High school students visiting Mount St. Mary College July 20 to enjoy a tour and barbecue also had the opportunity to get a sneak peek at its newest acquisition, the 13.1-acre property owned by the Dominican Sisters of Hope overlooking the Hudson River campus on Powell Avenue.
The Dominican Center was the original school founded by the Sisters of Hope in 1883; their administrative office, based in Ossining, had expressed a desire to sell the property to the college for some time. The property transfer was finalized July 13 with the Sisters retaining access to the property”™s private cemetery on Gidney Avenue.
When the college was founded, the Dominican Sisters formally separated from the congregation and subdivided the campus. Sister Lorelle Elcock, said their mission of education began when four sisters established Mount St. Mary Academy.
Elcock, along with college President Father Kevin Mackin and Abel R. Garraghan, chairman of the college board of trustees, sat down to make the transfer official. The cost to buy the 90,000-square-foot building, including its ornate chapel which will be preserved, was $5 million, and a capital campaign to raise $10 million for renovations was approved and will begin immediately. “We are happy that with this sale, the Dominican Center will be integrated into the college campus,” Elcock said.
Established in 1961, the college has grown from a graduating class of 166 to 2,700 students in 2011, awarding nearly 15,000 bachelor”™s and master”™s degrees in the process. It is the only independent four-year college in Orange County.
JMZ Architects and Planners P.C. in Glens Falls, architects for Kaplan Hall at the new SUNY Newburgh campus, have been chosen  to develop a master plan, which will include a state of the art library/learning commons. The college is a member of the Southeastern New York Library Resources Council and has a reciprocal borrowing agreement with Newburgh Free Library and SUNY Orange.
“Our primary purpose is education, in view of the vision and mission of Mount St. Mary College,” Mackin said. “Our strategic plan calls us to achieve academic excellence while creating holistic living-learning space; and our number of resident students has grown. Our purchase of the Dominican property is a unique opportunity to help fulfill our strategic plan, design a better living-learning environment, and add some parking and green space.”
Rochester-based Center for Governmental Research estimates Mount St. Mary”™s economic contribution to the community is $125 million a year. In addition to investing several million dollars in Newburgh, the school provides a home-ownership incentive program and has been a frequent site for nonprofits”™ and the city”™s events.
According to Mackin, nearly 40 percent of the college students are first generation college students. “We need to steward our resources carefully,” he said. “As an independent college, students and families invest in us to do that. We”™re challenged not to rest on laurels, but to improve constantly and build for the common good.”
