Jefferson Awards

The Jefferson Awards for Public Service recognize individuals for their public and volunteer service, and dedication to improving the quality of life in their communities.

Faculty, staff, and students can nominate any individual from the Pace University community. Self-nominations are also welcome. Nominations are typically due in October each year.

Online Nomination Form

The most up-to-date information about the application and nomination process can be found on the Jefferson Awards website.

Pace University is a Jefferson Awards Foundation Champion. Champions are organizations that partner with the Jefferson Awards Foundation to engage in meaningful public service and celebrate their communities with Jefferson Awards.

For more information, contact Heather Novak, Associate Director on our Pleasantville campus at hnovak@pace.edu, or Erin Mysogland on our New York City campus at emysogland@pace.edu.

2022-2023 Pace Bronze Medal Award winners

Julie Bazile

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Julie Bazile ‘23 is a Environmental Studies major on the Pleasantville campus who begins at Pace Law next year. Her freshman year she was recognized as the Alumni Hall representative advocating for over 150 students, an honor bestowed upon outstanding students who exhibit leadership qualities and exceptional service to the university community. She volunteered as an orientation leader, an Inspire tour leader, and a Faculty Assistant for Civic Engagement undergraduate teaching assistant during the summer of her freshman year, and was also briefly involved in the creation of Active Minds. Her most significant community service achievements include her voter engagement work for her on-campus position at the Center for Community Action and Research, where she has registered/ assisted over 100 students to vote. She devoted much of her time to working at the Pleasantville Mobile Food Market. She has also gone on to host workshops on social justice issues, voter engagement, and human rights issues. Julie is also an on-campus resident assistant, serving as a mentor and support system for her fellow students. Throughout her college career, Julie has continued to dedicate her time to various non-profit organizations. For three years, she has volunteered for Girl Be Heard, an NYC non-profit that empowers young women through theater and storytelling, the Sean Casey Animal Shelter, and Day One NYC, a Pace anti-violence community partner.

Julia Corrado

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Julia Corrado ‘23 is pursuing a combined Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies and Master of Arts in Environmental Policy and has been a student on both the New York City and Pleasantville campuses. Her interest in policy began as an undergraduate in Pace’s Environmental Policy Clinic where she lobbied environmental legislation at the state level. She returned to the Clinic as a Graduate Fellow to guide student work on invasive species policy. Julia has also worked with the Prospect Park Alliance to control invasive vegetation in the park, externed at the Hudson Valley office of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and recently helped Waterfront Alliance pass new legislation mandating flood disclosure for renters in New York. Her favorite experience at Pace was working as an Academic Mentor and Writing Tutor at Pace’s Learning Commons, helping first-year athletes navigate college and building bonds with members of the Pace community by helping them improve their writing skills. Julia currently works full-time as a Policy Analyst at the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery and hopes to continue to advance her career in public service and environmental policy post-graduation.

Samara Durgadin

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Samara Durgadin ‘25 is a Dyson College of Arts and Sciences student majoring in behavioral neuroscience with a minor in art on the New York City campus. In high school, she established 2 campus-wide initiatives: environment-friendly dining disposal options in the cafeterias and worm compost bins to support wildlife around the school. She also founded and hosted weekly “Good News Fridays” announcements about positive environmental news to an audience of 100-600 students & faculty to promote optimistic eco-friendly awareness. At Pace, she serves as vice president for Pace Circle K International, a nonprofit organization that focuses on service, leadership, and fellowship within the community. Outside of school, she is particularly passionate about serving the terminally ill community, volunteering in both the pediatric and geriatric hospice units every single week. During the school semester, she does volunteering for MJHS hospice; when she is home for break, she does volunteering for Delaware Hospice. Her role as a hospice volunteer is a lifelong commitment to which she is dedicated and she has gone the extra mile by taking on multiple patients at once in both geriatric and pediatric hospice care while advocating for their needs when observing neglect in facilities.

Tresmaine R. Grimes

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Tresmaine R. Grimes, PhD, is the Dean of the Dyson College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Education. With a passion for community service, she has been a tutor, mentor, and provided support to those in need. In 2004, she was part of a delegation of American mental health professionals who traveled to South Africa to exchange ideas and study the impact of apartheid-related trauma, sexual assault, and HIV/AIDS on the mental health of the South African population.

Dr. Grimes has established strong relationships with her students, and several of her psychology students have earned doctorates in psychology and related fields. This her contribution to increasing the number of ethnic minority psychologists and mental health professionals in the US.

In 2012, she established a not-for-profit organization that supports local groups assisting women recovering from domestic abuse. Through an annual conference, Dean Grimes raises funds to support agencies in New York that focus on domestic violence. The organization was recently recognized for its work with a $20,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson President's Grant Fund of the Princeton Area Community Foundation in December 2022. Past recipients of the nonprofit’s financial awards include My Sister's Place, Hope's Door, and The Hoving Home.

Danielle Harari

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Danielle Harari ‘25 is a Dyson College of Arts and Sciences student on the New York City campus, majoring in Criminal Justice and minoring in Peace and Justice Studies. She was one of 3,000 students across the globe (out of 35,000 applicants) awarded the prestigious UN Millennium Fellowship which empowers students to carry out social justice-related initiatives. Danielle’s project focused on period poverty, a global problem related to menstrual product accessibility. She hosted a discussion-based Social Justice Week event on this topic, aided in the creation of a menstrual product drive securing the donation of thousands of dollars of menstrual supplies, and partnered with people devoted to the initiative to create a QR code that will ensure constant access to menstrual products on campus in all bathrooms regardless of gender. Danielle remains committed to continuing to increase access to menstrual products in hopes of opening up opportunities for all who menstruate.

Nicholas Lotto

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Nicholas Lotto ’25 is an Accounting Major in the Lubin School of Business on the New York City campus. A U.S. Marine Veteran, he is known for his dedication to serving others. He currently holds the position of President of the Pace Chapter of Student Veterans of America, a nationally recognized non-profit organization whose mission is to act as a catalyst for student veteran success by providing resources, network support and advocacy to, through, and beyond higher education. Throughout his service in the Marine Corps and as a student, Nicholas has consistently pursued his goal of making a positive impact on others' lives. He has spent countless hours engaging in advocacy work to promote social justice, equity, and inclusion in all areas of public life, as well as serving unhoused folk, and animal shelters, food banks and much more. As a community leader and advocate, Nicholas has been able to effect positive change in various areas such as education, healthcare, and quality of life sustainability through his advocacy work. His unwavering commitment to service has earned him the Gold Presidential Volunteer Service Award.

Sharon Medow

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Sharon Medow is a senior lecturer in the School of Education, Childhood Program dedicated to teaching and service spanning a lifelong career as an educator and advocate for interdisciplinary project based learning. As a clinical faculty member, she collaborates and develops civic engagement and writing enhanced undergraduate courses. She serves as the faculty advisor for the Future Educators Association Chapter on the NY campus. She is also the faculty liaison for Pace High School and sponsors career exploration programs, campus visits and special projects. She has celebrated twenty-five years of service as the faculty counselor for Kappa Delta Pi, an international honor society in education, collating fund-raising initiatives for causes such as: Autism Speaks, Donors Choose and NYC Family Shelters. She was appointed as the education coordinator, collaborating with families from the Spruce Street and Peck Slip Public Elementary Schools for the Kubemas After School Program in the South Street Seaport, with funding from the Howard Hughes Corporation. Under her guidance a special project was created on climate change and weather patterns by students and was submitted to the United Nations Committee on Teaching and won a prestigious honor. She is also actively engaged in serving the School of Education, she presents at recruitment events and hosts prospective teacher education students in undergraduate classes. She presents at regional conferences such as the NYS Reading Association with colleagues sharing student projects and instructional methodologies. She is also a licensed professional auctioneer a.k.a. a Crier and has raised funds for the Peck Slip School, The United Way, and Pace University OASIS Program, auctioning original artwork by Dr. Temple Grandin, a prestigious professor, author, and advocate for autism awareness as well as animal science.

Ana-Laura Morales

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Ana-Laura Morales ‘26 is a Lubin School of Business student studying Quantitative Business Analytics with a minor in Computer Information Technology on the New York City campus. She serves as a Pace Votes Leader and a Kappa Delta sister. Through Kappa Delta, she works with the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, an organization committed to helping children get out of abusive households. As a Pace Votes Leader she is committed to educating students about their voting rights and getting people registered to vote in all elections. She started her high school’s Leukemia & Lymphoma Society chapter, where she raised over $224,000 in efforts to help fund research for blood cancers. She is also heavily involved with an organization called Diversify Our Narrative (DON) in her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. DON is an organization that is working towards implementing a more diverse catalog of literature and anti-racist pedagogy in schools across the nation. She started her DON chapter alongside other Tennessean students in the fall of 2020. She is no stranger to grassroots movements, back in Tennessee she helped start her county’s Black Lives Matter organization, where they held several protests and met with her county’s superintendent in order to make sure her school district was doing all they could to actively prevent and address racism. Working with community partners, she has helped develop spaces for support, with a focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and voting rights.

Wen Xi Piombino

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Wen Xi Piombino is the Assistant Director for Residential Life on the Pleasantville campus. She has been a part of the Pace campus community since 2018. Starting as a staff volunteer with the Pleasantville Mobile Food Mart, a community university partnership with Feeding Westchester, she took over operations of this all volunteer program in Fall of 2022. Since that time she established the permanent Pace Market food closet in Elm Hall and has expanded the Mobile Food Market to two days a month, serving over 100 attendees per month. In addition, she leads a committee on the university-wide Food Insecurity Taskforce, which brings together staff, faculty and students to address food insecurity across our campuses. In her professional role, she works to support the residential curriculum that over 40 resident assistants execute in the residence halls, manages the living-learning communities, First-year Interest Groups, and works to support other campus initiatives such as move-in, orientation, PaceBound, and various programming on campus. Outside of campus, Wen is involved in the field by serving on committees in higher education and publishes work that contributes to the field of higher education.

Tasfia Rahim

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Tasfia Rahim '23 is a NYC student in Dyson College Arts and Sciences studying Economics and Political Science who recognized the importance of local elections and strengthened her passion for civic engagement and advocacy. She worked as the Student Projects Coordinator at the Center for Community Action and Research, where she advocated for voter rights, immigration rights, and food security. Tasfia's dedication to fighting food insecurity led her to establish Fare Trade, which aims to alleviate food insecurity through mutual aid by providing financial support for self-identified food-insecure students during academic finals season. Tasfia is also a United Nations Millennium Fellowship alum, having completed the prestigious fellowship program in recognition of her outstanding leadership and dedication to creating positive change in her community. Tasfia has been instrumental in expanding the impact of Fare Trade at Pace University by ensuring that it was placed under the Office of the Dean for Students Department, creating a paid position for social advocates who are passionate about fighting food insecurity. Before graduating, Tasfia is expanding Fare Trade to the Pleasantville campus in the fall of 2023, demonstrating her commitment to making an even greater impact in the fight against food insecurity. She strives to inspire many to get involved in creating positive change in their communities.

PV Viswanath

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PV Viswanath, PhD., is a Professor of Finance in the Lubin School of Business on the New York campus. He has been engaged in service activities throughout his life, starting with college in India, where he worked in orphanages, in rural development, and in refugee camps. In his religious community, he has served on his synagogue’s Board of Directors. He has written many articles to highlight the diversity of the Jewish community and to create sensitivity to issues of equity and racism. At Pace, he is active in the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement, the anti-racist education taskforce, and has served as part of the year long Civic Engagement Task Force subcommittee which inventoried supports and operations of Civic Engagement and Public Value courses across the campuses. He created the first Finance and Society course at Pace, which looks at the intersections of finance and history, religion, ethics, public policy, political economy, and its use in different forms of oppression. He has directed students in various civic engagement projects including the use of flexible capital for equitable communities, interest-free loan societies and financial literacy and teaches Civic Engagement and Public Value courses. He has strived throughout his tenure at Pace for interreligious understanding.

Alexander Weiss

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Alexander Weiss ‘23 is a graduate student in the School of Education five-year combined degree program with a literacy specialist track on the Pleasantville campus. He served as Service Vice President (SVP) and President of Gamma Sigma Sigma, a national service sorority. As an active member of Gamma Sigma Sigma, Alexander completed 20 hours of community service each semester, working with organizations such as Operation Gratitude, Gigi’s Playhouse, the Ronald McDonald House, and many more. He was also a member of the National Residence Hall Honorary (NRHH), a community service organization on campus, fulfilling the role of administrative coordinator. With this organization, Alexander volunteered on campus and participated in events like midnight breakfast and the campus holiday party. Lastly, now as he completes his final semester of student teaching, as a part of his program, Alexander, once a week, volunteers after school to tutor and work with middle school students during extra help on Thursdays with English Language Arts (ELA).