The Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University is pleased to announce that Jessica Miles will join its faculty as a tenure-track Associate Professor of Law. Previously, Professor Miles was an Associate Professor of Law with Seton Hall Law School’s Center for Social Justice, where she co-taught the Family Law Clinic. At Seton Hall, Professor Miles also taught Evidence, Torts, Domestic Violence Law, Family Law, and Adoption Law. She is one of four new faculty members who will be joining Haub Law this fall.

"I am thrilled to join the Elisabeth Haub School of Law with its stellar faculty and unwavering commitment to the student experience and to preparing students for the practice of law,” said Professor Miles. “I look forward to immersing myself in the Haub Law community. As a scholar focused on efforts to combat domestic violence, I am also happy to have the opportunity to collaborate with the phenomenal Pace Women's Justice Center."

During her time at Seton Hall, Professor Miles was voted Professor of the Year by the Seton Hall Law student body in 2022 and 2017. In addition, she was selected as Seton Hall University Teacher of the Year by a university-wide faculty committee in 2020. Professor Miles’s scholarship examines the law’s intersection with domestic violence in numerous fields, including family law, criminal law, and the First Amendment. Her most recent article, Straight Outta SCOTUS: Domestic Violence, True Threats and Free Speech was published with the University of Miami Law Review and reprinted in Thomson Reuters' Women and the Law. Professor Miles earned her BA, cum laude, in political science and history from Duke University and her JD from New York University School of Law where she served as a Staff Editor on the Review of Law and Social Change.

At Haub Law, Professor Miles will teach several courses, including Torts, Family Law, and Domestic Violence Law. “Professor Miles is an exciting addition to our Haub Law community,” said Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University Dean Horace E. Anderson Jr. “Her advocacy and scholarship in the areas of domestic violence law and family law are extremely impressive and will have a direct and positive impact on our students in the classroom and beyond.”

Prior to joining the Seton Hall Law faculty, Professor Miles gained extensive practice experience as a public interest lawyer representing indigent clients in a range of family law cases with nonprofit organizations in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Florida as well as with the Committee for Public Counsel Services in Massachusetts. Professor Miles has also taught continuing legal education courses for attorneys and judges in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and New Mexico.

Liani Frederick ’25 is one of 2,100 Undergraduate Students Selected to Receive Funding to Study Abroad

Award Funded Through the Prestigious Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program

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Liani Frederick, a third-year student majoring in Psychology, has earned a scholarship from the federal government to take her studies on the road, Pace University today announced.

In winning the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship, Frederick ’25 is among 2,100 undergraduate students from across the country who will be studying abroad with the support through the U.S. Department of the State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), which aims to expand access to international education opportunities to Americans across the socioeconomic spectrum.

On average, 70 percent of Gilman recipients self-identify as racial or ethnic minorities while 60 percent are from rural areas and small towns across America; inspired half of all winners are first-generation college or university students. The Gilman Scholarship contributes to the Department’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility efforts to engage the American people in foreign policy.

“I’m so grateful for this opportunity,” Frederick said. “Through the Gilman Scholarship, I’ll be studying at Regent’s University London. I will be taking courses that will help me in completing my Pace degree and furthering my goal of becoming a pediatric psychiatrist.”

Pace Study Abroad, which offers programs throughout the world, partners with the Office of Prestigious Awards at Pace to advise students during the application process. Throughout the recent cycles, the two offices held information sessions to help students better prepare for their applications.

“I would like to extend my congratulations to Liani Frederick for being the only Pace student to receive this prestigious scholarship this cycle,” said Moira Egan, Ph.D., Director of Prestigious Awards and Graduate Fellowships. “For many undergraduate students the Gilman Scholarship provides unique access to life-changing overseas education opportunities. I am grateful for the Gilman program's generosity and genuine interest in our students, as I have seen firsthand how many doors can be opened via overseas education.”

The U.S. Department of State’s Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program enables students to gain proficiency in diverse languages and cultures, skills that are critically important to their academic and career development. Since the program’s inception in 2001, more than 38,000 Gilman Scholars from all U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and other U.S. territories have studied or interned in more than 160 countries around the globe.

By supporting undergraduate students who have high financial need, the program has been successful in supporting students who have been historically underrepresented in education abroad, including but not limited to first-generation college students, ethnic minority students, students with disabilities, students attending HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) or other minority-serving institutions, students attending community colleges, rural students, and students coming from U.S. states with less study abroad participation.

Learn more about the Gilman scholarship, and its recipients, including this newest cohort.

About Pace University

Since 1906, Pace University has been transforming the lives of its diverse students—academically, professionally, and socioeconomically. With campuses in New York City and Westchester County, Pace offers bachelor, master, and doctoral degree programs to 13,600 students in its College of Health Professions, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, Elisabeth Haub School of Law, Lubin School of Business, School of Education, and Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems.

The Animal Policy Project, an initiative launched by Professor Michelle Land, JD, within the Environmental Studies and Science department in Pleasantville this academic year, puts students at the forefront of animal issues, immersing them in hands-on research aimed at influencing policy while developing advocacy skills. Offering opportunities for students of all majors and at the undergraduate and graduate levels, the Animal Policy Project houses its cornerstone course entitled the Animal Advocacy Clinic, connects students to industry mentors on the Animal Policy Project Advisory Council, and presents firsthand experiences in lobbying.

“The Animal Policy Project is really about giving students opportunities to learn how to advocate for something they’re passionate about and connecting them to experts and resources,” said Land. “The topics we’re studying in the Clinic are all related to animal issues in New York State and have a science-based component, but students can employ the skills they learn in critical thinking, information-gathering, advocacy, and public speaking in any discipline or career.”

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Animal Advocacy Clinic

This spring, students in the Animal Advocacy Clinic course were organized into groups to focus on various issues surrounding the treatment of animals and how animals impact the ecosystem. In late April, a group of students from the course, along with faculty advisors and other students involved in the Animal Policy Project, went to the state capitol in Albany to meet with legislators, share their research, and lobby for the passage of a bill designed to ban wildlife killing contests.

Wildlife Killing Contests

Wildlife killing contests are competitions in which any person with a state hunting license can participate to kill as many animals of a certain species as possible to win cash and prizes. Typically, the targets are “nuisance” animals, such as squirrels, coyotes, or foxes. These competitions, which are difficult to find—typically only advertised through private Facebook groups—are not regulated by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and can have harmful effects on the ecosystem of the area.

“In a certain small area, if you kill a higher number of, say, coyotes, they will repopulate even more to account for this,” said Leanna Ward ’25, Digital Journalism, a member of the group that researched wildlife killing contests. “So, there will be even more of an issue with coyotes in the area, which is the opposite of what these contests are supposed to be for.”

Ward also mentioned that traditional hunters are often critical of wildlife killing competitions because the contests do not follow fair chase rules or hunting ethics.

Bill A2917, introduced by New York State Assemblymember Deborah Glick, Chair of the Environmental Conservation Committee—who represents the area in which the Pace New York City campus resides—advocates for the banning of wildlife killing contests in New York. The bill has been proposed numerous times, often getting “stuck” in the Environmental Conservation Committee and not making it to the floor of the Assembly.

Animal Policy Project partner The Humane Society proposed the bill and New York State Director Brian Shapiro, who serves on the Animal Policy Project’s Advisory Council, worked closely with students in creating a campaign to support its passage. The students in the Animal Advocacy Clinic gathered 525 petition signatures in support of the bill from the Pace community before heading to Albany to deliver the petition and lobby for the passage of the bill.

“It was really rewarding to educate people on campus,” said Ward. “It’s really important for lobbyists to come through in situations like this.”

At the time of publication, Bill A2917 passed in both the state senate and assembly and is awaiting approval by Governor Kathy Hochul.

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Exotic Animal Ownership

Another group in the Animal Advocacy Clinic focused their research on exotic animal ownership. While the definition of exotic animal ownership varies by state, New York State Senator Monica Martinez has proposed a bill to clarify and expand what is considered a “wild animal” and an “exotic animal” in New York. Under the proposed bill, any “indigenous, non-domesticated animal native to the country in which they live” would be considered a wild animal, while an exotic animal would be defined as a wild animal with “an origin of a different continent.”

This clarified definition would expand the list of animals that cannot legally be kept as companions in New York State, including examples such as hyenas, elephants, kangaroos, sloths, wallabies, and armadillos.

“Exotic animals are sold in large quantities to people who are not technically prepared to own and care for these animals,” said Travis Gerber ’23, Psychology, noting that many pet stores sell animals bought from breeders who use unknown sources. “It’s so problematic in New York State that we don’t have comprehensive legislation in place when it comes to caring for such animals.”

A member of the group working on this topic, Gerber noted that he and his classmates corresponded with Senator Martinez, sending her examples of other states that have passed legislation banning exotic animal ownership in hopes of providing support to get the legislation passed in New York.

“I’ve definitely learned more about how legislation is created and introduced in the Assembly and the Senate,” said Gerber, “and how we can reach our senators and legislators, learn to lobby for advocacy, and discover that a lot more can be done with all the research we’ve done.”

At the time of publication, Bill A6211B had passed in the New York State Senate and is in the Assembly Environmental Conservation Committee.

Graduate Research

Graduate students in the Master of Science in Environmental Science and Policy program worked closely with the Animal Policy Project for their research projects in the spring semester, with mentorship from Land, as well as environmental professionals from the Animal Policy Project Advisory Council.

Something that’s so unique about the Animal Policy Project is combining the science and legislative pieces, because it’s so important to have both of those to be successful in advocating.

—Andrea Galassi ’23

Wildlife Health

Andrea Galassi ’23, MS Environmental Science and Policy, opted to pursue this degree to supplement the Master of Law she earned from The Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, with a focus on environmental law. For her independent research project, Galassi focused on wildlife health monitoring. Certain states have systems or databases that monitor diseases or other health issues facing local animal populations and the subsequent impacts on the ecosystem. However, these systems are often difficult to find or out-of-date, and states do not communicate or cooperate on the collection of this data.

Galassi mentioned that veterinarians are engaged in robust work in monitoring wildlife health, but this work often goes unrecognized at the state and federal level. Galassi’s research aims to get the attention of New York State legislators to move forward with policies to streamline and expand these processes.

Galassi worked with Advisory Council member Dr. Deborah McCauley, DVM, executive director of the Veterinary Initiative for Endangered Wildlife (V.I.E.W.), who helped shape her research, pointing her in the direction of important resources to help provide persuasive information to legislators.

“Something that’s so unique about the Animal Policy Project is combining the science and legislative pieces,” said Galassi, “because it’s so important to have both of those to be successful in advocating.”

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Anticoagulant Rodenticides

Taylor Ganis ’23, MS in Environmental Science and Policy, hopes to use the research she conducted in her capstone project to advocate for a statewide ban on anticoagulant rodenticides (AR), poison used to kill mice and rats that is dangerous for humans, wildlife, and pets.

“As a New York State Licensed Wildlife Rehabilitator, I recognized the importance of protecting wildlife from unnecessary poisoning while also researching alternatives to protect people from rodent infestations,” said Ganis. “This topic presented challenges that I wanted to learn more about to be part of the solution.”

With the help of Advisory Council member and fellow wildlife rehabilitator Suzie Gilbert, Ganis distributed a survey to better understand the usage and dangers of ARs. Gilbert assisted Ganis in building connections, finalizing survey questions, and distributing the survey.

“The most rewarding part of my research has been to see how many people truly care about the wellbeing of wild animals,” said Ganis. “From meeting with various organizations and individuals to reading through the survey participants responses, I was blown away by the passion that so many people hold for protecting our state’s wildlife.”

The research and advocacy that students engaged in during the spring semester are just the beginning for the Animal Policy Project. Land’s goal for the initiative is continued growth, including research on ongoing animal issues, introduction of new topics, fostering more connections across the University on animal issues, hosting guest speakers and events, and more first-hand advocacy opportunities.

Associate Professor of English Kelley Kreitz, PhD, is ready to tackle a new challenge. In addition to her teaching and research, Kreitz began work as the director of experiential learning and the Pace Path, a reimagined position in the Provost’s Office, in January. Kreitz has exciting plans for building on Pace’s strong foundation of learning by doing, while continuing to move forward in student success.

We chatted with Kreitz to learn more.

What does this role encompass and what interested you in taking it on?

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My charge in the role centers on working within the University and externally to make progress on our strategic plan goal of being the leader in our region in experiential education. I was excited to have the opportunity to take on this role because I was involved in the strategic plan work itself as a faculty representative for the New York Faculty Council. We identified experiential learning as the source of many of our greatest successes—one that, with additional focus and support, can also help us to differentiate ourselves and appeal to students even more.

Our strengths in experiential learning run throughout our schools and our liberal arts core curriculum, which includes opportunities to participate in classroom-based research and civic engagement projects.

These strengths include:

• How in Dyson, an emphasis on learning through making and doing runs through our programs in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, including our Pace University Art Gallery, which serves as a learning lab for our students and our Animal Advocacy Clinic, which is run as an experiential course.
• How Lubin takes advantage of our locations in New York City and the Hudson Valley to provide students with opportunities to work with real companies—in the classroom and in co-curricular initiatives, such as the student-led businesses run through our Center for Student Enterprise.
• How Seidenberg has a project-based approach, as modeled by the Design Factory and the Blue CoLab.
• How School of Education students develop their own hands-on pedagogy for their future students, as in our Science Methods course.
• How the College of Health Professions students’ practicum and field work requirements provide opportunities to learn in and with our communities, as do their classroom experiences, such as a recent Occupational Therapy and Analysis course in which students created their own podcasts about the course content.
• How experiential learning defined and regulated in Haub Law School through the American Bar Association takes the form of initiatives meeting local needs, such as the Environmental Litigation Clinic and the Immigration Justice Clinic.
• And how our new Sands College of Performing Arts will provide students hands-on experience in producing, directing, acting, and dancing in their own shows.

How do you hope Pace can make its work in experiential learning clearer to both internal and external communities and continue to build on an already strong foundation?

For the first phase of the work, which started in January and will continue through August, I have focused on two main goals: the first is clarifying internally how we define experiential learning. I have met with faculty members and administrative leaders to better understand experiential learning from different perspectives and throughout our schools. The second goal centers on increasing understanding Pace’s approach to experiential learning in comparison to what other institutions of higher learning are doing.

Your job title includes both experiential learning and the Pace Path. In your own words, what is the Pace Path? What is its relationship to experiential learning?

The Pace Path is a mechanism for ensuring that all students have consistent, high-quality experiential opportunities throughout their undergraduate education at Pace. This is why I started with clarifying and building community around our experiential pedagogy. That clarity will enable us to strengthen our delivery of the Pace Path, which provides our students with a competitive advantage.

Our students start with opportunities in the first year to explore academically and to engage in research, community-engagement, and other projects. Those projects help students build their resumes and identify possible career interests, which they can explore further through the Career Communities, launched this past fall by Career Services. The Career Communities help students to determine how to communicate their academic and co-curricular experiences on a resume, while also guiding them in identifying internships that are best connected to their interests and skill sets. Students might try several different career possibilities through internships (for some, the Pace Path may include some loops and dead ends), giving them a chance to achieve clarity about their personal and professional goals, in addition to developing relevant academic knowledge and professional skills by the time they graduate.

I would also like to add that the Pace Path is about the undergraduate experience, but experiential education is not limited to undergraduate education. Many graduate programs are highly experiential, and they also contribute to our reputation as a leader in experiential education.

In your experience, why is experiential learning such an effective pedagogical technique?

At its best, experiential learning empowers students to take charge of their own learning. At its most ambitious, experiential learning also represents a sea change in pedagogy. Classrooms at all kinds of educational institutions, including institutions of higher learning, have historically provided a one-way flow of information from the professor-as-expert to the student-as-learner. Experiential pedagogy moves toward more of a partnership model. Students become partners in learning and, at times, in producing knowledge. This happens in different forms across all of our schools.

For example, when I teach introductory Latinx literature courses, we start with the 19th century, and we talk about the Spanish-language publishing that was happening right around this neighborhood as a beginning of Latinx writing in the United States. In one assignment, students create a digital map for which they each research a site of the Spanish-language press in the 19th century. Their combined sites on the map reveal that there was a vast, thriving Spanish-language publishing community in the neighborhood where Pace’s Lower Manhattan campus now resides. We build on that assignment with an additional archival research assignment, through which the students contribute their own analyses of understudied materials.

When we are engaging students in experiential learning, we are giving them the chance to do their own research and learning. And in turn, those projects become demonstrations of students’ independence, creativity, ability to collaborate, and more. In other words, experiential learning is about making students competitive for great internships and jobs—and it is also about so much more. Experiential pedagogy is also a means of increasing student participation in the production of knowledge. It is about empowering students to become makers of the world in which they want to live, through whichever of the many career paths and roles in their communities that our comprehensive university prepares them to choose.

In addition, student participation—especially when combined with community collaboration—in creating understanding of the past and present can help universities to define new roles in knowledge production, such as stewardship of and partnership in conversations and collaborations that extend beyond university walls.

Experiential pedagogy is a means of increasing student participation in the production of knowledge. It is about empowering students to become makers of the world in which they want to live...

Both you and Associate Professor of English Sarah Blackwood, PhD, have recently published pieces (in The New Yorker and New York Review of Books) about the importance of studying the humanities, particularly English. Subsequently, the Pace English major has also been featured in Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. Why do you think experiential learning is especially important in the humanities? And how can Pace as a community embrace experiential learning in the disciplines that don’t inherently have a “hands-on” component?

The role of experiential pedagogy in the humanities is grounded in a transformation that has been underway for some time. This transformation in the humanities is in part about recognizing that the archival record has been built in such a way that it has excluded and suppressed certain voices, especially BIPOC voices, and that the humanities provide sites where we can recognize those omissions and address them.

In the English Department, many of our courses build on traditional methods of close reading and contextual analysis with projects that engage students in interrogating literary history and its making, exploring the archival record and its absences, and collaborating with community partners to co-create digital and public humanities projects.

I believe there is an enormous opportunity to continue to position Pace as a leading model of experiential education throughout our humanities departments—which will benefit not only majors in those departments, but also our students across all schools who engage with those departments through our liberal arts core. Pace has a unique track record that positions us to contribute to the national conversation about the future of the humanities—and about the future of higher education more broadly.

What else is on the horizon for you in this role and what are your goals for this position?

This summer, I am writing a report based on the work conducted this spring, a survey recently sent out to faculty and staff, and on research comparing our approach to experiential learning to other schedules, which EAB (Educational Advisory Board) is conducting for us. Next year will be focused on actions that will ensure that the differentiating components of our experiential pedagogy are delivered consistently across all years and all schools. I will also be looking at clusters of classes that can help us look in a more granular way at the outcomes of our experiential pedagogy.

My overarching goal is to achieve a sense of identity, community, and pride in our approach that will be a key factor in the retention of students, faculty, and staff. I believe we are already part way there, but I want to realize our full potential to be a nationally recognized model of an experiential future of higher education.

What do you hope that faculty and staff will kind of take away from this work as it continues?

I hope that faculty and staff will feel more recognized for the work they do to provide students with excellent experiential opportunities. As I have noted, internships and other co-curricular opportunities, such as student leadership roles, are essential to our students’ success, but so is the learning—experiential and otherwise—that students are doing in the classroom. I am increasingly convinced that bringing the magic of our classrooms to light will continue to attract the kind of attention received by our English major this spring. I think we can continue to build a repository of examples and a sense of community that builds from those examples-as we commit to reinvesting in experiential learning as the core of our identity and engine of our growth.