Warren woman says Eastern Gateway’s Warren campus provided the opportunity she needed to succeed

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

Sixteen months ago, Tonya Mann was struggling. She was living in her car, and she had a criminal conviction that resulted in probation.

But she still believed in herself and wanted to get an education.

She had attended Eastern Gateway Community College’s Youngstown campus in 2014, but it was only when she arrived at the Warren campus in January 2016 that she felt she was in a position to succeed.

“The support is phenomenal. They worked with me here,” she said of the Warren campus. “They put themselves on the line. I was able to get a lot done and complete my studies,” she said this week from outside of the Warren campus on Main Avenue.

Mann, originally from Youngstown but now living in Warren, will graduate Saturday with an associate degree in business management and a minor in psychology.

“This helped me to be successful. It was more personable, and the classes are smaller. The counselors were able to help me get employment, and I started my own business,” she said of a cleaning service.

Now that Eastern Gateway is closing the Warren campus, Mann says she’ll have to consider continuing her education at the Youngstown campus, but she’d prefer to remain at one in Warren, she said.

“It saddens me because I want other people in my position to get this kind of opportunity,” Mann said.

Mary Williams of Cort-land, a longtime board member at Trumbull Career and Technical Center in Champion and the Lakeview Board of Education who also ran for county commissioner last year, said Eastern Gateway’s Warren campus helped people get into college.

“There’s only one way out of poverty. It’s education,” she said. ”We have to find a way to get people into college.”

According to U.S. Census Bureau, 17.3 percent of Trumbull County adults age 25 and older have at least a bachelor’s degree, which is well below the state average of 26.1 percent.

Eastern Gateway President Jimmie Bruce told The Vindicator last week the closure was done to focus resources on strengthening Eastern Gateway’s Youngstown campus, but he could not be reached Friday to discuss the matter further.

Warren pastor Todd Johnson, who worked for 10 years for OhioMeansJobs, a state employment agency with a Warren office, said he had high hopes for Eastern Gateway’s Warren campus but he still thinks there are lots of options.

“I was excited about the idea of Eastern Gateway and establishing a community college in Warren because I thought it would be [great] for people like myself who went away to college, and it didn’t work out.”

He felt it would be great for people intimidated by leaving home and needing a “kick start” to get into college. “It seems like it didn’t catch on as well as it should have.”

But Johnson said this area “has always had a very rich, diverse amount of secondary-education opportunities.”

“We [at OhioMeansJobs] used to say that you can find just about any kind of training within about a 50-minute radius,” Johnson said. “We still are very rich with diverse training options.”

He said people have become accustomed to having options very close to home, but Kent State Trumbull, Trumbull Career and Technical Center’s adult education, Eastern Gateway’s Youngstown campus, Youngstown State University and others are within a reasonable distance.

Lance Grahn, dean of Kent State Trumbull, said the struggles of Eastern Gateway in Trumbull County and the recent closure of Trumbull Business College in Howland poses a question: “What is it we need to do to attract more students to post-secondary options so Trumbull County can continue its recovery and become more vibrant and build up those jobs and retain jobs in Trumbull County?”