Family’s $200K pledge will create Dr. Robert L. Paserba lab at BC3
A $200,000 pledge to the BC3 Education Foundation will establish the Dr. Robert L. Paserba Education Teaching and Learning Lab for students in one of the college’s most popular transfer programs.
The Paserba family of Butler has pledged a donation of $200,000 to establish an interactive lab, which will offer students of early childhood education a hands-on experience, creating settings in its simulated classroom and evaluating intended lesson-plan outcomes at BC3’s main campus in Butler Township.
“This interactive lab will further set apart and distinguish our already top-notch early education program,” said Megan Coval, executive director of the BC3 Education Foundation and external relations.
BC3 representatives toured facilities at regional four-year colleges and universities and found students pursuing bachelor’s degrees in early childhood education trained with preschoolers in on-campus environments that — much like BC3’s Amy Wise Children’s Creative Learning Center — “were already planned,” said Nichol Zaginaylo, dean of BC3’s education and behavioral sciences division.
“But in our teaching and learning lab,” Zaginaylo said, “students will get to practice creating the setting and the environment without the CCLC children in there at first.”
Robert Paserba, of Butler, earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from what was then Slippery Rock State College, and a master’s degree and a doctorate degree in education-related fields from the University of Pittsburgh.
He served 18 years in the Butler Area School District, where he spent a decade as superintendent after teaching at the former Institute Hill and McQuistion elementary schools.
“I have always been an advocate for early childhood education,” he said. “That’s clearly where habits are formed, where children learn who they are and maybe what aspirations they have for the future. Everyone who interacts with them contributes to their feeling of self-respect, and their overall feeling that ‘I really can do what I want to do, given my abilities and the things that make me.’”
Paserba later became superintendent of the more than 100 elementary and secondary schools in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. He is currently educational director and strategic planner for the Extra Mile Education Foundation, Pittsburgh, which provides learning opportunities to economically disadvantaged Allegheny County children in educational settings not often available to them.
The creation of an immersive learning environment like those of simulated intensive care unit and patient rooms within the Victor K. Phillips Nursing and Allied Health Building on BC3’s main campus “is an indicator of the quality that we bring to our students,” said Nick Neupauer, BC3’s president. “Much like nursing, education is a high-demand field.”
Elementary school teacher is a high-priority occupation in a Tri-County Workforce Development Area that includes Butler County, according to the state Department of Labor & Industry’s Center for Workforce Information & Analysis.
BC3 will renovate and merge adjacent classrooms and a resource library to create, by fall 2025, the 1,735-square-foot Robert L. Paserba Education Teaching and Learning Lab in the college’s humanities and education building, said Brian Opitz, BC3’s executive director of operations.
The lab’s centerpiece will model an elementary school classroom and allow for “different teaching scenarios,” Opitz said. “There will be a lot of flexibility.”
It will include an interactive whiteboard, adjustable tables and chairs, and distinct subject-matter stations where students can experiment with lesson plans and learn about the importance of desk groupings and material layouts.
BC3’s early childhood education program, pre-K through fourth-grade, has 60 students enrolled this spring, according to Sharla Anke, the college’s assistant dean of institutional research and planning.
Graduates of the 61-credit program can transfer to a four-year institution to complete a bachelor’s degree and earn Pennsylvania teacher certification, or they can seek employment as a teacher’s assistant or preschool teacher.
