Time to dance! Congratulations to our Pace University men’s and women’s basketball programs for their selections to their respective NCAA tournament fields! It is the first time both teams have made the national tournament together since 2007.

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The No. 7 seed Pace women's team will be playing against No. 2 seed Chestnut Hill in the NCAA Division II Women’s Basketball East Regional on Friday, March 11 at 2:30 p.m. ET. The semifinals will take place on Saturday, March 12 with the Regional Final on Monday, March 14 at host-school Southern New Hampshire University. The Blue and Gold were rightfully rewarded after recently completing one of the best seasons in program history. Pace's 14-5 conference record earned the Setters a share of their first-ever NE10 regular-season championship. Head Coach Carrie Seymour has now led Pace to 11 NCAA Tournaments during her remarkable career in Pleasantville. Earlier this season, she became just the 17th active head coach to eclipse 500 career wins.

Follow the Pace women’s basketball team’s run in their first NCAA tournament appearance since 2012!

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The Pace University men’s basketball team won their first outright NE10 Southwest Division regular-season championship title in February. On Sunday, the Setters were announced as the No. 5 seed in the NCAA Division II Men’s Basketball East Regional and will play against No. 4 seed Dominican in the first round on Saturday, March 12 at 7:30 p.m. The Setters' success has been based on tremendous defense and a balanced attack. Pace ranked in the top-four of the NE10 in scoring defense, blocks, and steals this season. Coach Healing's squad put together an 18-8 regular-season record (14-5, NE10) before advancing to the Northeast-10 Conference semifinals for the first time since 2007.

Follow the Pace men’s basketball team’s run in their first NCAA tournament appearance since 2007!

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The Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University is proud to announce that Dean Horace E. Anderson Jr. was named to the “2022 Law Power 100” list published by City & State New York magazine. The list recognizes “New York legal professionals who aren’t simply influential in their field, but powerful in New York’s governmental landscape.” Dean Anderson was ranked #88 on the prestigious list, which includes district attorneys, federal prosecutors, white-collar defense attorneys, public interest lawyers and others who have shaped New York politics and government.

Horace E. Anderson Jr. is the ninth dean of the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, appointed in December 2019. Prior to this appointment, Dean Anderson had been serving as Haub Law’s interim dean. Of Dean Anderson, the publication notes that, “In his two years as dean, Horace Anderson Jr. has focused on strengthening its offering of legal programs, including initiatives like the launch of the Pace Access to Justice Project and the Haub Sustainable Business Law Hub. Anderson also led the expansion of Pace’s part-time law degree program to include evening and weekend options. He has been a faculty member at Pace since 2004, with expertise in intellectual property, internet privacy and communications law.”

Also included on “The 2022 Law Power 100” list is Mimi Rocah, Westchester County District Attorney. Listed at #16, Mimi Rocah previously served as the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University Distinguished Criminal Justice Fellow. City & State states, “The Trump Organization already faces legal scrutiny from the Manhattan district attorney and the state attorney general’s office. Last year, Westchester County District Attorney Mimi Rocah joined the list of New York prosecutors eying the former president’s family business practices. Rocah aso made national headlines in January when she reported that law enforcement officials “missed opportunities” when investigating multimillionaire Robert Durst regarding the disappearance of his first wife in 1982.”

View the full City & State 2022 Law Power 100 List

It is easy being green.

I mean no disrespect to Kermit the Frog, but it’s been a real pleasure to watch the three Pace University campuses move back to the Green COVID-19 Alert Level. And it’s been even better to see how well our community is responding to the change. When I’ve walked around our campuses this week, I’d like to think I’ve seen a little bit more joy, a little bit more freedom, and a little bit of pride that we’ve kept our community so safe and strong over the past 24 months.

What impresses me most is that I see a community that is still being careful. As you know, we’ve made Pace a “mask-friendly” environment. We continue to require masks in certain places—in classrooms during classes, on elevators, in healthcare settings—and we welcome them, even encourage them, in other places, especially crowded ones. Across Pace, I’ve seen diligent students, faculty, and staff responsibly continuing to wear masks as they walk down hallways or gather in lounges. It’s not required any longer, but the people of Pace know how to be responsible, how to take care of themselves, and perhaps most important how to look out for each other.

Now that we’re returned to normal capacities and more normal events, I’m looking forward to being out and about on our campuses. This week I’ll attend Haub Law’s annual Law Leadership Dinner, our first fully in-person event for alumni and friends in more than two years. I want to get back to all those in-person student activities I’ve missed—the celebrations and awards ceremonies and Midnight Breakfasts. As we ramp up Employee Recognition Month, which started on Friday, I want to get back to the in-person meetings and councils and recognition ceremonies. And perhaps most of all, I’m looking forward to Commencement 2022, our first in-person graduation celebration in three year. I’m excited for our big day, with thousands of graduates, family, friends, faculty, and staff, all gathered at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.

Finally, I can’t speak of all this good news without acknowledging a horrible loss. Since I last wrote to you in Pace Now, Pleasantville sophomore Jordan Robinson passed away. I didn’t know Jordan, but everything I hear about him breaks my heart further. Jordan was a remarkable young man, kind and giving, who could light up a room. The outpouring of love for him on our Pleasantville Campus was both inspiring and a real tribute to the person he was.

Jordan was a believer in paying kindness forward. As we move forward, let us keep Jordan in our hearts, and let us use him as an inspiration to continue making the world a better place.

We often think of trash as something physical; we put garbage in a bin, that bin gets collected, and the cycle continues. When it comes to large-scale environmental problems, we might think of oil spills, reef decimation, or hazardous agricultural practices. In 2022 however, there is another, increasingly relevant type of trash that is accumulating by the nanosecond.

"There's a lot of invisible things about technology,” says Dyson Art Professor Will Pappenheimer, a pioneer in the use of augmented reality (AR) as an artistic medium. “We are calling attention to the idea that digital trash is not completely without cost."

This reality—that the files stored on our computers and servers aren’t entirely without environmental impact—was the idea behind Digital Trash, an exhibit recently showcased at the Pace Art Gallery. The exhibit was conceived and created by students in Pappenheimer’s ART 288 Mobile Media course, a class that requires students to imagine New York City a canvas and their phones as a window into a new dimension.

Yet, this was no ordinary exhibit. To demonstrate that digital trash is not entirely dissimilar to an empty McDonalds wrapper, or an empty plastic cup strewn about the sidewalk, the class created a virtual “trash heap” in front of One Pace Plaza as part of the exhibit, which could be viewed through one’s smartphone via AR.

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Through Pappenheimer’s encouragement and technical expertise in the realm of AR, students in the class were able provide creative commentary on this real-world issue, in a way that arguably very much fits the subject matter at hand.

“I enjoyed collaborating with Professor Pappenheimer and our class as we experienced the excitement and challenges of AR together,” said Czarina Manipon ’22. “Creating a space limited to digital screens but offering greater imaginative potential presented a unique blending of artistic design with technical experimentation.”

“It really opened a new insight into digital art and AR capabilities for me,” added Thai Van Nguyen ’22. “It was different in the sense that I was still creating art, but I was sourcing it from online and trying to understand virtual space.”

The idea of digital trash, although perhaps not firmly in the mainstream, is likely only to grow in size and importance in the coming years. In 2020, it was estimated that each human creates about 1.7 MB in data per second, a number that will likely only grow with our increasing reliance on the digital realm. And as our files and file sizes grow, the energy that it takes to power all of this data—often supplied by large server farms consisting of thousands of computers—will also increase.

“I hope the concept of digital trash will gain more visibility within the Pace Community and beyond because of its potential as a conversation starter."

“We’re generating an enormous amount of digital files. We don’t really think about it, and we tend to think of digital trash as costing very little. But then a lot of people aren’t aware of these server farms, which are keeping this information and are constantly using up energy,” explains Pappenheimer. “The more files each person creates the more energy it takes.”

Pappenheimer also noted that while the Digital Trash exhibit doesn’t explicitly comment on emerging technologies like cryptocurrency and NFTs that the project can also reverberate in these areas. Bitcoin, for example, requires a considerable amount of energy in order to function effectively.

As businesses place increasing importance on Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG), being more aware of the complications and environmental implications surrounding digital waste will likely only help Pace students be more prepared to tackle the ever-complex challenges of the future. The emerging phenomenon known as the metaverse, for example, will likely raise fascinating questions and solutions surrounding the ways the future might be powered.

By being challenged to express the evolving problem of digital waste in an innovative fashion, students like Nguyen and Manipon have been starting a dialogue in the Pace Community in a way that would certainly not have existed without this exhibit.

“There are so many clouds holding data, music, emails, anything, and everything but that doesn't mean there is infinite space,” said Nguyen. “There is still the energy source that powers the Cloud which has just as much contribution to the power running our planet. So, every decision we make is factored into Earth's life span, and it is important to be aware of that.”

“I hope the concept of digital trash will gain more visibility within the Pace Community and beyond because of its potential as a conversation starter,” added Manipon. “Themes such as the power of AR as a rising media, awareness of how we utilize digital space, or simply taking in the oddity of it, could each start engaging conversations between viewers just as it was for us putting it together.”