The College of New Rochelle was a private Catholic college with its main campus in New Rochelle, New York. It was founded as the College of St. Angela by the Ursuline Order as the first Catholic women's college in New York in 1904, when women were generally excluded from higher education. The name was changed to the College of New Rochelle in 1910. The college was composed of four schools and became co-educational in 2016. In early 2019, Mercy College and College of New Rochelle announced that College of New Rochelle would be absorbed into Mercy College before fall 2019, including College of New Rochelle's students, faculty, programs, and some facilities, as well as transcripts, history, and legacy of CNR alumni. Mercy College became the repository of CNR documents. On September 20, 2019, the college declared bankruptcy due to $80 million in liabilities. The campus was subsequently sold in an auction and purchased by Freemasons for $32 million.
On February 22, 2019, the college announced its intention to close at the end of summer 2019. The college under President Judith Huntington had failed to pay federal payroll taxes and owed the IRS an estimated $20 million. Following that discovery, the college fired faculty and staff, resulting in a lawsuit from dismissed tenured faculty. A New York State judge ruled that those dismissals were improper. On March 28, 2019, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission charged Keith Borge, the former controller of the college, with "defrauding municipal securities investors by fraudulently concealing the college's deteriorating finances." The U.S. Attorney's Office also brought criminal charges against Borge, who pleaded guilty. The SEC did not file charges against the college because it cooperated with the investigation. Later that same year, in September, the college declared bankruptcy as it had $80 million in liabilities. The campus and related materials were sold at auction and purchased by Freemasons for $32 million.
Campus
The main campus was located in New Rochelle, a Westchester County, New York, city about north of Manhattan. In 1896, the college's founder, Mother Irene Gill, traveled to New Rochelle to explore the possibility of establishing a seminary there for young women. During this trip, she came across Leland Castle, an 1850s gothic revival structure and former vacation home of wealthy New York hotelier Simeon Leland. The castle was purchased in 1897 and became the first structure of the college. It has since been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The castle is part of the campus quadrangle and housed the "Castle Gallery". The campus consisted of 20 main buildings, including a $28M athletic, recreational, and educational complex called the Wellness Center, which featured an NCAA competition-sized swimming pool, basketball court, fitness center, indoor running track, yoga studio, roof garden and meditation garden, and volleyball court; it also had the Mooney Center with computer and photography labs, and TV production studio; the 200,000-volume Mother Irene Gill Memorial Library; the Student Campus Center; the Rogick Life Sciences Building with many laboratories; four residence halls; and the Learning Resource Center for Nursing.
Notable alumni
The College of New Rochelle's alumni were integrated into Mercy College's alumni community in 2019.
Madeleine Blais, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author
