Vibrant Community
Vibrant Community
A Vibrant Local Community
The City of Wooster is a vibrant community of 26,000 with a strong, diversified economy, a downtown full of great restaurants and shops, national chains like Starbucks, Panera, Chipotle, and Kohl’s, and easy access to outdoor recreation opportunities.
Downtown
Whether you’re in the mood for pastas and gourmet pizza at Broken Rocks, a perfectly grilled steak at City Square, Hungarian pastries at Tulipan, or great deli sandwiches at Spoon, downtown has something for every taste.
There’s an independent bookstore, a high-end kitchen emporium, a year round farmer’s market, antique and gift shops, and the Wayne Center for the Arts. Downtown is still also the place to pick up some guitar strings, grab a newspaper, get your hair cut, buy a skateboard, or get a new tattoo.
Get Outside
The college has its own nine-hole golf course and the city’s park system includes hiking trails, two pools, and a disc golf course. It’s a short drive to Ohio State’s Secrest Arboretum, the mountain biking trails at Vulture’s Knob, and the 1,000-acre Mohican State Park.
Opportunities
From the Cleveland Clinic’s Wooster campus to CACI, a high-tech imagery and geospatial data processing firm, Wooster’s business community is strong and growing, and provides opportunities for Wooster students both before and after graduation.
One of the city’s newest entrepreneurial success stories is ABS Materials, co-founded by Wooster chemistry professor Paul Edmiston, who has developed a nano-engineered material with scores of potential applications for environmental cleanup.
ABS has grown from two employees to more than 30 – including several Wooster graduates – in just two years. In 2011, Edmiston won a Breakthrough Award from Popular Mechanics magazine, and the Ohio Chamber of Commerce honored ABS with its 2011 Excellence in Entrepreneurship award.