“The campus itself is in a state of disrepair. If it was in private hands, we’d consider them to be slumlords.”

That was a statement made in February 2023 by New York State Assemblyman Fred Thiele on CBS New York, when the station ran a story criticizing Stony Brook University for alleged mishandling and neglect of its satellite campus in Southampton, N.Y.

Two months later, The Statesman published an article investigating several of Thiele’s claims that highlighted issues with the campus, such as facilities, student life and employee recruitment at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. Now — a year and a half later — the state of the Southampton Campus largely appears to be trending in the opposite direction.

In October of 2023, Stony Brook announced the appointment of Vice President of Strategic Initiatives and Executive Director of Stony Brook Southampton, Wendy Pearson — amending one of Thiele’s original critiques: Without a defined leader, Stony Brook Southampton would continue to degrade.

Pearson was the first person to lead the Southampton campus since Matt Whelan, who departed from Stony Brook in 2020 and became the president of Caldwell University in New Jersey.

Thiele said that simply having someone in charge of the campus had already made him feel much more optimistic about Southampton’s future.

“[Pearson] has been an outstanding hire,” he told The Statesman. “She’s really jumped into the issues at Southampton, reached out into the community and has really aggressively pursued the idea of creating a plan for the future use of the campus.”

Thiele also mentioned the creation of a Southampton Campus advisory board as a significant step, which meets monthly and contains representatives from local governments, businesses and other community stakeholders and provides input to University leadership about how to best move forward with the campus.

For Pearson, improving facilities at the Southampton campus was her priority upon joining Stony Brook. In The Statesman’s 2023 article on the Southampton campus, it was noted that 18 different buildings were condemned, including Southampton Hall, a large building that had long served as the campus’s historic centerpiece.

“My first priority, really, was on facilities,” Pearson said in an interview. “When I joined Stony Brook, I had William Herrmann, the vice president for Facilities and Services, give me a tour, show me the behind-the-scenes behind the condemned buildings and my focus really was on those buildings.”

Soon after, though, she said she began to further appreciate the strengths of the campus after establishing an office at the campus and beginning to work regularly from there.

“Then, I started to see the other side of that campus and how beautiful it is,” Pearson said. “It’s a beautiful campus, and what’s interesting is that a lot of the faculty and staff have been a part of that campus since it was owned by [Long Island University]. They are there because they want to be there, and it’s easy to see why they stay.”

As for the next steps, Pearson said a major objective was making the campus more aligned with the needs of the local community on the East End. She explained that while the campus might have programs that align with Stony Brook’s strengths, the main purpose of any regional campus should be to serve the needs of the particular community it is located in — not solely act as an extension of the main university campus.

A large part of that goal is to reestablish bachelor’s degree programs on the campus that were removed by former Stony Brook President Samuel L. Stanley Jr. There are challenges, however. Bachelor’s degree programs are expensive to run, and Pearson noted that it is likely that the only way it would be feasible would be to collaborate with Suffolk County Community College — particularly its campus in Riverhead.

“We’re working with them to see to what extent we can do a [Bachelor of Science in] health sciences as two plus two joint admissions, [with programs in] health sciences, marine biology and areas we can open up a pathway for students to get their bachelors degree,” Pearson said.

However, these programs will take time to get off the ground, and Pearson said that it made the most sense to only offer three or four of those programs in order to make sure that all of them can be properly supported and sustained.

Graduate programs are seeing a new lifeline on the campus as well. One promising offering is a bilingual Master of Social Work program that Stony Brook is currently working on developing in partnership with Organización Latino Americana of Eastern Long Island, a Latino advocacy group. Pearson also floated the possibility of a program that would have middle and high school students attend the campus and receive instruction.

Despite these strides, there are still challenges on the campus. Dining, for example, continues to be a sore spot.

In an interview in October 2024, Stony Brook University Interim President Richard McCormick told The Statesman that “there was a long stretch of time this summer when the only food available for purchase on the Southampton campus was vending machines.”

McCormick also said in that same interview that he was “very committed to addressing the problems with the Southampton campus” and that other priorities include replacing the aging Stony Brook Southampton Hospital with new facilities. Those plans are currently in the fundraising stage.

For Thiele, the new developments are positive — albeit with reservations.

“These are first steps,” he said. “And they are all positive first steps, but we have a long way to go.”