MIDDLETOWN, N.Y. – For the second year in a row, SUNY Orange can celebrate record-setting enrollment for its Winter session as the College opened this year’s accelerated online session with 187 students, a jump of 22.2 percent over the first day of last Winter’s course offerings.

The increase marks the eighth consecutive academic session in which the College has enjoyed year-over-year enrollment gains among its credit programs, dating to the Spring 2023 semester. Enrollment data released by the State University of New York (SUNY) this past Fall showed SUNY Orange as the third-fastest growing community college within the state over the past two years, with enrollment growth of 14.6 percent since Fall 2022.

SUNY Orange’s Winter session is intended to offer students a compact schedule of online general education courses. This year, the College is running a dozen classes from Jan. 2 through Jan. 17 in topics such as English, history, biology, computer literacy, psychology, sociology and Spanish. In all, 87.7 percent of the registrants are SUNY Orange students, while the remainder are primarily students from other institutions who are planning to transfer those credits back to their main institution.

“Our Winter session is, by design, a limited menu of courses, but we’ve targeted specific classes that have the potential to help the most students across many of our degree programs, and I think we are seeing that students, particularly SUNY Orange students, are responding favorably to the courses we are offering,” said Dr. Kristine Young, SUNY Orange president. “As part of our Guided Pathways implementation, we’ve been encouraging students to appreciate the added benefit that the Winter and Summer sessions provide because they can complete a class in the Winter or several over the Summer.

“Those classes can help students accumulate credits toward their degree more quickly, or students can use the Winter and/or Summer to reduce their Fall and Spring workloads. That approach suits both our own students but also serves Orange County students attending other institutions because they see the value in taking a class or two while they are home on their own breaks,” Young added. “That allows students to concentrate more fully during the longer semesters, and hopefully be more successful academically either here at SUNY Orange or at their primary college or university.”

Alongside its growing enrollment over the past two years, SUNY Orange has also increased its student graduation rate. Since 2022, the graduation rate has surged 17.7 percent, including an 8.6 percent year-over-year rise from 2023 to 2024. The graduation rate measures those first-time, full-time students who enroll in a particular Fall semester and complete their degree within three years (six semesters).

For more information about SUNY Orange and its academic programs, visit www.sunyorange.edu/getstarted or contact the Admissions Office at (845) 341-4030 or by emailing apply@sunyorange.edu.