The school was founded largely through the efforts of Albert Ammerman who was the College's President from its founding in December 1959 until 1983. In its first year it had 13 faculty with 171 full-time students at the Sachem High School in Ronkonkoma and 335 part-time students at Riverhead High School until what is now called the Ammerman campus opened in 1962 in the former Suffolk County Tuberculosis Sanatorium (originally built in 1912). By 1977 it had opened a campus in Riverhead and one on the edge of the Pilgrim Psychiatric Center in Brentwood.