\u00a0Programs undergo review at Penn State Behrend, some face potential closure\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n“This group is being formed to decide what we should be building; are we going to lease, you know, talk about some different ideas as far as the partners and things like that. But really the need is just to get students more accessibility on the east side.” Sean Waskiewicz, the executive director of external relations and strategy for EC3, said.<\/p>\n
But for community leaders like Gary Horton, the director for the Urban Erie Community Development Corporation, the conversation goes beyond education; it’s also about creating new opportunities for people who live and work on the east side.<\/p>\n
“Almost 70% or higher of the population is high school graduates, and only about 10% of them are actually higher education, college graduates,” said Horton.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, so this group is going to come up with a squad analysis. They’re going to help us determine if we should buy something, lease, rent something. Work with another agency to partner with them and go into an existing building, an existing program,” Waskiewicz said.<\/p>\n
“A blueprint on the east side of Erie is certainly something that the residents of the east side of Erie will benefit from,” Horton said.<\/p>\n
Not only will it allow Erie to expand its educational opportunities, but it’s also about allowing people who live on Erie’s east side to know what their community could look like in the future.<\/p>\n
“We’re looking forward to the process that the Erie County community college is going to undertake to find the best location for them. We believe that location is right here,” Horton said.<\/p>\n
EC3 is accepting applications for a community representative on the advisory group through Wednesday, October 28.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WJET\/WFXP\/YourErie.com.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Erie County Community College (EC3) is forming an East Side Expansion Advisory Group to explore how the college…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[136,138,137],"class_list":["post-314875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}