LOCH SHELDRAKE, NY — Dr. Richard K. Greenfeld was the founding president of Sullivan County Community College from its opening in 1963 until his departure in 1966.
Now SUNY Sullivan, the college recently learned that Greenfield passed away on August 7 in Boulder, CO.
According to a 2006 interview with Greenfield, the college started in the former South Fallsburg High School with 78 full-time students, eight full-time faculty and a small administrative staff when it opened in September 1963. When Greenfield left, there were 740 full-time students, 27 full-time faculty, 10 adjunct faculty and six administrative and support staff members.
“The founding of a college is no small accomplishment,” said SUNY Sullivan president Jay Quaintance. “All these years later, the SUNY Sullivan community and our county still benefit from the work that [these] pioneers of the community college movement did with great vision.”
Greenfield also developed the hotel-management program, a program of academic requirements and curricula for a permanent campus, and organized support for the appointing of an architect to design the college’s present campus.
“I remember our initial concern was to make the most out of the limited facility that we had,” he said in an interview in 2006.
The college had a vacant school building “which had to be renovated and renewed to make it ready within three months, because our first students were going to come in September 1963,” he said. “Even now, I marvel over how we managed to spruce up the building, get furniture and equipment and have everything ready in such a short time.”
He eventually resigned to become president of Mercer County Community College in New Jersey.
Greenfield earned his Ph.D. in education from Columbia University. He was a World War II veteran, serving as a 2nd lieutenant in the U.S. Army in the Asiatic-Pacific theater.