established.
When the State University of New York was established by legislative act in 1948, the Teachers College at New Paltz was one of 30 colleges associated under SUNY's umbrella. An art education program was added in 1951. The school experienced another name change in 1959, becoming the State University College of Education at New Paltz. One year later, in 1960, the college was authorized to confer liberal arts degrees. Just one year after that, in 1961, the school updated its name yet again, to the State University of New York College of Arts and Science at New Paltz.
The college's general education program (including then-vanguard introductory surveys of African and Asian cultures) was eliminated in 1971; a distribution requirement was re-instituted in 1993. A program in African American studies was established in 1968. Three years later, the experimental studies program (reorganized as the innovative studies program in 1975) began. It encompassed then-unusual disciplines including video art (under …