LOCH SHELDRAKE — A self-study created as part of a re-accreditation process for SUNY Sullivan provides a lens into the college’s internal operations over the past few years.

Accreditation is a stamp of quality given to colleges after a peer review. The U.S. Department of Education will only provide federal student aid to institutions that have been accredited by a nationally registered agency.

SUNY Sullivan receives its accreditation from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE). The college had its accreditation granted in 1968 and last had its accreditation reaffirmed in 2013. It started work on its reevaluation in 2021. 

This week, MSCHE evaluators are visiting SUNY Sullivan as part of the process. “We are looking forward to what we feel will be a very positive experience,” said SUNY Sullivan Dean of Communications and Admissions Eleanor Davis. 

In advance of that visit, SUNY Sullivan released its self-study report, a document put together by SUNY Sullivan in consultation with the MSCHE to guide the evaluation process

The document lays out SUNY Sullivan’s successes and its challenges, and the progress it has made over the past few years.

Planning and administration

The MSCHE visit comes at a time of publicity for SUNY Sullivan’s administration. President Jay Quaintance is on a planned vacation, according to Davis. Reporting from the Sullivan County Democrat has said that Marc Singer, the vice president of academic and student affairs, has resigned. In the same time period, the New York City mayor’s office announced a program in partnership with SUNY Sullivan and the Center for Discovery for the relocation of asylum seekers; officials from both organizations have said that the program is not concrete at this point. 

The MSCHE self-study report evidences several years of turmoil among the college’s administration.

“In 2018, multiple changes and turnover of higher levels of administration positions occurred, including the elimination of division chairs who had the responsibility for overseeing assessment [of academic programs],” reads the report. A pilot review of new assessment protocols was conducted in the spring of 2022, and was “only partially successful, especially as the campus had lost many of its most knowledgeable assessors and assessment results had not been maintained.”

The report highlights steps the college has taken to reinvigorate its internal assessment, including the formation of an Institutional Assessment Committee. 

Forward planning at the college has suffered as a byproduct of executive turnover. 

“The college has taken multiple forward-looking steps, including hiring architects and a higher education consulting firm, to create and implement long-term planning; however, up to this point, there has been no clear link between planning and budgeting and assessment data… With continued turnover in management/senior leadership, and the global pandemic of 2020, the college has continued to budget using an incremental approach, essentially budgeting based on previous years’ allocations with across-the-board spending operationalized due to lower enrollment,” reads the report. 

SUNY Sullivan has hired new staff to fill organizational holes, and in the report touts the hiring of a new vice president of academic and student affairs and a new vice president of administrative services, as well as the creation of an associate dean of assessment and instruction position. Some positions remain unfilled; the vice president of academic and student affairs position belonged to Singer, the executive who resigned in March. 

Pandemic and enrollment

“As with most colleges in the SUNY system, the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted the human and fiscal resources of the campus,” reads the report. Enrollment decreased, support from state and federal governments dropped and costs rose due to COVID-19 and employee benefit costs.

Full-time enrollment dropped from 779 full-time students in the fall of 2019 to 583 in the fall of 2021; the report ties this drop to a decreased number of high school graduates in New York State and the vaccine requirement for in-person students on SUNY campuses. 

Other aspects of college enrollment appear brighter. The number of part-time students rose from 849 to 1,012 from fall 2019 to fall 2021. The county has an increasing number of school-age students, according to the report, with new families coming into the area and the college expanding its high school cohort. 

And while enrollment was down, the experience of those students who attended remained strong. An intelligent.com poll from 2021 ranked the college number one among community colleges in New York State, and students reported a “reasonable level of satisfaction” in a 2021 graduation satisfaction survey, ranking most aspects of campus between a three and a four on a five-point scale (with five being “extremely happy”). 

Next steps

The self-study process—and the MSCHE accreditation process more broadly—helps a college identify areas of improvement. 

The executive summary of the report lists a number of areas for action, including the creation and implementation of an institution-wide assessment plan, the hiring of staff appropriate for the college’s needs, and the establishment of a clear and well defined decision-making process. 

The faculty council of the college unanimously passed a vote of confidence in the administration in advance of the MSCHE visit, Davis confirmed. 

Following the visit, MSCHE will meet in June to determine what actions to take.