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The College of New Rochelle, which said last month that it would likely close by the end of the summer, will officially cease operations at the end of the summer semester and has entered into an agreement that will allow students to complete their education at nearby Mercy College.
The two institutions detailed the agreement in a joint announcement released Tuesday.
An exact closure date "will be shared when that determination is made," New Rochelle president William Latimer and Board of Trustees interim chair Marlene Tutera said in a statement.
"While this is not the outcome we had hoped for regarding the future of CNR, we can take solace in the fact that this is not a reflection of the quality academics that CNR offers nor the impact this college has had on so many communities and for so many individuals for the past 115 years," they said.
The agreement will allow New Rochelle students to automatically transfer to Mercy for the fall 2019 semester. Mercy will also apply to New York State to offer New Rochelle programs that it doesn’t currently offer, including a liberal arts bachelor’s degree and nursing programs.
Mercy said it is hoping to hire several New Rochelle faculty and staff and is exploring the possibility of leasing portions of New Rochelle’s Westchester County and New York City campuses.
In a Feb. 22 memo to the campus, Latimer and Tutera said the college “continues to experience significant cash flow challenges” and that “it appears unlikely that the college will be able to continue operations beyond the end of the summer 2019 semester.”
The college, which enrolls nearly 3,000 students, has struggled to recover from several financial crises in recent years. In October 2016, officials said New Rochelle had “significant unmet financial obligations” that required major budget cuts. Weeks later, the college announced that it had not made payroll taxes for two years and owed about $20 million.
