Research/Doctoral Institutions

Pace University (NY)

http://www.pace.edu/

Contents

General Institutional Overview

1. Vision and Goals for Internationalization
2. Progress
3. Successful Strategies
4. Future Plans

General Institutional Overview

Pace University is a comprehensive doctoral institution with main campuses in New York City and Westchester County, New York. Nearly 14,000 students (9,000 undergraduate, 4,000 graduate) are enrolled in Pace's six schools and colleges, the Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, the Lubin School of Business, the School of Computer Science and Information Systems, the School of Education, the School of Law, and the Lienhard School of Nursing.

Pace's student body comprises 53 percent minority and 12 percent international students, large numbers of first-generation Americans drawn to the New York area from around the globe, and a rich kaleidoscope of religions, cultures, and ethnicities. The majority of Pace students are first-generation college students, and 83 percent receive federal financial aid.

In the spirit of its institutional motto, "Opportunitas," Pace offers students opportunities to grow, discover, and fulfill their potential. Commitment to the liberal arts is central to the Pace philosophy; while 62 percent of Pace undergraduates pursue majors in the professional schools, all students complete a recently revised 60-hour core curriculum in the arts and sciences. Several aspects of the new core help advance Pace's goals for internationalization. There is now a foreign/second language requirement, and students must complete two courses from disciplines that focus on world traditions and cultures outside North America and Europe. One distinguishing feature of the new core curriculum is a civic engagement requirement that students can complete through international service experience. In addition, all students must participate in an interdisciplinary team-taught learning community, several of which are distinctly international in focus.

Pace aspires to offer students co-curricular opportunities and programs that prepare them for an increasingly diverse and interdependent global society. The largest campus is located in lower Manhattan, just five blocks from the site of the World Trade Center tragedy, and the Pace community is reminded almost daily of the importance of pursuing global peace and understanding through education. Through speakers, cultural programs, cooperative education, internship placements, student clubs and organizations (such as Model UN), faculty hiring and scholarship, and trips or study abroad, internationalization is a major part of the Pace agenda.

Four new and important initiatives that energize and give focus to the mission are:

• The Center for Downtown New York, which provides academic, research, and civic leadership in the redevelopment of the lower Manhattan community.
• The Pace Academy for the Environment, a university-wide, interdisciplinary institute with the mission "to foster policies, practices, and ideas that sustain a mutually enhancing relationship between nature and society" locally and internationally.
• A partnership with National Actors Theatre, which now holds theatrical performances and educational outreach programs in Pace's Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts.
• The Pforzheimer Honors College, created in 2003, that offers exceptional learning experiences (including guaranteed study abroad) to talented students drawn from all majors and campuses. 

Overview of Internationalization Efforts

I. Vision and Goals for Internationalization

Pace University's mission statement proclaims, "At Pace, supportive and challenging programs prepare graduates for meaningful lives and successful careers in a rapidly changing world." The core values articulated in the statement include the following:

• Preparing students for an increasingly diverse society and global economy.
  
• Responding to the individual needs of an increasingly diverse student population.
  
• Fostering intellectual growth, ethical maturity, and civic responsibility.

In concert with these core values, the institution recently articulated broad goals that now guide efforts to internationalize the Pace learning experience. These goals are:

• Ensuring that Pace students come to understand and appreciate the interconnectedness and interdependence of peoples and nations around the world.
  
• Preparing Pace students to live and work in a multicultural global society according to the principles of respect, tolerance, and understanding.
  
• Recruiting and embracing a student body from around the world.
  
• Ensuring that life on all campuses—intellectual, social, residential—has a distinct international character.
  
• Providing orientation and support services for international students that enable them to thrive at Pace and acquire a deep appreciation for the fundamental democratic values as well as the people of the United States.
  
• Recruiting and supporting faculty with international experience.
  
• Providing faculty with development opportunities that enable them to enhance their knowledge of the world.
  
• Developing a curriculum and array of co-curricular experiences (including internships, study abroad, volunteer and coop opportunities abroad, clubs and student organizations, and student activities) that provide students with a deep understanding of other cultures and peoples.
  
• Making Pace University a recognized leader in international education. 

II. Progress

In winter 2003, Pace University created four working groups on internationalization. These groups engage in careful analysis and systematic planning with regard to: (1) study abroad; (2) faculty-led field study courses and trips abroad; (3) international students; and (4) academic and co-curricular programs plus overall strategic planning. Their efforts are coordinated by the Associate Provost for Academic Affairs. Forty-six individuals, drawn from all academic divisions plus university offices such as the Office of Student Affairs, Admissions, and so forth, currently serve on the four working groups. Their lengthy agenda includes the following activities:

1. The groups are working to develop affiliation and exchange agreements with foreign universities and study-abroad providers around the word and to establish financial arrangements that will make it possible for Pace students to study abroad. To date, exchanges have been established with Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Singapore, and China. In addition, the International Programs office works proactively with
   
2. A separate working group is devoted to faculty-led field study courses abroad because the institution has found that short one- to three-week trips abroad (during winter, spring, and summer breaks) are more viable international options for Pace students, most of whom work or have family commitments that prohibit long-term study abroad. Pace is increasing opportunities for this type of travel with trips this year to Denmark, Sweden, France, Uganda, Tanzania, China, Peru, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Iceland, Cuba, Greece, and Canada. Tuition is folded into normal semester tuition, thereby making the trips affordable.
   
3. The group that focuses on international students attending Pace works primarily on assisting the 1,100 international undergraduate and graduate students with visas, orientation, and so forth. The group is also designing programs and activities in which foreign students can interact with all students and thereby enrich the Pace community.
   
4. The working group on academic and co-curricular programs and overall strategic planning has identified several areas for action, including faculty development, faculty recruitment, curriculum, arts and lectures, student organizations, outreach and service activities, new student orientation, students to apply for study-abroad scholarships (such as NSEP and Freeman).academic advising, cooperative education and career services, and international visitors and visiting foreign scholars. 

III. Successful Strategies

As Pace University moves forward with an ambitious internationalization agenda, it is selecting strategies that maximize results by means of: (1) alignment of core values and goals, resources (money, personnel, program), and key players (individuals as well as units within the university); (2) partnerships across the university and with outside groups and organizations; and (3) careful orchestration and planning so that one good initiative blossoms into several others. The following example illustrates how an institution can weave several specific strategies together to maximize results.

In 2001, Pace took a snapshot of its involvement in Brazil and was surprised to discover the amount of interest, contact, and activity—almost every academic division had some involvement with Brazil. The Pace Law School took students to Brazil to engage in environmental law conferences. The School of Nursing offered a distance learning program on health care to students in Brazil. The College of Arts and Sciences was home to the oldest Brazil Studies Program in the United States. There was an elementary school in Rio de Janeiro named after Pace University. Five members of the business school faculty were from Brazil, and other business faculty led their students to Brazil to study ecotourism. The Schools of Education and Computer Science were also interested in Brazil. Despite this remarkable amount of interest, faculty in each school had no idea that their colleagues in other schools were also interested in and involved with Brazil. So the university set about bringing people from all divisions together to build a Brazil affinity group and to craft a proposal for a joint grant from the U.S. Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) and the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) to enable the institution to establish formal affiliations and student exchange programs with two universities in Brazil. The group strategically selected "Environmental Sustainability and Responsibility" as a theme for the proposal because it could be presented as an interdisciplinary umbrella under which faculty from all Pace schools and colleges could gather and form new partnerships and interdisciplinary collaborations. They also strategically selected two federal universities in Brazil as partners—one in the north (Amazon) and one in Porto Allegre in the south.

Once awarded the FIPSE-CAPES grant in 2002, Pace began conducting monthly meetings of the Brazil affinity group with debates, speakers, and discussions. Now more than 50 people typically attend the monthly meetings, and they are getting to know each other. Energy has been channeled into two more grant applications for faculty exchanges with Brazil and also toward curricular development. Pace is leveraging new student exchange programs and affiliations with universities in Brazil to advance a variety of other interests. For example:

1. Pace has just launched a new core curriculum that includes a "civic engagement" requirement. With new contacts in Brazil, a professor of Latin-American history has developed a field study course that will take students to the Amazon for a learning/service experience that will satisfy the new "civic engagement" requirement.
   
2. As law and business faculty lead students to Brazil, they strengthen bonds with Brazilian affiliate universities by visiting and partnering with them.
   
3. Pace encourages two-way faculty exchanges and invites visiting Brazilian faculty and other dignitaries to meet with its "Brazil Team" and to give guest lectures as appropriate.
   
4. Pace and Brazilian faculty are conducting collaborative research on environmental topics.
   
5. Pace students have begun to apply for Fulbright Scholarships to Brazil.

Simply put, Pace has taken a project that began as a grant to support semester-long student exchange between Pace and two Brazilian universities and aligned it with several other goals (curriculum development, faculty research, interdisciplinary environmental studies, campus lectures and other programs, team-building across campus, civic engagement, and student distinctions such as Fulbright Scholarships) to yield numerous successful results. Alignment, partnership, and careful orchestration and planning can enable an institution to maximize results in the area of internationalization.

IV. Future Plans

Pace University's four internationalization working groups are pursuing a lengthy agenda. Wherever possible, they are following the principles of alignment, partnership, and orchestration so as to maximize results. Following are three examples of concrete plans that illustrate this approach.

1. International Survey

Pace faculty and staff represent a treasure trove of international contacts, scholarly expertise, facility with foreign languages, international experiences, and cultural insight. In order to benefit from the richness of its human resources both as individuals and as an institution, the university has crafted a simple "international survey" and sent it to all faculty (440 full-time and 575 part-time) and professional staff. The survey is a Microsoft Access–based questionnaire that can be completed online, and the results will be used to achieve the following results:

1. Pace University plans to establish area studies affinity groups similar to the "Brazil Team" that bring together faculty and staff from different schools and divisions who share interests in a particular country or geographic area. University administrators will invite these individuals to investigate and pursue internationalization focused on specific areas of the world via curriculum development, collaborative research, campus programming for students, and faculty colloquia.
   
2. The university will follow up with those individuals who have institutional and business contacts abroad to investigate opportunities for institutional affiliations, student and faculty exchange, and new sites for Pace-led field trips abroad.
   
3. Faculty and staff with experience and expertise in certain nations will be asked to serve as resources for students applying for Fulbright Scholarships, faculty in search of information and contacts abroad, public relations stories, admissions recruitment efforts, alumni relations, and career planning.

2. Fulbright Alumni Association – New York Area Chapter

By definition, former U.S. recipients of Fulbright and Fulbright-Hayes Scholarships for research, teaching, study, and travel abroad have a deep appreciation for internationalization. Many of them join Fulbright Alumni Associations through which they gather with other former Fulbright recipients from the United States and current visiting Fulbright Scholars from abroad for events (such as speakers, films, and performances) with an international focus.

Many Pace faculty are members of the Fulbright Alumni Chapter of the New York Area, and in the past Pace has invited the chapter to use the facilities of the Pace New York City campus for its regular meetings and programs. In turn, the chapter permits Pace to invite students, faculty, and staff to attend its programs. This is a mutually beneficial partnership that provides Pace with special programs (and interesting people) that enrich the community and enhance efforts to make international learning a part of the Pace experience.

3. Study and Field Trips Abroad

Study and travel abroad can be a powerful learning experience for students. Two of Pace's university-wide internationalization working groups focus on improving and expanding such experiences. Current efforts include establishing one-to-one student exchange agreements with foreign universities; improving and simplifying procedures by which students obtain approval for credits earned abroad to be counted toward their Pace degrees; changing financial arrangements so that Pace scholarships can be used toward study abroad; developing a web site, pamphlet, and other literature to promote study and travel abroad; and hiring a study-abroad coordinator who will work proactively with faculty and students to encourage study and travel abroad.

Last updated: April 27, 2005