Fall is here, and there are a few important financial aid updates to keep on your radar. From filing your 2027–2028 FAFSA to understanding new federal student loan rules, here’s what Haub Law students need to know.

File Your 2027–2028 FAFSA by February 15

The 2027–2028 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) opens October 1, 2026. Pace’s priority submission deadline is February15, 2027. Before you get started:

• Create your FSA ID. If you do not already have one, create an account on the Federal Student Aid website.
• Use your legal information. First-time filers should have their Social Security number ready and enter their legal name exactly as it appears on their Social Security card.
• Submit by February 15. Filing by Pace’s priority deadline helps ensure you are considered for all financial aid for which you may be eligible.
• Need help? A 2027–2028 FAFSA walkthrough is coming soon. In the meantime, visit the Pace Financial Aid YouTube channel for helpful videos and resources.

New Federal Student Loan Limits Are Now in Effect

New federal student loan limits took effect July 1, 2026. Some continuing students may qualify for a legacy exception, allowing them to continue borrowing under the previous federal loan limits. You may qualify for the legacy exception if you were enrolled in your current program and received a Direct Loan before July 1, 2026.

To maintain legacy eligibility:

• You must remain enrolled in the same program at the same school without interrupting your enrollment.
• Taking a Leave of Absence may cause you to lose legacy eligibility.
• You must complete your program within its published length.

If you do not qualify for the legacy exception, the new federal loan limits will apply.

For example, Graduate PLUS Loans will only be available to students meeting Legacy guidelines.

Non-Legacy borrowers are eligible for up to $50,000 Unsubsidized loan annually, with a new aggregate limit of $200,000.

Students are unable to choose whether or not to "opt out" of legacy borrower status.

Other Federal Student Loan Changes

There are also two important changes to how federal student loans are distributed:

• You can no longer receive more than half of your annual federal student loan eligibility in a single semester.
• If you enroll less than full-time, federal student loans will be reduced based on your credit load.

Complete Your 2026–2027 Financial Aid Requirements

Still have outstanding financial aid requirements for the current academic year? Log in to your Pace Portal and complete any remaining 2026–2027 financial aid requirements as soon as possible. Outstanding requirements can delay the processing or disbursement of your financial aid.

Don’t Lose Financial Aid Over Attendance

Federal financial aid eligibility is tied to your attendance and participation in your courses. To protect your eligibility:

• Attend and participate in all your registered classes.
• Pay attention to any attendance-related communications from Pace.
• Respond promptly if there is an issue with your enrollment.

Professors are required to verify attendance during the semester. If you do not attend or participate in a course, you may be dropped for non-attendance, and your financial aid may be adjusted accordingly.

Check Your Pace Email

Your Pace email is one of the most important ways the Financial Aid Office communicates with you. If you receive a message that requires action, respond as soon as possible. Check it regularly for:

• Outstanding financial aid requirements
• FAFSA updates
• Changes to your aid
• Requests for additional information
• Important deadlines

Contact the Financial Aid Office

Need help? The Financial Aid Office is available Monday–Friday, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Reach out via phone at (914) 648-0796 or submit a Help Desk ticket,

Fall is here, and there are a few important financial aid updates to keep on your radar. From filing your 2027–2028 FAFSA to understanding new federal student loan rules, here’s what undergraduate students and families need to know.

File Your 2027–2028 FAFSA by November 15

The 2027–2028 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) opens October 1, 2026. Pace’s priority submission deadline is November 15, 2026.

Before you get started:

• Create your FSA ID. If you do not already have one, create an account on the Federal Student Aid website.
• Use your legal information. First-time filers should have their Social Security number ready and enter their legal name exactly as it appears on their Social Security card.
• Submit by November 15. Filing by Pace’s priority deadline helps ensure you are considered for all financial aid for which you may be eligible.
• Need help? A 2027–2028 FAFSA walkthrough is coming soon. In the meantime, visit the Pace Financial Aid YouTube channel for helpful videos and resources.

New Federal Student Loan Limits Are Now in Effect

New federal student loan limits took effect July 1, 2026. Some continuing students and families may qualify for a legacy exception, allowing them to continue borrowing under the previous federal loan limits.

You may qualify for the legacy exception if you were enrolled in your current program and received a Direct Loan before July 1, 2026.

To maintain legacy eligibility:

• You must remain enrolled in the same program at the same school without interrupting your enrollment.
• Taking a Leave of Absence may cause you to lose legacy eligibility.
• You must complete your program within its published length.

If you do not qualify for the legacy exception, the new federal loan limits will apply.

For example, Parent PLUS Loans are now limited to $20,000 per year for each dependent undergraduate student, with a $65,000 lifetime limit.

If your parent borrowed a Parent PLUS Loan before July 1, 2026, they may be able to continue borrowing under the previous rules, up to the full cost of attendance minus other financial aid, for up to three additional years or until you graduate, whichever comes first.

Other Federal Student Loan Changes

There are also two important changes to how federal student loans are distributed:

• You can no longer receive more than half of your annual federal student loan eligibility in a single semester.
• If you enroll less than full-time, federal student loans other than Parent PLUS Loans will be reduced based on your credit load.

Complete Your 2026–2027 Financial Aid Requirements

Still have outstanding financial aid requirements for the current academic year? Log in to your Pace Portal and complete any remaining 2026–2027 financial aid requirements as soon as possible. Outstanding requirements can delay the processing or disbursement of your financial aid.

Don’t Lose Financial Aid Over Attendance

Federal financial aid eligibility is tied to your attendance and participation in your courses. To protect your eligibility:

• Attend and participate in all your registered classes.
• Pay attention to any attendance-related communications from Pace.
• Respond promptly if there is an issue with your enrollment.

Professors are required to verify attendance during the semester. If you do not attend or participate in a course, you may be dropped for non-attendance, and your financial aid may be adjusted accordingly.

Check Your Pace Email

Your Pace email is one of the most important ways the Financial Aid Office communicates with you. If you receive a message that requires action, respond as soon as possible. Check it regularly for:

• Outstanding financial aid requirements
• FAFSA updates
• Changes to your aid
• Requests for additional information
• Important deadlines

Contact the Financial Aid Office

Need help? The Financial Aid Office is available Monday–Friday, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Reach out via phone at (877) 672-1830, submit a Help Desk ticket, or schedule an appointment.

For independent game developers, creating the game is only part of the challenge. Once the coding, design, testing, and polishing are complete, the creators face a completely different question: How do they find an audience for what they’ve built?

Brennan Moores ’26, a recent graduate of Pace University’s Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems, knows that challenge firsthand as an independent game developer. As he put it, “The one thing that you want to do with your game is share it. You want to get it across the world.”

This is exactly the problem that Averent, a social commerce platform designed to help small, independent game developers and their supporters discover and be discovered, is working to address. Co-founded by Pace student Tyler Yeung, who is pursuing his BA in Computer Science from Seidenberg, and University of Calgary student Rabi Khan, the company aims to improve indie game discoverability, strengthen creator-audience relationships, and complement trusted platforms such as Steam, itch.io, Discord, and game websites.

One thing Pace has allowed me to do is incorporate my startup directly into my education.

Throughout his time at Pace, Yeung and the team have been building Averent and applying everything they’ve learned into developing the platform. “One thing Pace has allowed me to do is incorporate my startup directly into my education,” Yeung said. “In multiple instances, I’ve been able to incorporate Averent directly as part of my coursework, including my Honors Thesis, final projects for multiple software development courses, and working directly with students and faculty, including Dean Chen herself, to push Averent forward. Our team is nearly entirely composed of Pace students and alumni, with many faculty serving as direct mentors and advisors.”

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Faculty mentorship has played a crucial role in Averent’s development. “One of the professors that stood out the most to me was Professor Tom Schmidt,” Yeung added. “I had one of my first-ever classes at Pace with him, discrete math, which is an area I was never very strong in. I was worried this would be a major struggle, but Dr. Schmidt’s teaching motivated me to continue my studies at Seidenberg when I wasn’t too sure about my future in this field.”

Schmidt eventually became Averent’s academic advisor, and as Yeung put it, “he was our gateway into most of the great resources that Pace has to offer.”

As Averent developed, Seidenberg students and alumni with different areas of expertise joined the team. Sapna Naidu (’26), the team’s cybersecurity lead, earned her MS in Cybersecurity from Pace and is now a full-time faculty member at Seidenberg. “My work as a secure full-stack engineer ran alongside my studies and made the coursework click. I could take a concept from class and immediately apply it against real threats and real systems. That loop between classroom and practice is what turned knowledge into instinct,” Naidu said. She added that when she was looking for a cybersecurity program, Seidenberg’s hands-on approach, proximity to industry in New York, and experienced faculty made the difference. “It felt like a place that would prepare me to actually build and defend systems, not just study them.”

Mentorship by faculty ... as well as Pace’s networking events and courses based on industry-level knowledge, were the things that really enhanced my education here and left me feeling prepared for a career.

Sarvesh Shah (MS in Computer Science ’26), the platform’s full-stack cloud engineer, echoed Naidu’s emphasis on faculty mentorship and industry-focused learning as important parts of his Pace experience. “Mentorship by faculty like Dr. Scharff and Dr. Shan, as well as Pace’s networking events and courses based on industry-level knowledge, were the things that really enhanced my education here and left me feeling prepared for a career,” he said.

The Averent team recently completed the Spring 2026 Element 46 Tech Accelerator, a Westchester-based startup accelerator, where they presented at Demo Day. They have since launched the platform and started testing with active beta users. They’ve also joined forces with the Front Yard at Pace University, an entrepreneurial incubator at the Lubin School of Business, as a startup in residence. The partnership gives the team another environment to develop Averent while expanding its connections across the University.

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For Lizi Imedashvili (BS in Information Systems ’26), Averent’s head of growth and business development and a current MS in Data Science student, interdisciplinary experiences at Pace led her to the startup. She also serves as a project manager at Blue CoLab, Seidenberg’s program of training, innovation, and research in real-time water monitoring technologies within the Gale Epstein Center for Technology, Policy, and the Environment, where she met Yeung and learned about Averent. “Joining the team let me apply what I’ve learned, keep growing my skills, and experience what it’s like to build something in a real startup.”

Isaiah Zuppa (BS in Computer Science ’26), the platform’s lead outreach coordinator and full-stack developer, discovered Averent in a software engineering class, which ultimately helped him finish his capstone project: “I got to work on a platform with real-world implications, applying not only my previous knowledge but consistently learning new things that I can confidently say have greatly honed my skills.”

Averent’s collaborative approach has been central to the team’s growth. Rabi Khan, Averent’s co-founder and CTO, recognizes that same spirit of collaboration at the heart of the company’s beginnings. “One of the main things that made me want to work on Averent was Tyler's passion, and I was impressed with his front-end design when he first showed me,” he said. “A cool part of Averent's story is that it started off from us playing Minecraft when I was probably around 10 years old, and it led to the start of a company.”

As the team continues expanding its platform and building relationships with industry partners, Averent captures how people can grow together and build something with the potential to influence an industry when they have an environment that supports hands-on learning and mentorship.

The Elisabeth Haub School of Law launches the Haub Environmental Law Fifty Fund, a new initiative established to coincide with the Law School’s 50th anniversary to support innovative scholarship, research, and collaboration among junior environmental law scholars.

At a time of significant change in environmental law and policy, the Haub Environmental Law Fifty Fund will provide targeted, flexible grants to help emerging scholars advance ambitious projects with the potential to contribute to environmental law scholarship, education, policy, and practice. Grants will support endeavors that extend beyond the boundaries of traditional legal scholarship and encourage innovation, collaboration, and real-world impact.

“For 50 years, Haub Law has been at the forefront of environmental legal education, scholarship, and advocacy, and this new fund reflects both that history and our commitment to the future of the field,” said Horace E. Anderson Jr., Dean of the Elisabeth Haub School of Law. “By investing in the next generation of environmental law scholars and providing them with the resources to pursue innovative ideas, we are helping to ensure that environmental law continues to evolve to meet the challenges of our time.”

The Haub Environmental Law Fifty Fund Grant Program is designed to provide junior scholars with timely funding that can unlock new opportunities in their work. Funding may support research assistants, empirical or fieldwork, data acquisition and technical tools, workshops and stakeholder convenings, practitioner engagement, project-related travel, community collaboration, and other innovative approaches that may be difficult to pursue through traditional faculty resources.

The program is also grounded in principles of mutual support and community-building. In addition to providing financial support, Haub Law seeks to create opportunities for grant recipients to develop new collaborations, exchange ideas, and build lasting connections within the environmental law academy. Awardees will be invited to participate in an end-of-grant-year symposium at Haub Law’s campus in White Plains, New York, where they will share their research, works-in-progress, project outcomes, methods, or tools with fellow scholars.

The program builds on Haub Law’s longstanding commitment to expanding access to academic resources. Beginning in 2014, Haub Law’s Future Environmental Law Professors Workshop provides mentorship and support to emerging environmental law scholars on the academic job market. The Haub Environmental Law Fifty Fund Grant Program seeks to extend that support to junior scholars in need of additional resources to deepen their work.

“Environmental law scholarship is strongest when scholars have the freedom and resources to explore new ideas, build collaborations, and connect their work to the communities and institutions confronting environmental challenges,” said Professor Josh Galperin, Associate Dean of the Environmental Law Program at Haub Law. “We have seen firsthand how the Haub family’s support has opened doors for new ideas and initiatives in environmental law at Haub Law and beyond, and the Haub Environmental Law Fifty Fund gives us an opportunity to help open those doors for junior scholars as well.”

Eligible applicants include full-time, pre-tenure faculty and faculty in their first-year post-tenure at U.S.-based law schools whose work focuses on environmental law. Clinical faculty who meet the applicable career-stage criteria are also eligible, including those who are not in tenure-track positions. Collaborative proposals are encouraged, provided at least one applicant meets the eligibility requirements and has significant involvement in the proposed project.

Applications are due by November 15, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. ET, with award recipients expected to be notified in December. Multiple projects are expected to receive funding. Projects will generally take place over approximately nine to twelve months following the award, although proposals with different timelines will also be considered. Applications will be evaluated by both Haub Law faculty and a group of outside experts. Assessment criteria will include innovation, feasibility, impact and community value, scholarly development, and alignment of the proposed budget with the program’s goals. Full application details and additional information on the Haub Environmental Law Fifty Fund are available here.

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For Jolina Halloran, EdD, academic advising has never been simply about choosing courses, checking requirements, or staying on track toward graduation.

It is about helping students navigate college as people.

As director of academic advising for Pace University’s Lubin School of Business, Halloran leads undergraduate advising across the New York City and Pleasantville campuses, supervising a team of eight academic advisors and one staff member while maintaining an active caseload of more than 300 undergraduate and graduate students.

Her approach is grounded in a simple but consequential question. When a student begins struggling, rather than immediately asking Why aren’t they doing what they are supposed to do?, Halloran considers something different: What might be happening in this student’s life that is affecting their ability to engage?

That question is also at the center of Halloran’s paper, Emotional Intelligence and Relational-Cultural Theory as a Framework for Trauma-Informed Academic Advising, published in the peer-reviewed NACADA Journal, a leading scholarly publication focused on advancing academic advising research and practice.

Her research brings together emotional intelligence, relational-cultural theory, and principles of trauma-informed care to offer advisors a more holistic framework for understanding student behavior. Emotional intelligence considers an advisor’s ability to recognize and manage emotions. Relational-cultural theory examines trust, connection, power, identity, and empathy within the advising relationship. Trauma-informed care considers the wider institutional environment surrounding both the advisor and student.

“When students trust their advisor, they begin to ask questions, advocate for themselves,” she says.

Together, Halloran says, those perspectives can help higher education professionals look differently at behaviors that might otherwise be interpreted simply as disengagement or irresponsibility.

A student who stops responding to emails, misses appointments, withdraws from a course, or begins struggling academically may be experiencing circumstances an advisor cannot immediately see.

That does not mean eliminating expectations.

“Accountability and empathy aren’t opposites,” Halloran says. An advisor can clearly explain policies and academic standards while still acknowledging that a student may be experiencing something difficult.

At Lubin, that philosophy becomes part of a larger approach to preparing students to navigate college, careers, and increasingly complex professional environments.

Halloran has spent more than a decade at Pace, beginning in the Biology Department before moving into academic advising through the Honors College and, eventually, Lubin. She has worked directly with students throughout different stages of the undergraduate experience and has taught courses including University Life, professional planning and internship preparation, and advanced professional development for career readiness.

That breadth of experience has helped shape her understanding of advising as developmental rather than merely transactional.

Students may initially walk into an advisor’s office because they need help registering for a course, understanding a degree requirement, or resolving an academic problem. But when trust develops, Halloran says, the conversation changes.

“When students trust their advisor, they begin to ask questions, advocate for themselves,” she says.

Advisors, then, have an opportunity not only to help solve an immediate problem but also to teach students how to navigate complicated systems, recover from setbacks, make decisions, and confidently ask for help.

Halloran’s research has made her even more intentional about bringing curiosity into those interactions. It has also reinforced her belief that strong advising should ultimately increase a student’s independence.

Part of the goal, she says, is “helping them develop the confidence and the skills to navigate the next problem themselves.”

Her commitment to resilience and student support also extends well beyond Pace.

Halloran is co-founder of the BTH Foundation, established in memory of her son, Brian Thomas Halloran. Through the organization, Halloran and her family support mental health education for young people, including bringing DBT STEPS-A curriculum into school districts and helping train educators to continue that work.

Her experiences with the foundation, together with her scholarly interests in emotional intelligence, self-stigma, help-seeking, and student self-advocacy, have increasingly converged with her work in higher education.

But Halloran is careful about the boundaries of that work.

Academic advisors are not therapists, she emphasizes. Trauma-informed advising instead asks advisors and institutions to think carefully about how they listen, how they communicate, and how they connect students with appropriate resources.

Halloran advocates for “warm referrals,” which can mean helping a student identify the right office, explaining what to expect, initiating a connection when appropriate, and following up rather than simply directing someone elsewhere. She also argues that sustainable trauma-informed advising requires institutional support, including clear referral pathways, training, manageable workloads, collaboration, and strong partnerships across campus.

“I hope they feel seen, heard, respected, and capable,” she says.

It is a philosophy that places relationships at the center of student success while recognizing that successful advising is never the responsibility of one person alone.

For Halloran, its impact can ultimately be measured in something deceptively simple: how a student feels when they leave the room.

“I hope they feel seen, heard, respected, and capable,” she says.

Students may not always receive the answer they hoped for. Policies cannot always change. But even when the answer is no, Halloran wants students to know that someone listened, treated them with dignity, and helped them understand what comes next.

At Lubin, Halloran is bringing that combination of research, experience, and advocacy directly into the work of supporting students, helping them not only move toward a degree but become more confident navigating the challenges they will encounter along the way.

At Pace University’s Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems, finding new ways to explore how technology fits into our lives is an almost daily occurrence. So, for Seidenberg, what does it mean to break patterns with AI? How can we use it as a tool to challenge familiar ways of doing things while being thoughtful about what the impact is and what comes next?

A recent event called Break the Pattern with AI, an International Women’s Day celebration held at Pace’s New York City Campus, explored those questions and centered on the participants’ personal interpretations of the topic. Organized to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) 2026 by Seidenberg and the Pace AI Lab alongside Women Techmakers, Pace’s Google Developers Group on Campus, and Women in Tech Club, the all-day event brought together students, faculty, and technology professionals, including speakers from organizations such as Google, Capgemini, and JPMorgan, to consider AI from a variety of perspectives.

Through career and technical discussions, student lightning talks, emerging technology demonstrations, and even a technology-integrated fashion show, women working and studying in technology shared their experiences while exploring AI’s growing influence on careers, creativity, ethics, and everyday life. Throughout these activities and conversations, the event became a space to exchange ideas, learn from one another, and consider how future technologists can play an active role in shaping how AI is used.

For Sarah Lin ’19, adjunct professor of computer science at Seidenberg and faculty affiliate at the Pace AI Lab, the event made for a memorable experience.

“Honestly, one of the more energizing days I've had this semester,” Lin said. “The mix worked really well. Panels that got into the hard questions, lightning talks by students who absolutely held their own, and a Meta Glasses demo that had people huddled around it the whole break.”

Being Intentional About AI

Lin participated in The Developer’s Future: Navigating Careers in the Age of AI, a panel focused on what a rapidly changing technological landscape means for current and future developers. Her perspective centered on an idea she calls “Break the Pattern with Intentional AI,” which is basically an approach that explores how we learn, teach, and work with AI on purpose rather than simply adopting the technology by default.

“Ethical AI use looks like disclosure, intent, and accountability to me. Disclosure, being honest about where AI was involved. Intent, asking whether you're using it to go further or to avoid going at all. And accountability, being willing to stand behind the output as if it were fully yours, because in a professional context, it is. It's a habit you build decision by decision.”

Students also engaged in the conversation through a series of five-minute lightning talks centered on their own interpretations of “Break the Pattern with AI.” Selected presenters received coaching from Marie-France Han of JustWorks NYC as they prepared to share projects, initiatives, and ideas with the event’s audience.

This format gave students a chance to learn from professionals and faculty members while also adding their own voices to the conversation—building communication skills and confidence while challenging them to think critically and develop their own ideas about the topic.

Christelle Scharff, PhD, director of Pace’s AI Lab and professor of computer science in the Seidenberg School, added that “this event truly reflected the power of community. Students, faculty, staff, and our partners came together to create a space where we could learn from one another, celebrate women in technology, and explore how we can shape the future of AI together.”

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Modeling New Possibilities

One of the event’s highlights was the technology-integrated fashion show, where patterns generated with the help of Dr. Scharff’s machine learning process were transformed into wax-printed clothing and accessories.

Lin participated in the show herself, moving from a conversation about responsible AI use to a creative demonstration of the technology in action—with a particular emphasis on using AI as a collaborative tool, rather than replacing the human creator.

“I also walked in the fashion show, which was such a fun counterweight to the panel,” she said. “Same conversation, totally different register. Instead of talking about intentional AI, we were wearing it. The wax-print patterns generated for the show were a great example of AI as a creative collaborator rather than a replacement and stepping into that as a participant made the throughline of the day click for me.”

That throughline connected the event’s many different pieces: students finding their voices, women in technology sharing what they have learned, and a community exploring new tools together rather than simply reacting to them.

A big thank you to all speakers who were involved in IWD 2026.

Pace University’s motto, Opportunitas, inspires us to recognize those who create opportunity for others and to celebrate the individuals who embody our community’s values. This year, you have two ways to take part in these traditions: by nominating an inspiring voice for Commencement 2027.

Commencement Speaker and Honorary Degree Nominations

Who will address the Class of 2027? You tell us.

Each year, Pace invites nominations for honorary degree recipients—leaders who exemplify the University’s values and aspirations, bring distinction to Pace, and help make Commencement unforgettable. Selected honorees may:

• Deliver the keynote at the main ceremony,
• Address a school or college ceremony, or
• Be recognized without giving a speech.

All honorees will receive an honorary doctorate—the highest recognition Pace University can bestow.

What We’re Looking For

• Inspiring stories and passions that reflect Pace’s mission of Opportunitas
• Connections to the Pace community or alignment with causes the University represents
• Leaders who will resonate with graduates and enrich their Commencement experience
• Nominees based near New York City or with reason to be here around Commencement

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

Nomination deadline: Sunday, November 1, 2026

Submit your nomination