LOCH SHELDRAKE—SUNY Sullivan President David Potash and Executive Assistant to the President, Katrina Gibson, were pleased to announce to the Government Services Committee of the Sullivan County Legislature on Thursday that the college has regained full accreditation from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. 

Gibson was the college’s accreditation liaison. Potash praised her for being “so instrumental” in the process and allowed her to share the news. Gibson stated that the Middle States Commission met on Wednesday, November 20, before informing the college that its accreditation was reaffirmed. 

“We are in compliance with all of the standards at this point and we will be required to do just another follow-up monitoring report that will be due in August,” Gibson said. “That is just part of the procedure of anyone who is reaffirmed. Our next self-study will be 2030, so we are going to start planning for that now and start getting everything going so we will be in good condition for that next self-study.”

Gibson noted that the self-study is how the commission evaluates each institution, assuring that they are meeting compliance with the set of standards. 

“Between the self-study and the follow-up reports, each of the teams has made recommendations,” Gibson noted. “The recommendations are not required to be followed, but we have been implementing a lot of those changes already. Some of those changes are still in the works, like updates to the website, different changes to the assessment process and stuff like that.”

Gibson said that they are going back and reviewing all of the recommendations and that part of the plan for 2025 is reviewing all of the different standards so that they aren’t “solely focused on standards five and six and start implementing some the other recommendations.”

“Any other requirements that were noted, we have met with all of those,” she added. “But we are going to go back to look at the recommendations and start implementing what we can.”

Gibson noted that the reaccreditation process is required every seven years. 

Drop in fall enrollment attributed to 

residence hall closure

Potash also had an update on the college’s fall enrollment, which was down, as they went through some challenges. Dean of Students Stacey Johnson reported that she looked at enrollment from the last three fall semesters to gather data and where the significant impacts of the enrollment drop were. 

Johnson said that while looking at credentials - students that come in take certain credentials by gender, program and ethnicity, there were no significant changes in those areas. 

However, the most significant area was the closure of Lazarus I. Levine Residence Hall (Laz Hall) before the beginning of the fall semester due to a dilapidated roof. 

“But we did find that the most significant changes were the closure of the residential hall,” Johnson said. “That impacted our enrollment significantly and we have a process now, which is really good. We can look at trends and targets now going forward.”

Potash said that they wanted to make sure that there weren’t any other things that the college was missing out on. He said that when they tracked it through the closing of the residence hall, the timing of the closure was the major challenge. 

“That does have an impact on the budget, we are aware of that,” Potash stated. “We are recruiting pretty aggressively for the spring semester. We have also dialed back significantly our spending and our hiring. We are significantly slowing the spending rate.” 

Potash also said that they had an extensive meeting with the College Board of Trustees Finance Committee about the impacts on the budget, looking at the cash flow. He also said they have an ongoing discussion with County Manager Joshua Potosek and Assistant County Manager Michelle Huck about ways to keep the county informed on the enrollment. 

Once they close the fall semester and have an idea of spring enrollment numbers, they will be able to provide an update to the county so that everyone is on the same page in terms of numbers. 

“There will be changes of some sort, I don’t know what they are,” Potash said. “But I want to make sure that everybody is caught up and not surprised by anything on the budget or our operations.”

Strengthening the 

college experience

With the step of reaccreditation complete, Potash said they can now focus a little more on the operation of the college. He stated that the college has plans to not only strengthen its relationships with the high schools but also to increase the student experience for all of the college and the high schools. 

“It hasn’t been consistent across the county and I want to give a giant shoutout to [Sullivan BOCES Superintendent] Robert Dufour and his entire team,” Potash said, “because there is a new cooperative service agreement that the state has put in place. So far, Fallsburg, Livingston Manor and Roscoe have adopted that agreement that is going to help us streamline some of the application and paperwork process.”

Potash said that the college has met with DuFour’s team regularly. He stated that their aim through the agreement, through the spring of 2025 and 2026, is to make it “absolutely easier and better, not only for all high school students to do college in the high school but also to have a significantly stronger relationship with the college.”

“One of the things that the cooperative service agreement really wants to see is that everyone who is in college in the high school, have some college experience on the campus and do some other things with it,” he added. “We think this is going to be a really good opportunity for us to strengthen those relationships and to make the community college much more of a default destination for students in the county.”