As actor and filmmaker Tom Hanks wrote in his New York Times op-ed piece a few years ago entitled I Owe It All to Community College: “I drove past the campus (Chabot Community College) a few years ago with one of my kids and summed up my two years there this way: ‘That place made me what I am today.’”
That’s what community colleges do. We make students into nurses and respiratory therapists, into graphic designers and computer programmers, into entrepreneurs, and even into professional athletes.
We give people second chances. Chances at whatever stage in life they’re at. High school graduates, high school dropouts, home-schooled students, single mothers, or adults in the workplace looking for a change in their careers, just to name a few.
At SUNY Sullivan, we’re working to make it easier for students to earn their degrees.
By creating more one-year certificate programs.
By removing several barriers for students looking to transfer in as a student.
By changing our placement testing process.
By expanding our class scheduling to provide more options for students who work.
And, by launching this fall, a number of degree programs that can be taken 100 percent online, so students – and especially working professionals – can study whenever, and wherever, it’s convenient for them.
This past fall we welcomed Sullivan BOCES Public Safety students on campus, to give them an early college experience and to provide them with an educational pathway into our Criminal Justice program.
And just a few weeks ago we welcomed the New York State Excelsior Conservation Corps to SUNY Sullivan.
The corps is comprised of 50 young men and women who will serve together to protect, restore and enhance New York’s natural resources.
This is New York’s next generation of conservation leaders, so it’s only fitting that they are housed here for the next 10 months while they gain hands-on learning, on a campus where sustainability is a vital and vibrant component of our mission.
There is much happening, with much more yet to come. We wholeheartedly welcome new economic development projects to the area, as we utilize our expertise to develop short term training courses, micro-credentials and professional development opportunities that make businesses stronger, employees more valuable, and job seekers more desirable.
We have every intention to do for you what community college did for Tom.
By Jay Quaintance,
SUNY Sullivan President