(Butler, PA) A former Butler County Community College student elected three times as mayor of Mars and another who as a BC3 administrator increased the number of named scholarships at the college by 165 percent will become BC3 distinguished alumni Oct. 1 and join past selections that include a county judge, county commissioners, physicians and other notable graduates.
Gregg Hartung and Michelle Edinger will be recognized on the college’s main campus in Butler Township during an Oak Hills Celebration that also serves as an opportunity for students who received scholarships from the BC3 Education Foundation to meet their benefactors.
Hartung and Edinger bring to 54 the number of BC3 distinguished alumni since the awards were first presented in 2004.
Distinguished Alumni Awards honor those who have utilized their education and experience from BC3 to achieve significant levels of success and who have a commitment to community service.
Hartung and Edinger each enrolled at BC3 two years after their graduation from high school. They are among the approximately 25,500 former students who have earned at least 45 credits at BC3 since its first class assembled in 1966.
Hartung earned an associate degree from BC3 in 1980 and Edinger, in 1984.
“This recognition goes back many years,” said Dr. Nick Neupauer, president of BC3. “It very much shows the type of student who goes to BC3 and graduates from BC3. These are individuals who give to their professions and their communities, and Gregg and Michelle are just the latest examples of that.”
Added Megan Coval, executive director of the BC3 Education Foundation and external relations: “We have a chance to highlight two people who have really made their mark in our community and have ties back to BC3 at the same time.”
BC3 “was foundational”
Hartung’s 37 years in radio broadcasting and production began in central Pennsylvania following his graduation from Mars Area High School.
After two years at WCBG-AM in Chambersburg, Hartung enrolled at BC3, where he earned an associate degree in general studies.
Hartung then achieved a bachelor’s degree in communications from what was then Slippery Rock State College and a master’s degree in nonprofit and public policy management and public relations from Carnegie Mellon University.
He has served on the Butler County Tourism and Convention Bureau’s board, has assisted the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank and the Mister Rogers Neighborhood Sweater Drive, and as an elder in his church worked as a missionary in Africa.
Hartung, who became mayor of Mars in 2014, said his having attended BC3 “was foundational in all the things that came after it in my life.
“Researching, studying, being able to relate to people in a way in which you can have not only opportunities for yourself, but for those around you,” he said. “Not only were the textbooks and the classrooms and the subject matter important, but how faculty taught you to relate to people, to work as a group.
“Those are the essential things that BC3 provided. … When you get to the college level, you work with other students who are not necessarily from the same place in which you grew up. People from different parts of the county or from somewhere else.
“You’re learning to work with other people, which is valuable for students to know what it is like to be in the workforce, and knowing that things can be accomplished as a common goal.”
This recognition goes back many years. It very much shows the type of student who goes to BC3 and graduates from BC3. These are individuals who give to their professions and their communities, and Gregg and Michelle are just the latest examples of that."
BC3 provided “the courage to believe in myself”
Edinger is a graduate of Butler Senior High School who achieved an associate degree in marketing management from BC3, a bachelor’s degree in communications and a certificate in gerontology from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania and a master’s degree in organizational leadership from Geneva College.
She worked as an information specialist supervisor at the Butler County Area Agency on Aging before beginning as the BC3 Education Foundation’s director of alumni programs and annual campaigns in 2004.
Edinger later became associate director of the BC3 Education Foundation, a role in which she worked to increase the number of named scholarships at the college from 52 in 2009 to 138 in 2020, and created the BC3 alumni program, the BC3 Distinguished Alumni Awards and Oak Hills event before her retirement in 2020. The creator of the Jennie Jamieson ’83 Scholarship and the Michelle Edinger ’84 Scholarship with the BC3 Education Foundation was also instrumental in helping BC3 to receive two $1 million gifts.
The first was in 2014 from Robert R. Heaton, which helped to fund what is the Heaton Family Learning Commons on BC3’s main campus; and the second, in 2017, from the Janice Phillips Larrick Family Charitable Trust, which is helping to fund the Victor K. Phillips Nursing and Allied Health Building under construction on BC3’s main campus.
Her selection as a distinguished alumna in a program she helped to create “is interesting,” Edinger said.
“When we were selecting distinguished alumni over the years, we always talked about the wow factor,” Edinger said.
“The first thing I thought about when I received my letter (of notification) was that I did not have a wow factor. “But then, the more I thought about it, the donors, and those who create scholarships, are the wow factors for me. I was able to help them create something that is going to impact the lives of BC3 students forever.”
Edinger worked in retail for two years following her graduation from Butler High “and I decided that wasn’t the way I wanted to go,” Edinger said. “I had friends who were attending BC3 and they liked it.”
The first member of her family to attend college said “what BC3 provided to me was the opportunity, and the teachers encouraged me. They told me I could succeed and were very interested in my being successful. And it was really the first time anyone ever said to me, ‘Hey, you’re smart enough to try something.’
“The most important thing I got from BC3 as a student was the courage to believe in myself and in my abilities.”
Edinger has served on advisory boards for the Butler County Penn State Extension 4H, the Butler County Area Agency on Aging and Slippery Rock University communications program.
The Oak Hills Celebration also serves to introduce recipients of the BC3 Education Foundation’s 148 named scholarships to their donors. The foundation this year has awarded a record $280,000 in named scholarships.
Among students who received a 2022-2023 scholarship and who plans to attend the Oak Hills Celebration is Riley Bauer, of Emlenton, who is in his second year as a park and recreation management student at BC3.
The 19-year-old assists in operating a campground, hopes to become a wildland firefighter and said he learned about his successful scholarship application to the BC3 Education Foundation when checking his tuition balance.
“All of a sudden, I saw something substantially different than what I expected,” Bauer said. “I had taken a closer look into what I saw, and it came to be that I had been so graciously gifted a scholarship by the Oak Hills Garden Club.
“The excitement in my household could not be contained.”
