Keeping Pace: Job readiness is Pace University’s mission

For more than 100 years, Pace University has been dedicated to providing a hands-on, real-world education grounded in the liberal arts that prepares graduates for great jobs and great careers. We give our students a great education and we give Westchester employers graduates ready to meet their needs.

We have a long tradition of training businesspeople and communications experts, teachers and counselors, public and nonprofit leaders. Our Elisabeth Haub School of Law, which has trained a generation of Westchester lawyers, serves the community through our legal clinics ”” and is now the top-ranked environmental law program in the country. With plans well underway for the new North 60 project, we”™re making sure we”™re also educating a new generation of Westchester biotech workers. The $1.2 billion plan, which kicked off earlier this year, will bring our region 222,000 square feet of lab and office space for biotech and medical use in a new biosciences center that is projected to create 8,000 permanent new jobs.

To meet that need, we”™re redoubling our offerings in the bioscience sector. We see that as encompassing three distinct but related areas: health care, technology and the life sciences.

LIFE SCIENCES
The New York metropolitan area is the most significant bioscience region in the world. The area hosts more than 60 percent of all Big Pharma national or global headquarters, with more than 75,000 biotech jobs. The New York-New Jersey region is the second-ranked in the nation for research funding from the National Institutes for Health, with 4,200 awards totaling $2.1 billion. And Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pushing several initiatives to grow the life sciences sector in New York state.

Innovation in the life sciences happens at the intersection of our College of Health Professions and our Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems. And it gets a big boost from a number of programs in the Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, which houses our Biology, Chemistry and Physical Sciences departments and the Institute for Sustainability and the Environment. Life science employers need the marketers, administrators and finance experts we educate in our Lubin School of Business. We send students on to jobs at major regional employers including Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Abbott Laboratories.

HEALTH CARE
Our College of Health Professions has long been a leader in health care education in Westchester. We”™re a Center of Excellence in Healthcare Simulation. And we”™re adding new programs to respond to employer demand, like a new master”™s in occupational therapy and the region”™s only master”™s in nutrition and dietetics that allows students to complete their clinical work at the same time they complete their classroom instruction.

Undergraduate CHP students complete dozens of clinical experiences in hospitals and hospital systems including NewYork-Presbyterian, Montefiore, Westchester Medical Center and Phelps Memorial. Master”™s students complete clinicals at those same systems, plus Memorial Sloan Kettering and White Plains hospitals.

CHP”™s programs are highly rated and job-placement rates are well above national averages. Last year we placed graduates in all of those hospitals and hospital systems plus many more throughout the region.

TECHNOLOGY
Our Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems nearly tripled its student body over the last five years as we respond to the demands of the tech sector in Westchester and across the region. We”™re designated as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education by the National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security. Our cybersecurity graduates go on to public-sector jobs at the FBI, NSA and organizations in Westchester.

We”™re also adding new programs at Seidenberg. We added new courses in design thinking so our students are best prepared to innovate. We launched an interdisciplinary eco-lab on the Hudson River in Ossining. Our students are working on the programming and robotics that allow water-quality testing and monitoring.

Seidenberg graduates go to jobs in data science, web design, software development, network engineering and so many other fields at everything from local startups to major employers like IBM, KPMG and Consumer Reports.

Marvin Krislov is the president of Pace University. He can be reached at Mkrislov@pace.edu.