City: Mont Alto, PA

Category: Education

Telephone: (717) 749-6000, (800) 392-6173

Address: 1 Campus Drive

Description: Both the Civil War and the area’s iron furnaces played a role in the creation of a school at Mont Alto. Col. George Wiestling came to Mont Alto in 1864 after his medical discharge from the Union army. As a shareholder in the Mont Alto Iron Company and its last ironmaster, Wiestling lived here during the waning years of the iron furnaces, which converted local iron ore into pig iron. During peak production the fires of an iron furnace would use up to an acre of forest in a day, and the forests of South Mountain were clear-cut on a 20- to 25-year cycle to feed the demand. (For more on the many iron furnaces that were in the area, see the Close-up in the State Parks and Public Lands chapter.) All the clear-cutting eventually took its toll on the forest around the Mont Alto Furnace, as it did on the forests throughout Pennsylvania. After Wiestling’s death the state purchased his estate as part of public use lands for reforestation. Wiestling’s abode became the site of the Pennsylvania State Forest Academy, a school devoted to the study of forestry and the reforestation of the state of Pennsylvania. The school opened in 1903 with an enrollment of 13 at the site of the present-day Mont Alto campus, becoming the only state-established and -operated forestry school in the nation. The Pennsylvania State Forest Academy merged with Penn State (then the Pennsylvania State College) in 1929; academy students protested, feeling Penn State’s forestry curriculum was inferior to theirs. Mont Alto served as Penn State’s forestry campus, and students completed the first year of their four-year degree here until 1942. The campus was closed due to World War II and reopened in 1946. Penn State Mont Alto became a Commonwealth Campus in 1963, offering the first one or two years of many Penn State degrees, as well as some associate degrees (including forest technology). In 1997 Mont Alto joined Penn State’s Commonwealth College and began offering bachelor’s degrees. Today Penn State Mont Alto offers the first two years of study for more than 160 Penn State bachelor-degree programs, and 5 bachelor’s degrees or 8 associate degrees may be attained while taking all classes at the Mont Alto campus. Bachelor’s degree programs are in business, nursing, human development and family studies, and English. Two-year associate degree programs are in forest technology, business administration, nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, human development and family studies, and letters, arts, and sciences. Enrollment numbers around 1,100 students, with a student-to-faculty ratio of 17:1 and an average class size of 24 students. Mont Alto is one of only 10 Penn State campuses to offer on-campus housing, with three residence halls that can accommodate 440 students on the campus’s 91 wooded acres. Varsity sports include basketball, tennis, golf, soccer, volleyball, softball, cheerleading, and cross-country. Club sports and intramural sports are also offered.