualified for the NJCAA national tournament, where he finished 21st among 100 competitors at Chautauqua Golf Club in Chautauqua, N.Y.
  
  “In this area, Butler County and Lawrence County in particular, we have had some really strong high school programs that have had promoted their players to come here,” Miller says. “I think they go back and hear from other players and see some success. We’ve had some All-Americans from our spring season. That obviously bodes well when students are talking about playing golf or where they are going to go.” Show less...

• Oct 15

  BC3 scholarship donors, recipients meet as Oak Hills Dinner draws 370

  

  Wyatt Karenbauer, 19, left, is a Butler County Community College freshman and one of five 2016 recipients of the Cranberry Township Community Chest’s Butler County Volunteer Firefighter Tuition Scholarship at BC3. Wyatt is shown on Saturday, Oct. 15, 2016, prior to the Oak Hills Dinner at BC3, which introduces scholarship recipients to their donors. At right is his mother, Nichol Szybka. Wyatt and his mother, both of Saxonburg, serve as volunteer firefighters in Saxonburg.

  Step inside Tanner McCaw’s accounting firm near Indianapolis, and you might find the Butler County Community College graduate huddled over his computer, viewing satellite images of the oak-tree-lined alma mater that he loves so dearly. Read more...

  He’s crossed the miles and relived the memories in the same way while working in Las Vegas, clicking on that bookmarked Google map and cruising along Route 8 until he arrived, virtually, on campus.
  
  “All the time,” he says.
  
  While Butler is where he was born, BC3, he says, “is the place that made me.”
  
  Not quite 30 months after graduating with an associate degree in business administration, the staff accountant has, in turn, made something for BC3. In the spring, the 24-year-old became the youngest scholarship creator in the college’s 48-year-history, and the first to do so after receiving such a financial award himself – the Matthew Kapp Memorial Scholarship.
  
  Sentiments echoing McCaw’s – and those of Robert R. Heaton and Tim Shaffer, of Susan Seibel, of Bruce Mazzoni and others who worked to create the school’s 118 scholarships – are as many as the 370 guests who this evening at BC3’s Founders Hall share stories, handshakes, an Oak Hills Dinner and their love of BC3.
  
  The gala celebrates the legacies of those whose roots at BC3 run as deeply as those supporting the stately oak trees, introduces scholarship donors such as Tanner McCaw to their beneficiaries, and lauds the college’s distinguished alumni.
  
  It also comes in the afterglow of the college’s most successful fundraising campaign ever.
  
  More than 900 donors pledged a total of $6.82 million – a 24 percent increase over the $5.5 million goal – during the three-year Pioneer Proud Campaign that ended June 30.
  
  Fifty donors established new scholarships, bringing to 118 such awards now available – nearly double the number of only three years ago.
  
  Roughly 500 students this spring applied for those scholarships, says Ruth Purcell, executive director of the BC3 Education Foundation Inc., which distributes $200,000 through the 118 gifts.
  
  “I’ve worked at liberal arts institutions, state universities, and I’ve sat in the audience for many of these,” Dr. Nick Neupauer, BC3’s president, says as visitors finish an aptly-themed Thanksgiving-like meal. “And I will tell you, there’s not a connection to a college like there is here at BC3.”
  
  Tanner McCaw feels that connection, as does Kaley Scott, 19, a BC3 business administration student from Mercer County and the first recipient of the McCaw Family Scholarship.
  
  “It gives more kids the opportunity to go to college who may not have the money,” Scott says. “There are more students and more variety of students being chosen.”
  
  Robert R. Heaton and Tim Shaffer feel that connection. The administrators of the Glenn R. and Rhea J. McCandless Logan Family Trust endowed $250,000 to the BC3 Education Foundation to create scholarships for students pursuing an occupational associate degree or who are enrolled in a technical trade program.
  
  “The kids have been wonderful about this,” Heaton says. “It’s a great pleasure for me. In the past two weeks I received a packet of letters from the various students, 12 of them who have been studying under my scholarship funds.”
  
  Susan Seibel feels that connection. The adjunct BC3 instructor, one of four children raised by a single mother, created the Jean Speicher Memorial Scholarship, crafted for a BC3 student who is a single parent with custody of minor children.
  
  “She knew she needed to get a degree to be able to provide for herself and her kids,” Seibel says of her mother, Speicher, who attained an associate degree in marketing from the Community College of Allegheny County.
  
  Melanie McGary feels that connection. The 40-year-old single mother of four daughters, including 9-year-old twins, is the recipient of the 2016 Jean Speicher Memorial Scholarship, which she’ll use to finance her pursuit of a nursing degree.
  
  “How do you say thank you? I wrote a letter ... It just doesn’t ... I mean ... It’s hard to portray in that letter ...” she says, battling tears, her voice quivering. “The difference that this makes in somebody’s life. ... I mean, this really changes my life. ... I want my girls to see that anything is possible. It’s never too late. If you want something bad enough, you can accomplish it.”
  
  The Cranberry Township Community Chest feels that connection with its Butler County Volunteer Firefighter Tuition Scholarship, says Bruce Mazzoni, a BC3 trustee, member of the Pioneer Proud Steering Committee and of the all-volunteer municipal organization.
  
  The gift may attract new volunteer firefighters while honoring the service and benefiting the BC3 education of those like 19-year-old freshman Wyatt Karenbauer, of Saxonburg. He says he’s been so cold battling blazes in sub-zero temperatures that “my eyelids were freezing shut.”
  
  Kevin Boozel also feels that connection, as did the late Debra Lee Covert McGrath and the late Rae McGrath, all of whom BC3 honors this evening as distinguished alumni.
  
  Boozel, 45, tells the crowd, matter-of-factly, about earning an associate degree in elementary education from BC3, a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and a master’s degree from Geneva College.
  
  But it was those two $500 scholarships he received at BC3, he says, looking back and through tear-filled eyes, his voice breaking with emotion – that “made the difference for me.”
  
  The first-term Butler County commissioner volunteers to assist disadvantaged children in Butler, as a firefighter and emergency medical technician in Harrisville, and with a Harmony unit that counsels first-responders after crises. That altruism continues this evening, when he announces his creation of the Boozel Scholarship for first-generation college students and in honor of his father, Eugene, an unemployed home insulation manufacturer when his youngest child, Kevin, stated he wanted to become his first to pursue a post-secondary education.
  
  Lauren McGrath, daughter of the late Debra Lee Covert McGrath, and granddaughter of the late Rae McGrath, feels the connection.
  
  Debra, who died at age 58 in May 2014 in North Bethesda, Md., was a 1976 graduate of BC3. She would later graduate with the highest honors from the University of Pittsburgh, where she earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. During a career that began as BC3’s first director of the ACT 101 Equal Opportunity Program, Debra demonstrated a deep commitment to educational opportunities for disadvantaged students.
  
  “Having benefited from her unending enthusiasm and support from her first-hand, I am thrilled to know that other students have benefited from her work, and the foundation she created for the ACT 101 program,” Lauren says. “To say I miss her guidance, wisdom and love would be the understatement of the century.”
  
  Debra married Matt McGrath in 1982 and moved to Washington, D.C., where she established DCM Management, a consulting business showcasing her expertise in organizational management.
  
  Rae McGrath taught math and English as an original member of BC3’s faculty in 1966.
  
  Rae became chairperson of Humanities in in 1971, a full professor in 1978 and was voted Outstanding Faculty Member in 1983. She created the Tuesday College program to enable homemakers returning to the work force to attend college once a week to earn an associate degree. She served for 11 years as registrar until her retirement in 1995.
  
  As a token of BC3’s appreciation, Neupauer says, Debbie McGrath and Rae McGrath will be honored by having an Alumni Legacy Scholarship named in their honor beginning in 2017-18.
  
  “This is the community she sought when she took the job in 1966,” Matt McGrath, Lauren’s father, says of his mother, Rae. “A community of friends that my brother and father embraced and a community that, frankly, my wife never left.” Show less...

  Flickr Photo Album: 2016 Oak Hills Dinner

• Oct 17

  BC3 president testifies to senators: Community colleges work educate borrowers

  

  Dr. Nick Neupauer, president of Butler County Community College, testifies before the state Senate Majority Policy and Senate Education committees in Harrisburg on Oct. 17, 2016.

  The president of Butler County Community College tells a joint state Senate panel about measures Pennsylvania’s 14 community colleges are taking to ensure informed borrowing decisions by families and students and to ameliorate a student loan default rate of 15 percent.
  
  Dr. Nick Neupauer, immediate past chairman of the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges, testifies before the Senate Majority Policy and Senate Education committees that community colleges collectively enroll the highest number of students and are the least-expensive public postsecondary option in Pennsylvania, with annual tuition averaging $4,132 in sponsored districts. Read more...

  Many of those 318,000 students rely on federal and state financial aid programs, Neupauer says, and some receive scholarships. For those who pursue loans, community colleges such as his are improving financial literacy programs.
  
  The average household income of a Pennsylvania community college family with a dependent student is nearly $20,000 below the state median of $55,000, Neupauer says.
  
  “Pennsylvania’s community college leadership is keenly aware of our responsibility to ensure that our students make wise financial decisions, particularly when borrowing money for educational purposes,” Neupauer testifies. “The colleges are committed to providing high-quality financial education to our students to ensure that they fully understand the consequences of loans on their future and principles of borrowing and debt management.”
  
  Every community college posts tuition and fee information on its website, including a net price calculator that provides students the ability to enter information to learn what students like them paid to attend the institution in the previous year, after grants and scholarships are applied, Neupauer said.
  
  Those schools also offer an extensive menu of education and counseling to promote financial literacy and to improve student understanding of the financial obligations of attendance and loans, according to Neupauer.
  
  BC3 offers financial literacy content in its “College Success Skills” class. It also offers a Financial Literacy 101 course every semester that teaches students how to create a budget, the importance of savings and how finances affect financial well-being.
  
  Selected in December by Schools.com as Pennsylvania’s top community college, BC3 further publishes a “Beyond Financial Aid” brochure that provides resources for basic needs and supports and is distributed to all faculty and staff and made available to students. BC3 also conducts an annual “Financial Wellness Fair” that attracts more than 200 participants and includes representatives from community organizations, a credit union, its financial aid office, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, Job Corps and others.
  
  Additionally, Neupauer tells the state Senate panels, BC3’s financial aid office does not “auto-package” loans. Instead, it requires students to complete a separate loan request form and uses that opportunity to educate the student about borrowing.
  
  “Our goal and success is that students understand what their actual costs are and what they need to borrow,” Neupauer says.
  
  Neupauer cites as another example the efforts at Bucks County Community College, which offers a range of financial education opportunities and counseling for students, with checkpoints to ensure that students are informed before a loan is certified or processed. In addition to resources on the Bucks County Community College website, and video sessions and financial literacy workshops at all campus locations, the school conducts loan information meetings that give students the opportunity to know what they have borrowed and how much they will owe when they leave. During those sessions, Bucks County Community College provides computer use in which students can view their outstanding loan balance and loan services and learn how to access the National Student Loan Data System, where this information is housed.
  
  Despite these efforts, some students borrow too much, Neupauer says.
  
  Fifteen percent of Pennsylvania community college students default on loans. At BC3, it’s 11.1 percent, the second-lowest average among the 14 schools, according to Neupauer, who stresses to senators that the problem is not confined to community college students or those with low incomes.
  
  “A report issued by the Federal Reserve Board in May found that 46 percent of adults surveyed said that they did not have the funds to cover a $400 emergency expense, or would either borrow money or sell something to come up with the money,” Neupauer says. “Improved financial literacy and financial education is needed across the population.”
  
  Show less...

  BC3 President’s Blog: Community colleges teach financial aid
  Video: President Neupauer at Joint Hearing

• Oct 29

  After netting star, BC3 volleyball squad nets two titles

  

  The Butler County Community College women’s volleyball squad finished its season ranked No. 9 nationally among 102 teams in the National Junior College Athletic Association’s Division III. Members were, front row, from left, Katie Winter, Lauren Wade, Bella Chiodo, Brittney Bianco and Kelly Kabay. Back row, from left, Jenn Barry, Christina Dreher, Christina Davis, Bri Bedillion, Baylee Verner, Mary Romano, Autumn Rodgers, Cassie Berteotti and Coach Rob Snyder.

  The punch of the Butler County Community College women’s volleyball team in September and October – that 21-3 record, that eighth straight winning season, those second consecutive Western Pennsylvania Collegiate Conference and National Junior College Athletic Association Region XX crowns, that No. 9 national ranking –- began exactly nine months earlier. Read more...

  On Jan. 14.
  
  At 10 a.m.
  
  That’s when Coach Rob Snyder, on the lookout for talent to buttress his 339-135 career record, searched faces in a crowd of 100 new students attending Welcome Day in Founders Hall. To his amazement, there she was, the player he had scouted at Freeport Area High School, a freshman on the Yellowjackets’ first-ever WPIAL Class AA championship team, a senior on its second.
  
  The very Brittney Bianco that he knew had chosen to attend Slippery Rock University was now sitting among scores of incoming BC3 students. In the front row.
  
  “She’s out there,” Macy Smolic, a Freeport graduate and member of BC3’s 2015 squad, alerted Snyder.
  
  “I immediately,” Snyder says, “knew who she was.”
  
  He hadn’t known she had transferred to BC3.
  
  “The thing that I do really well is scour the students who are coming in,” Snyder says. “I find out who has potential and offer them a chance to play.”
  
  After the crowd dispersed, Snyder met Bianco as she walked to another session.
  
  “I stopped her and said, ‘I have only one question for you,’” he recalls. ‘“Are you playing volleyball?’”
  
  “I said I was,” Bianco remembers.
  
  “Your heart tends to beat then,” Snyder says.
  
  Snyder – the seven-time WPCC coach of the year – didn’t waste time in adding Bianco to a roster featuring six returning players.
  
  “No,” Bianco says with a laugh. “Not at all.”
  
  With Bianco as its setter – “Having an outstanding setter is like having a floor general or a quarterback in football,” Snyder says. “You have to have a good setter or it doesn’t matter what else you have” – BC3 jumped to a 14-0 start.
  
  It would sweep Pennsylvania Highlands Community College to capture the program’s 12th WPCC title and eighth under Snyder, and win its seventh NJCAA Division III Region XX crown.
  
  BC3’s season ended Oct. 29 with a 3-0 to Columbus State, Ohio, in the NJCAA Division III District G title game in Anne Arundel, Md.
  
  Players unique and talented
  Bianco’s addition to a team that a year earlier finished 23-5 and returned Bella Chiodo, Mary Romano, Baylee Verner, Cassie Berteotti, Christina Davis and Bri Bedillion was key, Snyder says. Bianco would join Romano, Verner and Davis on the WPCC’s all-conference team this fall and later, on the NJCAA Region XX all-tournament squad, of which she was named MVP.
  
  “I knew she was good,” Snyder says. “I didn’t know how good she was going to be.”
  
  In her senior year at Freeport, Bianco was a libero, which plays only in the back of the two rows.
  
  “And when she got here,” Snyder says, “she said she wanted to be a setter, and I said, ‘OK, we’ll give it a try’ and she turned out to be a fantastic setter.”
  
  A setter – that field general, that quarterback – can and will be anywhere once the ball is in play, running, lunging and diving, setting up shots for her teammates and a good one, like Bianco, “is tenacious,” Snyder says.
  
  “I am sure she is the quickest on the team,” Snyder says. “She is the most aggressive. She just goes and goes and goes and goes. She’s just a tough kid. She wants to get to every ball. That’s a hard skill to teach to a setter and she does that.”
  
  Romano, a sophomore outside hitter and Seneca Valley High graduate, was BC3’s second-tallest player at 5-foot-10. She entered the starting lineup about halfway through the 2015 season “and this year she continued that improvement,” Snyder says. “This year, she is one of our strongest hitters, if not our strongest. She has an ability to block and she can hit a lot of different positions.”
  
  Verner, a sophomore and Butler Area High graduate, was BC3’s tallest player at 5-11 and, most importantly, Snyder says, a left-hander.
  
  “She’s a unique thing in volleyball,” Snyder says of his opposite hitter, who plays on the right-hand side of the front row.
  
  “What you want from your right side is big blockers,” he says. “The reason it makes a lefty so important is because a right-handed hitter on the right hand side of the court is very awkward, because the setter sets from behind her head. If you are a right-hander, it is really hard to get your body turned the right way. So to get a left-hander is really important. To get a 5-11 lefty who can jump is very unique. There are very few of those around. So no one else has a Baylee but us, which makes us a tough team to beat.”
  
  As does having Davis, a sophomore middle hitter from Ford City.
  
  “She is a little undersized for her position, but she’s an athlete and she is a natural blocker,” Snyder says. “Blocking is a lot about timing and feel, when the other team is going to hit, knowing where to go and when to jump is really hard. That’s why there aren’t a lot of good blockers, but she is a natural at that. And she has a really strong arm. She hits the ball extremely hard.”
  
  Once she and her teammates get it from Bianco.
  
  “One of the things you are looking for in a setter is a person who can get to every ball,” Snyder says. “So she gets to every ball, which is very important. And she has good hands and can set nice balls. Which is the second thing you want from a setter, getting the ball to the hitters where they want it. She’s very fast for a setter.”
  
  Quick decisions, reactions a must
  Bianco says she looks at her “matchups across the court, seeing who the best option would be to go to, and throughout the game I look at my hitters to see who is hitting well, who is hitting consistently. And if we need a point, I go to my most consistent hitter. I think everything out as I am doing it. Even when I am running for a ball, I am in my head thinking where I need to push the ball, where I need to go. What I need to do.”
  
  What many fans don’t understand about volleyball, Snyder says, is that “we are running plays every time the ball comes to the net. It’s like football without the huddle, as if you just went back and forth in football and had to run plays. The setter needs to be coordinating all the different things that are happening. I don’t know how many times the ball crosses the net in a match, hundreds and hundreds of times, and each time we have a plan and are calling out numbers. It’s far more complicated than anyone can imagine.”
  
  BC3 has plays for every situation, he says.
  
  “Players have to communicate as it goes,” he says. “So you need a setter who can make quick decisions, who can evaluate situations, who can pick out who the best hitter is against the weakest blocker and all that has to happen in a split-second without any time to stop. The ball is moving in the air the whole time.”
  
  While players rotate among the six positions for each changed serve, “As soon as the play starts, you go to your normal position,” Snyder says.
  
  BC3 ranked No. 9 among 102 squads
  Also on squad that finished ranked No. 9 among 102 teams in NJCAA Division III were freshman Kelly Kabay, a defensive specialist from Butler High; freshman Katie Winter, a libero from Avonworth; freshman Autumn Rodgers, a middle hitter from Butler; sophomore Lauren Wade, a defensive specialist from W.T. Woodson; Chiodo, a sophomore libero from Grove City; Berteotti, a sophomore outside hitter from Mars; and Bedillion, a sophomore outside hitter from Eden Christian.
  
  “We all wanted the same thing,” Bianco says. “When we went to regionals we all fought for the same thing. It just worked so well. Everyone’s skills. Everyone is so skilled. And it all just meshed so well.”
  
  Snyder will resume his search for players this offseason, “Googling names off applications, trying to find out who the athletes are,” he says. His 2017 team will seek its third berth to the NJCAA Division III national championships, where it finished sixth among eight squads in 2009 – and fifth in 2002, the year BC3 won a school-record 28 matches.
  
  Possibly even produce a sixth All-American and first since Danielle Lloyd in 2011.
  
  “We’re excited to see what comes in next season,” Bianco says.
  
  “I’ll try to do everything I need to do to win. I want to win.” Show less...

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• Nov 1

  Pins and needling at BC3’s unique fundraiser for unique organization

  
  

  Mary Beth Rock and her father, Eugene, light candles on a birthday cake to celebrate Eugene’s upcoming 80th birthday while participating in Butler County Community College’s Bowling for Scholars event Nov. 11, 2016, at Family Bowlaway Fun Center in Butler.

  Eugene Rock glides to the foul line and, in a seasoned, sweeping motion, releases a 14-pound ball toward the 7 and 8 pins left standing from his first roll.
  
  Rock confidently turns his back as his reddish-green Ebonite nears its target 60 feet away, and approaches his daughter at Butler County Community College’s Bowling for Scholars fundraiser. Read more...

  A second later, verification of that confidence, the sound of his polyurethane ball smacking and scattering those hard-maple pins, piercing the medley of sounds inside Family Bowlaway Fun Center, those gales of laughter, high-fives and good-natured ribbings, and emcee Tyler Friel announcing winners of 20 white-auction gift bags.
  
  Rock returns to the side of his daughter, Mary Beth, a 2005 BC3 graduate who is lighting candles on her father’s white-frosted birthday cake. Four nights shy of turning 80, Rock is among 115 business leaders, politicians, BC3 graduates, students and administrators, and 2-year-olds at this family-friendly event, rolling balls and having a ball at a unique fundraiser benefiting a unique organization: a community college alumni association.
  
  “Everyone can bowl”
  BC3’s Alumni Legacy Scholarships “help out a lot of people,” says Rock, who hasn’t missed any of the three fundraisers that benefit a child or grandchild of a former BC3 student.
  
  Five $500 BC3 Alumni Legacy Scholarships were awarded in the fall semester, says Michelle Jamieson, associate director of the BC3 Education Foundation Inc. and a 1984 BC3 graduate. Overall, the foundation awards more than $200,000 through 118 scholarships.
  
  “It’s a nice opportunity for families to come together because,” Jamieson says, “everyone can bowl. There are a lot of fundraisers out there that do not include the whole family. There are generations of BC3 alumni here. There are grandparents, children and grandchildren, who all attended BC3, all in the same place, coming together and having fun. That’s what’s great about it.”
  
  An 8-year-old and her “green, pink and yellow” ball
  Bowling for Scholars, in its third year, is the only fundraiser for the BC3 Alumni Association, says Ruth Purcell, executive director of the BC3 Education Foundation Inc.
  
  “We really did want to do something for families and that didn’t appeal just to golfers,” she says. “And you see a lot of families here.“ The Butler ARMCO Employees Credit Union serves as King Pin sponsor of Bowling for Scholars.
  
  “The credit union has brought a lot of their employees here,” Purcell says. “So it gives them an opportunity to say to their staff, ‘Come on out and we’ll have a fun time.’”
  
  It also brought out Addisen Vinroe, 8, whose mother, Shannah Lynch, works at ARMCO.
  
  “I’m doing good and I’m really having fun,” Addisen says. “I get to spend time with my family and friends. It’s fun because I get to use my ball and my new shoes that my mom got me. Bowling is fun because I can get high scores and I can get trophies and I can get my own bowling ball, which I already have one.”
  
  Hers, she says proudly, is “green, pink and yellow.”
  
  She has been bowling for four years – in a league, she is quick to add, “without bumpers.”
  
  “Let’s be the first”
  BC3 has more than 22,000 alumni, among them, Lucille Shapiro, whose idea it was to create the BC3 Alumni Association.
  
  “I instigated it,” she says.
  
  As a married mother of three, Shapiro was part of the inaugural BC3 class in 1966.
  
  “They day they opened their doors,” she says, she was a student in Dr. LaMonte Crape’s English class.
  
  Years later, after graduating in 1973 and receiving letters seeking donations, she called the BC3 Education Foundation and said, ‘When you decide to start an alumni association, get in touch.”
  
  ‘“Community colleges do not have alumni associations,“’ she says she was told.
  
  “I said, ‘Well, let’s be the first.’”
  
  BC3’s first 48 graduating classes have produced 22,000 alumni. Since 1997 they have had an alumni association to call their own.
  
  “I love this school,” Shapiro says. “It has done so much for me and so much for the community. This school has touched every family in the county and in surrounding counties. You talk to anybody. Someone in the family has gone to BC3, which is really amazing and wonderful, and that’s why I love it so much.”
  
  “Affordable education even more affordable”
  As does Friel, tonight’s emcee who is reading off numbers of winning tickets for gift bags containing everything from an Xbox One, to $100 in cash, to autographed Pittsburgh Pirates baseballs and Pittsburgh Penguins tickets.
  
  The 2014 graduate received the Gail L. and Doris Rose scholarship while studying at BC3.
  
  “At BC3, you get the two sides of it,” Friel says. “Not only is it an affordable education, but you get an opportunity at a scholarship, which makes an affordable education even more affordable.”
  
  Bowling for Scholars, he says, is distinctive.
  
  “Not everyone is doing a bowling fundraisers,” he says. “You have 13,000 golf outings, it seems like. A bowling outing during the fall is a great idea. It’s a fun time and it brings the BC3 community together. You have a bunch of alumni, and even people who may not have gone to the school but live in the community, who know the importance of the college and how great it actually is, and the importance of what BC3 can do for families.”
  
  Friel’s sentiments echo – like those purple and forest green and lime and ruby-red balls striking shiny white pins – with Dr. Nick Neupauer. He’s battling Dr. Case Willoughby for bragging rights on Lane 22.
  
  “We like to say that we are a family at BC3,” says Neupauer, BC3’s president. “One of the reasons I like this event is because we actually get to see the family of the BC3 family members. People really seem to like that a lot.”
  
  Purcell interrupts Neupauer to show him a photograph on her smartphone.
  
  Her picture of an electronic scoreboard at Family Bowlaway Fun Center reveals Willoughby, BC3’s vice president for student affairs and enrollment management, has just bested Neupauer 117-111.
  
  “That,” Neupauer says, laughing, “won’t be posted on social media.”
  
  He and Purcell, he continues, “talk about this being a unique fundraiser, about doing something different. There are fancy galas and fancy dinners. We love this because it draws a different group of people.”
  
  Bowling for Scholars donations reach $26,750
  The 2016 event attracts 115 bowlers and raises $10,700. Through three years it has drawn 440 bowlers and raised $26,750.
  
  BC3’s Alumni Association preserves the college’s history, improves its relationship with former students and the community and advances its mission. It also offers networking programs, services and events – like Bowling for Scholars, which on this night gives Turkey Challenge prizes to John Merriman and Fred Brown for rolling three consecutive strikes.
  
  Butler County Commissioner Kevin Boozel, a 1991 BC3 graduate; Renee Boozel; Colton Boozel; Tony Shakely, a 1994 BC3 graduate; Ben Jamieson; Erica Zanicky, a 2014 BC3 graduate; and Martin Zanicky, a 2015 BC3 graduate; win Capon Challenge prizes for rolling two strikes in a row – as did Eugene Rock, that Butler resident who was just as accurate with that 7-8 split earlier in the night.
  
  “I’ve been throwing that ball for about 50 years,” Rock says. “I think I know where it’s going.”
  
  And if it doesn’t?
  
  “Patience,” he says. “Patience.” Show less...

  Video: Bowling for Scholars
  

• Nov 17

  Trustees mull collaborations in marketing, alumni relations, outreach

  Collaboration among Western Pennsylvania’s five community colleges strikes a chord with Jennifer R. Linn, one of five Butler County Community College trustees who attend a regional board of trustees meeting near Johnstown with BC3 President Dr. Nick Neupauer.
  
  “The trustees would benefit from learning from how the different community colleges run their programs,” says Linn, who with BC3 Trustees Kimberley D. Geyer, Gail A. Paserba, Joseph E. Kubit and Dr. Sarah G. Peart-Forbes meet with those representing Westmoreland, Allegheny, Beaver and Pennsylvania Highlands community colleges near Johnstown. Read more...

  “It was a good starting point to actively collaborate with the other community colleges as boards of trustees to work on issues such as marketing, alumni relations and community outreach,” Linn says. “Trustees were able to share ideas, and what has worked for their colleges and what hasn’t worked.”
  
  Dr. Walter Asonevich, president of Pennsylvania Highlands Community College, reports on several Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges items, and commission President and CEO Elizabeth Bolden discusses the state’s spending plan, community college appropriations and the organization’s 2017-18 budget request.
  
  Gov. Tom Wolf over the summer signed a 2016-17 budget that allocates $232 million to Pennsylvania’s community colleges, a 2.5 percent increase over the previous fiscal year. In Wolf’s first two years in office, Pennsylvania has increased funding to schools by nearly $640 million, including an additional $16.4 million for community colleges.
  
  Asonevich then leads a discussion among trustees that includes questions, the exchange of ideas and suggestions.
  
  “We were coming together as Western Pennsylvania’s community colleges and going forward with joint marketing and joint enrollment approaches,” Neupauer says, and “really selling the fact that it’s a great time to be a community college with the affordability, accessibility and transfer opportunities. There really seems to be a great interest in that.”
  
  “Good spirit in the room”
  Such combined efforts have been undertaken in the past, “but with a lot of turnover in presidents and trustees, we’ve kind of lose a little bit of that history,” Neupauer says. “There seemed to be a real good spirit in the room to go forward with that. In the past we have done joint op-ed pieces, joint advertisements and we came together on WPXI (a Pittsburgh area television station and NBC affiliate) for a job summit. So revisiting something like that is important.”
  
  Among joint efforts that could be considered, Neupauer says, is a tuition reciprocity agreement.
  
  “So rather than us invest in very expensive equipment, if we have a reciprocity agreement with the western colleges, you can now send students back and forth,” he says.
  
  A Community College of Beaver County student, for example, could use BC3 equipment for a flat cost.
  
  “That there are 32 public institutions and Western Pennsylvania has these five community colleges with a similarity among affordability, accessibility and quality, that really resonates,” Neupauer says. “The fact that you can save a lot of money is our message, if we do a better job of marketing not only our affordability, but our quality.”
  
  Western Pennsylvania community colleges are regaining traction as a group, says Linn, one of 15 BC3 trustees appointed to six-year terms by Butler County commissioners.
  
  “It was definitely a good starting point for future talks,” she says, “and future collaborations.” Show less...

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• Dec 5

  Focus on specific development plan, BC3 president tells business leaders

  

  Dr. Nick Neupauer, president of Butler County Community College, speaks before a crowd of 100 gathered for the Ellwood City Area Chamber of Commerce’s Christmas dinner and annual meeting on Monday, Dec. 5, 2016, at the Connoquenessing Country Club in North Sewickley Township, Beaver County.

  “A show of hands,” Dr. Nick Neupauer engages the crowd of 100 gathered at the Ellwood City Area Chamber of Commerce’s Christmas dinner and annual meeting.
  
  “Who remembers the Majestic?” the president of Butler County Community College and an Ellwood City native asks at the outset of his keynote “Dare to Dream: Ellwood City in the 21st Century” speech.
  
  “The Manos?”
  
  Hands that once clutched movie tickets to those two theaters in the borough begin to raise from the 12 circular tables at the Connoquenessing Country Club. Read more...

  “How about Ellwood City with two newsstands?”
  
  Hands raise.
  
  His grandfather’s tavern – Ellwood City Gardens? The G.C. Murphy 5 & 10 store on the next block?
  
  More hands.
  
  “I can remember walking into the 5 & 10,” Neupauer says, conjuring memories of footsteps along creaking hardwood floors that echo off high ceilings and of a wide staircase descending to a lower level, where the smell of fresh-roasted peanuts permeated the air, as did songs of caged pet birds in a toy department “off to the right.”
  
  “I remember that as if it were yesterday,” Neupauer says. “And I recall my mother would drop my brother Michael and me off on Lawrence Avenue on a Saturday, with the Christmas music playing, and my brother and I, with about $30 or $40 from our parents, would do our Christmas shopping on Lawrence Avenue.”
  
  Applause fills the Connoquenessing Country Club in North Sewickley Township.
  
  “Friends,” Neupauer says, shaking his head, “I hate to tell you. Those days are not coming back.”
  
  Since the decline of the steel industry in the early 1980s, Ellwood City and all of Western Pennsylvania has forever been changed, Neupauer says.
  
  “I’m asking you to forget the past,” he says, “something that is quite difficult for us to do in Western Pennsylvania.”
  
  Three keys to development plan
  Focus instead, he says, on a future governed by a specific economic development plan that incorporates retaining a work force, attracting a new work force and new businesses, and providing an opportunity for individuals to create and nurture their own businesses.
  
  BC3, likewise, is playing an important role in helping Butler County and the region with economic development, Neupauer says.
  
  “There are 1,200 community colleges nationally, and most are correlated to economic development,” he says. “Very few do it well, and that is what we are striving to do.”
  
  He and James Hrabosky, BC3’s vice president for administration and finance, and an Ellwood City native also attending the chamber dinner, have researched numerous models of economic development, Neupauer says. Those approaches include linking medical and educational institutions, fostering town-gown relationships, promoting the arts or business incubators, capitalizing on the talents and interests of millennials and strategically using tax-exempt nonprofit organizations and foundations.
  
  A larger strategy that incorporates “these different entities” in economic development allows alignment with U.S. Rep. Keith Rothfus, who represents Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District, and with individuals who work with the state to focus on federal or state grants, Neupauer says.
  
  “We’ve been beneficiaries of such grants,” Neupauer says. “In other words, you are working with the players, the boards, the chambers, the hospitals, the colleges, the universities, the superintendents, so that you are all talking with the same language.
  
  “What was happening in Butler County forever was that the university would apply for federal and state grants, the college would, tourism would, and there was no consistency. But once we are on the same page, that helps increase the chances of those soft dollars and those grant monies coming in.”
  
  Because Butler is a college town, Neupauer says, BC3 is considering the development of a master plan that will strengthen the relationship between the two.
  
  Walking path, banners would showcase relationship
  “What does that include? A walking path that would link downtown Butler to our main campus” two to three miles away, Neupauer says.
  
  It could be streetscape banners that promote Butler County Community College, as is done in State College with Penn State University or in Pittsburgh with the University of Pittsburgh, Neupauer says.
  
  “It could be that in partnership with the Armstrong Group of Companies of the world, some of our bank partners, and other big hitters in the community, turning a vacant storefront into an opportunity where our college can offer continuing education and lifelong learning credits.“ Neupauer and Hrabosky recently visited the campus of Penn State-Altoona – which “took a lot of those vacant buildings, and worked with powerful individuals like the Sheetz family,” and met with Steve Sheetz, the company’s board chairman.
  
  After the chancellor of Penn State-Altoona presented this vision to the Altoona-Blair County Development Corp., “to the big hitters who have the resources to donate – not hundreds of thousands of dollars but millions of dollars” – Altoona has rebounded toward what it was in the 1950s and 1960s, Neupauer says.
  
  “It is mind-boggling,” Neupauer says. “By utilizing existing space, vacant storefronts, you can not only provide space to accelerate businesses, but also space for individuals to grow their own businesses, and that is exactly what is happening in Altoona.”
  
  Message resonates with chamber boss
  Neupauer’s example affirms discussions that have occurred in Ellwood City, says Ray Santillo, the chamber’s executive director.
  
  “What I heard is some of things we need to do around the Ellwood City community,” Santillo says. “A direction to go, like with the buildings. Some of those things have been talked about, but we need to formalize a plan and how we are moving forward.”
  
  The next generation poised to move forward and grow its businesses is the millennial – those born between 1977 and 1999 – and “the most misunderstood group of individuals who are out there,” Neupauer says.
  
  Businesses, he says, can capitalize on the strengths and ideas of millennials, who are willing to work as independent contractors, are apt to volunteer, are conscious of the environment and of physical fitness, who may prefer walking or public transportation to using their own car, who may want to live in downtowns, and who are less likely to discriminate among race, religion and ethnicity.
  
  Imagine what a downtown would look like if you focus on a business model that targets millennials, Neupauer says.
  
  Imagine the space you have in Ellwood City if you talk to an investor and to developers about converting vacancies into thriving businesses. Sitting at a table in front of Neupauer and agreeing with his assessment is Jillian D’Amico, 26, the newest associate of an Ellwood City Area Chamber of Commerce that in 2016 increased its membership 58 percent, to 315.
  
  “I was happy when he mentioned public transportation,” says D’Amico, who joined the chamber a week ago after returning to Ellwood City from North Carolina. “That is the big thing that resonated with me. I would like there to be more public transportation. It would be helpful to millennials who would rather not own their own cars.”
  
  D’Amico isn’t among those to raise her hand when Neupauer asks about the Majestic, the Manos, Ellwood City’s two newsstands, Ellwood City Gardens or the G.C. Murphy 5 & 10 store.
  
  “I don’t remember any of those,” she says of the businesses that closed by the time she was born and have since been repurposed. “We can start fresh,” she says. “We can look to the future.”
  
  She is, however, one to raise her hand to coordinate the Ellwood City Area Chamber of Commerce’s Earth Day festivity – fitting Neupauer’s description of millennials’ environmental consciousness and desire to volunteer.
  
  “It’s helpful to bring new thoughts to the town and city planning,” D’Amico says. “Some fresh ideas.” Show less...

• Dec 5

  President’s Cup trophy shining example of BC3’s emerging leaders

  

  A team of Butler County Community College employees are shown Dec. 5, 2016, with the President’s Cup they won after presenting their capstone project proposal in the inaugural Western Pennsylvania Community College Leadership Institute program. From left at Treesdale Golf & Country Club, Gibsonia, are Erika Nail, Karen Jack, Michelle Jamieson, Stephanie Long, Renee Piovesan, BC3 President Dr. Nick Neupauer, Sean Carroll, Jessica Matonak and Matt Miller.

  Their fingerprints on the gold-plated President’s Cup are temporary.
  
  But the fingerprint that Sean Carroll, Karen Jack, Michelle Jamieson, Stephanie Long, Jessica Matonak, Matt Miller, Erika Nail and Renee Piovesan may leave on Butler County Community College would be permanent. Read more...

  Their idea – devised, modified and refined over 10 months, and as polished at its presentation in Gibsonia as that lustrous President’s Cup atop a beveled mahogany pedestal – is to create a community health and resource center on BC3’s main campus.
  
  As BC3’s first group of employees selected to participate in the inaugural Western Pennsylvania Community College Leadership Institute program, their proposal before a crowd of 50 at Treesdale Golf & Country Club was recognized by three judges as superior to those presented by other regional community college workers.
  
  Most importantly, their advocacy for a community health and resource center will be considered in BC3’s master planning process, BC3 President Dr. Nick Neupauer says.
  
  Winning the President’s Cup is an achievement, Carroll says, but to see the group’s idea one day materialize on campus “will be infinitely better. To see that building become realized would be better than any cup we could win, to see something that could benefit countless students, staff, faculty and the community.”
  
  Eight candidates are selected ...
  Groups of employees representing Westmoreland County Community College and the Community College of Beaver County also participated in the leadership program, created by Dr. Chris Reber, president of CCBC; Dr. Tuesday Stanley, president of WCCC; and Neupauer, who says “We all realized that we needed to focus on succession planning for our institutions and community colleges as a whole.”
  
  Two-year educational institutions are projected to lose a large number of administrators and faculty to retirement over the next decade, according to results of a 2012 survey published by the American Association of Community Colleges.
  
  Presidents understand, Neupauer says, the need to invest professionally in employees.
  
  Sixteen BC3 employees applied to participate in the 10-month program that culminates with the presentation of the group’s capstone project proposal in Gibsonia.
  
  Eight were chosen...
  Carroll, director of BC3 @ Lawrence Crossing; Jack, project director of the Keystone Education Yields Success program; Jamieson, associate director of the BC3 Education Foundation Inc.; Long, an instructor in humanities and social sciences; Matonak, executive director of communications and marketing; Miller, associate director of information technology; Nail, an instructor in the business division; and Piovesan, secretary for the vice president of academic affairs.
  
  “There was a competitive selection process,” Neupauer says.
  
  “I evaluated the candidates based on the strength of the applications, strength of letters of support and diversity of our team,” Neupauer says, adding that the decision weighed professional roles, campus sites, full- and part-time status, seniority and an analysis of applicants’ recent participation in similar programs.
  
  Her decision to apply, Matonak says, was as easy one.
  
  “At the time, I was serving in an interim role, so this was the perfect opportunity to learn and grow professionally and to show my commitment to the college,” she says. “When I was selected, it made me feel like BC3 was in turn invested in my professional development. That was really encouraging as I was adjusting in a new position.”
  
  Miller says he sought the opportunity to develop additional leadership skills “and network with peers from within BC3 as well as the other two institutions.”
  
  “This was a very limited selection process,” he says. “I was honored when I learned of my acceptance into the program.”
  
  Eight participants become one group ...
  During monthly workshops in Butler and Cranberry townships, Monaca and Beaver Falls, Youngwood, Mount Pleasant and Latrobe, BC3’s group was encouraged to sit among and befriend those representing other colleges in the leadership institute.
  
  “When in fact we realized we didn’t really know each other,” Piovesan says.
  
  Jack works across campus in student services; Carroll, at Lawrence Crossing near New Castle, where Long teaches part-time – “none of us really knew her,” Piovesan says.
  
  “I don't get the opportunity to work with faculty on a regular basis,” Matonak adds. “The leadership institute allowed me to form some great relationships.”
  
  Piovesan and Long would develop a rapport.
  
  “Now, she’s my friend,” Piovesan says. “We are Facebook friends, so that tells you a lot. We all realized we enjoyed getting to know each other. That was the best upside to it.”
  
  Complementing the development of relationships with peers and dedicating themselves to a common goal, BC3’s participants also learned leadership skills from governmental, financial, educational and marketing experts at the seminars, Carroll says.
  
  “Hopefully we went in there as a sponge to soak up as much as they had to offer,” Carroll says. “When you hear from people who have been successful, you can learn from them regardless of what walk of life they are in. If they are successful there are certain traits that they have in common. There are going to be common threads that run through each, and those are the things hopefully that I could take and use to my benefit as I progress in my professional career.”
  
  The sessions help Piovesan see the “whole picture of the college” – that, for example, budgeted capital funds by law can be spent only on capital items.
  
  “It got me out of my little world, my day-in and day-out job,” she says. “I now can see how my colleagues have to do the things the way they do them. About the decisions that board members have to make that I, sitting at my desk, don’t have to think about, what they have to consider when they are making their decisions on behalf of the college. It makes me a better employee because I can sit back and think, ‘OK, that’s why they are doing that. I understand that now.’ It’s just a better awareness of our community college as a whole.”
  
  Participants: Create partnerships with health provider ...
  Not only can BC3 create a community health and resource center on its main campus, it can do so while expanding on its array of existing community partnerships – such as those with senior educational institutions for bachelor’s degree completions; with the Butler Armco Employees Credit Union that operates a branch in the Student Success Center and provides internships to business students; and with the Butler County Chamber of Commerce, which may move to BC3’s campus in Butler Township – an underserved area in health services, Brian Opitz says.
  
  “If you look at our geography, we are located on the southern side of Butler County. ... This type of resource is not really available in this area,” Opitz, BC3’s executive director of operations, says in the capstone project proposal. “In conversations I’ve had with neighbors in this area – they are looking for some of these amenities to come to this side of their town for them to use.”
  
  A community health and resource center would address needs of students, employees and those living and working in proximity.
  
  “Whether somebody gets a headache or somebody falls and scrapes his knee, unlike what we had in high school, you can’t go down to the nurse,” Carroll says. “BC3 doesn’t have that.”
  
  BC3’s campus security department handles emergencies, Piovesan says, “but there is really no place to take somebody in case of an emergency, if someone sprains an ankle or cuts himself. There is no room to take them, no specified room. And we thought this is a very big need on campus.”
  
  In addition to working with a local health-care provider or agency to provide first aid and urgent care, BC3 could offer special immunization clinics, athlete physicals, mental health counseling, health education programs, screenings, flu shots and private nursing and pumping spaces. Eventually, it could house U.S. Department of Agriculture food and nutrition programs such as Women, Infants and Children and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
  
  Jack assists low-income students, those who receive assistance such as WIC or SNAP.
  
  “There is always a need for resources and I have become the go-to person for any resources the students may need,” she says, adding that in 2015 she created a brochure for students who need help beyond financial aid.
  
  “So we saw that as a need,” she says. “We run into students who are homeless, who don’t have enough food. For me, it was really the resource part of it as well. We definitely have a need for a place to go if someone has any kind of injury or are not feeling well. That has always been an issue. But the resources, for me, that was a huge part. I am passionate about that.”
  
  Once their idea “morphed into a more community-based resource,” Carroll says, “that gave it more acceptance and more cache.”
  
  ... And use facility to foster curriculum
  BC3 must leverage its physical assets and intellectual resources to keep pace with a dynamic national and statewide community college landscape, according to the proposal that references similar undertakings among Northampton Community College on Bethlehem and St. Luke’s Hospital; with the Student Health Center at Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica, N.Y., and with Slippery Rock University, which provides health care for students in collaboration with, among others, the state Department of Health.
  
  A community health and resource enter would allow BC3 to fulfill an unmet need of its various publics, including its main campus student body and employees by providing services at a convenient time and location between classes and other academic commitments. It could also play a role in expanding programming and curriculum to match industry needs, in collaborating with a community partner for economic development, and diversify BC3’s revenue stream, according to the proposal.
  
  In addition to students, employees, preschool and daycare children, campus visitors and community members would benefit from having a professionally-qualified staff on campus to address basic first-aid or treatment for minor illnesses or injuries, the proposal states. “It speaks to our role as the community’s college,” Neupauer says. “The proposal fits our strategic goals so well, including a terrific tie to our strong academic programs.”
  
  Participants present plan, brace for judges’ decision
  BC3’s team is spread out among three tables after the presentation of proposals, Carroll says, when Jeff Prokovich walks to a lectern on a small stage.
  
  Prokovich, vice president for institutional advancement at Grove City College, is a WPCC Leadership Institute program judge, along with Dr. B. Jean Ferketish and Erin Stinner. Ferketish is secretary to the board of trustees and assistant chancellor at the University of Pittsburgh; and Stinner, vice president of marketing at A to Z Communications, a branding, marketing, advertising and web development company in Pittsburgh.
  
  “Participants from all three teams were very invested into their projects,” Miller says, “and were looking to bring the win home to their college.”
  
  The presentation weighs 75 percent in the judges’ decision, Neupauer says, and the written proposal, 25 percent.
  
  “I didn’t know which way it would go,” Jack says.
  
  Westmoreland’s presentation focused on revamping its degree-auditing program; and BC3’s, on its high school academies.
  
  “If we didn’t win,” Carroll says, “it wouldn’t diminish the work that we did.”
  
  The winner of the first President’s Cup, Prokovich announces, is Butler County Community College.
  
  She and Piovesan gasp, Jack says.
  
  “If anyone was between us, it would have been in stereo, Piovesan says.
  
  Matonak high-fives Nail, then turns to catch a glimpse of Neupauer’s reaction.
  
  “Our president is a competitor,” Matonak says, “and the idea behind the institute and our proposal originated with him. I knew he would be proud.”
  
  He is.
  
  “I am so proud of this group,” Neupauer says. “They worked very hard with the project and were sure to attend each session. Each member did so on top of his or her busy work schedule at the college. The President’s Cup was the crowning jewel of their dedication to the program.”
  
  The 10-pound trophy represents an idea whose heavy lifting – the creation of a community health and resource center on its main campus – has yet to come.
  
  “Any big process starts with a small idea,” Piovesan says. “And this was the idea. Even if it is a small start, one room with maybe a nurse, maybe some bandages and some pamphlets, everything starts with a small idea and you build into it.”
  
  Piovesan thanks the judges, then tells them: “I want you to know that I plan on being there at ribbon-cutting. I truly see this happening. It might not be this month or this year, but it is going to happen, and I will be standing in that front row at the ribbon-cutting, knowing that we had a part in it. I plan on being there watching it happen.”
  
  Jack, too.
  
  “It will be just a wonderful day knowing that I was part of something,” she says. “That could benefit not only the students and staff, but also the community. And that means a lot.” Show less...

• Dec 16

  BC3 pacts build muscle with phys ed teaching, homeland security

  

   

  Justice Lewandowski may follow in his father’s footsteps, though his will be in the shape of gym shoes.
  
  Joseph Lewandowski earned an associate degree at Butler County Community College, transferred to Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, obtained a bachelor’s degree in secondary education and became an English teacher at Butler Intermediate High. Read more...

  Justice is a sophomore pursuing an Associate in Science degree in BC3’s 63-credit physical education-teacher education program. The Butler 20-year-old says BC3’s new articulation agreement with Slippery Rock University, leading to its bachelor’s degree in education in health and physical education teaching, may influence him to attend the senior institution 20 miles away.
  
  BC3’s latest agreements with Slippery Rock University enable its students to seamlessly transfer credits toward Bachelor of Science degrees, one in education in health and physical education teaching, the other in homeland security.
  
  Each field is predicted to experience steady job growth in the next decade.
  
  “As a student, your No. 1 priority is classes,” Justice Lewandowski says. “And knowing that you can get all of your classes to transfer to an institution, I think, is one of the biggest things you can offer someone.”
  
  Another attraction, he says, is affordability.
  
  The cost of tuition and fees for BC3 students pursuing up to 17 credits is $2,393 for residents of Butler County and $3,953 for residents of Pennsylvania’s other 66 counties. The cost of tuition and fees for Pennsylvanians pursuing 17 credits at Slippery Rock University is $4,956.
  
  “Cost is absolutely up there with classes,” Justice Lewandowski says. “Once again, this agreement will save costs as well as time in the classes. Knowing that you’re going to get all of your money’s worth out of your classes, that you are not going to lose any in the transfer process, that’s very important. All around, you are saving money. It’s all positive.”
  
  BC3 now has 21 program-to-program agreements with Slippery Rock University. Of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, only two – Butler and Delaware – are home to a community college and a State System of Higher Education institution.
  
  BC3 this year separated its physical education-teacher education program from the secondary education tract for marketing purposes, says Bill Miller, BC3’s dean of humanities and social sciences.
  
  “It will be defined,” Miller says. “If somebody says he wants to be a physical education teacher, we can hand him something that says physical education teacher. Before we would hand him education or secondary education information that didn’t specifically say it. That, from a marketing standpoint, is positive.”
  
  As is the job outlook for education graduates in the commonwealth.
  
  Grads can fill dearth in teaching positions
  The state Department of Education reported this year that the number of instructional certificates issued in Pennsylvania has fallen from 21,294 in 2010-11 to 8,615 in 2014-15 – a decrease of 60 percent.
  
  “And this bubble of a low number of people graduating and getting certified in all areas (of teaching) is really going to come to fruition here in terms of the shortages you will see shortly down the road here,” says Dr. Keith Dils, dean of Slippery Rock University’s College of Education. “That is what we are predicting. It’s a good time to go into teaching for many different reasons, physical education especially.”
  
  Teaching jobs are available, says Dr. Kathy M. Wood, who attained a bachelor’s degree in physical education at Slippery Rock University and is program coordinator for health and physical education at BC3.
  
  “Kids are saying there are jobs out there,” Wood says. “And we know there are jobs out there.”
  
  400 homeland security jobs possible in county
  Miller also touts the convenience of pursuing a bachelor’s degree at Slippery Rock University for students in BC3’s Associate in Applied Science homeland security program.
  
  “There might be a lot of people in Butler County who don’t even know we have homeland security,” Miller says.
  
  BC3 created its 62-credit homeland security program 2011. Four years later, Economic Modeling Specialists International reported that Butler County could see 400 new jobs in homeland security by 2025. Average salaries nationwide range from $43,000 for a property specialist to $64,000 for a border patrol agent.
  
  “It just opens so many doors for students, to gain such knowledge in a fast-growing field,” says Steven Shaffer, who teaches crime and justice systems, juvenile justice and juvenile delinquency, corrections, criminal law and criminal procedure at BC3.
  
  “Since Sept. 11, there has been so much put on to this field through education. And the job opportunity out there is mind-numbing.”
  
  Homeland security has become a $400 billion-a-year industry, says Dr. Susan Lubinski, associate professor of criminology and security studies at Slippery Rock University.
  
  “The growth rate,” Lubinski says, “is tremendous.”
  
  Students can select from “attractive” options
  The option to transfer to Slippery Rock, Miller says, “will be attractive for us to sell in that a student can come here for two years and get an associate degree or, if they want, they can go on and get a four-year degree.”
  
  Seventy percent of BC3 students are in programs that transfer to a senior institution.
  
  BC3 accounts for 45 percent of the 850 community college transfer students admitted to Slippery Rock University annually, says Dr. Amanda Yale, SRU’s associate provost for enrollment services.
  
  “Whenever those numbers were shared with Bruce and me, we were absolutely blown away,” BC3 President Dr. Nick Neupauer says, referencing Dr. Bruce Russell, BC3's interim vice president foracademic affairs.
  
  The relationship with Slippery Rock University, Russell says, is “great. I am pleased that we are continuing to find more opportunities for our students. Students come here as a good start and transfer on. I do encourage us to continue to find more opportunities for articulation agreements.”
  
  Yale says BC3 is the largest feeder for Slippery Rock University for transfer students. She adds that SRU is now devoting $250,000 in scholarships to transfer students who have attained at least a 3.0 grade-point average. More than 100 BC3 transfer students will receive a scholarship award from SRU.
  
  “BC3 students are the ones who do reap a large, large percentage of that,” she says.
  
  BC3 and Slippery Rock University “can be first-choice opportunities for education here in Western Pennsylvania,” says Dr. Cheryl Norton, Slippery Rock University president.
  
  “As the No. 1 community college in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, it shows that when you are achieving excellence, people will come,” Norton says of BC3’s ranking in December 2015 by schools.com. “And people will come because they recognize that the opportunity provided at BC3 and provided at Slippery Rock University will help them develop their career opportunities and support the work force development in this area.”
  
  Butler County, or perhaps both institutions, “might take for granted the excellent relationship that we’ve always had with Slippery Rock University,” Neupauer says, adding that he and Norton were asked to speak about their collaborative spirit to presidents of Pennsylvania’s 14 community colleges and 14 state system universities.
  
  “Community colleges are ultra-sensitive when it comes to this,” Neupauer says, “however, we’ve always felt like an equal whenever we’ve worked with The Rock, and that has been absolutely across the board.”
  
  Attending the articulation agreement signings from BC3 were Dr. Case Willoughby, vice president for student affairs and enrollment management; Robert Morris, dean of admissions; Josh Novak, dean of student development; Kelly Flis, associate director of academic and career planning; and Neupauer, Miller, Wood, Shaffer and Russell.
  
  Attending the articulation agreement signings from Slippery Rock University were Dr. Philip Way, provost for vice president for academic and student affairs; Dr. Randy Nichols, professor in physical and health education; Jennifer Keller, interim dean, College of Liberal Arts; Betsy Stevens, associate director of admissions and transfer articulation, and Norton, Yale, Dils and Lubinski.
  
  For more information about the articulation agreements between BC3 and Slippery Rock University, contact BC3 Admissions at (724) 284-8501 or admissions@bc3.edu.
  Show less...

  Flickr Photo Album: Articulation Agreement Signing: BC3 & SRU

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