Eastern Gateway’s Success Makes Its Presence Known
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- The entry of Jefferson Community College, Steubenville, renamed Eastern Gateway Community College when it expanded in the Mahoning Valley in 2009, is so recent that many Valley residents remain unclear about its role and what it offers, Dante Zambrini has found.
Zambrini, interim vice president of the Valley Center and Warren campuses, contends daily with this lack of awareness. Kent State University has satellite campuses in Champion Township in Trumbull County and Salem and East Liverpool in Columbiana County that began basically as community colleges. In the 1970s, Youngstown State University introduced a two-year degree to deflect the effort to build a de novo community college in Canfield. It still awards two-year degrees.
So the concept of a community college in a region long without one is only beginning to take hold. The Ohio General Assembly chose to expand the Jefferson Community College rather than create a new community college to serve the Mahoning Valley, “the largest area in the state not served by a community college,” Gateway spokeswoman Ann Koon notes.
Most of its growth, to nearly 3,800 today from 2,800 four years ago, has come at its sites in the three counties. At the Valley Center campus in downtown Youngstown, enrollment is projected at just short of 1,000 when classes resume Aug. 26, Zambrini reports. It stood at 909 in the 2012-13 academic year.
Between 60% and 65% of Eastern Gateway students live at or below the poverty level, Koon says, and this has led the college to introduce the Gateway Grant in 2011 at the Valley Center and Warren Center campuses. The grant provides full tuition for two years – roughly $6,500 – to graduates of high schools in the Mahoning Valley who qualify.
To qualify, the graduate must attend full time upon enrolling for the fall semester and have earned at least a 2.5 GPA in high school. Before the Gateway Grant can be applied, the student must apply other sources of financial aid. Students are strongly encouraged to file for FAFSA – Free Application for Federal Student Aid. More than 70% of the students enrolled at Eastern Gateway “receive financial aid through grants, scholarships and loans,” the college reports.
During the inaugural academic year of the Gateway Grant, 23 such graduates qualified and the community college places the value of their scholarships at “more than $55,000.” Two beneficiaries are Gia Herrera of Canfield and Tim Spalding of North Jackson. Herrera is an interactive and Internet digital media major, Spalding a business management major.
Both completed their first year and return to finish next spring. “Debt-free,” Meeks emphasized at a news conference Aug. 5. Both students intend to continue their studies at YSU and earn baccalaureates.
Eastern Gateway offers a general or liberal arts education, Zambrini points out, just like the first two years at four-year colleges and universities where students are expected to take requirements in English, social sciences and mathematics. Where community colleges differ is unabashedly preparing those students uninterested in transferring to a four-year institution for certificates that allow them to re-enter the workforce. “We’re a conduit to jobs,” the interim vice president states.
And perhaps a conduit to entrepreneurship as well. Jim Senary, who taught accounting at Hiram College before coming to Eastern Gateway, has discerned this as a difference between the students. At Hiram, most of his students wanted to work for someone else. “Most kids [in his classes at Eastern Gateway] want to work for themselves,” he observes.
Hence Eastern Gateway offers classes that lead to certificates in welding, real estate, computer software, medical coding and as a paralegal, among other fields. It also offers a program that allows LPNs (licensed practical nurses) to become RNs (registered nurses).
Duplication of what YSU and Eastern Gateway offer seems minimal. At YSU’s Metro College in Boardman, students can earn certificates in medical coding and as a paralegal. Most notably, the Bitonte College of Health and Human Services at YSU offers a curriculum leading to an RN and baccalaureate in nursing.
With a certificate, says Anthony Carnevale, a high school graduate on average “receives a 20% wage premium.” Where the average high school graduate “earns slightly more than $29,000, certificate holders earn slightly less than $35,000.” Carnevale, a Ph.D., is the author of Certificates: Gateway to Gainful Employment and College Degrees. “This can mean the difference between living at the poverty level and a middle class life for a family,” he concludes. Moreover, a student can earn a certificate in health-care, community services, and information technology, areas where community colleges excel, and pay less than “$6,000 for their coursework often covered by a Pell Grant.”
Unlike a traditional four-year institution, Eastern Gateway recruits displaced workers so they can learn skills that will make them employable without earning an associate’s degree. This is one reason the age of the average student is 30.
The staff at Eastern Gateway provides a level of support and encouragement for their students rarely found at a four-year college. Take the Math Emporium, for example. The room has three carrels of computers, each with six seats, and banks of computers along the walls that allow the tutors to monitor students’ efforts. The emporium is the first in the Eastern Gateway system, Zambrini says. Three tutors are on hand at all times during classes and at least one during breaks between semester to help students catch up.
Concerns that the entry of Eastern Gateway into Mahoning and Trumbull counties would hurt enrollment at YSU appear overblown. Herrera, apprehensive about enrolling at Eastern Gateway, could not see herself starting out at YSU although she has the confidence to transfer there for her junior year.
Eastern Gateway sees one of its missions as offering the remedial classes in mathematics and English that YSU does not want to offer. Just as at YSU, students pay tuition but receive no academic credit – and pay less tuition.
U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-13th Ohio, in endorsing the value of Eastern Gateway Aug. 5, noted that as advocates of the community college predicted, it has started “feeding into YSU. It’s not a detriment to YSU.” The campuses in downtown Youngstown and downtown Warren, the congressman said, “are growing the [educational] pie” and making it possible for more to receive a post-high school education.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story appears in our MidAugust 2013 print edition, published today.
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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