Remember Justin O'Neill? Justin is a student-athlete majoring in Computer Science at Pace University’s Seidenberg School. When we last spoke, Justin was finishing up his junior year and preparing for a summer internship at Staples. I recently caught up with Justin to hear about his internship experience which, in short, was phenomenal. Keep reading to learn more about Justin’s journey at Staples which (spoiler alert) is still unfolding…

Justin’s internship began on a positive note. He, alongside 40–50 other student interns, attended orientation at which they learned about Staples and about what to expect as an intern. Leaders from across the company shared information about its structure as well as key components of its culture. “Hearing from leadership about Staples’ goals and values really set the tone for the summer,” notes Justin. “And understanding more about the operational infrastructure was great context for me to have getting started.”

Justin was assigned to the Global Notification Platform Team which oversees communication related to all eCommerce transactions made on the company’s domain. As the only intern working with this small team, Justin was asked to contribute to a wide variety of projects with far-reaching and immediate impact. At times, he was surprised by the amount of opportunity he was given. “I had the perception that, as an intern, I would be assigned to less challenging tasks,” notes Justin. “Instead, I was given the opportunity to work on interesting and impactful projects.” Through working on such projects, Justin gained an awareness of the full lifecycle of his team’s process, including product initiation, development, testing, demoing, and going live.

Justin was also given his own project in which he was asked to engineer a solution to streamline a time-consuming process managed by the Staples Support Team. He met with the Support Team to learn about their needs and goals. From there, he built a system to address their pain points and create efficiency in the process. “It was really empowering to manage the project and make key decisions,” shares Justin. “I learned so much about collaboration, communication and creative thinking in this process.” Justin leveraged many of the skills he’s learned at Seidenberg to accomplish the project.

During his last week at Staples, Justin was given the chance to share his internship experience with Staples staff, members of senior leadership and other interns. He discussed the team he worked on, the skills he learned and was able to share a bit about himself. That this opportunity to reflect was part of his, as well as every student’s internship journey, was further evidence of a theme that was made clear to Justin all along – Staples’ deep investment in the intern experience. “I noticed this on day one with how comprehensive orientation was,” shares Justin. “And throughout the summer, there were many events organized to prepare students for the future.” Some of these activities included career readiness and resume building workshops as well as sessions focused on interview tactics and financial literacy. “All of these offerings, in addition to the incredible opportunities I was afforded through my team, made the internship an extraordinary experience!”

And Justin’s story at Staples continues.

At the end of the summer, he was asked to meet with a senior manager to interview for the company’s Rotational Program, wherein new hires are part of a 2-year program consisting of four 6-month rotations on different teams after which the individual can choose their path. Soon after the interview, Justin learned that he was selected for the Program, which will begin after he graduates. “I’m relieved to have a job lined up for when I graduate, as I know how challenging it can be to find work,” shares Justin, who is also incredibly happy to be returning to Staples. “I am thrilled to say the least!”

We, too, are thrilled and are excited to see what the future holds for Justin, in his senior year and beyond.

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Lily Lockwood

Class of 2026

Peace and Justice Studies, BA
Women’s and Gender Studies, BA

How did you become interested in pursuing a double major in Peace and Justice Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies?

I entered Pace as an undecided major because I wasn’t exactly sure what path I wanted to pursue. During my spring semester, I added a Peace and Justice Studies (PJS) course, The Artist as Activist and Activist as Artist, with Emily Welty, PhD, to my schedule because I wanted to get a taste of the major. Over the course of the semester, I fell more in love with PJS and knew I would be declaring it as a major.

Around the same time, I became interested in pursuing a Critical Race and Ethnicity Studies minor to complement the PJS curriculum. At the start of my second year, I had taken so many Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) courses, met professors I wanted to continue studying with, and found courses I still wanted to take. So, it seemed only natural to add it as a double major. Like the year before, I decided to declare a Queer Studies minor to complement the WGS coursework. Every time I return to a PJS or WGS classroom, I am reminded of just how much I love studying both subjects.

Why did you choose to attend Pace?

I chose Pace because the first time I visited the New York City campus, I felt more welcomed and excited about going to college than on any other college tour I attended. Having been here for a couple of years now, I think a big part of that immediate sense of comfort is due to the strong queer, femme, and activist presence that I feel on campus, particularly within my majors. Pace also offered me the largest scholarship of the schools I applied to, which definitely made my decision even easier.

What have your experiences been like with the departments of your major? What faculty members have been instrumental in your academic journey?

I am so incredibly grateful for the connections I’ve made with my professors over the past few years, and many of them have been very instrumental during my time at Pace.

Professor Welty has been the most influential professor I’ve had the privilege to learn from and work with; not only is she an incredibly fascinating person with a wealth of knowledge and experience, her teaching and my learning style are very compatible, particularly due to her attention to pedagogy. She has also put deliberate effort and care into building a relationship and connection with me as a person, student, and activist.

“I chose Pace because the first time I visited the New York City campus, I felt more welcomed and excited about going to college than on any other college tour I attended. I think a big part of that immediate sense of comfort is due to the strong queer, femme, and activist presence that I feel on campus, particularly within my majors.”

In addition, Professor Emily Bent, PhD, co-director of the Dyson Women’s Leadership Initiative (WLI), of which I am a fellow, is someone I’ve gotten to know both in classes, and as an advisor to the work I am doing with the WLI. Her feminist work in the nonprofit sector and at the United Nations has provided me opportunities to engage with those environments. For example, as a part of my Gender and Human Rights class, I attended the 67th annual Commission on the Status of Women, a two-week conference at the UN, in which I participated in both general assembly and civil society events.

Further, Professor and Chair of Women’s and Gender Studies Meghana Nayak, PhD, offered to be a resource to me from the very beginning as I was exploring majors, and her support and friendliness throughout the years has made my student experience all the easier.

In spring 2024, you participated in the Bread and Puppet Theater workshop at Judson Memorial Church. Tell us more about how meaningful this event was to you.

I believe that the Bread and Puppet workshop on cantastorias will have real life applications in my current and future organizing. I’ve already included the method in a protest plan and intend to use it more widely, particularly to share the medium with new audiences. The workshop also encouraged community building within the major and provided us an opportunity to learn from experts at the top of their field. The workshop truly reignited a flame within me for organizing and protest, particularly because of how fun and engaging the experience was. The paper itself recounted the workshop setting and experience and included feedback from its participants.

What other activities and organizations are you involved with at Pace?

When I first came to Pace, I knew I wanted to become involved in a race-based affinity space, which led me to the Office of Multicultural Affairs (ōMA), its Shades: Women of Color Collective, and Denise Belén Santiago, PhD, ōMA’s director and a professor of anthropology. I have worked with her in the Anti-Racist Advocates program, which has allowed me to attend the Critical Race Theory Bootcamp hosted by the African American Policy Forum the past two summers, as well as work on a number of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) initiatives at Pace.

In addition, during fall 2023, I was selected to be one of 30 Pace students participating in the United Nations Academic Impact Millennium Fellowship. As this fellowship requires you to be a part of an on-campus cohort, it was an amazing opportunity to connect with other passionate Pace students and work towards making a social impact with our projects.

I also work as a student assistant for central advisement and New Student Experience and Transitions, as I was immediately drawn to the infectious energy, positivity, and groundedness of the director of the Advising Center for Exploring Majors, Shannon Haick, who asked me if I’d be interested in working in that office, and I continue to work the front desk there. I am also a peer leader for UNV 101.

What would you like to do upon graduation/what are your career goals?

I would like to pursue a career in the peace and justice studies field. One path I’ve considered is community organizing because this is what I have the most experience doing and I like working outside of the confines of the state and its institutions, rather than trying to change the system from within. I also have a particular interest in making diverse and inclusive curriculum and education accessible to all communities. An alternative path that has sparked my interest is truth-telling and reconciliation work. The power of communication and community that are central to the truth-telling process resonate deeply with me and I think it would be very powerful to be able to facilitate a reconciliatory space.

What advice would you like to give to our current students?

The transition to college is just that, a transition, and I think it is important to treat it as such. You have so many opportunities available to you, whether at Pace or in the city and surroundings. Keep an open mind and explore everything. While you have all this newfound freedom, it also comes with the responsibility to take care of yourself. There are many supports available to you, but it is up to you to seek them out and get what you need. You may not need the same things you needed when you were in high school, so give yourself the grace to find what works for you now.

Who is going to address the Class of 2025? You tell us! The annual speaker and honorary degree recipient nomination process has opened so be sure to submit your nomination no later than Friday, October 25.

Nominees may be asked to speak at the main ceremony, to speak at a school or college ceremony, or to be honored without giving a speech. Each selected honoree will be awarded an honorary doctorate, the highest form of recognition Pace University can bestow upon an individual.

We are looking for honorees who exemplify the Pace Community’s values and aspirations, will confer distinction upon the University, and will help enliven and enrich Commencement day.

As you make your nomination, please prioritize potential speakers who will resonate with our graduates and whose personal stories or passions reflect Pace’s mission of Opportunitas.

Ambitious nominations are great; the people of Pace are go-getters, and we will pursue all appropriate nominations. At the same time, please remember we have been most successful with nominees who have a personal or professional connection to Pace, for whom Pace is reflective of causes they advocate, or whose own story reflects Pace’s mission. We also have most luck with nominees who are based near New York City or will have a reason to be here around Commencement.

Nominations will be reviewed by the Commencement Speaker Advisory Committee, co-chaired by Jeff Barnett, PhD, Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean for Students, and Joe Sgammato, Director of Executive Communications. The committee includes representatives from our student body, staff, and faculty.

Read President Krislov's September 20 message to the community regarding Commencement 2025 and stay tuned to the Commencement website for more details as we move closer to the big day.

The Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University had the honor of hosting Professor Amanda Kennedy for a series of lectures and presentations. Professor Kennedy is a Professor of Law at Queensland University of Technology in Australia and Deputy Head of School at the School of Law. Professor Kennedy’s research interests fall predominantly within the area of agri-environmental law, and include natural resources and land use law, environmental justice and energy governance.

During her time at Haub Law, Professor Kennedy delivered a lecture on “Sustainable Development in International Environmental Law.” In this lecture, Professor Kennedy emphasized the vital role of law in achieving a just and sustainable future, advocating for equitable legal frameworks that promote sustainable resource use while safeguarding vulnerable communities.

Professor Kennedy also presented in Haub Law Professor Bridget Crawford’s tax law class where she spoke on taxation reform for the environment. This lecture highlighted the crucial intersection of tax law and environmental law, emphasizing how tax policy serves as a powerful tool to incentivize behavior change and address problems such as global emissions. She discussed Australia's carbon tax experience to illustrate the potential and challenges of using tax mechanisms to drive environmental progress.

A special faculty workshop also was held where Professor Kennedy presented on QUT’s experience with “Embedding Sustainability within the Legal Curriculum.” In addition to the various discussions and lectures, Professor Kennedy spent time engaging with the Haub Law community – faculty, staff, and students – and thought sharing.

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This latest visit is part of a joint endeavor between Pace | Haub Environmental Law and QUT Law’s Environmental and Social Governance Research Group. Previously, Achinthi Vithanage, Haub Law’s Associate Director of Environmental Law Programs & Professor of Law for Designated Service in Environmental Law, visited QUT Law to present a seminar, “The Evolution of the Role of the Lawyer in Promoting Environmental Sustainability: Our profession’s role in innovation, regulation, and responsibility.” The event was followed by a reception hosted by QUT Law’s ESG Research Group and Professor Vithanage also participated in a podcast interview with Professor Amanda Kennedy for QUT Law’s new subject on ‘Law, Governance and Sustainability’. Professors Vithanage and Kennedy also spent time visiting the offices of the Queensland Law Society (QLS) for a tour and a meeting with several members of the QLS to discuss the role of bar associations and law societies in advocating for climate action and sustainability.

Pace | Haub Environmental Law and QUT Law will be working on a joint online symposium for the coming year and additional news will be provided as it is available.

The Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems kicked off the Fall 2024 semester with a slate of engaging student events to bring our community back together and spark some fresh ideas for the beginning of the new school year.

On September 11, the annual Seidenberg Community Day was held on the Pleasantville campus, while the New York City edition of the event was held on September 18. Both Community Days provided students with the opportunity to explore the many clubs and resources that are integral to the Seidenberg experience. The students who attended had the opportunity to meet Seidenberg faculty and staff, fellow students, and they got to know more about Seidenberg’s labs and programs like the Design Factory, Blue CoLab, Robotics Lab, as well as student clubs like Women in Tech and the Cybersecurity Club. The event was also attended by the likes of eSports, Career Services, and the Pforzheimer Honors College, so that the attendees could learn more about resources that the school has to offer.

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Also on September 18, Seidenberg launched the 1st Annual Pleasantville Grand Prix, offering students a hands-on opportunity to test their engineering, coding, and problem-solving skills. Small teams of students were led by Professor Matt Ganis, and worked together to build, program, and troubleshoot their own robot cars. This event kicked things off and familiarized the students with the robot building phase, and will be followed by another two events: Programming and Troubleshooting on September 25, and the final Race Day on October 2.

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On September 20, Dr. Soheyla Amirian hosted AI: Separating Fact from Hyperbole, the first event of many to come in the Pace AI Series of topical conversations about artificial intelligence with experts. Over Zoom, she moderated a conversation with Dr. Illah R. Nourbakhsh, Kavcic-Moura Professor of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, who delivered a thought-provoking lecture on the evolving dialogue surrounding AI and its societal impacts.

As of August 16, 2024, Dr. Li-Chiou Chen has stepped into the role of Interim Dean at the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems. With an extensive background in cybersecurity and a strong commitment to student success, Dr. Chen is ready to guide Seidenberg toward continued progress. She aims to further expand programs like cybersecurity, game development, and artificial intelligence, while fostering a supportive and collaborative environment for both faculty and students. In this interview, Dr. Chen reflects on her career journey from Taiwan to New York City and Pace University, her passion for technology, and delves deeper into her vision for the future of Seidenberg.

I’m very curious about your journey and how you got to the position of Seidenberg’s interim dean, how your life path and your career path have gotten you here. Could you tell me a bit about your background and how you became interested in the tech field?

Sure. Let’s start with where I came from and how I got here. I’m originally from Taiwan, where I earned my master’s degree in management information systems. After that, I worked for a year in market research for a computer company called Acer but soon discovered that I am more interested in the technical aspect of computing.

During my undergraduate years, I was a student assistant for developing information systems of the university supervised by one of our professors, which sparked my interest in system design and development. After I left Acer, I switched gears to work as a software engineer managing the systems and databases I had helped develop as a student. I always considered myself a programmer and liked to automate processes with my programming skills. Even before cybersecurity was a well-known term, I loved exploring various operating systems to see what I could do with them. Some of my friends moved to the United States for further study, and I thought it could be a great adventure for me as well. That's when I decided to pursue a PhD and went to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in their engineering and public policy program.

The education in Carnegie Mellon had a profound impact on me. Many research projects I was involved with were interdisciplinary. That is, researchers in different disciplines worked together to solve a problem. While I worked with the information technology group, we also explored the public policy issues relating to the adoption of new technology. Because of my earlier interests in systems and security, I was connected to work with the Computer Emergency Response Team/Coordination Center in the university’s Software Engineering Institute. I began developing simulation programs and tools to analyze computer security incidents, which then later became the focus of my dissertation where I built computational models to assess security risks.

And after that you got a job at Pace University?

After completing my PhD, I wanted to move to a bigger city and Pace University felt like the right choice. I moved to New York to become a professor in the department of information technology (IT), and I started teaching and conducting research in cybersecurity. While I was doing my PhD, I learned more about how to conduct research and write papers, but less about how to teach students in a college classroom. So, in the first couple of years, I spent a lot of time on adjusting myself to the classroom and on preparing materials that are at the right level for my students.

While I was adjusting to my teaching role, I also started to do more work in the research area and started applying for grants to support research activities and students who worked with me. My first federal funded grant was on developing web security tools and teaching modules. I really liked the experience and the collaboration with colleagues and students. This experience led me to the NSF-funded grants from the CyberCorps®: Scholarship for Service program. This program offers student scholarships in cybersecurity and has helped us recruit and train many students interested in this area. This is a program very dear to my heart and would like to keep it going along with other academic programs supporting it.

That’s an incredible path you created for yourself. And after teaching for a while, you took on different and bigger roles at Seidenberg as well. How did this bring you to your new position of Interim Dean of the school?

I had some experience in education administration before I took on the new position. Up until this August when I took on the role of Interim Dean, I was the Executive Director of our cybersecurity programs, where I handled academic programs, research grants, and Pace’s designation in the Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense. But even before that role, I was the IT Department Chair for several years. These administrative roles have taught me how to balance academic and administrative duties. My previous experience prepared me for the new role, and now I get to look at the whole school from a different angle. I can look at it from a very holistic view, and can have a more strategic perspective about which direction to take Seidenberg in.

If we think of the school as a boat, as Interim Dean I am basically the captain. This doesn’t mean that I am driving the ship myself, but I need to guide the direction of the school and need to ensure we are all working together. This includes the faculty and staff, as well as the students.

It’s not just about the captain’s direction, everyone on this boat plays a vital role in determining where we are going, and together we are forming a collective vision. So, what I am most excited about is this collaborative journey.

I love that analogy. So, if you can envision a path for the school over the next year, what would that look like?

I think that the school has a very good foundation right now. Comparing to where we were a decade ago, the school is in a very different place. We should thank the efforts of the past deans for leading us to this positive trajectory. The technology landscape is changing and there will always be challenges and new trends, so we must adapt and evolve with the changing world. At the moment, we have a lot of new programs and majors, like the BS in Game Development, as well as the expansion of our cybersecurity programs and AI initiatives. The faculty have a wide range of research grants and activities, and we are supporting a lot of our students in a variety of extra-curricular or experiential learning activities.

All of these are areas I would like to focus on. While we are continuing this upward trajectory by looking for new directions to expand, we need to enrich the student experience inside and outside the classroom.

I am very grateful that many of our alums and industry advisers are enthusiastic in helping our students by providing them opportunities and guiding them to jumpstart a bright future.

And do you have anything to add, something that you would say to the students who will be reading this article?

I want students to consider Seidenberg as their home, a place where you can not only study, but also make friends and participate in things you are interested in beyond the classroom. And it’s important that you feel supported, that you feel like you can always find someone to talk to at the school. And then after you have graduated, I want you to feel like you have grown, matured, and have a connection to something greater. But also, that Seidenberg will always be your home to come back for support and friendships.