This year was hard; for everyone. For you at home and for us at Pace—for our students, for their families, and for the faculty and staff charged with providing opportunity to everyone in our community. There was nothing easy or familiar about navigating the uncharted waters of making a university function during a global pandemic, but we did our best. Not everything was perfect, and we sacrificed a lot, but our hearts were in it. We started in mid-January and we haven’t stopped since. Our community came together in the face of a seemingly insurmountable challenge. We were resilient. Steadfast. Hardworking.

Through long days and even longer nights, people from all across the University worked together to accomplish what we set out to do…we brought our students back to campus and we kept our community safe. As the fall semester comes to a close, we look back on the journey that brought us to this point, and we look towards a brighter future.

Preparing for the Worst

With the goal of keeping the Pace Community safe, our emergency preparedness team regularly runs drills and tabletop exercises for a variety of scenarios—earthquakes, floods, fires, active shooters, bears on campus, chemical spills, loss of electricity, tornadoes. Clearly, some of these scenarios are more likely than others, but the University teams prepare for them, nonetheless. No detail goes overlooked: safety and security on the ground; meal delivery; managing residential students; communicating with our internal community, with the press, and with local law enforcement, there’s a plan and procedure in place to manage a crisis. But nothing could have prepared them for the long-term impact caused by a deadly global pandemic.

In late January, while the coronavirus was still an overseas issue, leadership at Pace was closely monitoring the situation. While the pandemic was just beginning to make headlines in domestic news outlets, our biggest concern was for our students studying abroad.

“We had a coronavirus advisory team monitoring the spread of the virus, mainly because we had students studying abroad and a diverse international population,” recalls Brian Anderson, Pace’s director of Emergency Management and Environmental Health and Safety. “Once the virus hit US soil, we transitioned into a task force and we began to formalize plans in earnest of how we would react should we need to shift operations.”

The first recorded coronavirus case in New York was recorded on February 29 and while the news was inevitable, the planning process for how the University would respond should the rate of community infection rise was kicked into high gear.

The 35-member COVID-19 Task Force, comprising functional areas like health and safety, residential and student life, the Office of the Provost, facilities, dining and auxiliary services, communications, finance, and risk management began meeting daily as the virus crept closer to our campuses.

By March 11, the decision had been made to move all classes to a remote format, with the anticipation that in-person instruction would resume on March 30. In our communications to residential students, we encouraged them to bring their important belongings home with them as they headed out for spring break—just in case.

“I understood the health implications and that people were getting sick, and the seriousness of it. But at the same time, I was like ‘We get to work from home for a few weeks and then we’ll come back,’" recalls Interim Senior Associate Dean for Students Todd Smith-Bergollo. “It felt like a pause, not knowing it was the beginning of the most stressful year ever. So yeah, looking back to the thoughts then, it just seemed like it was going to be this thing that we'd get through quickly. We'd all work from home for a few weeks and we'd be able to beat the virus, and just not having any sense of what was to come.”

By Alyssa Cressotti ’08, ‘18

This year was hard; for everyone. For you at home and for us at Pace—for our students, for their families, and for the faculty and staff charged with providing opportunity to everyone in our community. There was nothing easy or familiar about navigating the uncharted waters of making a university function during a global pandemic, but we did our best. Not everything was perfect, and we sacrificed a lot, but our hearts were in it. We started in mid-January and we haven’t stopped since. Our community came together in the face of a seemingly insurmountable challenge. We were resilient. Steadfast. Hardworking.

Through long days and even longer nights, people from all across the University worked together to accomplish what we set out to do…we brought our students back to campus and we kept our community safe. As the fall semester comes to a close, we look back on the journey that brought us to this point, and we look towards a brighter future.

Image

In the classroom, faculty made use of Zoom stations, teaching to both students in the room and those at home.

Preparing for the Worst

With the goal of keeping the Pace Community safe, our emergency preparedness team regularly runs drills and tabletop exercises for a variety of scenarios—earthquakes, floods, fires, active shooters, bears on campus, chemical spills, loss of electricity, tornadoes. Clearly, some of these scenarios are more likely than others, but the University teams prepare for them, nonetheless. No detail goes overlooked: safety and security on the ground; meal delivery; managing residential students; communicating with our internal community, with the press, and with local law enforcement, there’s a plan and procedure in place to manage a crisis. But nothing could have prepared them for the long-term impact caused by a deadly global pandemic.

In late January, while the coronavirus was still an overseas issue, leadership at Pace was closely monitoring the situation. While the pandemic was just beginning to make headlines in domestic news outlets, our biggest concern was for our students studying abroad.

“We had a coronavirus advisory team monitoring the spread of the virus, mainly because we had students studying abroad and a diverse international population,” recalls Brian Anderson, Pace’s director of Emergency Management and Environmental Health and Safety. “Once the virus hit US soil, we transitioned into a task force and we began to formalize plans in earnest of how we would react should we need to shift operations.”

The first recorded coronavirus case in New York was recorded on February 29 and while the news was inevitable, the planning process for how the University would respond should the rate of community infection rise was kicked into high gear.

The 35-member COVID-19 Task Force, comprising functional areas like health and safety, residential and student life, the Office of the Provost, facilities, dining and auxiliary services, communications, finance, and risk management began meeting daily as the virus crept closer to our campuses.

By March 11, the decision had been made to move all classes to a remote format, with the anticipation that in-person instruction would resume on March 30. In our communications to residential students, we encouraged them to bring their important belongings home with them as they headed out for spring break—just in case.

“I understood the health implications and that people were getting sick, and the seriousness of it. But at the same time, I was like ‘We get to work from home for a few weeks and then we’ll come back,’" recalls Interim Senior Associate Dean for Students Todd Smith-Bergollo. “It felt like a pause, not knowing it was the beginning of the most stressful year ever. So yeah, looking back to the thoughts then, it just seemed like it was going to be this thing that we'd get through quickly. We'd all work from home for a few weeks and we'd be able to beat the virus, and just not having any sense of what was to come.”

Making a Shift

On March 18, the Pace Community was notified that the shift to remote classes would be extended. As cases rose and guidance from New York State became more direct, the COVID-19 Task Force made the difficult decision to move to a remote format for the remainder of the Spring 2020 semester.

Moving hundreds of classes to an online format and shifting all work at the University—including student-facing services—was not an easy decision to make, but the safety and well-being of the community was the highest priority. In just a matter of weeks, all of the University’s operations had shifted to remote. From Counseling to Career Services and everything in between, the University had to pivot. To stay in lockstep with New York Governor Cuomo’s orders, only essential personnel—information technology staff, safety and security, housing staff, and facilities staff—remained on our campuses.

One of the critical components to keeping a University community alive and thriving during the remote period was our access to the Internet and the software we all needed to do our jobs effectively and serve our students. For Chief Information Officer Paul Dampier, the infrastructure was there, but his concern was how well the community would adapt to it.

“I felt shock, horror. All of those negative emotions, initially,” recalled Dampier of the official pivot to remote for the Spring 2020 semester. “I think my biggest concern was how would people react to using online technology. Because I felt, from the IT perspective, we had all the technology in place apart from, perhaps, a fully comprehensive video conferencing system. We have different video conferencing systems, but when everybody goes online, that's a different kettle of fish.”

In addition to this seismic shift, the fear and worry within the Pace Community was pervasive—this was a global pandemic, hitting New York hard.

“Because my role involved communicating with the faculty about the pivot and subsequent revisions to our modes of teaching and learning, what was most challenging for me was supporting people who were feeling anxious, afraid, and angry,” says Interim Associate Provost for Academic Affairs Joan Walker, PhD. “My own response to these emotions was to hold smaller town calls where faculty could talk with each other about their experiences. I also worked with our instructional designers at Pace Online and the Faculty Center and with Academic Technology and Educational Media to set up a large number and variety of professional development events. The coordination of these teams at that time—and our continued coordination now to support faculty success—has been outstanding.”

In addition to getting students and faculty up and running for online learning, there was also the matter of caring for the students who remained in Pace’s residence halls—either because they were unable to travel home or because their move-outs had been put on hold due to changing guidance from New York State.

“There's not much that I haven't done or seen in higher ed to be quite honest—I’ve been in this field for more than 20 years,” says Alerie Tirsch, interim associate dean for students and director of Residential Life and Housing for the Pleasantville Campus. “When we pivoted, I was thinking, ‘Wow, this is something I never thought I would see or be a part of, and I have no idea how to make this happen,’ literally. And that is not often something that I say in my job.”

Breaking Down Barriers

“My initial reaction to the news that we were going to pivot was ‘I know we can get this done, I know that we are going to be able to meet the needs of our students,’” recalls Interim Associate Provost for Student Success Hillary Knepper, PhD. “And that it would be a great opportunity to bring everyone together.”

And she was right.

As the COVID-19 Task Force continued to meet daily and plans were put in place for what would need to be done over the summer in order to bring the community back to campus for the fall semester, cross-functional relationships were formed and synergies created.

“Everybody came to the table and they rolled up their sleeves. There was no arrogance, there was no I-know-best attitude. There was nothing but ‘How do we make this work? What are the problems? What are the solutions? Who can make it work? Who can fix this?’” says Knepper. “As part of the task force, I was working with people that I'd never met before and seeing for myself how hard everybody works on a daily basis to keep Pace running.”

For Anderson, the coming together of the University towards a common mission was a critical part for successfully navigating an entire University through a global pandemic situation.

“I think the most surprising was just how quickly we all came together. For a university that can sometimes operate in silos, those silos seemed to go away very quickly,” he says. “We had different operating units, different kinds of people. We had students, staff, faculty, all involved in our planning, all working towards a common goal.”

For Andréa Sonenberg, PhD, professor of graduate nursing in the College of Health Professions and member of the board of directors of the New York State Public Health Association, once she was appointed to the role of Coronavirus Coordination Officer, she realized how critical the relationship-building aspect of her role could be.

“Coordination is what it takes, because it isn't just about strategizing, developing, and implementing a testing protocol; following up on the results; and isolating/quarantining students to keep the community safe. All of that goes into working with multiple players, and all of the different moving parts of the system. I met amazing people in the University that I never had met before, or was even aware of their roles, who helped along the way,” she says. “And I couldn't have done it without them. Obviously, Brian introduced me to a lot of these players, but then once I developed my own relationships with them, we were able to accomplish things by expanding our smaller groups to work together in whatever facet of what I was doing.”

Preparing for the Return to Campus

As the months of remote work rolled on, the focus shifted from an immediate righting of the ship to a concerted effort to create smooth sailing for the fall semester. Once the University was able to get its bearings in a virtual format, planning for real success was swiftly becoming a reality. With New York’s phased reopening in process during the summer months, the COVID-19 Task Force alongside the Fall Reopening Group, which comprised faculty and students and was led by Biology Chair Marcy Kelly, PhD, began planning for an in-person college experience for the fall. The plan had to align with guidance from New York State and included not just health and safety protocols, but also methods for monitoring the health of our on-campus population (think testing and health care availability), containment of potential transmission (how we would assist the state with contact tracing and providing space for quarantine and isolation on campus), and planning for a potential campus shut down—in the event there was widespread, uncontrolled transmission of the virus.

After pivoting the majority of a University’s workforce to a remote modality, the University saw upwards of 18,000 Zoom sessions per day. Which was great! But how do you make that work once people return to campus?

“We had to somehow be able to bring Zoom into the classroom, and we reached out to one of our vendors and actually said, ‘This is the issue we've got. We've got to be able to put a big screen in the Zoom station,’” explained Dampier. “Well, we coined the phrase ‘Zoom station,’ because we wanted a buzzword to hang it on and worked with the vendor to actually develop that technology and put it in place.”

The Zoom technology that was brought into our physical classrooms were 150 large format screens and audiovisual equipment that would allow our faculty to teach simultaneously to students physically in the classroom and to those tuning in from a remote location. Each station essentially gave the students and the faculty an almost seamless course delivery method called HyFlex, or hybrid-flexible.

Over the summer, Pace’s ITS Department teamed up with the Provost’s Office and the Faculty Center to bring our faculty, some of whom had never worked with Zoom, up to speed to make sure they were able to effectively teach for the fall.

“It's a challenge, it is absolutely a challenge to learn in a method in which you have not before, it's a challenge to teach in a method that you have not before,” says Knepper. “But when I saw the numbers of faculty who took the trainings to learn how to do a better delivery, how to improve their pedagogy…we had adjuncts stepping up, we had tenured full professors stepping up. We had everybody covered in terms of our community. So, I would say that we kept education accessible in a very dire time.”

In addition to the Zoom stations set up in classrooms across campuses, our Facilities team was hard at work ensuring that the physical classrooms and common areas of our buildings were set up for success.

“We had to learn new cleaning methods, learn about how to clean for a virus that we didn't know whether or not lasted on surfaces. So new protocols, new training, bringing on staff to make sure that they were cleaning the right way. That was a big one, making sure that they weren't contaminating surfaces as they cleaned one area and cleaned another area. The cleaning aspect was really important. Learning all about electrostatic cleaning, what that did, the type of products that we use, making sure we had the right products in place, making sure we had enough supplies on campus and projecting, we usually project on a semester basis, but we really had to project differently on what we needed and how much we needed,” explains Assistant Vice President of Facilities and Capital Projects Aisha Moyla.

And it wasn’t just cleaning and sanitization techniques that were being perfected over the summer break. There was also the small matter of ensuring social distance was maintained across the University and that students, faculty, and staff were kept safe during an in-person semester.

“We spent a lot of time talking to other people, other universities, other facilities, a lot of organizations, to see what they were doing, what their recommendations were, and that's where we learned a lot of information,” says Moyla. “I think that the hardest part of all this is really planning and trying to figure out what to do in this unknown.”

One of the biggest tasks for the Facilities team was making sure there was appropriate signage throughout the buildings on all of the Pace campuses—occupancy limits, traffic patterns and flow, where people could sit (and where they couldn’t), and so much more.

“Our project managers put together circulation plans for every single building on each campus, over two million square feet of space,” she says. “They spent a lot of time trying to figure out what made sense and then actually going out to the field and walking that to make sure it actually worked and making sure that they were still not violating any code compliance issues, any egress issues. This was on top of putting together the social distance planning for more than 300 classrooms.”

Another critical part to consider when bringing the students back to campus was what they could expect in terms of life on campus—were there going to be events? What about life in the residence halls? How do meals work? What would happen if students had to be isolated or quarantined?

“At some point in the summer when we started realizing we're going to have to change our protocols for everything. We're going to have to change our protocols for living in residence, how to host campus activities, how to keep students, staff, and faculty healthy,” says Interim University Dean for Students Rachel Carpenter.

One of the first changes was to the University’s guest policies inside the residence halls. Students are typically allowed to visit each other’s rooms, but to keep everyone safe, “Family Units” were created to help slow the spread of the virus while still giving residential students the sense of community they desired. Inside a student’s room or suite, they could take off their face coverings, relax social distancing requirements, and feel normal. But this new policy wasn’t without its challenges.

“When we announced the change to the guest policy we had a little bit of pushback because students wanted to visit with each other. But I think they really understood,” says Patrick Roger-Gordon, assistant dean for students and director of Residential Life and Housing in NYC. “I think the culture in our state, given what New York went through in March and April, even our students who weren't physically here, the whole nation was watching what was happening here. And we were the epicenter and things were terrible and we worked really hard to improve.”

The education around the virus and the ways it spread was critical to helping enforce policies set forth by the COVID-19 Task Force. Once the decision was made to return to campus, the University began socializing these new requirements and policies through the #OurSafePace campaign and our Return to Campus website, dedicated to informing our community about the different procedures that were implemented to help reduce the spread of the virus on campus.

A Virtual Learning Experience

The introduction of Zoom stations and a mix of in-person and virtual learning began when the community returned to campus. The ways faculty and students had to reassess their definitions for teaching and learning this semester were incredible.

In the classroom, students sat six feet apart, faculty stood behind clear moveable partitions and taught to the students in the room and those tuning in from elsewhere, and all wore face coverings. Not an easy feat in even the best of circumstances.

“I think that this has demolished any preconceived notions that online or remote teaching is inferior to on-campus teaching. No pedagogy is perfect. But I think many people have seen that remote teaching has unique affordances that can and should be used post-pandemic,” says Walker. “On Zoom, I felt like a guest in students’ homes and residence hall rooms. Knowing that roommates and family members were overhearing our work, meeting students’ pets and seeing students ‘on their turf’ rather than in the classroom made teaching feel more personal to me.”

“I think that window into students' lives made faculty really aware of their students’ needs in ways that they might not have been otherwise,” notes Knepper. “I'm not sure everybody realizes that a lot of our students are really struggling to make it through.”

For Walker, she used class time and office hours during the first two-weeks of the semester to set up one-on-one meetings with her students to get to know them personally, something she believes really created a connection and increased the level of student engagement. “It’s something I want to continue doing, whether we’re face-to-face or not,” she says.

And that sense of connection goes both ways. For students, they had the opportunity to see their professors on their home turf—from kids and spouses wandering around in the background to cats jumping up to say hello, the virtual modality had a humanizing effect that traditional in-classroom learning doesn’t typically have.

“As a faculty member, I think it probably makes you a little less lofty and a lot more like a partner in education,” says Knepper. “Continuing that accessibility was so important and also makes everybody think about the fact that people have lives beyond the classroom, beyond my classroom. I know they have another life and they know I have another life.”

This year was hard; for everyone. For you at home and for us at Pace—for our students, for their families, and for the faculty and staff charged with providing opportunity to everyone in our community. There was nothing easy or familiar about navigating the uncharted waters of making a university function during a global pandemic, but we did our best. Not everything was perfect, and we sacrificed a lot, but our hearts were in it. We started in mid-January and we haven’t stopped since. Our community came together in the face of a seemingly insurmountable challenge. We were resilient. Steadfast. Hardworking.

Through long days and even longer nights, people from all across the University worked together to accomplish what we set out to do…we brought our students back to campus and we kept our community safe. As the fall semester comes to a close, we look back on the journey that brought us to this point, and we look towards a brighter future.

Preparing for the Worst

With the goal of keeping the Pace Community safe, our emergency preparedness team regularly runs drills and tabletop exercises for a variety of scenarios—earthquakes, floods, fires, active shooters, bears on campus, chemical spills, loss of electricity, tornadoes. Clearly, some of these scenarios are more likely than others, but the University teams prepare for them, nonetheless. No detail goes overlooked: safety and security on the ground; meal delivery; managing residential students; communicating with our internal community, with the press, and with local law enforcement, there’s a plan and procedure in place to manage a crisis. But nothing could have prepared them for the long-term impact caused by a deadly global pandemic.

In late January, while the coronavirus was still an overseas issue, leadership at Pace was closely monitoring the situation. While the pandemic was just beginning to make headlines in domestic news outlets, our biggest concern was for our students studying abroad.

“We had a coronavirus advisory team monitoring the spread of the virus, mainly because we had students studying abroad and a diverse international population,” recalls Brian Anderson, Pace’s director of Emergency Management and Environmental Health and Safety. “Once the virus hit US soil, we transitioned into a task force and we began to formalize plans in earnest of how we would react should we need to shift operations.”

The first recorded coronavirus case in New York was recorded on February 29 and while the news was inevitable, the planning process for how the University would respond should the rate of community infection rise was kicked into high gear.

The 35-member COVID-19 Task Force, comprising functional areas like health and safety, residential and student life, the Office of the Provost, facilities, dining and auxiliary services, communications, finance, and risk management began meeting daily as the virus crept closer to our campuses.

By March 11, the decision had been made to move all classes to a remote format, with the anticipation that in-person instruction would resume on March 30. In our communications to residential students, we encouraged them to bring their important belongings home with them as they headed out for spring break—just in case.

“I understood the health implications and that people were getting sick, and the seriousness of it. But at the same time, I was like ‘We get to work from home for a few weeks and then we’ll come back,’" recalls Interim Senior Associate Dean for Students Todd Smith-Bergollo. “It felt like a pause, not knowing it was the beginning of the most stressful year ever. So yeah, looking back to the thoughts then, it just seemed like it was going to be this thing that we'd get through quickly. We'd all work from home for a few weeks and we'd be able to beat the virus, and just not having any sense of what was to come.”

Making a Shift

On March 18, the Pace Community was notified that the shift to remote classes would be extended. As cases rose and guidance from New York State became more direct, the COVID-19 Task Force made the difficult decision to move to a remote format for the remainder of the Spring 2020 semester.

Moving hundreds of classes to an online format and shifting all work at the University—including student-facing services—was not an easy decision to make, but the safety and well-being of the community was the highest priority. In just a matter of weeks, all of the University’s operations had shifted to remote. From Counseling to Career Services and everything in between, the University had to pivot. To stay in lockstep with New York Governor Cuomo’s orders, only essential personnel—information technology staff, safety and security, housing staff, and facilities staff—remained on our campuses.

One of the critical components to keeping a University community alive and thriving during the remote period was our access to the Internet and the software we all needed to do our jobs effectively and serve our students. For Chief Information Officer Paul Dampier, the infrastructure was there, but his concern was how well the community would adapt to it.

“I felt shock, horror. All of those negative emotions, initially,” recalled Dampier of the official pivot to remote for the Spring 2020 semester. “I think my biggest concern was how would people react to using online technology. Because I felt, from the IT perspective, we had all the technology in place apart from, perhaps, a fully comprehensive video conferencing system. We have different video conferencing systems, but when everybody goes online, that's a different kettle of fish.”

In addition to this seismic shift, the fear and worry within the Pace Community was pervasive—this was a global pandemic, hitting New York hard.

“Because my role involved communicating with the faculty about the pivot and subsequent revisions to our modes of teaching and learning, what was most challenging for me was supporting people who were feeling anxious, afraid, and angry,” says Interim Associate Provost for Academic Affairs Joan Walker, PhD. “My own response to these emotions was to hold smaller town calls where faculty could talk with each other about their experiences. I also worked with our instructional designers at Pace Online and the Faculty Center and with Academic Technology and Educational Media to set up a large number and variety of professional development events. The coordination of these teams at that time—and our continued coordination now to support faculty success—has been outstanding.”

In addition to getting students and faculty up and running for online learning, there was also the matter of caring for the students who remained in Pace’s residence halls—either because they were unable to travel home or because their move-outs had been put on hold due to changing guidance from New York State.

“There's not much that I haven't done or seen in higher ed to be quite honest—I’ve been in this field for more than 20 years,” says Alerie Tirsch, interim associate dean for students and director of Residential Life and Housing for the Pleasantville Campus. “When we pivoted, I was thinking, ‘Wow, this is something I never thought I would see or be a part of, and I have no idea how to make this happen,’ literally. And that is not often something that I say in my job.”

Breaking Down Barriers

“My initial reaction to the news that we were going to pivot was ‘I know we can get this done, I know that we are going to be able to meet the needs of our students,’” recalls Interim Associate Provost for Student Success Hillary Knepper, PhD. “And that it would be a great opportunity to bring everyone together.”

And she was right.

As the COVID-19 Task Force continued to meet daily and plans were put in place for what would need to be done over the summer in order to bring the community back to campus for the fall semester, cross-functional relationships were formed and synergies created.

“Everybody came to the table and they rolled up their sleeves. There was no arrogance, there was no I-know-best attitude. There was nothing but ‘How do we make this work? What are the problems? What are the solutions? Who can make it work? Who can fix this?’” says Knepper. “As part of the task force, I was working with people that I'd never met before and seeing for myself how hard everybody works on a daily basis to keep Pace running.”

For Anderson, the coming together of the University towards a common mission was a critical part for successfully navigating an entire University through a global pandemic situation.

"I think that this has demolished any preconceived notions that online or remote teaching is inferior to on-campus teaching. No pedagogy is perfect. But I think many people have seen that remote teaching has unique affordances that can and should be used post-pandemic."

“I think the most surprising was just how quickly we all came together. For a university that can sometimes operate in silos, those silos seemed to go away very quickly,” he says. “We had different operating units, different kinds of people. We had students, staff, faculty, all involved in our planning, all working towards a common goal.”

For Andréa Sonenberg, PhD, professor of graduate nursing in the College of Health Professions and member of the board of directors of the New York State Public Health Association, once she was appointed to the role of Coronavirus Coordination Officer, she realized how critical the relationship-building aspect of her role could be.

“Coordination is what it takes, because it isn't just about strategizing, developing, and implementing a testing protocol; following up on the results; and isolating/quarantining students to keep the community safe. All of that goes into working with multiple players, and all of the different moving parts of the system. I met amazing people in the University that I never had met before, or was even aware of their roles, who helped along the way,” she says. “And I couldn't have done it without them. Obviously, Brian introduced me to a lot of these players, but then once I developed my own relationships with them, we were able to accomplish things by expanding our smaller groups to work together in whatever facet of what I was doing.”

Preparing for the Return to Campus

As the months of remote work rolled on, the focus shifted from an immediate righting of the ship to a concerted effort to create smooth sailing for the fall semester. Once the University was able to get its bearings in a virtual format, planning for real success was swiftly becoming a reality. With New York’s phased reopening in process during the summer months, the COVID-19 Task Force alongside the Fall Reopening Group, which comprised faculty and students and was led by Biology Chair Marcy Kelly, PhD, began planning for an in-person college experience for the fall. The plan had to align with guidance from New York State and included not just health and safety protocols, but also methods for monitoring the health of our on-campus population (think testing and health care availability), containment of potential transmission (how we would assist the state with contact tracing and providing space for quarantine and isolation on campus), and planning for a potential campus shut down—in the event there was widespread, uncontrolled transmission of the virus.

After pivoting the majority of a University’s workforce to a remote modality, the University saw upwards of 18,000 Zoom sessions per day. Which was great! But how do you make that work once people return to campus?

“We had to somehow be able to bring Zoom into the classroom, and we reached out to one of our vendors and actually said, ‘This is the issue we've got. We've got to be able to put a big screen in the Zoom station,’” explained Dampier. “Well, we coined the phrase ‘Zoom station,’ because we wanted a buzzword to hang it on and worked with the vendor to actually develop that technology and put it in place.”

The Zoom technology that was brought into our physical classrooms were 150 large format screens and audiovisual equipment that would allow our faculty to teach simultaneously to students physically in the classroom and to those tuning in from a remote location. Each station essentially gave the students and the faculty an almost seamless course delivery method called HyFlex, or hybrid-flexible.

Over the summer, Pace’s ITS Department teamed up with the Provost’s Office and the Faculty Center to bring our faculty, some of whom had never worked with Zoom, up to speed to make sure they were able to effectively teach for the fall.

“It's a challenge, it is absolutely a challenge to learn in a method in which you have not before, it's a challenge to teach in a method that you have not before,” says Knepper. “But when I saw the numbers of faculty who took the trainings to learn how to do a better delivery, how to improve their pedagogy…we had adjuncts stepping up, we had tenured full professors stepping up. We had everybody covered in terms of our community. So, I would say that we kept education accessible in a very dire time.”

In addition to the Zoom stations set up in classrooms across campuses, our Facilities team was hard at work ensuring that the physical classrooms and common areas of our buildings were set up for success.

“We had to learn new cleaning methods, learn about how to clean for a virus that we didn't know whether or not lasted on surfaces. So new protocols, new training, bringing on staff to make sure that they were cleaning the right way. That was a big one, making sure that they weren't contaminating surfaces as they cleaned one area and cleaned another area. The cleaning aspect was really important. Learning all about electrostatic cleaning, what that did, the type of products that we use, making sure we had the right products in place, making sure we had enough supplies on campus and projecting, we usually project on a semester basis, but we really had to project differently on what we needed and how much we needed,” explains Assistant Vice President of Facilities and Capital Projects Aisha Moyla.

And it wasn’t just cleaning and sanitization techniques that were being perfected over the summer break. There was also the small matter of ensuring social distance was maintained across the University and that students, faculty, and staff were kept safe during an in-person semester.

“We spent a lot of time talking to other people, other universities, other facilities, a lot of organizations, to see what they were doing, what their recommendations were, and that's where we learned a lot of information,” says Moyla. “I think that the hardest part of all this is really planning and trying to figure out what to do in this unknown.”

One of the biggest tasks for the Facilities team was making sure there was appropriate signage throughout the buildings on all of the Pace campuses—occupancy limits, traffic patterns and flow, where people could sit (and where they couldn’t), and so much more.

“Our project managers put together circulation plans for every single building on each campus, over two million square feet of space,” she says. “They spent a lot of time trying to figure out what made sense and then actually going out to the field and walking that to make sure it actually worked and making sure that they were still not violating any code compliance issues, any egress issues. This was on top of putting together the social distance planning for more than 300 classrooms.”

Another critical part to consider when bringing the students back to campus was what they could expect in terms of life on campus—were there going to be events? What about life in the residence halls? How do meals work? What would happen if students had to be isolated or quarantined?

“At some point in the summer when we started realizing we're going to have to change our protocols for everything. We're going to have to change our protocols for living in residence, how to host campus activities, how to keep students, staff, and faculty healthy,” says Interim University Dean for Students Rachel Carpenter.

One of the first changes was to the University’s guest policies inside the residence halls. Students are typically allowed to visit each other’s rooms, but to keep everyone safe, “Family Units” were created to help slow the spread of the virus while still giving residential students the sense of community they desired. Inside a student’s room or suite, they could take off their face coverings, relax social distancing requirements, and feel normal. But this new policy wasn’t without its challenges.

“When we announced the change to the guest policy we had a little bit of pushback because students wanted to visit with each other. But I think they really understood,” says Patrick Roger-Gordon, assistant dean for students and director of Residential Life and Housing in NYC. “I think the culture in our state, given what New York went through in March and April, even our students who weren't physically here, the whole nation was watching what was happening here. And we were the epicenter and things were terrible and we worked really hard to improve.”

The education around the virus and the ways it spread was critical to helping enforce policies set forth by the COVID-19 Task Force. Once the decision was made to return to campus, the University began socializing these new requirements and policies through the #OurSafePace campaign and our Return to Campus website, dedicated to informing our community about the different procedures that were implemented to help reduce the spread of the virus on campus.

A Virtual Learning Experience

The introduction of Zoom stations and a mix of in-person and virtual learning began when the community returned to campus. The ways faculty and students had to reassess their definitions for teaching and learning this semester were incredible.

In the classroom, students sat six feet apart, faculty stood behind clear moveable partitions and taught to the students in the room and those tuning in from elsewhere, and all wore face coverings. Not an easy feat in even the best of circumstances.

“I think that this has demolished any preconceived notions that online or remote teaching is inferior to on-campus teaching. No pedagogy is perfect. But I think many people have seen that remote teaching has unique affordances that can and should be used post-pandemic,” says Walker. “On Zoom, I felt like a guest in students’ homes and residence hall rooms. Knowing that roommates and family members were overhearing our work, meeting students’ pets and seeing students ‘on their turf’ rather than in the classroom made teaching feel more personal to me.”

“I think that window into students' lives made faculty really aware of their students’ needs in ways that they might not have been otherwise,” notes Knepper. “I'm not sure everybody realizes that a lot of our students are really struggling to make it through.”

For Walker, she used class time and office hours during the first two-weeks of the semester to set up one-on-one meetings with her students to get to know them personally, something she believes really created a connection and increased the level of student engagement. “It’s something I want to continue doing, whether we’re face-to-face or not,” she says.

And that sense of connection goes both ways. For students, they had the opportunity to see their professors on their home turf—from kids and spouses wandering around in the background to cats jumping up to say hello, the virtual modality had a humanizing effect that traditional in-classroom learning doesn’t typically have.

“As a faculty member, I think it probably makes you a little less lofty and a lot more like a partner in education,” says Knepper. “Continuing that accessibility was so important and also makes everybody think about the fact that people have lives beyond the classroom, beyond my classroom. I know they have another life and they know I have another life.”

Our Safe Pace

While life on campus may have looked and felt different this semester, Pace continued to be committed to ensuring the health and safety of our community.

“I think our students, whether from the tri-state area or from outside that area, understood what was happening here and what they were coming to be a part of. I think they recognize the importance of those measures we were taking, even though there was a sacrifice and a cost for that,” says Roger-Gordon.

Through community training, daily monitoring with the PaceSafe app and careful adherence to policies regarding social distancing, the wearing of face coverings, good hand hygiene, and a regulated community testing plan, Pace was able to have a successful semester back on campus.

Once back on campus, Pace implemented a community testing strategy that was able to successfully test 25 percent of our on-campus population weekly. People coming to campus were selected for coronavirus testing at random based on ID swipe information—if you were coming to campus and interacting with the community, the chances were good that you would be selected for testing. This 25 percent randomized testing strategy developed by the COVID-19 Task Force and Pace’s Coronavirus Coordination Officer was able to detect early clusters of positive cases on campus, resulting in only two full quarantine situations in Pleasantville and White Plains.

“I am humbled by the dedication, commitment, and persistence of this amazing group of men and women,” said College of Health Professions Associate Dean for Administration and COVID-19 Task Force member Gerrie Colombraro, PhD, RN. “Through our on-campus testing initiative, we have tested more than 9,000 individuals since August 10, with just 121 positive test results for an overall positivity rate of just over one percent—a remarkable accomplishment!”

When the students returned, they were able to host cross-campus events virtually via Zoom, connecting with students they otherwise would never have met if it wasn’t for the pandemic. From yoga sessions to club meetings, students were connecting with their counterparts on other campuses—strengthening the connection between all Setters.

“Students have forgone typical social interaction and many of the most traditional and fundamental aspects of college life,” says Walker of the students who returned to campus this fall, making Zoom critical to not only the academic portion of college life, but social as well.

“I think really at the heart of it all, was figuring out it's not just about doing a social program. It's about engaging all of our students; welcoming our new students into the community, helping them feel connected, giving them information,” says Smith-Bergollo “There were so many important things that we needed to capture in these virtual social programs in ways that we had never tried to do before, so it was a huge experiment.”

Throughout the fall semester, the University rallied behind the concept of Our Safe Pace, a call for each of us—student, staff, or faculty—to do our part to create a safe and healthy community for the greater good. The message was woven into our training, into digital signage across campus, in emails to the community, across social media, and more. And for the most part, it worked.

We had some positive cases, but we were able to contain them. In late September, we had our biggest outbreak, with 18 positive cases in one of our residence halls. The county health department directed everyone who lived in that building—students, RAs—to quarantine for 14 days. And, as it turned out, even that went OK. There wasn’t a larger outbreak. Our students stayed healthy—and emotionally healthy, too, thanks to a lot of support from our Residential Life staff and other university leaders.

“It was upsetting to think that I might not even have [the virus], but I’m stuck in quarantine,” said Kayla Slusser ‘23 in an article for the Pace Chronicle. “But thinking from a bigger picture now, we’re doing this so we can prevent having to all go home…It sucks, but it’s better for the long term than the short term.”

By starting classes early, the University was able to complete in-person instruction by Thanksgiving break, with the end of the semester, including exams, conducted remotely and finishing on December 6. The accelerated calendar was implemented to comply with public health guidance to avoid asking our community to disperse across the country and then return to campus, potentially contributing to virus spread.

Looking Ahead

As effective vaccines against COVID-19 have begun being rolled out to the nation, the team at Pace is looking forward to a bright spring. Right now, the students have gone home for winter break and the COVID-19 Task Force is monitoring the rising cases across the nation. They’ve shared their plans for bringing students back to campus for the Spring 2021 semester—barring any unforeseen changes to New York State’s travel advisory or reopening plans—and have high hopes for another success, albeit unusual, semester.

The nature of the virus and the actions we all take will play a key role in the success of the Spring 2021 semester. As things change, so, too, do the University’s plans.

“We have a lot of work to do. The virus is at a very interesting place right now. How it behaves further this spring is really going to be dictated by our actions and the actions of our communities,” Anderson says. “If people are wearing masks, if they are listening to science, we will see that slowing the spread that we saw last spring, but we do need to work together and stay vigilant.”

“My hopes for the spring semester are that our students will return safely, that they will have a wonderful academic semester, that we will get some semblance of our normal student life,” Knepper says. “My hope is for tenacity,” adds Walker. “We’ve been through a lot and it’s not over yet. But we will get through this, if we continue to have patience and help each other.”

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NEW YORK (Dec. 3, 2020) – Pace University’s Board of Trustees announced the election of a new member, Lana Bailey-Tamaro ‘06 (Dyson College of Arts and Sciences), a distinguished alumna and business leader.

"Lana Bailey-Tamaro exemplifies the drive to succeed we prize in our graduates," said Mark Besca, chair of Pace's Board of Trustees. "She has had a varied and accomplished career as a police officer, a mental health counselor, and now a business leader. We welcome her broad range of experience to our board, and we're excited about the compelling role model she will be for future generations of Pace students."

Lana Bailey-Tamaro is the CEO and owner of CASO Document Management, a national document scanning and document services automation company with offices in New York, Texas and Pennsylvania. As CEO, she oversees business operations, partnerships, investments, joint ventures and the overall growth of the company. Prior to CASO, Bailey-Tamaro worked as a police officer in the New York Police Department’s Detective Bureau in the Forensic Investigative Division. She has also been a mental health counselor and has expertise in organizational psychology.

Bailey-Tamaro said, “Pace University, and specifically the psychology department, has given me so much, so I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to give back. As a person of color and a female CEO, I know that we all benefit if everyone has the opportunity to get the practical skills they need to succeed. I have worn many hats in my life. I have worked as a police officer, a mental health professional, and now a businesswoman, so I look forward to providing my unique perspective to the Board of Trustees. Pace provides important opportunities to their amazing students, changing their future and their lives.”

About Pace University

Pace University has a proud history of preparing its diverse student body for a lifetime of professional success as a result of its unique program that combines rigorous academics and real-world experiences. Pace is ranked the #1 private, four-year college in the nation for upward economic mobility by Harvard University’s Opportunity Insights, evidence of the transformative education the University provides.

From its beginnings as an accounting school in 1906, Pace has grown to three campuses, enrolling 13,000 students in bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs in more than 150 majors and programs, across a range of disciplines: arts, sciences, business, health care, technology, law, education, and more. The university also has one of the most competitive performing arts programs in the country. Pace has a signature, newly renovated campus in New York City, located in the heart of vibrant Lower Manhattan, next to Wall Street and City Hall, and two campuses in Westchester County, New York: a 200-acre picturesque Pleasantville Campus and the Elisabeth Haub School of Law in White Plains.

From the psychological effects of social distancing, to the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis, the Dyson College community is working to advance our understanding of the ongoing pandemic. Student, faculty, and alumni researchers are working on a wide range of projects with both immediate relevance, and long-term implications, that will enable the world to move forward.

Here’s a look at some of the most significant work so far.

Mental health

The pandemic has undoubtedly had a significant impact on psychological wellbeing, and Associate Clinical Professor Linda Escobar Olszewski, PsyD, is studying the effects on one specific student group: athletes.

“The financial implications of COVID-19 resulted in early career termination of thousands of athletes across the country, throwing them into an identity crisis during a time of global instability,” she said. “Our study aims to investigate the double burden of COVID-19 plus early forced ‘retirement’ on NCAA athletes’ identity, health behaviors, self-esteem, and mental health.”

Escobar Olszewski, who is also the clinical director of Pace’s McShane Center for Psychological Services, is working with Mitchel Figueroa ’25, PsyD, and two outside researchers.

She notes that since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, mental health concerns among athletes are up as much as 250 percent from the NCAA’s highest previously reported totals.

“Having a better understanding the mental health impacts of the double-burden of COVID-19 and forced ‘retirement’ may highlight and capture the degree of impact these combined events have on student-athletes, and may inform universities of the mental health needs of student-athletes that results from the disruption, a population that has a great need for services, but whose mental health is often overlooked,” Escobar Olszewski said.

Her colleague, Barbara A. Mowder, PhD, is looking at another group: parents. As a researcher, one of Mowder’s core projects has been the development of the Working with Parents Manual, a training manual for counselors, psychologists, and other mental health professionals on working with parents and/or those who anticipate parenting in the future. The goal is to design a tool to assist parents in acquiring the understanding and behaviors to support the developmental needs of their children. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mowder began working with several Doctor of Psychology (PSYD) in School-Clinical Child Psychology students to assess the efficacy of the manual and the ways in which the virus may be impacting parents and parenting.

“This research has the potential to discern the myriad ways in which the pandemic has affected individuals in terms of their parent role and associated parenting behaviors,” Mowder said. “In turn, it may assist mental health professionals in identifying parenting needs during this time of increased stress as well as developing options and avenues for fostering parenting strengths.”

Economic ramifications

Data shows that during the Great Recession of 2008, workers in occupations that could be most easily automated by mechanization or technology experienced job losses in greater numbers. Julieth Saenz Molina\ ’15, Economics, coauthored a report for the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia looking at how the same trend is occurring now as a result of the pandemic.

“While the research focused on the short-term effects of automation during the pandemic, a prolonged economic crisis could lead to permanent job losses due to increases in labor-replacing automation, such as it happened after the Great Recession,” Saenz Molina said.

She was involved in several research projects as a Pace student, and plans to continue monitoring the trends of automation based on updated employment data, as well as the broader economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the responses by different governments.

“I am currently working on analyzing the role cash transfers have had in aiding nations in overcoming the detrimental effect of the pandemic on economic development,” Saenz Molina said.

The effects of remote work

Two Department of Public Administration faculty members are looking at how different groups of workers are being affected.

Associate Professor and Department of Public Administration Chair Gina Scutelnicu, PhD, has coauthored a paper analyzing how telework is impacting government workers. The research looked at how successful the transition to forced telework has been for federal employees during the COVID-19 crisis and how working experiences and arrangements adopted during COVID-19 may affect the future of telework.

“This study is among the first ones to examine telework in a comprehensive way through self-reported narratives of federal workers, thus assessing the lived experiences of telework in a holistic way,” Scutelnicu said.

Her findings indicated a generally positive perception of the transition to full-time telework in terms of productivity, performance and work-life balance, with the exception of working parents. Results were more mixed in terms of job satisfaction, social integration and supervisor support; however, data also showed that federal employees anticipate more work will become remote-eligible as society moves to a new normal. This suggests that while there are challenges that public and nonprofit organizations need to address for a remote workforce, telework can be an attractive human resource management strategy for both emergency preparedness and recruiting younger employees.

Clinical Assistant Professor Ric Kolenda, PhD, is looking at how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected gig workers. He began studying this freelance workforce in 2009, and since then it has continued to disrupt and shape our economy in new ways.

“Gig workers are a small but growing part of the economy, but more importantly, they have shown to be critical during the last several months, while also being exposed to the virus at higher rates along with other essential workers,” Kolenda said.

In addition to providing a better understanding of conditions for gig workers during the pandemic, he hopes his current research will help identify creative solutions to the unique issues they’re facing.

Kolenda plans to complete the research with the help of a paid graduate assistant.

Public perception and stopping the spread

“Understanding how the public perceives novel coronavirus/COVID-19 is a critical factor in developing public health strategies to reduce the disease spread and for treatment and prevention planning,” Clinical Associate Professor Christopher Godfrey, PhD, said.

Godfrey, who is also director of undergraduate psychology on the New York City campus, is examining how various factors—including sociodemographic characteristics, housing, access to services, and health psychological considerations such as risk perception, health literacy, and trust in government—may influence American adults’ perceptions of COVID-19, seasonal influenza, and vaccines and treatments for these diseases.

The main project is a national survey of 3,000 individuals, and graduate students are leading secondary investigations focusing on the experiences of women, communities of color, first responders, and economically disadvantaged populations. In partnership with Professor of Psychology June Chilsholm, PhD, and Associate Professor of Psychology Michele Zaccario, PhD, they will be looking at topics including how the pandemic is affecting online and family social networks and parenting practices of new moms, regional differences in African-American women’s COVID-19-related health care experiences, and health information literacy and COVID-19 risk among high COVID-risk groups.

Valerie Patritti ’20, MS in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, is on the front lines of the pandemic. As a fellow of the Association of Public Health Labs and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she is analyzing the genetic code of SARS-CoV-2 genomes. The purpose of her work is to decipher the genetic code of individual virus samples in New York City and determine if SARS-CoV-2 is changing through genetic mutation, with the goal of using the information to help with surveillance and contact tracing efforts.

She gained the experience necessary to prepare her for this research while a student at Pace, where she worked closely with chemistry professors Zhaohua Dai, PhD, and Nigel Yarlett, PhD.

“Even though the pandemic has been a difficult time for many, I am happy to have been given this unique opportunity to aid in a national emergency,” Patritti said.

Pace to reduce its energy consumption by 20% by 2023

NEW YORK and PLEASANTVILLE, N.Y. (November 17, 2020) – The U.S. Department of Energy has praised Pace University and highlighted its efforts to save energy and reopen its buildings safely. Through quick action and a commitment to reopening all three campuses — its undergraduate and graduate campuses in Lower Manhattan and Pleasantville, and the Elisabeth Haub School of Law in White Plains—in a safe and sustainable manner, Pace was able to achieve 30% to 40% energy savings compared to the same period in 2019.

Ryan McEnany, director of energy and resiliency at Pace’s Department of Facilities and Capital Projects, noted that the unexpected realities of the pandemic demanded flexibility and innovation.

“This showcases the hard work that we undertook including additional responsibilities such as becoming experts by researching the ever-changing Centers for Diseases Control and New York State recommendations, filtering through new and effective technologies to improve indoor air quality, and setting up campus with signage to allow for proper social distancing,” said McEnany.

Notably, Pace has emerged as a key leader in the Department of Energy’s “Better Buildings Initiative,” which involves over 950 commercial, public, industrial and energy organizations. The idea behind the initiative is for innovative organizations like Pace to share their sustainable energy strategies and practices, thus providing a blueprint for others to follow that lead.

Collectively, Better Building Initiative organizations have saved close to 1.8 quadrillion B-T-U’s of energy, equivalent to nearly $11 billion, and more than 105 million tons of carbon dioxide. As a participant in the Better Buildings Challenge, Pace has pledged to a 20% energy reduction campus-wide by 2023 and is well on its way to achieving that goal.

In a blog post on the Department of Energy website, the Better Buildings Initiative highlighted Pace’s commitment to its mission and praised many of the strategies the University implemented, which included productive and efficient air-conditioning cycling during the summer months, continuous energy audits to ensure standards were being met, and an overhaul of steam traps and steam system distribution.

Additionally, the Better Buildings Initiative praised the manner in which Pace maintained sustainable energy use while also implementing necessary COVID-19 safety measures that include, but are not limited to: installation of ultraviolet lights in bathrooms to help sterilize air, installation of bipolar ionization in some large public spaces on the New York City Campus, reorganizing the traffic flow of buildings, and installation of non-septic elevator buttons.

Ibi Yolas, vice president of facilities and capital projects, credited Pace’s accomplishments in this area to the tireless work of staff, and the University’s overall commitment to a sustainable future.

“I am thankful for my team who worked tirelessly to find the right solutions and keeping their focus on the best and most effective existing and emerging strategies,” said Yolas. “And also thanks to the diligent work of the COVID task force and others who made it all possible.”

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve, Pace remains committed to exploring and implementing strategies focused on improving both campus health and campus-wide energy efficiency.

Pace University has for decades been a leader in environmental stewardship. The university offers a number of undergraduate and graduate degrees in environment studies, environmental science and environmental policy, as well as a professional certification in ecology. Additionally, The Elisabeth Haub School of Law (Haub Law) is one of the top ranked programs in the country for environmental law, a signature program at the school, and The Pace Environmental Policy Clinic has gained a national reputation for its work developing innovative environmental protections on a range of issues.

Pace University was recently featured in The Princeton Review Guide to Green Colleges: 2021 edition and earlier this year, in partnership with Con Edison, Pace University installed a Solar Tree on its Pleasantville campus. In 2015, Pace also unveiled its Environmental Center Complex that includes classrooms and a replica of the former farmhouse building which serves as a key facility for faculty and students.

About Pace University

Pace University has a proud history of preparing its diverse student body for a lifetime of professional success as a result of its unique program that combines rigorous academics and real-world experiences. Pace is ranked the #1 private, four-year college in the nation for upward economic mobility by Harvard University’s Opportunity Insights, evidence of the transformative education the University provides. From its beginnings as an accounting school in 1906, Pace has grown to three campuses, enrolling 13,000 students in bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs in more than 150 majors and programs, across a range of disciplines: arts, sciences, business, health care, technology, law, education, and more. The university also has one of the most competitive performing arts programs in the country. Pace has a signature, newly renovated campus in New York City, located in the heart of vibrant Lower Manhattan, next to Wall Street and City Hall, and two campuses in Westchester County, New York: a 200-acre picturesque Pleasantville Campus and the Elisabeth Haub School of Law in White Plains. Follow us on Twitter or on our news website.

Honors the Memory of DJ Henry with Education and Empowerment

WESTCHESTER and NEW YORK (Oct. 16, 2020) – To educate and empower the Pace Community on topics connected to social and racial justice, inclusion and equality while honoring the memory of former student Danroy “DJ” Henry Jr., who was killed by a police officer 10 years ago, Pace University will host the inaugural Social Justice Week, the University today announced.

The week-long series runs from Oct. 26 to Oct. 30 and includes social justice-centered programming consisting of nearly 50 events created by students, faculty, staff and alumni. Pace University is committed to being an anti-racist institution and Social Justice Week supports education, empowerment and passion. Events are free and some are open to the public.

“This October marks 10 years since the tragic death of DJ Henry, a promising young Pace student and football player,” said Marvin Krislov, Pace’s president. “As we reflect on his life, I am pleased that our campus community is choosing to celebrate DJ’s legacy with this Social Justice Week series of programming. I hope this annual event will serve as a recommitment to work toward our goals of equality and other positive change.”

The week will kick off with an overview of how Pace students are leading the charge on advocacy and making a difference on campus and in their communities. Other highlights include a conversation with the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement; a discussion with the president of the National Urban League; presentations about topics such as diversity in the workforce, the gender gap in the technology field, and a conversation with a death row exoneree, among many others topics.

Many of the events are centered on the tragic death of DJ Henry, a Pace University football player who was shot and killed by a police officer in 2010. On Oct. 26, there will be a screening and discussion of the 48 Hourssegment, “The Story of DJ Henry.” The MFA program will be hosting “Poems in Power” in partnership with the Henry Family. There will also be a campus rally on Oct. 29—DJ Henry’s birthday (he would have been 31) and Pace University Athletics will retire his No. 12 football jersey. To learn more about his story, you can watch the video by the DJ Henry Dream Fund, the foundation established by DJ Henry’s parents.

“We created Social Justice Week to highlight the importance of social justice and to acknowledge the circumstances of DJ Henry’s murder,” said Pace student Ashley DeSalvo, a student organizer and ambassador of Unity and Social Justice with Pace’s Student Government Association. “Issues of social justice affect all of us. There is not enough time in one week to cover all of the moving pieces that influence our lives, but we hope that the events and activities of this week spark interest and passion that will encourage students to continue this work.”

Suede Graham, coordinator for Student Development and Campus Activities at Pace University noted that planning such a series of events was empowering as students, faculty and staff came together for something that was much bigger than themselves. “The students here are so passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and they are doing an excellent job of holding the university accountable in their passion,” said Graham. “I found myself nearly getting emotional reading through the submissions because I realize the levels of empathy individuals within our community hold.”

About Pace University

Pace University has a proud history of preparing its diverse student body for a lifetime of professional success as a result of its unique program that combines rigorous academics and real-world experiences. Pace is ranked the #1 private, four-year college in the nation for upward economic mobility by Harvard University’s Opportunity Insights, evidence of the transformative education the University provides. From its beginnings as an accounting school in 1906, Pace has grown to three campuses, enrolling 13,000 students in bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs in more than 150 majors and programs, across a range of disciplines: arts, sciences, business, health care, technology, law, education, and more. The university also has one of the most competitive performing arts programs in the country. Pace has a signature, newly renovated campus in New York City, located in the heart of vibrant Lower Manhattan, next to Wall Street and City Hall, and two campuses in Westchester County, New York: a 200-acre picturesque Pleasantville Campus and a Law School in White Plains. Follow us on Twitter or on our news website.

The Pace Storytelling Fellowship for Equity and Inclusion is providing new opportunities to promote diverse creatives.

With the inception of the Pace Storytelling Fellowship for Equity and Inclusion, funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Dyson College has a new opportunity to play an important role in fostering diversity and equal representation.

Launched in fall 2019, the fellowship program was created as a springboard to amplify diverse voices. Open to sophomores and juniors, it provides training and mentorship through monthly workshops, seminars, and events geared toward developing creative excellence and mastery of the writing craft, as well as assistance with graduate school applications and career and job search guidance. Fellows also receive a stipend and a paid summer internship to equip them with the knowledge and experience to enable success.

“This program gives an opportunity for students whose voices might not otherwise be heard to write,” program coordinator Lucia Burns said. “Representation matters, and we all want to see ourselves in stories, whether in plays, television, film, or fiction.”

The inaugural cohort of nine participants began in spring 2020 after a comprehensive application and interview process. They attended several panel discussions with industry professionals, including “Working Writers in New York,” featuring playwright and screenwriter Dustin Chinn, screenwriter/director/producer Sue Kramer, and young adult author and founder of We Need Diverse Books Dhonielle Clayton; “How to Pitch,” featuring entertainer Mo Brown and writer Rashaun Allen; and “How to Get the Most out of Your Internship,” featuring Andrew Tolbert, senior director of kids and animation at Hello Sunshine, and Cishawn Randolf, director of human resources at A + E Networks. During summer 2020, the students interned at arts, media, and technology organizations including New York Stage and Film, Clubbed Thumb, Girl Be Heard, Firelight Media, 9 Story, Valiant Entertainment, and Art Garage.

“Our overall goal is to help diversify writers’ rooms across the spectrum of arts organizations by developing a growing cadre of excellent and knowledgeable writers from currently under-represented groups to tell their compelling stories,” Burns said.

Meet the Fellows

The inaugural cohort of Pace Storytelling Fellowship for Equity and Inclusion participants includes these writers from across the nation and around the world.

Cheyenne Anderson ’21

“In fourth grade, I had a writing teacher, Mrs. Clark, who had us write short stories, and she told my parents that mine was one of the best she had read from a kid my age,” Cheyenne Anderson said. “I took the compliment and ran from there!”

Today, she’s an acting major, International Performance Ensemble program, who is actively involved at Pace. During the 2019–20 academic year, she served as president of Stand Up! Productions, a student theater organization, and represented the Pace School of Performing Arts in the Student Government Association. As a storyteller, she’s produced poems, plays, and other work grounded in authenticity.

“I believe in the necessity of telling lots of different kinds of stories with unflinching honesty, and I try to do that through whatever medium best suits the story,” Anderson said.

The truth about her own story is that it hasn’t always been an easy one. Originally from Kentucky, Anderson struggles with chronic mental and physical health conditions, and her path to Pace took her through boarding school, a gap year, and community college.

Now, she’s using her own experience as inspiration to forge a career as a multifaceted theatrical artist and producer.

“The Pace School of Performing Arts is a really fantastic program, so not only did the rigor of the artistic training draw me, but doing a tour of campus when I was sixteen really solidified for me that Pace is a wonderful community with a fantastic location and caring peer group,” Anderson said. “[As a fellow] I hope to gain a network of colleagues and mentors, along with a sense that my writing is worthy of being taken seriously.”

Luis Bermudez Jr. ’21

For Luis Bermudez Jr., writing is like “a puzzle.” “By the end of the story, everything will fit together and make sense, but the story itself will be chaotic,” he said. “I love invoking emotions and aim to write stories that will induce them.”

A film and screen studies major, he typically focuses his writing on the goal of entertainment and emotion, so it’s no surprise that music inspired his interest in storytelling. “I love artists who can tell a story with such vivid imagery that we all believe it happened the exact way they explained it,” he said.

Bermudez, who started out on Pace’s Pleasantville campus before transferring to New York City, hopes to sell scripts as soon as possible, while pursuing directing and film production. He’s thankful that the fellowship has placed him in an atmosphere to be able to work toward those goals.

“This fellowship is a great way to build connections and learn from people who are already [successful],” he said.

When he is not polishing his latest story or screenplay, Bermudez is an active participant in Pace’s intramural sports program.

Michelle Chan ’21

As a student in New York City, Michelle Chan has found plenty of new inspiration for her multifaceted work.

“The opportunities that come from living and learning in this unique city are one-of-a-kind,” Chan said.

While the directing major, International Performance Ensemble program, is interested in a variety of disciplines, she hopes to pursue a career as a director, bringing the stories of our communities of color to life and exploring themes of cultural fusion and identity.

Before starting at Pace, Chan spent several years growing up in Hong Kong. As a student, she served on the board of Stand Up! Productions throughout her freshman and sophomore years, helping to produce full-length performances and new works. Now, she’s looking to further expand her artistic community through the fellowship.

“I hope to create a network of other writers from diverse backgrounds and help each other navigate this industry that hasn’t made it easy for us to tell our stories,” she said.

Jemma Harris ’21

Jemma Harris first discovered her passion for writing through books. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, she recalls living as a squatter—when there wasn’t enough money for rent—so perhaps reading offered an escape from the challenges of real life.

“I’m a big fan of detail, and I like to use genre as a way to tell meaningful stories in a way that can address reality without slapping the reader in the face with it,” Harris said.

A film and screen studies major with double minors in creative writing and journalism and digital storytelling, she hopes to find future success as a screenwriter and novelist.

“I applied to the fellowship in hopes that it would provide instructive or mentoring experience within different fields of writing beyond what’s available in a classroom, and give me a greater sense of connection to the school I’m graduating from,” Harris said.

At Pace, she is also involved in Stand Up! Productions and Feminist Allies.

Jada Henry ’21

For Jada Henry, storytelling is a way to recount memories and reorganize them through a different lens. She describes her writing as “naturalistic” and “abstract,” as she tries to keep the realism in her stories while also incorporating unorthodox themes.

“I’ve always been connected to storytelling,” she said. “I continuously try to keep a sense of reality so that the stories I write are like that of old friends reminiscing over whacky memories.”

When Henry isn’t capturing her memories on paper, she spends her time as secretary of Pace’s multimedia club, POP TV. The film and screen studies major is also a fourth-year Women’s Leadership Initiative mentor and recently celebrated the publication of her first fictional thriller, The Principles of Good Taste and Ornament.

“As a creator, often the biggest obstacle is yourself, so I am thrilled to have a piece of work I am proud of to my name,” Henry said.

Before coming to Pace, Henry had never ventured out of her hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. Looking ahead, she intends to pursue screenwriting and acting in the film industry and believes the fellowship is an integral stepping-stone to those dreams.

Georges Yogolelo Mbuyu ’22

Born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, Georges Yogolelo Mbuyu came to New York City to work toward degrees in both political science and English literature and language at Pace. Mbuyu, a member of Pace Music Group, the University’s music club, and an active representative of the Alpha Kappa Sigma fraternity, first discovered his passion for writing through a high school English teacher.

“[He] taught me that writing was an indispensable tool,” Mbuyu said. “We got to write and record our own shorts. It rarely felt like a lesson, and I’ve loved writing ever since.”

Today, as a fellow, he is honing his craft with new stories and friends, and through his writing he hopes to take the audience on a journey to discover real meaning.

“It’s seeing the uniqueness of all our lives that excites me and makes me want to share that [enthusiasm] with everyone I can through stories,” Mbuyu said.

Janvi Patel ’21

Janvi Patel is fascinated with hearing and recording people’s stories. Double majoring in American studies and art, she came to Pace to be in New York City, and she’s already had plenty of life experience as a world traveler, international volunteer, and adventurer—she overcame a fear of heights and water by cliff jumping with a friend.

With her writing, unapologetically wordy and descriptive, Patel likes to take readers on their own journey, one in which they forget their current surroundings.

“I like creating experiences for others through my stories that make them question their morality, existence, and society,” she said.

As a kid growing up in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, she was mesmerized and delighted by stories and books she discovered while exploring the town’s public library, as well as her school library. At Pace, she’s actively involved in several student organizations, including Blend 41, Aphros Literary Magazine, Pace Music Group, the LGBTQA Center, Setter Stage, and Pace Film Club.

As a fellow, Patel hopes to learn and engage with other writers, and she has big plans for the future, which include working in government and conservation, writing books, volunteering, and designing a school where she can help create mindful, meaningful curricula that are free and accessible for students.

Benjamin Daniel Ravelo ’21

Working toward degrees in computer science and English, Benjamin Daniel Ravelo has loved stories and comics since childhood.

Born and raised in New Jersey, he describes his storytelling style as an exploration of strange, fantastical environments and real, universal truths, infusing a poetic language and a bit of fun along the way.

“I love to cast my net into various genres, often science fiction, and try to fish out a truth to convey to the reader,” Ravelo said. “The higher the concept and the more relevant the theme, the better.”

He credits his experience with undiagnosed anxiety during his middle school years with helping to make him who he is today, and looking ahead as a fellow, he hopes to grow in his craft as a writer and gain opportunities to make further connections, especially in the world of comics and graphic novels.

He has already taken a significant first step, having co-written a mini-comic that has received positive audience response.

Justin Winley ’21

Film and screen studies major Justin Winley is a transfer student from Harlem who describes himself as the kind of kid who read the dictionary for fun and often played around on his dad’s old typewriter, fascinated as he watched the words formed in his mind print out before his eyes in real time.

His parents encouraged him to read from an early age, and as a writer, his favorite subject is the human connection.

“I explore the way people change over time, through relationships and trauma and everything else that can happen to us over the course of our lives,” Winley said. “This is what ties my poetry to my prose, my screenplay to my songwriting.”

At Pace, he serves as vice president of Pace University Martial Arts, a student organization he co-founded, and he is a member of both the Black Student Union and the Caribbean and African Student Association. As a fellow, Winley is developing relationships with working writers in the Tri-State area.

“I am connected to several like-minded and equally gifted/talented individuals who are all eager to build, and that prospect keeps me excited and optimistic about the future of art,” he said.

He looks forward to further collaborations, and his ultimate goal is to work in the film industry as a “one-man pitch machine,” developing screenplays for film and television with opportunities for him to perform.

National Award Honors Ordinary Citizens Doing Extraordinary Acts of Public Service

PLEASANTVILLE, N.Y. – September 25, 2020 -- A Pace University nursing student who founded an international first responder organization in the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes in Haiti has won a 2020 Jefferson Award, a prestigious national honor that recognizes America’s top change makers and ordinary citizens who are doing extraordinary acts of public service.

In selecting Jacqueline Cassagnol for a National Award for Outstanding Public Service, Multiplying Good, the nonprofit organization that administers the Awards, cited the Rockland County resident’s on-the-ground life-saving volunteer work in Haiti and her subsequent creation of Worldwide Community First Responder, Inc., which provides health education, first-aid and disaster preparedness training to people in the United States and Haiti. Since the organization was established in 2011, it has educated and trained more than 350,000 community members in critical life-saving skills.

Cassagnol, a doctoral candidate in nursing at Pace’s College of Health Professions, is the first student from Pace to earn the national honor, and the third member of the Pace community. She joins an impressive list of people who have earned an award that is often considered the “Nobel Prize for Public Service.” This year’s other national winners include actress and activist Kristen Bell, Youth Villages CEO Patrick Lawler, and TOMS clothing brand.

“I couldn't be prouder of Jacqueline Cassagnol’s many accomplishments, now including becoming Pace University's first-ever student national Jefferson Award winner,” said Pace President Marvin Krislov. “Pace students are committed to serving our community, and Jacqueline embodies that. I'm impressed and inspired by her leadership, hard work, and dedication. She is truly deserving of this great honor.”

Over the past four decades, the list of Jefferson Award recipients has included hundreds of national figures — both public and private —more than 63,000 unsung heroes, and tens of thousands of employees and young people that represent the good that is happening in communities across the country. The list of winners includes an impressive who’s who of cultural icons, political dignitaries and everyday community members and volunteers.

“For nearly 50 years, we’ve used recognition to inspire everyone to find a way to serve others,” explained Hillary Schafer, CEO of Multiplying Good. “By celebrating service on a national stage, we elevate the spirit of America, the resiliency of its people, and the good that is all around us.”

“Jefferson Award recipients represent the highest level of service to others,” Schafer continued. “By telling their stories, we encourage them to do even more and inspire others to make a difference through service.”

The Jefferson Awards is the nation’s largest and longest-running awards ceremony honoring public service. The Awards, which are traditionally held twice a year at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., were entirely online this year. It was presented as a one-hour streaming video and aired a collection of inspiring stories that celebrate unparalleled service to others. It also included special recognition of One in a Million awards campaign winners who've had a positive impact through service in the face of crises.

Pace University, a champion of the Jefferson Awards since 2008, also held a virtual viewing party that included staff, students and faculty. Cassagnol was among 12 local bronze award winners and was chosen to represent Pace at the virtual awards ceremony.

In addition to winning a national Jefferson Award, Cassagnol has earned many other honors for her work. She was named “Nurse of the Year” by the March of Dimes at its Fifth Annual gala in New York; designated a “Rising Star” by the Rockland Economic Development Corporation at its Annual Forty Under 40 Reception in 2014; presented with the Safe Community Award by Volunteer New York; and inducted into the New York Academy of Medicine in November 2018. In 2019, the New York Yankees named Jacqueline a “Nurse Hero,” and she won the Haitian American Young Citizen of the Year Award from the U.S. Haitian Chamber of Commerce.

In her acceptance remarks, Cassagnol congratulated her peers and noted that it was a great honor to represent Pace University at the Awards.

“I am so grateful to Pace University and Multiplying Good for recognizing extraordinary public service,” Cassagnol said. “Congratulations to all of the recipients of this prestigious award tonight. Your contributions, your sacrifices, your collective enthusiasm clearly are making a significant difference. You are all leaders, highly deserving of the recognition you have received.”

Dr. Harriet R. Feldman, dean of the College of Health Professions and the Lienhard School of Nursing at Pace University, and past Jefferson Award recipient, said Cassagnol was an inspiration and example for others.

“I applaud our student Jacqueline Cassagnol on this extraordinary honor,” Dean Feldman said. “Her dedication to the well-being of local, regional and global communities will surely inspire others in the Pace Community and beyond about the importance of service. We are very proud of her!”

About Multiplying Good

Multiplying Good is a national nonprofit that uses service to others and recognition as tools to unleash potential, inspire individuals, and transform lives. It has offices in 11 communities across the country, delivering on-the-ground impact where it is needed most. Founded in 1972 by Sam Beard, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Senator Robert Taft, Jr., the organization has recognized the extraordinary public service of thousands with its Jefferson Award. Additionally, Multiplying Good fuels personal growth and leadership development through a continuum that starts with engagement and culminates in recognition. To learn more, visit MultiplyingGood.org or follow Multiplying Good on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

About Pace University

Pace University has a proud history of preparing its diverse student body for a lifetime of professional success as a result of its unique program that combines rigorous academics and real-world experiences. Pace is ranked the #1 private, four-year college in the nation for upward economic mobility by Harvard University’s Opportunity Insights, evidence of the transformative education the University provides. From its beginnings as an accounting school in 1906, Pace has grown to three campuses, enrolling 13,000 students in bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs in more than 150 majors and programs, across a range of disciplines: arts, sciences, business, health care, technology, law, education, and more. The university also has one of the most competitive performing arts programs in the country. Pace has a signature, newly renovated campus in New York City, located in the heart of vibrant Lower Manhattan, next to Wall Street and City Hall, and two campuses in Westchester County, New York: a 200-acre picturesque Pleasantville Campus and a Law School in White Plains. Follow us on Twitter or on our news website.

$200,000 State Grant through State Sen. Harckham’s Office Paves Way for Resource Center for Student Veterans

PLEASANTVILLE, N.Y. – September 21, 2020 – President Marvin Krislov joined New York State Senator Peter Harckham, student veterans and campus leaders on Monday for a grand opening of Pace University’s Student Veterans Center on its Pleasantville campus.

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The new center, which was made possible with the help of a $200,000 grant secured by Senator Harckham, will serve as a one-stop resource center for student veterans at Pace, which has hundreds of student veterans and dependents across its campuses, including 60 in Westchester. The new SVC is centrally located on campus inside the Kessel Student Center. Watch a video of the ribbon cutting here.

“Pace University has a proud tradition of supporting student veterans and their families, and this new Student Veterans Center, our first space dedicated exclusively to their needs, will help us deliver on that mission,” said President Krislov. “We are grateful to Senator Harckham for his support. He shares our firm belief that we must go above and beyond to serve those who have served our country.”

“The new Student Veterans Center at Pace University’s Pleasantville campus will be an important resource for the Pace veterans community, and I am pleased to have supported its creation from the start,” State Sen. Harckham added. “These days, more veterans of our Armed Services are pursuing postsecondary educations, and their needs differ somewhat from typical college students in terms of certain resources and socialization. Pace’s Veterans Center is a recognition of this shift in the student body, and will be met with wide appreciation as a result.”

The SVC will offer a central location on campus to connect, socialize and use the school's resources. Veterans, for example, will be able to obtain information on how to work with, and navigate, the VA, as well as the various educational benefits student veterans are entitled to including the Forever GI Bill, Post 9/11 GI Bill, Yellow Ribbon Program and Vocational Rehab.

“This is a dream come true,” said Steven Garcia, a USMC Veteran and Past President of the Student Veterans of America’s Pleasantville chapter. “Bringing veterans together at one central location will be great for the entire Pace community. This space will be essential in helping connect veterans with available resources at Pace and get them the support they need to be successful. I want to thank Senator Harckham and Pace for making this possible.” ​

“We are here today because like many others, Senator Harckham recognizes and believes in the importance of community building,” said Sukh Singh, a USMC Veteran and member of Pace University’s Class of 2021. “The SVA has put in countless hours to receive more recognition in our community. So, this is a crucial milestone for Pace’s student veterans who finally have a space to grow and support one another in their pursuits of higher education.”

Senator Harckham last year joined student veterans and university leaders to announce the project. Construction on the new Student Veterans Center began this past winter – delayed only slightly because of the pandemic -- and was completed over the summer.

“Student veterans contribute to the diversity and campus life here at Pace University,” said COL (Ret) Peter Riley, director of Pace Office of Veterans Services. “It is terrific that veterans have their own Center. It gives them a place to use the computers, study, relax, commiserate and support each other. We appreciate all the effort that Senator Harckham and his staff did to open the Veterans Center. COVID-19 might have delayed its opening, but could not prevent it.”

About Pace University

Pace University has a proud history of preparing its diverse student body for a lifetime of professional success as a result of its unique program that combines rigorous academics and real-world experiences. Pace is ranked the #1 private, four-year college in the nation for upward economic mobility by Harvard University’s Opportunity Insights, evidence of the transformative education the University provides. From its beginnings as an accounting school in 1906, Pace has grown to three campuses, enrolling 13,000 students in bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs in more than 150 majors and programs, across a range of disciplines: arts, sciences, business, health care, technology, law, education, and more. The university also has one of the most competitive performing arts programs in the country. Pace has a signature, newly renovated campus in New York City, located in the heart of vibrant Lower Manhattan, next to Wall Street and City Hall, and two campuses in Westchester County, New York: a 200-acre picturesque Pleasantville Campus and a Law School in White Plains. Follow us on Twitter or on our news website.