The college that almost wasn't: WCCC marks 50 years
Fierce opposition took aim at its approval and controversy dogged its first years, but the college that almost wasn’t marked its 50th anniversary on Tuesday.
From its start as a night school in rented classrooms at Jeannette High School, Westmoreland County Community College has expanded to serve nearly 5,000 students at a sprawling campus in Youngwood and an Advanced Technology Center near Mt. Pleasant, as well as branches in Indiana, Latrobe, Murrysville, New Kensington and Uniontown.
Its thousands of graduates include nurses, chefs, machinists, welders, landscapers, accountants, police officers and teachers, among others.
Students, graduates, faulty, staff and supporters gathered Tuesday to celebrate.
Andrea Hilburn, 18, of Hempfield, who is just finishing her first year at WCCC, said she’s glad the founders persevered.
“I wanted to save money instead of going into debt at a bigger university. I’m going here free on a scholarship the college gave me. So I’ll go here another year and then transfer to a four-year college,” she said. “I’m a social work major. I want to work with special needs people, and this is great because it’s close to the Blind Association where I work now.”
K. Plavko, 19, of Greensburg said she has fared well under her teachers’ guidance in the multi-media department.
“The teachers are fantastic. They care about you,” she said, as she typed away at her laptop in the newly renovated Student Achievement Center.
Jim Kelley, an 88-year-old retired Commonwealth Court judge, loves to hear the stories students and graduates tell.
Kelley, of Greensburg, was a young commissioner when the county began weighing whether there was demand to support a community college. The state legislature had authorized the creation of local community colleges — two-year institutions designed to provide college and technical training at the lowest possible price — several years earlier.
The state agreed to partner with school districts or counties willing to step up to sponsor such efforts. The model at the time called for counties or school districts that sponsored such institutions to provide one-third of the support, with one-third coming from the state and a final third from tuition.
A local study suggested there was a need for such a facility. But it quickly became apparent, Kelly said, that none of the region’s school districts were ready to take the leap. Westmoreland County would have to sponsor the school if it was to become a reality.
Kelley said he and a fellow Democrat, the late Bernard Scherer — a history professor who later became a lawyer and judge — voted to spend $300,000 to launch a community college in 1970. They acted despite strident opposition from the Association of Concerned Taxpayers, a local group that insisted the college was unnecessary and would “bankrupt the county.”
The following year, the taxpayers’ group ran candidates for commissioner and ousted Scherer. Dorothy Shope and Robert Shirey, who ran on the taxpayers’ ticket, became the new majority of the three-member board in 1972.
“That was a critical point in time,” Kelley said.
Larry Larese, now a member of the WCCC board of trustees, had just finished college and gone to work in the county planning department. He remembers the bitter controversy that boiled over in public meetings.
Over the years, as he wooed businesses to locate in the county, he came to appreciate the community college.
“In 1971, I didn’t know what a community college was. It took time for it to sink in. But now when I look back at the difference it has made, above everything else, the difference we’ve made being able to serve the workforce of the county, it’s amazing,” said Larese, who retired as county planning director in 2011.
As a commissioner, Shope remained adamantly opposed to funding the community college, Kelley said. But Shirey eventually sided with him, seeing strong benefits for the community.
“Dorothy Shope later matriculated at the community college and got a real estate license,” Kelley said, chuckling.
Kelley went on to be elected to the state Senate and was appointed to be a judge on Commonwealth Court, where he was later elected to two 10-year terms.
“Probably of all the decisions I’ve participated in, the most gratifying was the community college. I can’t tell you how much it means to me to see all the people who have gone through there and gone on to do so much. It’s nice to know I had a hand in this,” Kelley said, as community college officials and supporters toasted the school’s anniversary.
Commissioner Doug Chew, who once taught advanced biology and biochemistry at the community college as well as the University of Pittsburgh, hailed the school’s role making higher education and career preparation accessible to those who might otherwise go wanting.
“Community colleges are underappreciated by politicians, the public and sometimes the students, themselves,” Chew said. “But no other system of education in the world does more to provide higher education.”
He said the school lives up to Thomas Jefferson’s dictate that “the talent and virtue needed in a free society should be educated without regard to wealth or birth.”
WCCC President Tuesday Stanley, who was hired in 2014, marveled at how the college has blossomed from a former factory in the middle of a farm field where sheep kept the lawn in line. It has grown to the modern campus where multiple buildings house classrooms, offices and labs. Branch campuses and the technology center provide additional options.
Stanley said she constantly hears from graduates whose lives validate the commitment the county and the community have had to the college for half a century.
Deb Erdley is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Deb at derdley@triblive.com.
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