By Luis Herrera-Herrera

Staff Writer

WEST GROVE, Pa. — After 18 years of operations in southern Chester County, the Delaware County Community College Pennock’s Bridge campus will permanently close its doors on Tuesday, June 30, reducing the college’s physical footprint in Chester County to just one remaining location.

Over the last several years, a combination of budget reallocations and changing student demographics has led to the steady abandonment of the college’s Chester County infrastructure. The Exton Center was consolidated into the Downingtown Center in January 2023, leaving the West Grove satellite as the final southern outpost until this month.

Administrative data reveals that a severe drop-off in physical classroom utilization directly precipitated the shutdown. The Pennock’s Bridge campus offered a mere nine classes during its final spring semester.

Rikki Bardzik, who serves as the branch director for both the Pennock’s Bridge and Downingtown locations, pointed directly to post-pandemic shifts as the catalyst for the closure. “Well, it all comes down to enrollment,” Bardzik said. “Since Covid, we’ve seen a decrease in students enrolling for in-person courses.”

Stephen Lochetto, a biology professor who spent his entire career teaching at Pennock’s, corroborated the trend, noting a steep multi-year decline in physical classroom attendance. While undergraduate enrollment rates across the nation have shown signs of a slow recovery since 2020, local campus attendance numbers rebounded too slowly to sustain the satellite facility against operational costs.

Because completing an associate degree at DCCC requires a minimum of 60 to 70 credits, the satellite location rarely functioned as a standalone campus for full degree completion. Instead, its legacy rests on its role as a highly specialized commuter hub and dual-enrollment pipeline for local high schools.

The campus primarily served traditional and returning students from the Kennett, Avon Grove, Unionville, and Chadds Ford school districts, alongside a regional draw from the Coatesville Charter School.

Nic DiMatteo, a Unionville High School graduate and current pre-nursing major, noted that the lack of specialized infrastructure meant students always knew their time at West Grove was temporary. He added that the final student cohort on-site had become exceptionally narrow. “There are very few that aren’t in nursing,” he said, describing a closing student body largely split between high school students taking early morning dual-enrollment courses and adult learners utilizing the space for basic general education requirements.

The loss of the local space has left many commuters stuck. “Honestly, it just sucks it’s closing down, [because] it’s the closest one near me,” said Lilian Garcia, a first-year ultrasound technology student who utilized the campus to complete general education requirements before an intended transfer to a four-year university.

The closure highlights an ongoing geographic and financial hurdle for Chester County residents seeking affordable higher education. Under DCCC guidelines, lower “sponsored” tuition rates are legally restricted to residents of specific Delaware County school districts that pay into the college’s local tax subsidy pool.

Because Chester County residents do not pay into this pool, out-of-county students face tuition rates roughly double those of their sponsored peers. While some southern Chester County residents look across state lines to Cecil College in Maryland as an alternative, that path carries an out-of-state cost of $308 per credit hour and a more complex credit transfer pipeline.

To mitigate the gap left by the West Grove exit, DCCC administrators are directing displaced independent adult learners to the Downingtown campus or options in Delaware County. The college is also expanding its online course catalog to accommodate remote students and continuing its dual-enrollment partnerships, which allow credentialed high school teachers to deliver college-credit courses directly within local secondary schools.

While the administrative decision to pull out of the space came entirely from DCCC leadership, the building itself will remain active under its primary landlord.

“The Chester County Intermediate Unit and DCCC have shared a strong and successful partnership in West Grove for the past 18 years,” said Melissa Smith, CCIU assistant director. Smith confirmed that the building’s Career and Technical Education programs will remain a cornerstone of the Pennock’s Bridge location, adding that the intermediate unit is actively evaluating “the potential for additional partners to join us in meeting the needs of students and families in the region.”

News of the Pennock’s Bridge official closing first came from President Marta Yera Cronin last fall in a college-wide email dated on September 29, 2025.  In it, she wrote: “The College enjoyed 18 successful years in West Grove and we are grateful to have had the opportunity to provide access to the students from Southern Chester County for so long. I know that our excellent faculty and staff will do their best to help students continue their education at another DCCC location and ease their transition.”