Mount Saint Mary College is a private Catholic college in Newburgh, New York. It was founded in 1959 by the Dominican Sisters.
The campus overlooks the Hudson River, halfway between New York City and Albany. Over 2,700 students are enrolled in over 50 undergraduate and three graduate programs. The Knights compete in NCAA Division III athletics in the Skyline Conference.
History
Academy and Normal School (1883-1958) A group of four German-speaking sisters of St. Dominic first arrived in New York City in 1853. They left their convent of the Holy Cross in Regensburg, Germany to start a school in Pennsylvania. Plans went awry, and the sisters opened a school on Second Street in lower Manhattan instead. In 1883, at the request of the pastor of St. Mary's Church in Newburgh, a small group of sisters from the Second Street Convent opened Mount Saint Mary Academy off Gidney Avenue on property that had once belonged to the prosperous Harvey Weed family.
S. R. Van Duzer, a wealthy wholesale drug company owner, moved into A. Gerald Hull's Villa on the southeast side of the Thomas Powell estate in 1853. VanDuzer changed the name from Hull's Villa to Rozenhof. VanDuzer died in 1903 and his wife died six months later. The property remained in the family until the 1913 death of the VanDuzer's daughter, Katherine VanDuzer Burton. Although the family was offered a large sum of money for the property by the proprietors of a tuberculosis sanatorium, the VanDuzers instead turned to their neighbors, the Dominican sisters, on Gidney Avenue. Even though their offer of $65,000 was less than half of what the VanDuzers had been offered by the sanitarium bidders, Rozenhof, the carriage house, the ice house, and a hothouse were sold to the sisters, as they had outgrown the existing facilities on their property.
The new academy, called Greater Mount Saint Mary, opened in 1927 and served as a high school. A storehouse was rebuilt as the Casa San Jose and served as the elementary school.
Because the Dominican Sisters were involved in education in Newburgh and throughout the New York-New Jersey area, even as far away as Puerto Rico, the demand for a teacher training program was evident. The New York State Education Department certified the Mount Saint Mary Normal and Training School in 1930. In 1934, the Commissioner of Education granted full approval to the program, and Mount received the authority to issue teacher's certificates after the three-year program. In January 1955, the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York granted the Mount a provisional charter to grant the degree of Associate in Arts upon the completion of the registered three-year curriculum.
College (1959-Present) The Board of Regents voted to amend the college's charter on October 3, 1959, allowing the Mount to become a four-year liberal arts college. It opened its door to the first class of laywomen in 1960. In June 1962, the Mount granted its first bachelor's degree, a Bachelor of Science in Education. According to the college, both Mother Leon Vincent Short, the first president, and Sr. Mary Vincent Ralph, who served as the first Academic Dean, are considered to be the co-founders of the college.
In 1963, Aquinas Hall, named after Saint Thomas Aquinas, opened. This three-story building became the centerpiece of the college's academic life. Guzman Hall opened the same year. It was initially the residence hall for the young Dominican novices. The first graduating class in 1964 consisted of 32 graduates. That same year a two-year nursing program was started by the college, and a four-year program was added in 1971.
In May 1968, the college received full accreditation from the Middle States Association, and in the spring of that year, the first and only male student began taking classes at the newly co-ed Mount Saint Mary College. In 1970, 58 male students were enrolled at the college.
In 1984, the college's first master's degree program was introduced, leading to a Master of Science in Special Education.
In February 2016, faculty acted on "longstanding concerns about academic freedom and shared governance under its current administration" by voting no confidence in the chair of the college's board of trustees. Anne Carson Daly left the Mount due to family responsibilities in March 2016, and James Raimo, Vice President for Facilities and Operations, took the helm as Acting President until August.
In August 2016, David A. Kennett, the Elizabeth Stillman Williams Professor of Economics at Vassar College, became interim president for two years. While at the Mount, Kennett helped the college navigate accreditation through the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.