What’s happening with Penn State’s closing campuses? Trustees hear update
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Penn State began local engagement sessions to support campus transition planning.
- Seven campuses will close after spring 2027 due to declining enrollment and costs.
- Trustees collect feedback to explore workforce training and community use options.
Penn State has started holding community engagement sessions in each of the areas where a campus is slated to close as part of its commonwealth campus transition planning, the Penn State board of trustees chair said during a recent meeting.
During an executive committee meeting Thursday, Chair David Kleppinger said the sessions are held in effort to be transparent and gather feedback from those impacted. They have involved hundreds of hours of engagement.
“There have been discussions with local leaders and potential partners on how these campuses could continue serving their regions after the transition, and there’s been coordination, clearly, with academic student support and workforce planning to ensure a smooth transition for all of our students, our faculty and our staff,” Kleppinger said.
The executive committee is responsible for oversight of community and government relations, which will be especially critical as the university continues through the process of closing seven of its commonwealth campuses after the 2026-2027 school year, he said. Each executive committee meeting will include an update on the process.
Renata Engel, the recently named interim vice president for commonwealth campuses and executive chancellor, said so far they’ve done meetings with people around the Fayette, DuBois and Wilkes-Barre campuses. Next week they plan to have meetings in Shenango, New Kensington, Mont Alto and York. They’ll plan future meetings, as well, she said, to have additional discussions about the ideas they have and how the university can support the discussions.
After more discussion about how the campuses can be used and as things start to take shape, the board will be in a better position to finalize those opportunities.
“I will say that many of the ideas that are emerging are what you might expect as people are putting a lot of things on the table right to begin with,” Engel said. “We are hearing from individuals who would like workforce training and different kinds of education to be in their communities, but we’re also hearing from others who are thinking about different ways of having community centers or Community Hubs or places of engagement.”
Trustee Rob Fenza is the primary board liaison to the campus transition and said the listening sessions have been “extremely valuable,” and they’ve gotten great dialogue and questions with the community members.
“We have been tremendously successful in that area of just building relationships. And many people are following up with us, contacting us individually or contacting us as a team,” Fenza said. “They have ideas. Some want to help us directly with their businesses and see if they can get some work; others want to see that different programs are preserved. So I would say that the process is really robust and we’re gaining all kinds of insight to the opportunities that are available to us.”
Fenza’s background is in real estate, so he said he can’t help but check out the infrastructure on each campus he visits. He noted it’s all in good shape and well-maintained, and those assets are something they should be proud of.
Flat and declining enrollment is a problem for the campuses, Fenza said, and it is obvious when he visits those areas. He expects to come away from the gathering process with clear ideas on how to move forward and repurpose and reposition the campuses.
Kleppinger noted this is just the beginning of the process and it’s “pretty incredible” how much progress has been made.
“We still have a two-year process at work here before the campuses are actually closed, so there is time, but we’ve made tremendous progress already,” he said.
In May the board approved closing seven commonwealth campuses following the spring 2027 semester. DuBois, Fayette, Mont Alto, New Kensington, Shenango, Wilkes-Barre and York will all close following a “wind down” period.
The university is facing challenges including long-term demographic shifts, declining enrollment, flat public funding and increasing operational costs, which all put pressure on the campus ecosystem, the resolution to close campuses stated.
In a 143-page campus-by-campus recommendation report, the university outlined the reasons to close seven campuses. Although the reasons vary from campus to campus, recurring issues included declining enrollment, poor financials and minimal room for growth. The latter could be a result of competition from other schools, redundancy (e.g. close to another PSU campus), lack of on-campus housing and aging home county populations.
The university leadership has said it will do all it can to support employees at impacted campuses who want to continue their careers at Penn State. Closing campuses will not accept student applicants or transfers after this fall semester.
This story was originally published August 23, 2025 at 5:25 AM.
