SUNY Orange President Dr. Kristine Young is a visionary leader who has spent the first five years of her presidency reshaping the student experience through strategic approaches to improving support services, successful acquisition of transformational federal and state grants, and blending the best elements of Guided Pathways principles with the College’s strengths.

With one eye focused on delivering a meaningful daily “SUNY Orange Experience” for students, she simultaneously is tackling implementation of the College’s new Strategic Plan 2020-2025, the roadmap by which SUNY Orange will reach its 75^th anniversary in 2025. The plan is designed for the College to empower student success, strengthen the region’s economic future, and sustain and invigorate its future.

Navigating SUNY Orange through a global pandemic that triggered unprecedented impacts upon the College’s financial stability, enrollment and operations, Young’s leadership assured that the College was able to preserve the safety of its students and employees while continuing to offer academics with integrity. 

During Young’ tenure, SUNY Orange has secured more than $11 million in grants. From October 2019 through September 2020 alone, the College was awarded $5.4 million in grants, including renewal of its five-year, $1.3 million TRIO grant and successful receipt of a five-year, $2.94 million Hispanic Serving Institutions Program grant, both from the U.S. Department of Education.

Additionally, Young and her team are identifying ways SUNY Orange can create new and targeted workforce training partnerships across a variety of business sectors that are generating pipelines of talented and skilled employees while also time sparking economic development within Orange County. Such work will be even more critical in a post-COVID environment that is likely to see continued high unemployment.

Young came to SUNY Orange following a 17-year tenure at Parkland College in Champaign, Ill. Born in nearby Scranton, Pa., and raised in Moscow, Pa., Young earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., in 1996 and her master’s degree in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1998. Her doctorate degree is from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

She is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Association of Community Colleges, where she shapes the organization’s advocacy for more than 1,200 community colleges nationwide. She served a one-year term on the AACC Executive Committee and was the chair of the AACC Commission on Public Relations Advocacy and Advancement in 2020-21. For 2021-22, she chairs the AACC Commission on Institutional Infrastructure and Transformation. Young co-chairs the Mid-Hudson Regional Economic Development Council and holds membership on the boards of several local organizations.