Elizabethtown Community and Technical College celebrated the ribbon cutting for the Robbins University Center during their Pancakes with the Provost event Tuesday.
According to ECTC, the Robbins Center will allow “four-year colleges and universities to offer high-demand bachelor’s and master’s degrees locally.” Students will complete the first two years of a bachelor’s degree at ECTC and then transfer to a four-year partner that offers classes and support services at the Robbins Center.
ECTC President and CEO Dr. Juston Pate said several recent projects have focused on supporting a strong workforce, but this focuses on allowing local students to thrive closer to home.
“What we’ve really got is a population problem,” Pate said. “If we had more people who lived here, we wouldn’t have a workforce problem, so this university center concept really became more of an effort to keep local talent local, to support not just our community but our places of employment.”
The center is named for Dr. Robert and Rita Robbins, who made a $1 million donation to ECTC in 2018. Rita Robbins said the center will support area students and the need for continuing education.
“We hope this center will be an inviting place for people to gather, develop relationships, and pay it forward,” Robbins said. “When you walk through these doors, change happens. You don’t walk out the same way.”
ECTC has partnerships for the Robbins Center with Western Kentucky University, Lindsey Wilson College, and Campbellsville University, and plans to announce additional partnerships “as early as this fall.”
