Down River 8/5

By John Lipez

Secure the Hatches:
We’re a little more than a year away from the effective date of the integration of Lock Haven University into the three-headed amalgam of LHU and Bloomsburg and Mansfield universities. And questions, so many questions continue to abound.

And answers, so few answers so far. The greater Lock Haven community waits and wonders what the outcome will be. The lay person can’t help but get the sense that the state system of higher education is playing it by ear; that people in suits in Harrisburg and/or Bloomsburg are making a good faith effort to create a streamlined version of advanced educational opportunities for residents of north-central and northeastern Pennsylvania. The long-standing line about the previously woeful Philadelphia 76ers basketball team has been ‘trust the process.’

And while the community has no choice but to trust the process, it wants to know what the final product will look like and at what cost?

How many jobs will be lost? Will Lock Haven University still be Lock Haven University or will some new name be created? (In fairness, it likely took a little doing/time for our forefathers/mothers to adjust to “Lock Haven State Teachers College” after the school was created as the “Central State Normal School.”)

And the quality of education? What guarantees are there that a four-year degree (or something less if rumored additional two-year associate degrees come about) from LHU will provide the same level of education obtained before these massive faculty/program cutbacks are finalized?

What will the impact be on town-gown relations? In recent years, with LHU leadership positions constantly in flux, the bond between the university and the community has not been at its strongest. And what incentives might the new integrated leadership develop to get current and future faculty members to be part of the greater Lock Haven community, rather than living in Centre County or elsewhere?

And what of the intercollegiate athletic program at LHU, a university that built much of its early foundation as a “phys-ed” school? Athletic programs for the most part have not flourished through this transition program, additionally crippled by the COVID pandemic. While colleges are gearing up for fall sports, it’s been awfully quiet at the intersection of Susquehanna Avenue and N. Fairview Street. Sports is something for a community to build around and it’s happened in the past with wrestling at LHU and occasionally basketball (some of the great moments in LHU sports history came when coach Kurt Kanaskie’s Bald Eagle basketball teams were packing Thomas Fieldhouse in the 1980s). Where will sports be as the integration process continues? Will coaches at non-integrated state schools use these unknowns to recruit against LHU?

We get it that many of these questions remain unanswered during the transition period. But the movers-and-shakers at the state system level should certainly understand the apprehension in the community.

No one would argue that changes had to be made across the state system, given the declining amount of high school graduates in the state and state government’s flagging financial support for the state system schools. There was a day in the 1980s when the Keystone Central School District had more than 8,000 students; that number is now less than 4,000, so we can appreciate changes had to be made in how the 14 state schools function (jacking up tuition every year until recently didn’t help in the effort to entice PA kids to go to PA schools).

The wheels of change turn slowly, it would appear. Some demographer sometime in the last decade or three should have told the state system leadership that the pool of prospective students was trending down, with no end in sight. In the meantime Penn State, the behemoth 35 miles to LHU’s southwest, switched its two-year schools all across the state to four-year institutions, providing a lot more opportunities for prospective state system enrollees to go elsewhere.

Add it all up, these changes created the perfect storm for Pennsylvania’s state system of higher education. And here we are, in August of 2021, in the eye of the integration storm, the potential negative effects from which remain unknown. Batten down the hatches and hold on. In a year or two or three we’ll tally up the score. Let’s hope there are more winners than losers and LHU’s long-term viability in the community is ensured.

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Plug It In; Watch It Go:
Even as electric cars are coming to the fore in highway transportation in more and more of the country, Clinton County remains without a public charging station. Down River brings this up as this week’s Lock Haven City Council meeting saw some correspondence from a city attorney who asked about the possibility of installation of a charging station at one or more of the city’s municipal parking lots.

A quick Down River check found the only charging stations in the county belong to those who charge their electric cars at home. Closest nearby are at the Sheetz near Cracker Barrel in State College, the Sheetz off Maynard Street in Williamsport and the Weis Store outside Bellefonte; these are all, it is understood, for Tesla’s only.

Asked if Lock Haven is prepping for any charging station installations in town, city manager Greg Wilson said it is his understanding the federal infrastructure bill still alive and pending in the US Senate would include dollars for municipal installations. He said city staff is monitoring the legislation and its progress and doing its due diligence to be ready to proceed if and when federal financing becomes available.

This is where it’s going, fossil fuel powered vehicles trending down, battery-powered vehicles trending up. Sounds like Lock Haven will be ready as the changeover occurs.