State University of New York at Fredonia President Stephen Kolison took part in the Saturday commencement ceremonies. Photo by Lori Deemer/SUNY Fredonia

SUNY Fredonia President Stephen Kolison was optimistic about the campus deficit during his final College Council report of the 2024-25 school year.

Kolison opened his report by praising New York state for boosting SUNY funding by $400 million over the next three years. He said campuses in the state university system will get an additional $114 million for 2025-26 — and $100 million of that is going to offset the cost of contractually negotiated raises.

“Other states are going backwards in funding higher ed. New York State, we have a lot to be happy about,” Kolison said.

He went on to tout his administration’s work on cutting the campus deficit, which edged past $17 million a couple years ago but is going down.

“We worked very hard, took a whole year to put together a plan that SUNY would approve.” Kolison said. “We do have approval for that plan and that’s the plan we’re going to use for the next three years.”

Kolison said the SUNY system freed up an extra $1.2 million for SUNY Fredonia when its deficit plan was approved. He plans to eliminate the deficit by the 2027-28 school year. “We have three years to work very hard to do this, and I think we can do this.”

Kolison recognizes that the campus must boost its enrollment numbers if it wants to achieve fiscal stability. Speaking later on about commencement, he half-jokingly commented: “I’m looking at Kathryn (Kendall, SUNY Fredonia vice president for enrollment management) with crossed eye and thinking, ‘That’s about 700 students leaving. Can we get at least 800 students to join us?’ ”

In her own College Council report, Kendall said the campus has received 646 deposits from first year full time students to attend classes in 2025-26. At the same time last year, 595 first year full time students had deposited for 2024-25.

Additionally, there are 88 transfer students, up from 79 last spring. The 66 graduate students declared for 2025-26 is “about on par” with last year, Kendall said.

“These numbers are very encouraging,” she said. “I would like to see us above 700 (first year full time students) by midsummer. That would make me very, very happy.”

Kendall went on to call the retention of existing students “very, very strong.”

College Council President Frank Pagano said as the meeting ended, “We’re happy that enrollment seems to be going up, retention is going up, the deficit is going down. So we’re headed in the right direction. I see a lot of favorable things happening at Fredonia in the next year or so.”