Dutchess Community College names Peter Jordan new president
Dutchess Community College this fall is debuting a new campus in Fishkill, and a new home for its aviation program at Hudson Valley Regional Airport.
It will also have a new president overseeing it all.
Peter Grant Jordan will take on the role on Aug. 2, the State University of New York Board of Trustees and SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras announced Wednesday.
Jordan, whose career in higher education spans three decades, takes over the role from Acting President Ellen Gambino, who has served since September, after Pamela Edington’s retirement in July 2020.
He becomes the college’s sixth president in its 64-year history. Edington had a six-year tenure as the college’s first female president.
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He’ll take on a college in transition, with new facilities set to open in the hopes of remedying a steady decline in enrollment and revenue shared by many community colleges across the state.
In a statement announcing his appointment, Jordan said he was “grateful for the opportunity” to take on the job.
“I am eager to collaborate with college trustees, campus, SUNY and regional stakeholders to develop a shared vision and strategic plans to guide the college’s promising future,” he said. “With DCC’s committed faculty, staff and leadership, I look forward to our building on current academic innovation to advance equity, foster an even more robust and ‘student-ready’ experience, and address the educational, civic, cultural, economic, and workforce development needs of the region.”
In 2012 he became president of Tarrant County College-South Campus in Texas, according to the announcement from SUNY. There, between fall 2016 and fall 2018, enrollment increased by 12{13aab5633489a05526ae1065595c074aeca3e93df6390063fabaebff206207ec}.
Prior to joining Tarrant, he held positions of vice president for institutional effectiveness and vice president of enrollment management and and student development at LaGuardia Community College, and served as interim vice chancellor for student affairs at the City University of New York.
He earned a doctoral degree in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania.
SUNY board trustee Bob Duffy said, “The Dutchess Community College Board of Trustees has brought forth a stellar candidate with a vision for the future growth of the campus that will benefit the students and the entire Hudson Valley region.”
From 2010 to 2020, Dutchess Community College’s fall enrollment of full- and part-time students declined by more than 43{13aab5633489a05526ae1065595c074aeca3e93df6390063fabaebff206207ec}.
The reduction has been steady, somewhere between 3 and 8{13aab5633489a05526ae1065595c074aeca3e93df6390063fabaebff206207ec} each year for the past decade. This fall saw a more pronounced drop of nearly 11{13aab5633489a05526ae1065595c074aeca3e93df6390063fabaebff206207ec} amid the pandemic, and the rate was 14{13aab5633489a05526ae1065595c074aeca3e93df6390063fabaebff206207ec} this spring. That was actually less severe than the college expected.
The enrollment decline has forced DCC, in recent years, to burn through its fund balance to offset losses and reduce staffing, and the county has progressively increased its annual funding over the last seven years from nearly $10.9 million to almost $16.8 million. County funding was to cover roughly a third of the school’s needs for this academic year, according to a proposed budget that included a larger reduction in state aid than came to pass.
The school has attributed part of those problems to a reduction in the size of high school graduating classes, leaving a smaller pool of first-year college students and a need to find others to enroll.
Dutchess’ Fishkill satellite campus, a 47,000-square-foot space in the former Dutchess Mall space south of the intersection of Route 9 and I-84, will feature programs geared toward older, non-traditional students looking for training in specific fields the college believes are of the most value to residents.
Michael Dupree, DCC Board of Trustees chair, called Jordan “a leader who will listen to all our key campus constituencies and build a vision of what that will look like. Then, to also create it.”