President and Provost Q&A
“ Student success is our number one priority,” says President Krislov. “It’s the center of everything,” adds Provost Quiñones. Their passion for student achievement, plans for enhancing success rates, and optimism for Pace’s future can be infectious. If you want to know what Pace is all about and where the University is heading, you want to listen to how our dynamic leaders describe their plans. Below are excerpts from a conversation, moderated by Vice President for University Relations James Sterngold, in which they shared their insights and commitment to improving Pace’s singular record for propelling graduates upward. James Sterngold: Pace University has a great record in social mobility—it’s an important aspect of who we are and how we deliver, but we’re in a new knowledge-based economy, which is looking for innovators, disruptors, collaborators, and requires different skills to succeed. What we may have taught our students in the past may not be the best things for the future. What are we doing at Pace to prepare our students for this new world so that our mobility record remains so remarkably strong? Vanya Quiñones: We’re blending job skills with a liberal arts education, which is unique. An example of how we’re doing this is with the Pace Path. At the core of the Pace Path is a strong
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education, and around it we build everything to ensure that students learn, not only from textbooks, but through hands-on experience and being exposed to different issues in the real world. Our students graduate with a more sophisticated way of addressing these issues that are essential for moving forward in the future. Marvin Krislov: There are two types of skills that we are trying to give students. Fundamental skills, or liberal arts skills: learning how to speak, how to write, how to analyze big data, how to communicate and collaborate, and computer literacy, because that’s becoming a fundamental skill now. And then there are more specialized skills that students can learn, either through internships or real-world experiences, or some of our programs such as nursing, business, and arts and entertainment management, where you actually learn the way businesses work. That draws on those fundamental skills but gives them expertise in a particular area, connects them with a community, and really helps them be ready for the first job, and the second, and the third. VQ: For their lifetime. We also have a strong impact on community work— students have to take a mandatory service course that’s unique to Pace. Recently the NYC Mayor’s Office recognized Pace as one of the top three universities for community
service. We have an impact on the city, but more than that, it’s important for our students to not only get work experience, internships, and an education, but be involved in community-based activities. JS: How do we stay ahead of the curve? What are we doing in the way of new majors, new courses, new programs, to address that question of how we’re preparing our students for this changing world? VQ: One of the unique traits about Pace is the cross-disciplinary interactions, and the willingness of each school and college to work with each other. For example, business interacting with health professions to form a healthcare management program. Our arts and entertainment management program is another, and one of the most popular majors at Pace. It’s the ability to blend different disciplines that were traditionally separated. We’re going to meet with the deans and talk more about these cross-disciplinary programs that we can develop, but it’s the plasticity of the school to make curriculum that is modern and responding to the changing needs of our economy. MK: There’s also the new program in nutrition, which is responding to a real concern. One of the things I’m excited about with Vanya coming on board, is we’re looking at the way programs and faculty can relate to each other thematically. For instance, Vanya’s pulling people together to think about our research on autism, and so through that, there may come some new programs. We have a cluster of people who are thinking about food and environmental studies, and so how do we build on that? More concretely, we do