The Penn Stater Magazine

To Shenango and Back

December 3, 2008 at 8:19 am Tina Hay Leave a comment

The Lecture Hall at Penn State Shenango was once an elementary school.

Yesterday a bunch of us took a trip to Penn State Shenango, in Sharon, Pa., near the Ohio border. For many of us on the Alumni Association staff, it was the first time we ever laid eyes on the campus, but two members of the group knew the place well: Amy Fellin Caputo ’86, our director of strategic communications, used to work at the Sharon Herald, and Sue Sokolak Beschler ’78, our director of membership, grew up in Farrell and attended Shenango before transferring to University Park.

Our host was Fred Leeds ’69g, ’71g, the campus chancellor, who started as a French instructor 37 years ago and has been at the campus ever since. He’s a very likeable and interesting guy, and refreshingly honest, mostly in ways I probably shouldn’t quote him on. :-) He’d offer some innovative ideas for improving the Penn State campus system—stuff that makes a lot of sense but probably doesn’t have much chance of getting approved—and then he’d say with a smile, “You can see I’m getting close to retirement.”

The former elementary school and former junior high, connected by an atrium.

The campus is located in a pretty depressed area economically. Right next to the campus, for example, is a GE plant that is closed down now, but which once provided 10,000 to 12,000 local residents with jobs.

Leeds says the campus has remained viable in the face of such challenges by educating workers who want to retool for new careers. In fact, half of the students at Penn State Shenango are returning-adult students.

Human Development and Family Studies is a big major at Shenango—it’s one of several four-year majors offered at the campus. (Until about 10 or 12 years ago, the non-University Park sites were primarily two-year campuses, but now, a lot of them offer a handful of four-year degrees.)

A student art project on display in a gallery at Penn State Shenango.

Interestingly, of the students who attend Shenango for only two years, many don’t go on to University Park to finish. Instead they transfer to Penn State Erie or Penn State Beaver—or to some other school altogether, like Slippery Rock or Thiel. (Sue Beschler said when she was a student, a lot of students would do two years at Shenango and then finish at Youngstown State.) The fact that they start, but don’t finish, at Penn State doesn’t mean that the University has failed them, according to Ira Saltz, the campus’ director of academic affairs. A lot of the students have jobs and families in the area and they’re just not likely to move to University Park. “If anything,” he says, their finishing their degree at another college “means we prepared them well” for the next step in their education.

The auditorium renovations should be done in two weeks.

Interesting fact: Leeds said that students at the non-University Park campuses graduate with much more debt than do those at University Park. The average student attending UP will graduate with $22,000 in loans to be paid off, which is bad enough, but the figure for non-University Park students is $35,000. In part that’s because many students at non-UP locations are returning adults, so they’re not usually getting financial help from their parents, and in part it’s because Commonwealth Campus students tend to come from much poorer families: The average family income of a Commonwealth Campus student is about half that of a University Park student. I was impressed to hear, though, that Shenango gives out about $400,000 in aid each year.

Inside the atrium connecting Lecture Hall to Sharon Hall.

The campus is a funky conglomeration of buildings right in the middle of the town: a former elementary school, a former junior high, a former laundromat-turned-union-hall, a former architectural firm, and so on.

We saw a cool auditorium-renovation project that’s almost complete—the hope is that it’ll be done in time for graduation in two weeks. Leeds is hoping the auditorium will also be a draw for the performing arts in the area.

By the way, the photos here were all taken with my iPhone, so don’t inspect them too closely for quality! A side note to iPhone fans: I took many of these with the “Night Camera” app, which is supposed to improve the quality of shots taken with an iPhone in low-light conditions.

Tina Hay, editor

Entry filed under: Other Penn State locations, Penn State Shenango. Tags: Amy Fellin Caputo, Fred Leeds, Ira Saltz, Sharon Herald, Sharon Pa., Shenango, Sue Sokolak Beschler.