Eastern Gateway Campus in Youngstown Nears Closure
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Classes at Eastern Gateway Community College stopped last summer, and the board appointed to oversee the college’s closure is moving to close the downtown campus.
“One building only has two people in it,” Fred Ransier, executive director, said Wednesday at a meeting of the EGCC Governance Authority.
The former college trustees voluntarily gave up the school’s accreditation, effective Nov. 1. The five-member authority, chaired by Kimberly Murnieks, director of the Ohio Office of Budget and Management, is overseeing the wind-down. Members were appointed by Gov. Mike DeWine. The authority appointed Ransier, who is an attorney, as executive director. DeWine had previously named Ransier the college conservator.
Ransier said the security and maintenance worker for the Youngstown campus has submitted his resignation.
“That’s a problem because in the other building we have a lot of expensive equipment,” he said, referring to medical equipment as well as a 3D printer.
In September 2023, a Tradesman Series P3-44 3D printer manufactured at Juggerbot 3D in Youngstown was installed in the EGCC building at East Federal and Champion streets. The printer stands nearly 9 feet high, 10 feet wide and 5 feet deep.
It was expected to be the core of the college’s Additive Innovation Center. The printer was part of a $3.5 million Ohio Department of Development grant, and EGCC partnered with America Makes to secure the funds.
“The grantor said it wanted it at Youngstown State,” Ransier said of the printer.
He said it’s been suggested that computer equipment at the Youngstown campus be moved to the main campus in Steubenville.
“We have similar problems here,” the executive director said. “We have millions of dollars of equipment in three rental spaces.”
EGCC started in Steubenville as Jefferson County Technical Institute in 1966. It was renamed Jefferson Technical College 11 years later.
In 2009, it became Eastern Gateway Community College and expanded to serve students in Mahoning, Columbiana and Trumbull counties in addition to Jefferson. It opened a downtown Youngstown campus shortly thereafter.
The college has faced academic and financial challenges over the past few years, mostly connected to its free college benefit program. That program allowed union members from across the country to attend EGCC classes, mostly virtually, and earn degrees at no cost to them.
Under the program, enrollment swelled from about 4,000 to more than 40,000.
In August 2022, the U.S. Department of Education placed EGCC on Heightened Cash Monitoring 2, meaning the college had to use its own resources to credit student accounts and wait for federal student aid reimbursements from the federal department.
Also in 2022, U.S. DOE ordered the college to end the free college program, saying that EGCC was charging students who received Pell grants more than those who didn’t. The college sued the department. The two sides settled the case in August 2023, and the free college program ended and enrollment plummeted.
Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
