DISCUSSING FUTURE — Shannon Tirone, vice president of university relations for Youngstown State University, was the guest speaker at Wednesday’s meeting of the Weirton Rotary Club. -- Linda Harris

WEIRTON — Youngstown State University’s Shannon Tirone says in the next few weeks, residents should start seeing tangible signs of change at the former community college campus in the heart of Steubenville.

Tirone, vice president of university relations for YSU, has been planning the rebrand for weeks and now that the deal has been finalized, they’re ready to move forward with it.

The Jefferson County commissioners conveyed around 13 acres to YSU–including the building — through a limited warranty deed: Jefferson County retains the mineral rights to the property and maintained a reversionary clause that guaranteed the property would revert to the county in the event educational activities there were ever to cease.

That clause, inserted in the deed in the mid-1960s when the property was originally gifted to the trustees of the Jefferson Technical Institute, had, crucially, remained in place during the next 60 years despite several name changes. In 2024, when the board of trustees of the now-defunct Eastern Gateway Community College announced it was ceasing operations, the county commissioners took steps to assert control over the property, asking a judge to enforce the reversionary clause, and, several months, later a judge ruled it was and is valid.

“You’re going to start seeing the branding on the outside of the building, probably within the next two or three weeks,” Tirone said. “We’ve been working with a lot of local contractors, but we had no purchase orders or anything else like that in place, and so we’re working on that right now.”

Tirone, guest speaker at the Weirton Rotary Club’s Wednesday meeting at Undo’s in the Holiday Inn Weirton-Steubenville Area, said it will be known as Youngstown State University-Steubenville, “not a branch campus or technical school,” and said four students have already signed up for classes — though what they’ll be studying is still being worked out.

“The idea is to be flexible enough to showcase educational opportunities that will be needed in this area,” Tirone said. “There’s going to be much space to expand, but we’ll expand as the need (arises.)”

“Our president, Bill Johnson, has said from the very beginning, ‘we’re going to build it as we need it’ and all of us firmly believe that. What we’re not going to do is hire 13 STEM faculty members and then find out in the fall we only have eight students — our goal down here is to grow slow and steady and make sure that we’re successful along the way. What we don’t want to do is to build something that is going to be so large that we’re not going to be able to sustain it, whether it be financially or academically.”

She reminded Rotarians YSU had stepped in months ago to ensure continuity for the nursing and police academy programs, but they’d rented temporary spaces for them off campus while the legalities — and building updates — were in flux. Now that they have control of the building, she said they’re planning to have both programs back on campus by summer and to have a broader class schedule in the fall semester–though she said it will be a methodical expansion.

Tirone said they’ve been consulting business and industry insiders to get a handle on what workforce needs are in the greater Jefferson County area, and have met with educational leaders, including officials from the Franciscan University of Steubenville, to gather input. She said they won’t offer online classes through YSU-Steubenville because they already have a broad remote learning catalog available through the Youngstown site.

She also said the building had traditionally been opened to community use, something they plan to continue.

“We want to showcase our academic portfolio, but we also want to be part of the community,” she said. “Our goal is to put students in seats at the Steubenville site and train them, but we also want to be good stewards of the property.”