SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va – Leadership at BridgeValley Community and Technical College is considering significant changes to the institution’s facilities located in South Charleston and Montgomery.
At Friday’s meeting of the college’s board of governors, President Dr. Chris Treadway gave an extensive presentation on the status of the campuses and the issues facing them. He detailed issues with cohesiveness between the two spaces.
“Right now, we’re spread out with our two campuses over a wide area, and I’ve heard since I’ve been here that there are people who really, in many respects, resent the fact they don’t see folks from South Charleston in Montgomery very often and vice versa,” he said.
Treadway raised concerns with both facilities, namely the use of leased property in South Charleston and substandard buildings in Montgomery. The latter operation is based out of Davis Hall on the former WVU Tech campus, and he told the board he is unsure of its long-term viability.
“There’s lots of issues in that building that we have to talk with you all as a group to decide if investing in fixing all of those, given the small student population we’re able to serve in that area, is a good use of our limited resources as an institution,” he said.
Other issues related to Montgomery include a declining population in its service area and related programs being separated between the two campuses. Five of Davis Hall’s six floors flooded in June because of a broken water line, and 80 classrooms sustained damage.
Treadway believes that a smaller space may better serve those programs.
“If we’re going to move to another building, some of these costs would carry over with us, but the cost per student could be very different in a building that we’re better able to fully occupy as opposed to a big building that’s largely empty, so we’re paying the same fixed costs to occupy a great big building with few students in it,” he said.
The proposal included reducing the amount of leased space in use, consolidating those related programs onto one campus, finding a more modern home for the dental hygiene program housed in Montgomery, moving the college’s footprint more toward South Charleston, and creating additional room for new programs.
Board chair Mark Blankenship expressed belief that moving away from the Montgomery campus in its current form would better serve those programs.
“Where I’m leaning—if people want to know where I’m leaning, I think not. I think we could do it more efficiently. I think we could do it more consistently with something that could house all of the workforce,” he said.
As for South Charleston, Blankenship expressed frustration with the state of the leased property at the West Virginia Regional Technology Park. He stated that leased property is not inherently bad, but the college needs partners that align with its mission.
“The state of West Virginia owns all of this stuff that’s up here, or most of it, and you can see parking lots as far as the eye can see, and we have to beg, borrow, and plead to get a CDL truck up here to run a CDL program,” he said.
Treadway indicated that the next steps include looking into potential properties to house programs if they move.