Staff

Faculty and Staff members at Pforzheimer Honors College

Dr. Ida Dupont: Director of the Pforzheimer Honors College, NYC Campus and Associate Professor- Sociology

Pace University, NY

Dr. Ida Dupont is an Associate Professor in the Sociology/Anthropology Department. She earned her PhD in Criminal Justice from the Graduate Center at C.U.N.Y. At Pace, she has been actively engaged at all levels of university life. She is a member of many college and university-wide committees including the Dyson Tenure and Promotion committee and serves as the co-chair of the New York Faculty Council Curriculum Committee. She helped establish the Peace and Justice Studies minor on the New York campus. For the third year in a row, Dr. Dupont has acted as the faculty advisor of one of the Dyson Houses (a student retention effort for first-year Dyson students). Her research interests include dating violence; violence against women; and stigma related to non-normative reproductive choices.
Before coming to Pace, she was the Director of the Women in Prison Project at the New York Correctional Association of NY where she advocated on behalf of women prisoners and monitored prison conditions throughout New York State. Dr. Dupont also has several years of experience working in court-mandated programs with people convicted of domestic violence and facilitated violence-prevention programs for teens in New York City schools for STEPS to End Family Violence.

Dr. William Offutt: Professor of History and Faculty Advisor of the Pforzheimer Honors College

Pace University, NY

Bill Offutt was born in Washington DC, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University as a History major in 1976, and then graduated from Stanford Law School in 1979. Despite passing the California Bar, he decided not to practice law but rather went to graduate school at Johns Hopkins University in early American history, where he received a Ph.D. in 1987. After three years of academic apprenticeships, with one year at Pacific Lutheran University and two at Baylor University, he came to Pace as an Assistant Professor in 1990. His book, Of Good Laws and Good Men: Law and Society in the Delaware Valley 1680-1710, was published in 1995 and helped him get tenured and promoted. Since that book came out, his research turned to colonial and revolutionary New York; that focus led into his second book, Patriots, Loyalists and Revolution in New York City 1775-1776. This book is used as part of a simulation game in the “Reacting to the Past” series sponsored by Barnard and has been adopted by dozens of colleges and universities in the US and around the world, including Egypt and Australia. In 2001, he became Director of Pace’s Honors Program for New York City, which in Fall 2003 became the Pforzheimer Honors College. In 2007, he became Faculty Advisor for Honors under then Director Chris Malone, and he has continued in that role under Director Ida Dupont. He is also Executive Assistant to the Dean for Arts and Sciences, coordinator for the Dyson Houses project. His fall weekends are spent living and dying with the football fortunes of Stanford and the Washington Redskins.