Titusville transition starting to fulfill its potential

By SUSAN JONES

The opening of the Pitt–Titusville Education and Training Hub in fall 2020 may not have been the big celebration officials had hoped for because of the pandemic, but two years later the regional campus is starting to fulfill the dream first visualized in 2017.

Stephanie FielyThe plan to convert Pitt–Titusville to an academic and technical school began with a report by the provost’s office to the Board of Trustees in 2017 on options for the campus as it faced continually declining enrollment. The campus had 503 students in 2003, and 15 years later, in 2018, had less than half that — 225.

Now the campus houses programs run by Pitt–Titusville and three partners — Northern Pennsylvania Regional College, Swanson School of Engineering’s Manufacturing Assistance Center (MAC), and Brockway Center for Arts & Technology — and that’s just the beginning, said Stephanie Fiely, who was named executive director of Pitt–Titusville this summer.

“The next steps are going to be growing enrollment and growing programs and partners,” she said. “Our goal is to meet the workforce needs. We want programs that students can enroll in where they’re not forced to leave the region to find employment. They can earn a family-sustaining wage based on their credentials, and stay right within our six county area.”

Fiely has been working at the campus since 1999 and was director of student life before the transition in 2020. It wasn’t an easy year. Students had all moved online and Fiely had to deal with closing down the residence halls, which remain shuttered.

In addition, the last day for all the faculty and staff “of the former school as we knew it” was Aug. 3 of that year. Fiely said some of those people got jobs at other Pitt campuses and others took a retirement package. “Titusville has seemed to be over the years that a lot of folks, once they got started here, they just kind of stayed here because it was like a family,” she said. “And we still are a lot like a family, and we’ve encompassed and brought in more of our partners to be our families as well.”

In 2018, when the transition plan was announced, there were 65 Pitt employees at Titusville, now that number is 27, which includes support people for the Hub, instructors in Swanson School’s MAC and the nursing program and staff from the University Library System at Haskell Library. The other partner organization also have staff at the campus.

In addition, several services are shared with Pitt–Bradford, including having one president, Rick Esch, for the two campuses.

While Fiely is the “boots on the ground” in Titusville, Esch said he’s at the campus four or five times a month and he and Fiely communicate daily. The campuses are just over 70 miles apart and it takes a minimum of a hour and 20 minutes to drive, Esch said. Cell phone coverage has improved along the route, he said, which means he’s on the phone for most of the drive. He said they also meet individually and in groups with the partners frequently.

The campus is in the middle of a capital campaign to raise $3 million to support renovations in the McKinney Student Union and in Haskell Library, which also keeps Esch on the road and the phone with Titusville supporters.

Students and programming

Fiely said the short-term goal over the next three to five years is to have 164 students enrolled between the four partners. “When we add partners and programs, we would like to have 500 students enrolled in courses annually,” she said. “How many new partners and programs is yet to be determined because we want to ensure we are meeting the needs of the job market and region.”

Since 2020-21, the only Pitt academic program at Titusville is an associate of science degree in nursing. Students with this two-year degree can go straight to work, or they can transfer to Bradford to complete a bachelor of science degree in nursing. The Titusville program was recently ranked as the seventh best registered nursing program in Pennsylvania by the nursing advocacy group, RegisteredNursing.org.

Renovations to the Broadhurst Science Center were completed in August, which gave the nursing program a a bigger and brighter space, and added a hospital room simulation lab. Previously the classes were taught in the basement of the library.

The renovated building also houses no-cost clinical medical assistant and phlebotomy courses, which are run by Brockway Center for the Arts and Technology, a division of Pittsburgh’s Manchester Bidwell Corp. The programs started in July with a capacity for 15 students and 14 enrolled. “They’re looking at getting a second cohort started right now, so that there’ll be overlapping with a different sequence,” Esch said. “We’re also looking at a couple of other programs with Manchester Bedwell.”

“Our regional hospitals are eager to hire students from the two medical-related programs as soon as they complete their programs,” Fiely said.

The Swanson School of Engineering’s Manufacturing Assistance Center moved its equipment, along with an instructor and outreach coordinator, to Titusville in July 2021 while still maintaining a program in Homewood through a hands-on partnership with Conturo Prototyping. The MAC currently is located in a nearby industrial park until renovations are done to the Titusville student union, where it will be housed.

The center offers six-week programs in basic machining and CNC programming and operations. It’s available to recent high school graduates or people looking to retrain or upskill. Fiely cited one local manufacturer that recently got a government contract that will require them to add 100 to 200 jobs. “If they hire someone that’s not necessarily completely trained, we can work with them to get that student trained in as little as six weeks or as many as 15 weeks (for part-time students).”

Esch said the MAC programs are not at capacity yet, with just over 30 students going through in the first 12 months. “And we know that we want to get that significantly higher than that,” he said.

“I think in the case of Titusville, the demand for the training is very high from the employers’ standpoint,” Esch said. “It’s a matter of having enough students to fill those slots. We’re looking at all kinds of possibilities, including cohort programs that would include some temporary housing for them to go through the program.”

The Northern Pennsylvania Regional College is also a key player on the campus. It offers academic courses for five associate degrees — business administration, criminal justice, early childhood education, liberal studies and social sciences — and general education courses for the nursing program.

Fiely said all of the programs at the Hub complement and focus on the regional workforce needs. For instance, medical assistant and phlebotomy students might decide to pursue a nursing degree after they complete their courses, or a student whose high school GPA is too low to start directly into nursing can take classes with the community college to help them qualify.

“MAC students who want to start their own machining business after our program may choose to gain a business degree through NPRC’s associate degree program as well,” she said.

“All of our partners see the need to be in the region, and being here together, we can collaborate to make the most of our potential by sharing facilities and resources to support each other and provide stackable education opportunities.”

Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.

 

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