OP-ED: Steps required to rescue PSU-Fayette
Robb Rhodes has performed an estimable public service: He has put on the table a plan for the Penn State-Fayette campus now slated for the ash heap.
Rhodes, the Fayette County controller, wants to convert the campus into a four-year “senior military college,” along the lines of Norwich University in Vermont and the Virginia Military Institution (VMI) in Lexington, Va.
He’d call the new school the George C. Marshall Military Institute at the Eberly Campus.
The “organizer of victory” in World War II, Marshall, hailing from Uniontown, graduated from VMI. The Eberly Campus refers to Uniontown’s Robert Eberly and the Eberly Foundation, which poured millions of dollars into both PSU-Fayette and the University Park campus.
“As our nation has grown (and) our population has increased, we have not expanded our need for academic institutions that are founded on military discipline, leadership, and services,” said Rhodes, writing a summary of his singular idea.
“Currently, the U.S. military is going through a transition, and the need to produce future leaders is greater than ever.”
A 13-year veteran of the Marine Corps, Rhodes was elected county controller in 2023. He is the county’s chief fiscal watchdog.
Rhodes is convinced “we can create a senior military college,” and thus “fill” a “void” caused by the fact that only six such schools now exist: In addition to Norwich and VMI, there is The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina; the University of North Carolina in Dahlonega, Georgia; and Virginia Tech and Texas A&M, both large schools with impressive Corps of Cadets components.
Rhodes makes clear the distinction between these schools and the five service academies: West Point, Annapolis, the Air Force Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, and the Merchant Marine Academy.
“These are all four-year programs that provide rigorous academic and military education, preparing graduates to become officers in their respective branches of service.”
He added in an email to me, “I do believe that a vocational school like Penn Tech could coexist on the campus with a senior military college. I think it would be fitting to have both on an ‘Eberly’ campus.”
Reserve Officers’ Training Corps programs are a top feature of Rhodes’ plan. The Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Space Force each offer ROTC.
Rhodes outlined the need for on-campus student housing and eating facilities, if his proposal, still in a preliminary stage, takes hold.
He thinks dorms at Penn State-Fayette would have made all the difference.
PSU president Neeli Bendapudi said of the decision to close the Fayette branch along with six other campuses, “We are subsidizing decline at the expense of growth.”
The campus between Uniontown and Connellsville on Route 119 ran a $3.7 million deficit in 2024. In recent years, PSU-Fayette experienced a steep enrollment decline: in 2010, some 1,000 students attended classes; by fall of last year enrollment had shrunk to 450.
PSU-Fayette will go dark after the spring 2027 semester. The campus includes 100 acres and 10 buildings, including a structure added early in the 21st century featuring a 1,500-seat arena and a 450-seat auditorium.
The value of the Rhodes proposal lies not just in its intrinsic worth, but as an example to those who shudder at the prospect of all those acres of buildings and grounds occupied by generations of Penn State students going to seed.
What’s needed are more ideas, more proposals – serious ideas, off-the-wall ideas, ideas of all kinds. Then a convergence. Which ideas are worthy of further study? Which can be implemented? Followed by implementation itself.
There is no time to lose. The spring of 2027 will be here sooner rather than later. Nothing will happen, however, in the absence of someone or some group taking charge of the process. What’s needed is a sort of campus conversion chief of staff.
It seems to me, the county commissioners, as the county’s top elected officials, should answer the call by naming and empowering NOW not a dictator but an individual of sufficient managerial and political know-how to steer the process to a successful conclusion.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.