By Karin Fischer

Harrisburg, Pa.

During the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear-power plant, news reporters camped out here, 10 miles north of the reactor site, describing the ominously deserted streets and darkened storefronts.

"Nah," a resident deadpanned, according to local lore, "it's like this every day."

Once named one of the nation's most economically distressed cities, Harrisburg has since revived its fortunes, repopulating its vacant downtown with offices and restaurants and capitalizing on its strength as a state capital to build a more stable employment base.

Now, in the next stage of its economic rebirth, the city wants to reinvent itself as a college town. In 2005, after local community and business leaders pressed for the creation of a local college closely tied to regional work-force needs, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology opened. This spring the private, nonprofit institution, supported largely by city and state grants and local philanthropy, graduated a class of 13, its first with students who started as freshmen.

Its advocates believe the university can help stanch an outmigration of college graduates and end an underproduction of science and technology degrees. The university's business backers —who helped draft the curriculum and who teach many of the courses —also hope it can build up the local high-tech labor force.

"Higher education is one of the few things you can put money into and get a return," says David A. Schankweiler, a university trustee and a local newspaper publisher.

But Harrisburg University also has its skeptics, who question whether an upstart institution is needed when 20 other colleges, including Pennsylvania State University-Harrisburg, in nearby Middletown, sit within easy reach of the city center. "At a time when support of current popular public institutions is declining, should new schools be created?" asks William M. Mahon III, Penn State's vice president for university relations, noting that the state's appropriations to the system have been cut five times since 2000, even as the state has underwritten much of the construction cost of Harrisburg's new academic center. "And similarly, with state demographics clearly showing a sharp decline in high-school students on the horizon, should additional publicly funded schools be launched?"

Complicating matters is the continuing national economic slump, which has threatened the financial well-being of many established colleges, never mind a fledgling university without a large endowment. Indeed, campus leaders do not expect the university to hit its break-even enrollment of 500 students for another year.

An Audacious Effort

The notion of starting a college to respond to hometown economic demands may seem unusual today. But it once was commonplace, says Edward W. (Ned) Hill, vice president for economic development at Cleveland State University and a scholar of economic and urban development at the Brookings Institution.

"That's the historic way land-grant colleges were started," Mr. Hill says. "They were just that, an institutional response to a regional need."

More recently, a few places, like Goodyear and Surprise, in Arizona, sought to persuade private colleges to relocate or build branch campuses. In Pennsylvania, civic and business officials are exploring whether to establish a community college in Erie County to better meet workforce needs.

The idea of having a four-year college in Pennsylvania's capital city, where just 20 percent of residents have bachelor's degrees, gained traction in 1998, when a commission of civic, business, and educational leaders called for the formation of a four-year institution with a focus on technology as one of several recommendations to modernize and strengthen the region's economy. The proposal dovetailed with statewide efforts to significantly increase the number of Pennsylvanians with training in science and technology.

From the outset, Mayor Stephen R. Reed championed creating a university from scratch. A curricular focus on technology, he argued, did not fit the missions of the area's many liberal-arts colleges.

Money also was an issue. The 14-institution Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education was open to adding a 15th public college, says Kenn Marshall, a spokesman for the system, but only if it received additional state funds to do so.

Then the business sector stepped in. Prominent companies with local roots, like the Hershey Company and Select Medical Corporation, contributed to start-up costs. "From the start, we had buy-in from the private sector," Mr. Reed says. "Why? Because we were speaking their language."

But the project also needed someone who could translate the community's goals into a workable college plan. Melvyn D. Schiavelli, a former provost at the University of Delaware and a former interim president and provost at the College of William and Mary, had stopped for a cup of coffee on a Pennsylvania highway when he spotted a short article on the planned university in a local newspaper. Intrigued, he volunteered his services as a consultant —and, in 2002, became the university's founding president.

"I wanted to do something audacious," Mr. Schiavelli says. "And I am a rotten retiree."

Industry's Imprint

Walk in Harrisburg University's new, 16-story academic building, and, except for the college logo, you might think you'd entered a corporate headquarters. From the airy lobby, students and faculty and staff members swipe ID badges to call elevators to ferry them up to the 12th, 13th, and 14th floors, home to academic offices, laboratories, and lecture halls. The classrooms are so wired that professors went through five training sessions to learn how to use them.

Until the academic building opened, in January, the university was itinerant. From his top-floor office, Mr. Schiavelli points out its many former homes, including space in the city's science-and-technology high school, built as a feeder to the college.

The building's opening quieted some critics, who had viewed the project as fantasy even though the university this past year enrolled 350 students in its five undergraduate and three graduate programs, notes Bradley R. Jones, a university trustee. Some 700 people showed up for the dedication, and since then, nearly 600 high-school sophomores and juniors have visited the campus.

"I think a lot of people were standing on the sidelines, waiting for the dust to clear," says Mr. Jones, vice president for community development at the Harristown Development Corporation.

The facility's $73-million price tag was largely covered by state capital-construction funds and by the city, which operates a 400-space parking garage in the building. A glance suggests other sources of revenue: the Susquehanna Bank faculty office, the Hilton Harrisburg office of vice president for student affairs, the Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course learning alcove.

Industry's imprint is not limited to the campus's physical spaces. Local businesspeople played a prominent role in drawing up the curriculum and continue to sit on advisory boards that review course content. Robert M. Scaer, president of Gannett Fleming, an international engineering-consulting firm based in Harrisburg, says much of the syllabus for the university's program in geography and geospatial imaging came "off the desks, literally" of employees of a Gannett Fleming subsidiary, GeoDecisions, that specializes in computerized mapping and database management.

"When I went to school, there was a lot of theory," Mr. Scaer says. "We wanted to build a curriculum with real-life applications."

Eric D. Darr, the provost, points to ways business-sector input has already led to curricular changes. The geospatial-imaging program was initially grounded in geography, but university officials soon found that employers wanted more "hard core" computer-programming skills. Likewise, biotechnology and biosciences course work has come to focus on agriculture and food sciences because of the presence of Hershey and nearly 90 other snack-food companies in the area. Deliberately, the multidisciplinary degree programs reflect "industry clusters," like one called e-business, rather than traditional majors, like chemistry and math.

The university maintains its ties with the business community through corporate faculty members, who teach one or two courses while continuing in their day jobs. When students question the value of their physics lessons, Samuel Benigni, who retired after 22 years in research and development at RCA Thomson, an electronics company, talks about the patents he holds for parts in flat-panel televisions. Michele Washko, vice president for strategic services at the Life Sciences Greenhouse of Central Pennsylvania, draws on her work with start-up health-care and biotechnology companies in the required first-year course she teaches on the "entrepreneurial mind."

Unlike most adjuncts, the corporate professors can vote on the curriculum. In another break with convention, the dozen full-time faculty members do not have tenure but rather work on 11-month contracts. Mr. Schiavelli, the president, candidly calls that an "extremely practical choice" as the university works out what programs to offer and abandons those for which there is insufficient demand; eventually, professors will work under multiyear contracts.

Despite the lack of job security, Mr. Schiavelli says he received 400 applications for the first 10 faculty positions.

Charles Palmer left Carnegie Mellon University last year to become director of Harrisburg University's new Center for Advanced Entertainment & Learning Technologies. The attitude there is, "Let's figure out a way to solve that problem," he says. "I like the freedom of that."

Taking Chances

It's not just faculty members who are taking a chance. The university had to persuade students to enroll despite the lack of a reputation, a building, or any of the teams and clubs common to college life.

Nic Fulmer had twice tried community college. "I hated it," he says. But Harrisburg's integrative-science program, which allows students to customize a course of study across the sciences, appealed to him.

Still, he says he was conscious of not going to a big-name college. "I worried I wouldn't be on the same level," says Mr. Fulmer, who expects to finish his studies next winter. What he found, though, was that his academic background was comparable to those of other students. In some ways, he even had an edge. "Some of them hardly ever met their professors," he says.

Indeed, one of the benefits of Harrisburg's small size is the close relationships that develop between professors and students. "The trick," says Bili S. Mattes, associate provost for strategic markets, "will be keeping that sense of community even as we grow."

Working with faculty members or outside mentors, students are required to complete two internships and a junior and senior project of their design.

Rachel A. Giordano El-Mourli, a young mother of two who wants to earn a medical degree, apprenticed with the county coroner, Graham Hetrick, a corporate faculty member, to learn forensic facial reconstruction. She took on the case of a Jane Doe whose skull had been found in the woods and shared a collegewide research prize with Nicky Cheng, who had spent a semester isolating and studying an intestinal-track microbe.

Mr. Cheng, who earned a degree in biotechnology in May and plans to go on to graduate school, calls the experience "invaluable for a young scientist. They didn't just hand you a project."

For a handful of graduates, an internship or outside study has led to a job. Abner Vargas, who studied computer and information science, made such an impression during his internship at Highmark Inc., a health insurer, that managers there held a position open for him until he graduated last spring. Mr. Scaer, of Gannett Fleming, has hired two Harrisburg graduates. The attraction, he says, is that they are ready to work.

Overlooked Talent

Harrisburg is tapping talent that other universities might overlook. Like Mr. Fulmer, many of its students are transfers from Harrisburg Area Community College. Half of all of the students are members of minority groups, and half are women.

Financial need is high —the average student pays just $4,000 of the $18,000 tuition. During the May commencement ceremony, the speaker asked how many students had worked their way through college. Every hand went up.

To keep students on track, Harrisburg requires a one-credit course each year that focuses on study skills and time management and, for upperclassmen, interview techniques and compiling an electronic portfolio of their work.

The college also matches students with business mentors. Over the four years that Rich Hudic, president and chief executive of Team Pennsylvania Foundation, a statewide economic-development group, has been paired with George B. Friend III, the two have talked regularly about Mr. Friend's studies and even attended a conference together on nanotechnology.

Mr. Hudic says he is impressed by Mr. Friend's determination to complete his degree, even though he was juggling several jobs. "I'm proud of him and of the many obstacles he's overcome," the executive says.

Developing a Niche

The university itself continues to face hurdles. As the new kid on the educational block, it is still working to establish a reputation and to forge partnerships with other institutions, a process complicated by the fact that it is not yet fully accredited. University leaders hope to receive full accreditation from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education this month.

The need to stay lean drives many decisions. The university relies heavily on its corporate faculty members not only for their real-world experience, but also because they don't have the same salary and benefit costs as full-time employees. The academic center was built without a cafeteria or gym; students use the food court and fitness center at an adjacent shopping mall.

Still, Mr. Schiavelli says Harrisburg is on firm financial ground. Despite the economic downturn, giving to the university remains healthy, and the institution is ahead of its $40-million capital-campaign goal. Enrollment has grown steadily and according to projections, Mr. Schiavelli says.

The institution also has won over some former skeptics. "They're still young," says Don L. Francis, president of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Pennsylvania, "but I think they've done a good job of developing a niche."

Harrisburg and other colleges with an economic-development mission must stay in constant conversation with employers to anticipate work-force needs, says Mr. Hill, of Cleveland State.

"You have to ask, What economy are you there to serve?" he says. "It does you no good to serve an economy in sunset."