For 15 years, members of the Shades Women of Color Collective on Pace’s NYC Campus have been meeting, talking, and uplifting one another.

“Shades is a mentoring program but in a nontraditional sense,” says Denise Santiago, PhD, director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs and coordinator for the collective. “It’s a support space for Black and Latina women, and all women are welcome.”

The weekly discussion groups tackle everything from social media, mental health, wellness, leadership, politics, and more. But it’s not just talk. The women of Shades attend outings together, organize special events, and share professional opportunities.

"If you keep showing up, we keep showing up.”

Nina Riley ’22 came to Shades as a student and grew into a role as a facilitator. She finds that having a space to share experiences can lead to real change. “People value transformative storytelling,” she says. “Students come in and share their hair stories, or stories related to other topics, and we learn from each other.”

At the heart of Shades is a sense of community. “We welcome all women and femmes into Shades,” Riley says. “If you want to be a part of the conversation, you are welcome. And we really do create a family. If you keep showing up, we keep showing up.”

From CT scans to at-home COVID tests, technology is revolutionizing healthcare. By working across disciplines, faculty at Pace are turning groundbreaking ideas into reality.

Juan Shan, PhD, an associate professor of computer science in the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems, is focused on applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyzing medical imaging—things like breast ultrasounds and knee MRIs. The basic idea is to take advantage of those advanced models in machine learning and apply those to the medical domain to help solve medical problems.

“In computer science, we know more about machine learning and computer vision techniques than about medical problems,” Shan says. “But we want to apply these techniques to help doctors solve the medical domain problems.”

Shan and her students are using machine learning and computer vision techniques to help doctors solve problems detecting the precise details of a tumor more accurately and efficiently or providing a second opinion on the severity of knee osteoarthritis.

“My students here at Pace get involved in my research projects,” she says. “Research informs my teaching, and I can always bring new ideas back to my classroom and discuss them with my students.”

Shan and her doctoral students design Computer Aided Diagnosis Systems (CADs), systems that are programmed to do particular tasks—pinpoint location, measure joints, estimate size. Her primary focus is developing robust and efficient CAD algorithms to help doctors analyze medical images, discover distinguishing features, and classify data utilizing machine learning methods.

In one recent research endeavor, for example, Shan created a system where a computer was able to estimate the severity of osteoarthritis in a hand after learning how to read and interpret thousands of X-rays—a technique that Shan says helps save on labor and time for medical professionals that would otherwise be manually diagnosing the severity of the osteoarthritis.

“Research informs my teaching, and I can always bring new ideas back to my classroom and discuss them with my students.” —Juan Shan, PhD

At the College of Health Professions, Assistant Professor John Damiao, PhD, has spent the past several years figuring out how to leverage gains in scanning technologies to build customized wheelchairs tailored toward the needs of an individual user. His work makes the wheelchairs more comfortable, and potentially helps reduce the risk of future injury.

“Traditionally, the wheelchair user is seated in a molding bag that makes an imprint of their shape,” says Damiao. “The molding bag is hardened, and that bag shape is scanned, sent off to a company and they make a cushion from that imprint.”

But his work is driving a paradigm shift in how wheelchair seats are constructed.

“The problem with the traditional method is that the person is sitting in a loaded fashion, and their body contours are being distorted from sitting in a loaded fashion,” he says. “The innovation in my research is scanning the person directly, or in an unloaded position, which should make for a more accurate custom contoured seat.”

Custom contoured seating refers to wheelchair seating systems to fit people with severe deformities—whether its postural or a skeletal deformity, and they can’t sit in a typical linear wheelchair seating system because it would cause discomfort, or eventually cause pressure ulcers because of the mismatching of their shape to what is a typical wheelchair seat shape, explains Damiao.

Pressure injuries kill 60,000 people are a year and are, as Damiao describes, a “$10 billion per year problem.” Damiao’s inventive use of custom-contoured seating utilizes ever-improving technology to potentially save lives.

As a 21st century occupational therapist, Damiao understands that, while academic research is vital and will continue to be vital, it is just as important to be able to leverage technological advances to implement changes rapidly. He hopes that increased interdisciplinary collaboration—for instance, better collaboration between those developing healthcare technologies and researchers—can help take the theoretical into the practical much faster, and thus positively impact lives.

As per the work of Shan and Damiao, it seems that when it comes to the intersection of health and tech, Pace is certainly building an effective algorithm.

Pace has been preparing students for the demands of an evolving job market for more than 115 years. Now we’re creating new academic programs that will help our students succeed in the careers of the next 115.

It’s part of the commitment to academic innovation in our new strategic plan, called Pace Forward, that ensures we meet the needs of today’s students and employers.

In 2021, the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems launched a master’s program in Human Centered Design. It’s a discipline that blends art, design, psychology, and technology to focus on how people interact with machines. For some considering grad school, this degree can mean a significant value-add to a career in tech not only now, but especially during the transition into Web 3—the umbrella term used to describe emerging technologies such as the metaverse, blockchain, and NFTs.

Together with the College of Health Professions (CHP), Seidenberg is also offering a new master’s degree in Health Informatics. It’s an interdisciplinary program designed to launch careers at the intersection of health and technology—ranging from telehealth, to artificial intelligence, to software development, and much more.

“Healthcare technology is bringing us into an exciting world of truly personalized medicine and healthcare,” says Jonathan Hill, DPS, dean of Seidenberg. “Right now, faculty from CHP and Seidenberg are working with students on innovative, interdisciplinary research projects that seamlessly blend healthcare and technology in ways that improve the healthcare experience not just for patients, but for medical professionals as well.”

Finally, the School of Education has a new master’s program in Early Childhood Development and Learning. This new degree program draws upon all the latest advancements in the field to best prepare educators to succeed in the ever-changing education landscape— ensuring that while the educational tools and strategies may be different, the quality will continue to be of the highest caliber.

Go Further with a graduate degree from Pace.

Not familiar with the Big Dance? We mean the NCAA tournament. The men’s and women’s basketball teams represented Pace on the national stage in 2021–22, both earning at-large bids to their respective NCAA tournaments.

The women, led by head coach Carrie Seymour and All-MBWA Division II Player of the Year Lauren Schetter ’21, ’24, were crowned the regular season champions of the NE-10 Southwest Division, and advanced to the Elite Eight for the first time since 2001 and for only the third time in school history.

The Setters also led Seymour, who just finished her 30th season at the helm, to career win number 500 this season; she currently sits at 35th on the all-time Division II wins list.

Head coach Matt Healing and the men’s basketball team won the NE10 Southwest Division Regular Season title for the first time in program history as the Blue and Gold went unbeaten divisionally. Healing and the Setters won their first NCAA Tournament game since 2002 before losing in overtime to Bentley University.

“For the more than 50 years that it’s been in existence, Pace’s Lienhard School of Nursing has been committed to serving diverse communities,” says Rhonda Maneval, DEd, RN, vice dean of Pace’s College of Health Professions. “Part of that commitment is educating nursing students from diverse backgrounds in order to create a nursing workforce that can better address the health care needs of our diverse communities and improve health outcomes for all people.”

The COVID-19 pandemic served as a stark reminder that people from underserved communities suffer from severe disparity in health outcomes—due in part to lack of access, linguistic and cultural barriers, and economic and job conditions. For Maneval and the other leaders at Pace’s College of Health Professions (CHP), that experience emphasized the need to attract and support more diverse nursing students at Pace.

Last summer, CHP’s Lienhard School of Nursing received a nearly $2 million federal Nursing Workforce Diversity grant, funded through the US Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). The grant works to increase educational opportunities and retention rates for first generation college students from underrepresented ethnic and racial minority groups in nursing. The grant—facilitated through CHP’s innovative STEPS to Success program and authored by Maneval—provides support, scholarships, mentoring, tutoring, wellness workshops, and resiliency training aimed at preventing burnout and promoting academic success for nursing students.

For the nine nursing students who have just completed their first year as part of the inaugural HRSA cohort, the support, guidance, and mentorship they’ve received through the program have provided unparalleled opportunities.

“Many minority groups, especially those who are of Hispanic or Latin descent—like myself—tend to avoid health care institutions because of the fear of the language barrier that is so prevalent when trying to receive care,” says HRSA scholar Joeleena Hernandez ’25.

A Higher Calling

“My first ‘ah-ha’ moment was when I was nine-years-old,” says Alessandra Gutierrez ’25, whose grandmother, Tita, lived with her growing up in Ossining, New York. “She had broken her dominant arm and was diabetic, so she needed assistance with her insulin and testing her glucose levels. That was when I realized I loved helping others and wanted to help them as I did with my grandmother.” That call to caring is what eventually brought Gutierrez to Pace.

Sofia Garcia ’25 had never considered a career in health care until her senior year in high school, when her father suffered a medical emergency that left him fighting multiple organ failure for weeks. “I observed how attentive the nurses were and the difference they were making in my dad’s recovery, and realized I wanted to have that same impact on someone else’s life as well,” she says.

“I tell the students all the time, ‘We need you to be registered nurses, but we also need you to be leaders. We need you to go out there and take charge and lead.’ And that’s something we do well—we give you the skills to begin that leadership journey.”

The impact these students will have after graduation doesn’t begin and end with just patient care—they’re being educated to critically examine care in the clinical environment and strive for leadership roles within the nursing industry to carry the wave of change forward to the nurses who will come after them.

“Part of this program is really introducing the scholars to nursing leaders, because we need them to be the next generation of leaders,” says Maneval. “I tell the students all the time, ‘We need you to be registered nurses, but we also need you to be leaders. We need you to go out there and take charge and lead.’ And that’s something we do well—we give you the skills to begin that leadership journey.”

Total Immersion

Scholars in the nursing diversity program come from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in nursing, and they must also be first-generation students, meaning they are the first in their family to attend college. While going off to college is a feat in itself, doing so as a first-gen student presents its own set of challenges. To help ease students and their families into college life, the scholars had the opportunity to participate in a week-long summer immersion program that introduced them to campus, their future faculty, advisors, and alumni who were working in area hospitals.

“Being part of the summer immersion program allowed me to meet students who were experiencing the same things as me,” says Evelyn Cabrera ’25, who is also in the Pforzheimer Honors College. “I was more comfortable going into the school year because I felt as if I already had a group of people I could rely on. Being part of a cohort really allowed us to build connections with faculty and other students to create a big family who supports one another.”

During that week, students in the cohort lived together on campus, met their peer mentors (nursing students further along in Pace’s nursing program), got connected with key resource offices at Pace, and started building connections with each other and their individually assigned faculty mentors.

And it wasn’t just the scholars who built connections—their families were invited to campus to meet each other, meet their student’s faculty and advisors, and learn about how the program will impact their children. “I’ve always said that people who choose nursing are very, very special people, and we wanted to communicate that with the families, and we wanted them to know how challenging nursing school can be,” Maneval says. “We invited the families to be cheerleaders and supporters for their students because we know that their students will sometimes feel overwhelmed. Having families know that these things are going to happen in advance means we can prepare them to help their students in positive ways.”

Now a year into the four-year program, students and their families have already felt the impact that this type of comprehensive and immersive support can have on student success. “Everything is kind of new to us, in terms of college, but I think we’ve both adjusted well and are doing great so far,” says Hernandez about her and her mother. “My mom is so happy and excited for all the new things I’ve learned and been able to do and accomplish in the program. She always says that my hard work will pay off, and this opportunity is one thing that proves it.”

It Takes A Village

“This grant gave us a great opportunity to capitalize on the strengths that we already had,” explains Maneval. “We were able to say to HRSA ‘You should invest in us because we have a good track record in educating diverse students, but we need help to do more.’”

As part of the funding, there is a deep focus on student retention and persistence to graduation—meaning no missed semesters, no drop-outs, and an always-forward academic progression for students. And, of course, one of the most important facets of the grant is the financial support from which the students benefit.

“It’s important, because not only does the scholarship say to the student that they are being invested in and that we believe in them, but it also helps to limit the amount of outside work they need to engage in,” Maneval says. “We know that many students are working lots of hours outside of academics, and that can be a major barrier to success.”

Image

For nursing students in particular, the level of academic commitment required is extremely high. Between full class loads, labs, and on-site clinical rotations, it’s an intensive and full-time effort. To help these students balance it all, peer and faculty mentors step in to offer guidance, moral support, and serve as sounding boards.

“It was incredibly reassuring to see an adult nurse who succeeded in her journey and still had time to dedicate to her relationships with her family and friends,” says Garcia, who was able to travel with her faculty mentor to Utah for the National Student Nurses Association Convention. “It was also delightful to talk to her about her experiences growing up.”

“We all were able to build great relationships and bonds with our peer mentors,” Gutierrez says. “They’re all nursing students who are one or two years older than us and it’s great to be able to talk to someone who has walked in our shoes.”

And it’s not just the people at Pace who are making a difference in student outcomes—it’s their families, too. By getting them involved in the process early, it paves the way for understanding and compassion when the road to graduation gets a bit rocky.

“They realize that being a nursing major is hard work, but they are there with me every step of the way to remind me that I am capable of becoming a nurse."

“My family was very proud of me when I started this journey and still are,” says Jahaira Pereira ’25. “They realize that being a nursing major is hard work, but they are there with me every step of the way to remind me that I am capable of becoming a nurse. They help keep me relaxed and calm when things get to be a handful and without my family I wouldn’t be where I am now.”

“There’s real intentionality behind involving so many people and resources in the success of these students,” says Maneval.

“When we designed the program, we looked at what the best evidence was for the things that seem to make the most difference to the success of students. And in four years, we’ll be evaluating what really worked and what didn’t and use that information and those strategies to support all of our students in the best ways.”

It All Adds Up

Prior to their junior year, these scholars will spend time in externship placements at partner hospitals in the Westchester area. They’ll be earning wages and working closely with registered nurses in areas that are of interest to them as they begin to explore future career paths.

“Again,” says Maneval, “these placements are another strategy to build confidence and skill sets.”

“I am very thankful for the grant,” says Pereira. “It’s helped me be able to afford to attend school, but also helped me realize the impact I am making for the future of nursing. Being able to relate with my fellow students about how we want to make the representation of Hispanic nurses larger just helps to show the impact everyone in the program wants to make in the future. Overall, I hope that this grant will impact the industry and patient care by making more of a diverse community in the nursing community.”

For students like Hernandez, the grant has helped remove obstacles that she may have otherwise faced as a first-gen student entering a challenging program like nursing.

“I hope that more people in minority groups are propelled in the health and patient care industry because their contribution is so important to promoting wellness everywhere,” she says. “The HRSA program and grant is truly aiming to combat obstacles and barriers to education and access to health care and I have no doubt we can all achieve it.”

When EY needed an online solution for educating their tax professionals in India and Argentina, the Legal Studies and Taxation department led by Professor Vince Barrella made it happen.

Legal Studies and Taxation faculty formulated a plan drawing on Pace’s pivot to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The faculty was able to convert the existing MS in Taxation program to a completely asynchronous format that met the needs of EY employees abroad, while ensuring that the historic quality of the degree was preserved. The EY program has served as the prototype for the new asynchronous online MS in Taxation degree available to all tax professionals this coming Fall 2022 semester.

“Pace’s strong focus on the accounting and tax profession, with a record number of Big Four partners and a top-tier MS program made the University a natural front-runner,” says Ashu Rathor ’01, an alumnus who leads EY’s Global Tax Delivery team around the world. Rathor found an ideal proposition at Lubin as he and his learning team were scouting for a school to bring a master in tax program for their top US tax executives.

“Coupled with that, Pace presented a customized virtual pro­gram that became critical during the pandemic. Flexibility on timing to line up with our busy season, topped with best faculty and com­mercial proposition convinced us we had no other option to go with but Pace.”

Alumni Terri and Alex Rohan made the lead gift to establish the Dan Mulholland Endowed Fund for Pace Men’s Lacrosse, named in honor of Pace’s long-time men’s lacrosse coach and founder of the program.

Muholland helped develop countless student-athletes in his 14 years as coach, including Alex Rohan. Mulholland earned a career record of 104-77 and was inducted into the Pace Athletics Hall of Fame in 2018. The Rohans’ gift, made through the May Ellen and Gerald Ritter Foundation, will help support scholarships for Setter lacrosse players through the fund.

Supporters can contribute to the fund by visiting Setter's Club and choosing “Dan Mulholland Endowed Fund for Men’s Lacrosse.”

You probably have no idea what’s actually in your drinking water. How would you? Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems Professor John Cronin, formerly New York’s first full-time Hudson Riverkeeper, is aiming to change that. With the help of a donation of over $200K in water testing equipment from General Electric, he founded Seidenberg’s Blue CoLab.

In this lab, he leads a team of nine students who work with equipment that allows them to test water conditions in real time. They’re creating apps. Reviewing data. Mapping visualizations. Basically, they’re working on the technology that will help ensure a future where no one has to wonder what’s in their drinking water.

"That’s my calling: training the next generation to make a difference."

“I’ve worked for Congress, and for the New York State Legislature. I was the Hudson Riverkeeper for 17 years. I brought all those skills together at Pace. And now at Seidenberg, I’m able to pursue what is needed: more innovation, better use of technology, how to protect people in real time,” says Cronin. “I want to pass on those skills and give students real opportunities. Show them what is possible. That’s my calling: training the next generation to make a difference.”

Rob Sands, JD ’84, knows that bold decisions and calculated risks form the path to success. Sands, who this summer is completing his first year as chair of Pace’s Board of Trustees, joined his family’s wine-wholesaling business, then called the Canandaigua Wine Company, in 1986. Over the next three and half decades, and in partnership with his brother, Rich Sands, he pursued a strategy of aggressive acquisition that both expanded the company’s footprint and moved it into premium products.

In 2000 it was renamed Constellation Brands, and today, thanks to the moves Sands made, Constellation is a Fortune 500 company with more than $8 billion in annual sales across such iconic brands as Modelo and Corona beers, Modavi and Kim Crawford wines, and Svedka Vodka, among many others.

“Rob has been a truly visionary and entrepreneurial leader for his business,” says Pace President Marvin Krislov. “We are so fortunate to be able to benefit from his leadership and wisdom at Pace.”

A native of the Rochester area, where Constellation is headquartered, Sands earned an undergraduate degree at Skidmore College before coming to Pace for law school. After graduation, he practiced for a few years at the Rochester firm Harter Secrest & Emery LLP before joining the family business as general counsel. In 2007, he succeeded his brother as CEO, and in 2018 he became executive chairman.

“Rob has been a truly visionary and entrepreneurial leader for his business,” says Pace President Marvin Krislov.

“I had a great experience at Pace Law School, and I found the education to be excellent,” Sands says. Serving as Board chair is his opportunity to give back to the University. “I think my entrepreneurial spirit and success will be valuable to Pace in moving forward with our mission and setting us up for future success,” he says.

Sands first became involved with Pace as an alumnus in 2016, when the Sands Family Foundation and Constellation Brands made a $400,000 contribution to launch the Food and Beverage Law Clinic at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law. Through the clinic, the first of its kind in the country, Haub Law students and faculty provide legal services to farmers, food and beverage entrepreneurs, and nonprofit organizations seeking to improve our food system.

In 2018, he joined the Board of Trustees, and when the University kicked off a new strategic planning process in the summer of 2019, he became deeply involved in that effort, leading a Board committee to drive the planning process. Last summer, when Mark Besca ’81 decided to step down after an eight-year term as Board chair, Sands stepped up to lead the implementation of the new plan, Pace Forward.

He’s ready to make big steps that yield big results.

“Pace is a great institution,” he says. “This is our opportunity to make it even greater.”

Surviving on Instant Ramen.

This is the image of the quintessential college student—perpetually tired but unrelenting, hungry yet insatiable.

Unfortunately, the “starving college student” is less romantic notion and more harsh reality. Across the country, nearly 40 percent of college students report going hungry, and 52 percent have utilized food pantry services at some point.

College is expensive. Living (and eating) in New York City is expensive. And with two years of a destabilizing pandemic further increasing disparities, food insecurity on college campuses is only getting worse. Fortunately, the fight against food insecurity at Pace just gained three dedicated advocates.

Image

Agents of Change

Pace is part of the United Nations Millennium Campus Network, a global student movement designed to address our society’s greatest challenges. Students at network schools can apply to be part of the UN Millennium Fellowship. This is an incredibly selective program, with only 6 percent of students worldwide chosen. Yet for the past three years, nine Pace students per year have been made Fellows.

Change-making students apply to this program with the goal of tackling one of the UN’s seventeen Sustainable Development Goals. “These are goals that leaders from all over the world, about 190 countries, put together to promote peace, justice, and environmental sustainability,” says Sue Maxam, EdD, assistant provost for Special Projects and Retention Initiatives, and Pace’s liaison for the program.

For many, the program is a chance to learn something hands-on and add to their resume. But for Fellows Alexandra Kennedy ’22, Marisa Medici ’22, and Tasfia Rahim ’23, this was their chance to change their school for the better.

Goal: Zero Hunger

Alexandra Kennedy was already immersed in the fight against food insecurity as a volunteer at Pace’s food pantry Provisions. Growing up food insecure meant she also had firsthand experience. “When I came to college, I didn’t have any money and my meal plan money typically ran out very quickly,” says Kennedy. “Honestly, when we were sent home for COVID [in Spring 2020], I said ‘thank goodness’ because I only had a hundred dollars left for the semester.”

For Tasfia Rahim, it did not escape her notice how much the pandemic had changed her community, with food pantry lines growing longer by the day. “Seeing that, it really tapped into my interest in what food insecurity is and its prevalence in my community,” she says.

"A lot of students have to decide whether they want to continue to pay for tuition, housing, or books rather than feeding themselves." —Rahim

Marisa Medici can’t help but connect food insecurity to deeper systemic issues that she finds fascinating—and concerning. “Personally, I’m interested in the complexities of the food production/distribution system,” she says. “I feel like a lot of people aren’t aware how they contribute to some of the most temporarily pressing issues—from carbon emissions to increasing health disparities.”

They knew their peers were struggling, even going so far as skipping meals they couldn’t afford and taking “poverty naps,” sleeping to keep hunger at bay. Maxam brought the three students together and they decided to take on the UN’s second goal of Zero Hunger, believing they could find tangible solutions to ease food insecurity on campus. And so, they got to work.

The Cost of Going Hungry

When Denise Santiago, PhD, director of Pace’s Office of Multicultural Affairs, set out to create a campus food pantry in 2014, she conducted a survey to gauge need. The results were concerning. “We had 1,500 students that were living below the poverty line,” says Santiago. “But we don’t know the number living at the poverty level, or slightly above—which is also cause for food insecurity, especially in places like New York City.” The results of the survey were part of the impetus for the creation of Provisions, a Bhandari Jain Family Food Pantry on Pace’s NYC Campus.

Maxam worries students are going hungry to pay for an education that is ultimately impacted when they go without enough food. “Students who deal with hunger get lower grades, very often they withdraw from college, if they withdraw or drop out entirely, they end up applying for lower paying jobs, they still have their college debts and they have to repay their loans,” she says. “It’s a vicious cycle.”

“We want to make sure they are being supported and can succeed. That requires being healthy in mind, body, and soul.” —Medici

“Society normalizes the idea of college students eating ramen or mac ‘n’ cheese, but it’s problematic because a lot of students have to decide whether they want to continue to pay for tuition, housing, or books rather than feeding themselves,” adds Rahim.

“We want to make sure our peers are set up for academic success and are aware of food insecurity, and that they don’t feel ashamed by it. It’s more common than a lot of people think,” says Medici. “We want to make sure they are being supported and can succeed. That requires being healthy in mind, body, and soul.”

Food for Thought

Even before they were formally accepted into the Millennium Fellows program, the students were already hard at work conceptualizing solutions. They were certain of one thing: they didn’t want their project to be theoretical or temporary, but sustainable and institutionalized to serve the Pace Community for the long term.

The idea started from their observations and grew. “We knew that graduating students had a surplus of meal plan money and nowhere for that money to go,” says Kennedy. At Pace, unused meal plan money is forfeited at the end of the spring semester, meaning many students went home for the summer or graduated with unused balances on their meal plan. “We felt that students should be able to share that with each other, especially if that money would just go away when they graduated.”

“Food insecurity is not a one size fits all issue, so it shouldn’t be a one size fits all approach.” —Medici

This observation eventually materialized into Fare Trade, a program that would empower students to re-allocate excess meal plan money to other Pace students who may be in need—a fair trade for food fare.

Charting the Course with Chartwells

John Olsson arrived at Pace 10 years ago as a chef for Chartwells, Pace’s dining service provider. Now he’s the Director of Dining Services and he’s seen several programs dedicated to combating hunger.

With the help of Olsson and Pace’s Auxiliary Services team, the three students were able to bring Fare Trade to life. Here’s how it works: when students pay using meal plan money in the dining hall, they can donate up to $5 which goes into a fund that is then distributed to students in need towards the end of the semester, when meal plans tend to run low.

Through Fare Trade, food insecure students can confidentially get the support they need, whether they are chronically food insecure, or just going through a rough patch. “No one is going to know about your situation,” Rahim says. “Our ultimate goal is to help you.”

Image

Provisions Providing

They could have stopped with Fare Trade, but the students felt they could do more. “Food insecurity is not a one size fits all issue,” Medici says, “so it shouldn’t be a one size fits all approach.”

They looked to the Provisions food pantry and brainstormed ways to increase its impact. Santiago, the founder of Provisions, was concerned especially about members of Pace’s Active Retirement Community, a formal social group for NYC senior citizens. “One of our collective concerns is how to get our pantry items to that community, especially during inclement weather or when they are not feeling well,” she says.

To support these senior citizens, the Fare Trade team partnered with Invisible Hands Deliver, a nonprofit dedicated to delivering groceries to the most vulnerable during COVID-19. Now, anyone who relies on Provisions could get their food pantry groceries delivered to them.

With the delivery service established, the Fare Trade trio turned once more to spreading awareness about food insecurity.

For Students by Students

Professor Meghana Nayak, PhD, chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Department, met the Millennium Fellows after seeking out resources for one of her students facing food insecurity. She shared their vision of seeing the program institutionalized and offered up Pace’s Women’s and Gender Studies department as a sponsor. “The people who experience food insecurity are also more likely to experience the forms of oppression that we study when we are looking at feminist theories and social justice movements,” she says.

Even though Kennedy, Medici, and Rahim connected with and involved academic and administrative departments at Pace, they continued to stay dedicated to one of their earliest decisions—this would be a program for students, by students.

“When there’s a problem, students should feel like they have the chance to help.” —Kennedy

“We were really embraced so much by Pace administration and faculty so that we could take the lead,” says Medici. “They were really comfortable with letting us make those mobilizing actions and being that support system for us. We are so grateful every day.”

Empowerment is a key phrase when it comes to Fare Trade, as the students wanted to emphasize the power of community mobilization. “Students make up a majority of the Pace Community,” Kennedy says. “When there’s a problem, students should feel like they have the chance to help.”

Medici wants her peers to see that a big impact can start small, and that what they are learning can contribute to making their community better. “Every small change can make a bigger difference,” she says. “It’s about fostering that community around wanting to do public service and civic engagement work and how important that can be.”

“Every wonderful thing we have at Pace is because a student thought, ‘What if this could happen?’ or because they have taken a great idea to the next level.” —Nayak

This Year, and The Next, and the Next

It will be some time before the impact of Fare Trade can be officially measured and quantified—but the short-term effects are clear.

“This program will grow beyond them,” says Olsson of Chartwells. “We’ll use it as a model at other schools, because it really is an engaging way for students to pay it forward.”

For Nayak, Fare Trade is another example of student excellence at Pace. “Every wonderful thing we have at Pace is because a student thought, ‘What if this could happen?’ or because they have taken a great idea to the next level.”

“Fare Trade is leading by example. It ties into Pace’s mission of Opportunitas—that experiential learning,” says Medici. “We’re taking what we’re learning in the classroom and being able to apply that critical thinking in real life.