Pitt-Titusville’s Education and Training Hub has been rebranded with a new name — the Education and Training Center at Pitt-Titusville — new logo and new signage.

“This is a very exciting day,” Stephanie Fiely, executive director of the Education and Training Center, said at a ceremony on March 11. “Our new name, logo and messages will help us enhance the way we talk about all of the exciting things that have been happening and will continue to happen here.”

Some of those initiatives include renovations, said Rick Esch, president of Pitt’s Bradford and Titusville campuses. These include ongoing renovations to the McKinney Student Union to add an art gallery, a new machine workshop, a makerspace, an industrial maintenance and workforce development lab, and a digital arts lab and studio.

“We are grateful to all of you who have supported the hub — now ETC — and are committed to its advancement, which is an important resource in the region,” Esch said.

“The rebranding here at the Pitt-Titusville campus is really indicative of what we have done with all of our regional campuses,” said interim Provost Joe McCarthy, who will take over the role permanently pending approval by Pitt’s Board of Trustees next month. “The regional campuses are aimed at serving the commonwealth and helping to supply the workforce needs for the commonwealth. The rebranding is really leaning into that fact. We really want to emphasize our partners and our collective value.”

The Education and Training Center is a unique partnership model that incorporates a university, a community college and technical schools.

It is composed of four partners. Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering Manufacturing Assistance Center offers basic machining and CNC programming and operations courses. Brockway Center for Arts & Technology, a subsidiary of Manchester Bidwell Corp., provides the clinical medical assistant and phlebotomy program. Northern Pennsylvania Regional College offers courses that lead to five associate degrees, including business administration and social sciences. Pitt–Titusville offers an associate degree in nursing.

The plan to convert Pitt–Titusville to an academic and technical school began with a report by the provost’s office to the Board of Trustees in 2017 on options for the campus as it faced continually declining enrollment. The campus had 503 students in 2003, and 15 years later, in 2018, had less than half that — 225. The Education and Training Hub officially launched in fall 2020.

The training center now offers affordable and accessible career-focused programs that directly address many in-demand, employer needs in the region.

“A well-prepared workforce helps to strengthen our community and ultimately benefits all of us in the region,” Fiely said.

Joanna Papada, vice president of external and government relations from Manchester Bidwell Corp., took part in the rebranding project from the inception.

“We were all individual organizations when we first came on campus, and this will now make us more than the sum of our parts,” she said at last week’s ceremony. “We’ve merged missions in this process, which creates more opportunities for our students and the community as a whole.

“To give you an example, our BCAT medical assistant students are better positioned to move into Pitt–Titusville’s nursing program should they desire to do so. Pitt–Titusville has done a really good job of extending academic credits from learning at Brockway, so students can transfer immediately into their nursing program. ETC is an exciting example of how higher education is adapting to meet the needs of their community.”

State Rep. Robert Lee James, whose district includes Titusville, stressed the importance of meeting community need from a legislative perspective.

“In my job at Harrisburg, we are very concerned about economic development,” he said. “This part of the state has an out-migration issue. The Education & Training Center provides opportunities for students of any age, both traditional or those in the existing workforce looking to upskill for better pay, which will ultimately help address retaining talent right here in Crawford County.”

The Education & Training Center has a new website at ETCGoSucceed.org.