Not going down without a fight
Community looking for ways to keep Penn State campus in Fayette County
The fight to save Penn State Fayette shows no signs of slowing down.
Less than two weeks after Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi announced the potential closing of several branch campuses due to declining enrollment and financial considerations, a local task force was formed, legislation is in the works, and an online petition to save the campus has garnered nearly 2,000 signatures.
On Friday, Muriel Nuttall, executive director of the Fayette Chamber of Commerce, said the Lemont Furnace campus is not just an educational institution, it’s a hub for organizations all over the county.
“It’s been a place where so many businesses and nonprofits have been able to go and hold important events,” she said.
While the Fayette county campus has had a significant drop in enrollment – from more than 1,000 students in 2010 to about 450 this fall – Nuttall is among many who believe those numbers don’t paint the whole picture.
About 90 people came to the first meeting of the Penn State Business Advocacy Task Force on Monday to brainstorm ideas about how to keep the campus open.
Along with developing ideas on how to spread the word and look for additional support for the campus, Nuttall said the group also wants to find ways to increase enrollment to the university by encouraging more adult students or retirees to take classes.
Another segment of the population who may benefit from what the branch campus has to offer is those who are in professional roles but may want to learn additional job-related skills.
“As technology changes there is an opportunity for ‘up-skilling’ and ‘re-skilling’ to provide and help keep employees up-to-date with the latest technology and current trends,” Nuttall said.
The task force has a supporter in Penn State Fayette student Brandon Pitts, who started a Change.org petition days after Bendapudi announced some branch campuses would be closed at the end of the 2026-27 school year.
The petition, which has nearly 2,000 signatures, has been widely shared across social media.
In an email to the TikTok成人版, Pitts called the Fayette campus “a community hub where future nurses, engineers, social workers, and other professionals are trained.
“Its role in fostering local talent and supporting economic and healthcare development is indispensable,” he wrote.
As the grassroots campaign in Fayette County continues to move forward, state Rep. Charity Grimm Krupa wants to bring legislation to the table to avoid situations like this.
The Smithfield Republican put together a three-bill package aimed at protecting higher education for students across the state.
On Wednesday, Krupa began circulating a memo on the legislative package to garner co-sponsorship. Two of the bills, the State-Related University Accountability Act and the Economic and Workforce Impact Review Act, deal with potential closure of branch campuses by publicly funded, state-related universities like Penn State. The former bill requires legislative oversight and public input before closing a campus. The latter bill requires an assessment of workforce and economic consequences before a campus can be closed.
“The proposed closure of branch campuses, particularly in rural and economically disadvantaged regions, is a direct betrayal of Penn State’s mission and an unacceptable misuse of public funds,” said Grimm Krupa. “These universities have an obligation to weigh the full consequences of their decisions. This is about fairness, fiscal responsibility and protecting the future of our communities.”
The third part of the package is the Taxpayer-Funded Education Access Protection Act, which is meant to “protect regional access to higher education and ensure taxpayer dollars are used responsibly by state-related universities.”
“Penn State and other state-related institutions receive hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the commonwealth. As a publicly funded, land-grant university, Penn State has an obligation to serve all Pennsylvanians – not just those in urban or wealthy areas,” Grimm Krupa said in a release.