It's described as a win-win, as Saint Bonaventure rents rooms to the Olean campus of Jamestown Community College, allowing that school to offer a dorm experience to its students and Bona may wind up with some of those students for their third and fourth-years of college.
The two schools are about three miles apart in the Southern Tier community and some JCC students already take some classes at Bona. The main JCC campus in Jamestown has 340-dorm beds, so the school is familiar with the topic. The university has blocked 38 beds in Doyle Hall for potential use by JCC.
Bona V.P. for Student Affairs Rick Trietley says this all grew out of a similar deal between Canisius and Buff State.
"Yeah, the light bulb just kind of went on that maybe we should look at this," Trietley said.
"Down here in Olean, New York, the J-C-C campus in Olean, they don't offer any residence halls for their students. So, it just became a pretty strong idea in our minds of something we wanted to pursue."
The deal means the community college can offer dorm life on a busy residential campus and the university picks up some bucks. Bona will charge the same $5600 dollar room rate and offer the JCC students the ability to buy a meal plan and gym use.
John Sayegh is JCC V.P. for the Olean Campus as well as continuing education and external partnerships. Sayegh says his campus benefits.
"With the partnership to house our students, basically it will be good for JCC and hopefully these will be SBU's future students as they transfer from our community college to Saint Bonaventure University."
Since Bonaventure is one of many northeastern universities dealing with the shrinking population of high school students, having potential transfers living on campus offers a new talent pool for admission.
