Paul Smith’s College President Dan Kelting speaks at the college’s 2024 commencement ceremony. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

PAUL SMITHS — Dan Kelting has become the official president of Paul Smith’s College after nearly two years as the interim president. The announcement of his title change comes as students start arriving on campus for the fall semester.

College officials say that under Kelting, the school has stabilized after several tumultuous years. The college’s Board of Trustees Chairman, Mark Dzwonczyk, said the board is putting a vote of confidence in Kelting, after seeing him display “true leadership” and “stabilize” the college at a time when it really needed it.

“(It’s a) well deserved change in title,” Dzwonczyk said on Thursday. “It was the right time.”

Enrollment numbers for the upcoming semester aren’t finalized yet, according to Kelting but the college is seeing around the same number of students registered to attend PSC as it did before the last fall semester.

The college has had five presidential changes in two years, declining enrollment, a planned acquisition by the educational nonprofit Fedcap Group that didn’t pan out and an exodus of staff. But with financial investments in rebuilding the college’s staff, new marketing strategies and retaining students, Dzwonczyk said he sees people inspired about the college again and the board wanted to show that Kelting has their “full support.”

Kelting said this is meaningful to him, adding that it is also an acknowledgement of his whole team’s work in the past year. With the title change, not much changes — his duties and responsibilities stay the same. But he believes the perception changes. Kelting said students never paid attention to the “interim” label, but people outside the college cared. When he attended events, people always asked him about the “interim” prefix. He said the new title shows confidence and a commitment to the future.

The college is a major employer and economic driver in this area. There are many people currently living in the Tri-Lakes region who moved here to attend the college and decided to stay. Its students live in the community, its staff research the Adirondack climate and its alumni work at or own businesses all over the region. The college has been struggling financially amid at least a decade of enrollment decline.

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Morale shift

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Kelting said the college lost “critical personnel” during a period of “great instability” last year. The attempted Fedcap acquisition was bringing changes some staff did not like. Some staff were concerned about their future and future of the institution after rumors that it was closing. There was low morale among faculty and staff, even among some students and alumni.

Kelting said they had to rebuilt trust. They had to show a vision for the future, a plan for success and make investments in key positions. He said it’s worked.

“Within the span of a year, to go from folks feeling pretty down to excitement is really what I think the biggest part of stabilization is,” Kelting said.

For example, Kelting said the college did not have an enrollment department last year. It was completely depleted. Now, he said the department is fully staffed and the college is adding one more position than before.

He said a large part of this was hiring Marketing and Enrollment Vice President Kathy Bonavist. Bonavist worked at Paul Smith’s College in the 2000s and enrollment peaked under her leadership at more than 1,000 students. Bringing back someone with a track record of success built confidence that skilled people want to work at PSC, Kelting said.

“People were like, ‘Wow, Kathy’s back,'” he said.

The same thing happened in the advancement department. The college brought Jim Gould back as its vice president for college advancement, and is now hiring for one more position in that department than there was before.

Keling said they had a choice — either invest or continue to struggle.

“You can’t cut your way to success,” he said. “You can only grow your way to success.”

Investments in people takes money. The college is spending money on staff with hopes it pays off in the future in the form of increased enrollment. Kelting said he spoke with the college trustees about this a lot last summer and he believes the board is on board.

The college needs a deep bench of teachers and employees in enrollment, student services and marketing, he said.

The college has six new faculty starting this fall, and has brought its financial aid and Title IX offices back in-house after outsourcing them last year, according to Kelting.

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Enrollment

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The college won’t have its actual enrollment numbers until a census on Sept. 7. Every year, some registered students don’t show up. Currently, though, Kelting said they have 403 registered returning students and 182 registered new students.

Last fall, 185 freshmen and transfer students were registered in the week before classes began, with around 600 students in total registered. The registration numbers currently are slightly lower than that, but students are accepted up until the first day of classes.

Kelting said every returning student who could register for fall classes did, which is a good sign that investing in student services led to a higher retention rate. He said they have incoming students from “more states than ever” in the continental U.S., as well as Alaska and Canada.

On Thursday, Kelting kept smiling as, every few seconds, he heard the welcoming committee cheering for freshmen arriving on campus to move into the dorms.

Kelting said they have a 10% increase in undergrad deposits from this time last year. He said other colleges are predicting double-digit decreases because of a federal financial aid debacle, which delayed forms usually seen in February until May. This led to many potential students taking a gap year this year, he said.

Kelting believes PSC’s increase is impressive with the financial aid difficulties and with the college having no active recruiting in the past year.

“We’ll have a full year of active recruiting for 2025, which we didn’t get to do for 2024,” he said.

The college has a goal of returning to having 1,000 students enrolled in five years, Kelting said. To reach that, he said they’ll need 300 new students a year — 100 more than are set to arrive this semester.

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Changes

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The college’s planned affiliation with Fedcap was being pitched as a saving grace for the college, but around a month before classes started last year, the two announced they were discontinuing their efforts to partner after conversations with the New York state Department of Education showed the state accreditors were requiring amendments to the acquisition plan that Fedcap would not make. Fedcap had already started to merge its resources with Paul Smith’s; the two had to then separate them.

Paul Smith’s and Fedcap had talked about collaborating in the future, but Kelting said the college has a lot of rebuilding to do on its own right now. The chief financial officer on loan from Fedcap was the the college’s last connection to the organization, and that position was brought back in house in December.

The college is now planning a new marketing campaign.

Not so much a rebrand, Kelting said — more like getting on brand. PSC already has a strong brand, but in 22 years at the college, he said they’ve always struggled to tell their story.

The psychology program PSC has offered since 2018 gets the most applications of any of the college’s programs, Kelting said — more than 100 each year. But it only nets three or four students per semester. He said nearly every college has a psychology program, so they needed to make theirs unique to Paul Smith’s. In the fall of 2025, the college will start offering an outdoor therapy bachelor’s degree.

Kelting said outdoor recreation is a mainstay program of the college but he feels that it has lost its identity. It is going to be renamed as outdoor adventure recreation. Kelting was surprised to learn that the college does not have an outing club, so it plans to start one up with a rental gear room.

Kelting said the culinary program had not been marketed for three years. The college started marketing it and got 12 students to enroll this semester.

He said the future for the program will have a focus on artisan cooking and specialties. In the past, he said the education was “a mile wide and an inch deep.”

He wants every academic program to be affiliated with an outward-facing institute. Kelting was formerly the executive director of the college’s Adirondack Watershed Institute. The college is starting an “Institute for Culinary Artisans and Adventure Hospitality.” Kelting said they are searching for someone to direct this institute. The institute will work with hotels and restaurants in Tri-Lakes and large cities, he said, partnering to provide internships and jobs.

Kelting said the college is creating a new scholarship program for North Country students. He said the college also plans to partner with Fort Drum, where 300 soldiers finish their duty each month and leave looking for work and degrees.

The tuition rate for full-time undergraduate students at Paul Smith’s College this year is set at $32,972. That is up from $32,048 last year — when the college frozen its tuition rate — and a return to the college’s average 3% annual increase.

The College Board nonprofit organization lists the national average tuition rate for private colleges at $41,540 for 2023-24. The U.S. News & World Report media company says the national average cost of tuition is $43,477.

The fall semester at Paul Smith’s College starts on Monday.