HERMITAGE, Mercer County — Butler County Community College’s board of trustees on Wednesday approved buying equipment for its new roustabout training course.

BC3 used two federal Department of Labor grants, totaling $553,044, to create a roustabout course, training laborers and other employees for work in the Marcellus Shale natural gas industry.

The program’s first class ran from Feb. 6-24, and, four of the 17 students who took the course were offered jobs upon completion, according to BC3 President Nick Neupauer.

Now the class, expected to run monthly through BC3’s public safety program, will get a 1999 Lull telescopic handler — a piece of heavy equipment used to lift or tow other equipment around job sites — for use in training.

The $32,605 purchase from Walsh Equipment comes with a service agreement, and will be the only such rig available for training in the area.

Other training programs already have inquired about its use, according to the BC3 board.

• Also at the meeting, Neupauer said executors of the E. Bertrum and Esther Shaffer estate are pleased with BC3’s plans to honor the couple with a one-mile walking trail, which will loop around BC3’s main campus. It will be called the Shaffer Walking Trail.

The Shaffers donated $334,710 each to BC3 and other county nonprofits groups and schools.

BC3 announced in November that the gift to the college foundation would endow the E. Bertrum and Esther Shaffer Scholarship established in 1977. Bertrum, who died in 2010, had been an academic dean at the college

“(The trail) has received tremendous excitement around our campus,” Neupauer said.

“It will be ready for the fall semester.”

• In other action, the board banned in-line skates on BC3 campuses. Violators can be fined up to $100, and their skates may be impounded for up to 30 days.