Note: This article was first published in Butler County Community College’s 2016 President’s Timeline.

(Butler, PA) Everyone, from Butler County Community College President Dr. Nick Neupauer to the institution of higher education’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.

There are chairs to be lifted and carried into state-of-the-art 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 and external relations.

“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,” BC3’s  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.”

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. 

 

Natural light and enlightening surroundings

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.

Months before the untimely storm outside, Purcell brainstormed after informing a potential donor that she believed all areas had been named.

“I said, ‘You know what? The elevator space is open.’”

As a result, guests on this night step off the Rodgers Memorial Trust Elevator, onto that dark-blue-gray carpeting and into the future of BC3.