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Valley’s community college launched
Eastern Gateway Community College
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Eastern Gateway Community College opens with remarks by Ohio gov. Ted Strickland.
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GRATEFUL STUDENT: Brenda Brady, a licensed practical nurse from North Bloomfield, is one of the first adult students to enroll at the new Eastern Gateway Community College. She spoke during the college’s official opening ceremony in Youngstown Monday and said being able to attend the college fulfills a childhood dream. She’s enrolled in the LPN to RN access program.
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COLLEGE OPENS: From left, U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th; Gov. Ted Strickland; Roy Church, president of Lorain County Community College; and Eric Fingerhut, Ohio chancellor of higher education, share a lighter moment before the official opening ceremony of Eastern Gateway Community College on Monday. The new college will be headquartered in the Medical Education Building of Forum Health’s Northside Medical Center but will offer classes at locations in Mahoning, Trumbull, Columbiana and Jefferson counties.
The community college has no central campus but offers classes where people live.
By Harold Gwin
YOUNGSTOWN — “You’re giving me a legacy. You’re giving me a dream,” Brenda Brady of North Bloomfield told a room full of people involved in the launch of the Mahoning Valley’s first community college.
Brady, a licensed practical nurse employed as a case-management nurse at Park Vista Retirement Center, is one of the first adult students to enroll at Eastern Gateway Community College, which began offering classes in late August.
She was selected as the student speaker at Monday’s official college opening at The Valley Center, Eastern Gateway’s headquarters at Forum Health’s Northside Medical Center on Gypsy Lane.
Brady said that, as a child, she dreamed of going to college but never had the opportunity.
“You’ve made my dream come true,” she told about 150 government, educational, business, community and labor leaders.
She’s enrolled in the LPN to RN access program, taking anatomy, physiology and chemistry classes this fall, able to attend class at night, something she said was unavailable in the past.
She has three children and nine grandchildren and said her grandchildren take great pride in her going to college at this point in her life.
Brady also said she is the only one of six siblings in her family to graduate from high school, but some of her brothers and sisters scattered across the country are now going back to school to add to their education.
“This Eastern Gateway Community College is long overdue,” she said.
“This is a great day for this region of Ohio,” said Gov. Ted Strickland who came to Youngstown to participate in the opening ceremony.
The creation of Eastern Gateway is only possible because people were willing to take a chance, work together and look beyond their own needs, he said.
“It is a model that I hope will be emulated often in our state,” Strickland said.
Roy Church, president of Lorain County Community College and chairman of the task force put together to start a community college here, said Eastern Gateway had only a few weeks to advertise its course offerings before classes started.
It’s a college without walls, as classes are being offered at six locations across four counties and online, and Church said enrollment is 3,000 students. That includes the summer enrollment of 922 students and the 2,050 enrolled so far this fall. The bulk of that number is at the Jefferson County Campus, formerly Jefferson Community College which has been running annual enrollments of more than 1,800. Fall enrollment shows 25 students from Trumbull County, 39 from Mahoning and 94 from Columbiana.
Church said enrollment is initially expected to grow by 15 to 20 percent each semester.
U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, told the gathering that some students, those at the low end of the financial spectrum, will be able to attend EGCC for free. The federal government has made its Pell grants more available, and the full Pell grant, at $5,350 per year, is more than EGCC tuition.
This community college is “a critical component” of Northeast Ohio’s economic revitalization, Ryan said. The groundwork is being laid for economic resurgence, he said.
The community college was made possible because people were willing to rethink the way we do business, said Eric Fingerhut, Ohio’s chancellor of higher education.
The creation of a community college was in the Mahoning Valley was included in the state’s strategic plan for higher education adopted in 2008, with a time line set for the start of classes in fall 2011.
Eastern Gateway has launched a full year early, the result of “extraordinary commitment and partnerships,” Fingerhut said.
Eastern Gateway is offering 11 associate degree and six certificate programs in 180 classes.
For information, call (800) 682-6553, ext. 236, or visit www.easterngatewaycc.com.
gwin@vindy.com
See also: Organization wants central campus