College's formation had aid from county leaders
Doris Rose, who watched the facilities and students spring up quickly, called the formation of Butler County Community College the "miracle on the hill."
Rose was on the college's board of trustees for several years beginning in 1983, but she was involved in the college's development from its beginning. Her husband, Gail Rose, was instrumental in the college's creation.
Now, 40 years later, residents think of it as the "college on the hill" and a fixture in the county, said former county commissioner Jim Green.
Green and the other commissioners in 1965 committed county dollars to help create the college and provide an affordable education to county residents.
Scott Lowe, current chairman of the commissioners and a BC3 board member, said the county continues to contribute money to the college.
"They provide a great service," he said.
When Green voted to sponsor the college, meaning the county would provide a third of its funding, there was no land for a campus, no faculty to teach the classes, no president to lead the school and no students to attend.
However, since it opened in 1966 more than 110,000 students have attended BC3.
"It's more than I ever expected," Green said.
On the first day of classes in 1966, 241 day students, 190 evening students, 16 full-time faculty, and three part-time faculty were on board for the newly founded institution.
Degrees offered were Associate of Arts in Business Education, Technical Education, Architectural Design, and a Certificate in Clerical Typing. Today, the college offers more than 60 associate degrees, career and transfer programs in liberal arts, business, nursing and allied health and technology.
The first graduating class of BC3 included 62 students in a small, outside ceremony. In the spring of 2005, BC3 presented 407 associate degrees, 22 certificates and 18 diplomas to graduating students.
The infrastructure of the campus has grown to meet the needs of the students over time.
While the trustees were trying to select a site for the college, they picked Howard, Burt and Hill, an architectural firm, to design the facilities for the college. The college was operating out of a rented office in the Lafayette Building but knew it had to move to meet the September 1966 deadline set by the state.The firm decided to build Armco Building Systems five months before the college needed to open its doors, so the board ordered the steel structures from Steel-Bilt Construction Co. in Bridgeville.Two classroom buildings and a library were prefabricated so the buildings could go up quickly — groundbreaking couldn't happen until 10 weeks before the first days of the classes. Work had been held up by a court order preventing work because of a lawsuit.The buildings were simply named by letters of the alphabet, so the first buildings on campus were "A,""B," and "C."More buildings — "D" through "I" — were added by Aug. 31, 1976.The alphabet system was used until Dec. 17, 1986, when the board renamed the buildings to recognize their functions.Recently one more building was added for classrooms.Using money from the first capital campaign, the college Educational Foundation and state money, BC3 broke ground on the Science, Technology and Cultural Center in August 2000.The three-story, 69,000-square-foot, $13.5 million facility is the largest building on BC3's main campus.It houses the 446-seat Succop Theater, the Mary Hilton Phillips Art Gallery, a boardroom, conference rooms, science labs, classrooms and faculty offices.When Carole "Biff" Healy, a former student, last visited the campus, he saw the center for the first time."It blew me away," he said.But the college is more than just buildings, said Nancy Murrin, former board member, said. The money given to the college to build the buildings is an invest in the college and shows the community's support for it.Both Murrin and Lowe expect the college to still be "on the hill" in another 40 years, they said."I salute those who were involved in the creation of BC3," Lowe said. "I would like to see it 40 years from now just as strong and bigger."
