Edinboro State College

In Shenango, classes were first offered in 1961 at the Hickory Township High School. In 1968, the Shenango Center was relocated to the junior high school at Farrell. For the first year there the Center shared occupancy of the building, but thereafter it was solely the property of the Shenango Center. Bill Utley was the first director of the Center. He was succeeded by Tom Come for three years and then by William Herrmann. The Center closed in 1975. In 1969-68, the enrollment was 283 students according to the Shenango Enrollment Statistics. Though, in the spring semester, it rose to 295 students. Two years later, there was a memo sent from the Director of the Shenango Campus pertaining to budget requests (1970-71) for a list of repairs and renovations for a newly acquired facility. A study was done by William M. Herrman in 1971 on the Past, Present, Future of the Shenango Valley Campus. The study focused on the evolution of the campus and concluded that the Shenango Campus was a justifiable and worthy institution. Further, Herrman recommended that a firm and specific policy should be implemented in order to properly develop as a campus. Though, with all of the campus promise, Edinboro State College closed the Shenango Campus in 1975.

Of Edinboro's branch campuses one was in Warren and another in Shenango. They were opened and closed at roughly the same time. Each experienced a warm reception in the community and a bell curve in enrollment. At the end of the curve they were closed as not being viable. Both of them expanded to the point where they purchased a campus or building to accommodate what they thought was a growing enrollment. Unfortunately, the enrollment declined the schools had to close.

In Warren, the college began offering night classes at the Warren Area High School in September 1962. In 1964, classes were moved to East Street School building in Warren. Then in 1971, the school bought and renovated Warren State Hospital "farm colony" as its campus. From opening to closing, the director of the school was Frank Johnson. The Warren Campus has an in-depth history that was written by John Mallery in September 1967. This paper discusses the evolution of Warren into a branch campus. To give some perspective of the campus during this time, there are selected registration statistics from 1968-78. These statistics were broken down into various different categories such as gender, race, full time/part time, number of years of school, transfer students, interest in study, etc.