An Elk County resident who stays in a 28-foot-long camper near the Butler County Community College’s main campus to avoid a round-trip commute of four hours has received a $500 scholarship from an academic consortium that recognizes her commitment to learning.

Alexis Krug of St. Marys has a 4.0 grade-point average as a student in BC3’s physical therapist assistant career program, pays the college’s out-of-county tuition rate and expects to graduate from BC3 debt-free in May.

Monthly rent in the campground where she stays five days a week costs up to $425 less than that of apartments she researched, according to the 24-year-old.

Krug said she owes $25,000 for student loans after earning a bachelor’s degree in exercise science from a regional public four-year university, where she lived in a dormitory or in an apartment.

“I honestly wish I would have thought about living in a camper when I was pursuing my bachelor’s degree,” Krug said.

The Three Rivers Academic Consortium Clinical Education Scholarship she received Jan. 30 “is going to help me with gasoline,” Krug said, “and with paying rent at the campground so I can stay near Butler” to complete a program-ending eight-week clinical education training this spring.

Krug is one of two physical therapist assistant students to receive the 2023 financial award from the consortium whose members are 14 colleges or universities in Western Pennsylvania and in West Virginia.

Students who are members of the American Physical Therapy Association and attend a college or university within the consortium are eligible to receive the financial award, said Ashlee Esplen, a professor in BC3’s physical therapist assistant program.

In addition to her commitment to learning, Krug received the scholarship based on leadership skills, professionalism and responsibility, Esplen said.

Krug works 20 hours a week at a hardware store and is president of BC3’s physical therapist assistant club that contributed $1,500 to the college’s Pioneer Pantry, $1,500 to the Lighthouse Foundation food pantry in Middlesex Township and $500 toward construction of the Victor K. Phillips Nursing and Allied Health Building on BC3’s main campus in Butler Township.

She is also a member of Rho Phi, the college’s chapter of an international academic honor society.

“And is living in a campsite near the college,” Esplen said.

“She was determined to go to BC3,” said Randall Kruger, director of BC3’s physical therapist assistant program.

“It shows her commitment to what she wants to do, to earn this degree,” Esplen said.

“A lot of people, when they ask ‘Where do you live?’ and I say ‘In a camper,’ they look at me like I have 20 heads,” Krug said.

It was during a 12-week internship in St. Marys in her final semester at the regional public four-year university that Krug decided to become a physical therapist assistant.

“After seeing what the physical therapists and assistants do, I found a love for working with the patients,” she said.

Krug researched institutions of higher education in Western Pennsylvania that offered a physical therapist assistant program. She also researched apartments, and found monthly rental costs to be between $800 to $1,000 and required lease agreements of up to one year.

“Which, for me, wasn’t feasible, money-wise,” she said.

Krug said she sought a physical therapist assistant program “that was close so that I could go home on the weekends, but I also knew from the reading I had done that I would be getting the best education from BC3.”

The success rate of BC3 graduates taking the post-graduation National Physical Therapy Examination that results in licensing is 94% in the past 22 years, Kruger said.

Physical therapist assistants, under the supervision of physical therapists, help patients to regain movement and manage pain after injuries and illnesses, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. The median annual salary in 2021 was $49,180. The field is expected to see a 24 percent increase through 2031, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Krug enrolled in BC3’s program in fall 2021.

“She is, without a doubt, one of the hardest-working students I have ever encountered,” Kruger said. “She is here before I am most days. I see her out in the hall studying as I key in to either the lab or the classroom. She stays late every day. I’m hard-pressed to think of anybody with the work ethic that she has.”

Krug has completed two four-credit, five-week clinical education trainings in Brookville and in Kittanning as part of BC3’s 70-credit physical therapist assistant program. She will pursue the six-credit clinical education training that is part of the program’s requirements to graduate near BC3’s main campus.

“(BC3) is the best decision I have ever made,” Krug said. “If I had to do it over again, I would do it again a thousand times. Ashlee and Randy are phenomenal. Thorough with the material. They are hands-on. They will sit down with you and try to help you figure out and understand the material.

“The one-on-one part of it is very in-depth. I’ve never had this type of education,” she said.

Upon graduating from BC3, Krug will move out of the camper — with its 21-inch-by-17-inch four-burner stove top, its 21-inch-wide oven and the 37-inch- by-30-inch retractable table that also serves as her desk — and take the National Physical Therapy Examination.

“I’ve had everything I’ve needed,” Krug said. “A full shower. A full kitchen. A little area for my TV and I have a couch.

“It’s very quiet here. And that makes it very easy to study,” she added.

Bill Foley is coordinator of news and media content at Butler County Community College.