STONE RIDGE – Dr. Alan P. Roberts is about a month into his tenure as president of SUNY Ulster, a period which he describes as a "whirlwind" of 16-hour days as he tries to make time for every campus and community stakeholder interested in having a private conversation.

Roberts spent the last 24 years as an administrator of a community college in Florida, which gives him the experience to guide Ulster's fortunes, but he's also a native of the Adirondacks, which should prepare him for the very different weather he will be experiencing compared to what he left down south.

Enrollment is a top concern for the new president, but it's a challenge faced by all community colleges. Research and student surveys point to a wide assortment of reasons why only a third of students who enroll each year in community colleges return the next. They include transferring to a four-year school, obtaining the skills needed to find a job in one's desired field, and difficulty affording transportation to class.

"We're dealing with a group of students that are challenged," Roberts noted. "That's why we're here, and that's why we love being here, but we have to find ways to engage them and support them with more dollars and resources, possibly through the college's foundation. Sometimes it's easier to keep the ones we have than go out and find a group of new ones," he said.

The new prez added that there doesn't seem to be a silver bullet to end the problem. SUNY Ulster is doing better than national averages, he pointed out, but Roberts is actively engaged with faculty and staff to find new solutions to this ongoing issue.

"We all understand the importance behind that," he added.

Some of those solutions will stem from efforts to serve new markets, such as employees of existing businesses, veterans, older people laid off during the recession and still in need of retraining, and local high school students who don't have reliable transportation to the Stone Ridge campus. Reaching out to these groups is one reason the new president wants to get more involved with the community, although "more involved" is on top of the lunch or dinner meetings he's holding nearly every day.

"We could be providing job training right on site," he said, or through distance learning.

One piece of that puzzle is the new Kingston Center, which will allow better access to the college — and at lower rates — for high school students in the city. Roberts said that what happened with his own daughters is the ideal he is aiming for:

"I handed them their diplomas in May, and then they graduated from high school in June," earning an associate's degree beforehand. "To be able to save on two years of college is huge."

Beyond working with the Kingston school district and Rondout Valley, which is collaborating on agriculture programs, Roberts plans on meeting with all the local superintendents on how to realize that dream of a "virtually free education while still in high school," generally by certifying high school teachers in the college classes, so that students can earn those credits during the school day without having to go anywhere else.

"It's a wonderful opportunity for those students," he said.

The Kingston Center will expand upon that so-called "collegian" program, and move the college towards the dual graduations Roberts said has been done in Florida for about ten years.

The college might also retain some space in the Business Resource Center on Ulster Avenue for continuing education classes, he said.

One thing which Roberts seems to share with all community college presidents is the message that lower cost does not mean lower quality. While he wouldn't speculate too much as to why four-year schools charge tuition in five digits for an education SUNY Ulster offers for a couple thousand dollars, he said that one reason is that community colleges have no research component.

"If you're paying a full professor $100,000 a year and he is only teaching one class so he can focus on his research, that's a cost to the students," he said.

Research is important, but cost-conscious students should recognize that the faculty at SUNY Ulster don't have to be actively engaged in it in order to provide a top-notch education.

"I would shout it from the rooftops," he said.

His own experience as a college student — first at North Country Community College, and then SUNY Albany— saw Roberts learn that it's not only less expensive at a community college, but actually superior for the student.

"We never had more than ten, fifteen students in class," he said of NCCC. But in his first year at Albany, "I took a psychology class and there were six hundred students in it. Working hand-in-hand with Ph.Ds right in the room, you really can't beat that."

A question which has been looming over the Stone Ridge campus for many years is that of student dorms. Roberts said that the jury's still out on whether it would make business sense to invest in the necessary infrastructure, and that there are still many unanswered questions that would have to be resolved by the campus community and its neighbors before any decision could be made on that front. "We have to really weigh the potential," he said.