BUTLER TWP — For the past 31 years, Bill Miller has been instrumental in the development of Butler County Community College.

“It's been a good 30 years,” he said.

Miller was BC3 director of admissions for 24 years before he became dean of the Humanities and Social Sciences division in 2004. He also coached BC3's basketball team, and now he's the golf coach.

The Humanities and Social Sciences division has more than twice the enrollment of any other academic unit at the school.

Of 4,104 students enrolled this spring, more than half, 2,711, are enrolled in Humanities and Social Sciences majors. In contrast, the second most popular division is the business school, where 932 students are enrolled.

“There's been a big growth in students undecided about their major,” Miller said, noting that 713 students are “general studies” students.

Those students are not waiting to get into another BC3 program. They will graduate with a general studies degree and transfer to a four-year school to continue. Another 1,000 are general studies enrollees as they wait to enter another program.

Miller attributes this student growth to the increased number of agreements BC3 has negotiated with four-year colleges and universities in the past decade.

These agreements ensure that students can transfer class credits from BC3 to those particular four-year colleges or universities.

“We have become a liberal arts transfer institution primarily,” Susan Chagnon, director of communications and marketing said. Seventy percent of BC3 students transfer to another institution, and 30 percent complete occupational studies at BC3.

These agreements also make it easy for students to take advantage of BC3's lower costs at a time when many students are putting themselves through school, Miller said.

In addition to the financial savings BC3 offers students, transferring has other advantages, too.

“Students are already successful in college. A student knows what he needs to do to be successful, to graduate,” Miller said.

More than 20 percent of Butler High School's graduating classes come to BC3, he said.

“That's very significant. Usually, it's only 15 percent,” he said.

Miller attributes that success to BC3's work with high schools in Butler County to find out which programs they find most valuable.

He attributes the division's success to the campus itself.

“There are 14 community colleges in Pennsylvania,” Miller said. “I've been to 10 or 11 across the state.

“The one thing I've always noticed, without question, is that physically we have the most beautiful campus of all.

“With 300 acres of oak trees, parents think it's a nice place to go to school. It make us unique.”

At the same time BC3 was growing into a regional college, Miller has been coaching: first basketball and then golf.

From 1980 to 1999, he was assistant coach for the Pioneers men's basketball team.

He retired in 1999, when it was time for him to cheer on his son, Corey, who was then a Knoch High School student and a basketball player like his father.

A few years later, Miller began coaching again, this time as the head coach of BC3's men's golf team.

“We've done well as a program,” Miller said. “We finished as runner-up in the conference.”

The team has finished second in the Western Pennsylvania Collegiate Conference six times.

In 2009, the team was the Region XX champions. He took the team to the national tournament in Chautauqua, N.Y., where it finished ninth out of 12 teams.

Several BC3 golfers also have achieved national status as individuals.

As for his own game, “if I could play more, I'd shoot better,” Miller said.

He plays at least twice a week with his sons on Saturday and Sunday during the spring and summer, he said.

Although he prefers to golf when it's hot outside in June, July and August, Miller admits he's also golfed during snow flurries.

“That's a die hard,” he said.

Miller is a member of the Oakview Golf Club in Slippery Rock.

“That's where I belong,” Miller said. “I like the Butler Country Club. I've played the Oakmont Country Club. It's one of the top 10 in the world.

“We go to the beach in the summer, and the boys and I play,” he continued. “We take our clubs with us.”

His wife, Cyndi, stopped golfing when she became busy with their children, but he believes she'll be playing again soon.

“I think she's going to take it up again,” he said.

When they aren't golfing, Miller's children are playing basketball. Corey is a freshman at BC3 and plays on the men's team. Kate is a junior at Knoch, and on the girls' basketball team. Austin is in the ninth grade at Knoch and plays for the boys basketball team.

As a result, Miller says he's been in gyms since the first of December, watching basketball games.

“Cyndi and I ‘divide and conquer,'” he said of watching their children.