Over the course of the 2024-2025 school year, multiple infrastructure and maintenance incidents affected SRU’s campus operations.
At the beginning of the 2024 fall semester, issues with air conditioning persisted on campus due to heat pump failures.
During the 2024 fall semester, a short in a manhole cover near the lower campus electrical feeding route’s cable caused a power outage in October, leaving various buildings without power.
The most recent incident involved an additional power outage during the first week of the spring 2025 semester.
The outage on Jan. 22 was caused by two failed underground medium voltage connections near Old Main and Miller Auditorium, and was responsible for shutting down eight buildings.
Residents of North Hall were relocated for the night after attempts to fix the blown fuse at 1 a.m. were unsuccessful. Classes in several upper campus locations were moved online. The outage was fully repaired by midday Jan. 23. Classes resumed with faculty and staff officially returning to the upper campus classroom buildings Jan. 24.
At the Feb. 4 Town Hall and following the incident, SRU President Karen Riley addressed the issue referring to “deferred maintenance” persisting for over a decade.
On February 28, SRU Comm released the following statement from the Office of the President:
“The power and HVAC outages at Slippery Rock University this academic year have been frustrating and inconvenient for so many of our students, faculty, and staff. I deeply regret these disruptions, and I am committed to taking the necessary steps to evaluate the causes and implement reforms to alleviate concerns about our preparedness.
I am working directly with executive leadership, and we are investigating and identifying key areas of vulnerability in our infrastructure and procedures. It is imperative that we take proactive measures to address these challenges.
As you might imagine, identifying and addressing deferred and critical maintenance issues is a large-scale, multifaceted undertaking. We will not succeed alone. We are working closely with experts locally and at the State System to provide the level of care and safety our students, faculty, staff, and community expect, and, most importantly, deserve.”
Riley sat down with The Rocket to discuss, in-depth, SRU’s strategy for infrastructure and maintenance moving forward.
“We want people to have the things that they want,” Riley said. “But first we have to make sure that they have what they need, and so we have to prioritize safety, we have to prioritize [having] a space where people can live and learn comfortably.”
“No blame, but I think we may have kicked the can down the road a little bit in the past,” she said. “People have been very responsible and trying to be good stewards of the students’ money trying to keep tuition low and we realized that there was deferred maintenance that needed to [be addressed].”
The Jan. 22 incident inspired the new on-call contracts, according to Riley. The contracts will allow for medium and high voltage repair crews to be on call in case of similar events.
SRU is expanding its contracts with Right Electric and Blackhawk Neff to include 24/7 emergency responses and consultative services for larger issues persisting on campus.
A similar contract was agreed to for HVAC technicians, specifically for high traffic periods such move-in and move-out weekends. The contracts are in addition to SRU’s in-house maintenance and facilities staff.
“After that experience, there was a lot of intentionality around trying to figure out what was going on, what happened, and how to fix it,” the president said. “And the third part of that is, how do we prevent that from happening again?”
“We need to be ready, and part of this whole plan of making this a good environment for everyone is fixing things when they break, trying to prevent things from breaking, good maintenance, up-to-date facilities and being very well-prepared if something were to happen,” the president said.
Although the event inspired some contracting and preparedness concepts, Riley said additional long-term planning was conceived during a combination of the original strategic planning and earlier incidents in fall 2024.
“Part of addressing what we learned from some of these instances, is we want to update our business continuity plans, we want to institute new safety plans, we’ll have to do more drills, we’ll have to have more material on hand so that we’re ready when something happens,” Riley said.
“We have a good budget, we’ve got great enrollment, we’ve got a good reputation, and we want to keep that,” Riley said. “So we are going to need to invest in the things that need to be fixed. Flat out. We have reserves, they’re there for a reason…and this is going to have to be taken care of right away.”
During spring break, upper campus buildings will be offline to access further preventative maintenance options.
Penn State Facilities Engineering Institute performed infrared scans of buildings impacted by the Jan. 22 outages and found no additional damages to electrical infrastructure.
Additionally, SRU is working with the PA Department of General Services to develop a final design for campus-wide electrical infrastructure. The bidding process for the former is expected to begin late 2025.
Aebersold Recreation Center and Boozel Dining Hall are being prepared for building-wide generator backups following load studies to determine generator specifics. Morrow Field House is to receive a dedicated backup generator as part of a design phase plan beginning in late 2025.
Repairs are being made on the water filtration system for the main cooling tower water supply. Additionally, the heating and cooling loops for Buildings D and E are being repaired. The four additional buildings are scheduled for various times from now through summer 2025.
Heat pumps in D and E were replaced in 2019, with A, D and F planning in process, but no official timeline is available yet. Heat pumps are already on-hand in case of existing unit failure.
SRU will have emergency supplies including sleeping cots, chargers, flashlights, emergency, blankets, portable HVAC units, power strips and basic hygiene items. No date was given for when the inventory would be stocked, as the items are currently being sourced and funded for.
Aramark will also increase their on-site inventory of bottled water and nutritional snacks for emergency use. Housing plans will include the ability for students to access their rooms to retrieve clothing, bedding and basic toiletries, as well as a supply of pillows and blanket.
“We value people, and how we show we value people is also through our actions and making sure we listen to what people need,” Riley said. “And if we make a mistake or if things don’t work the that we hoped that they will, that we learn from that.”
