University Life (UNV)

This course will explore the unique aspects of university life by engaging the student in personal discovery through readings, writing and discussion. In addition to the classroom hours, students will participate in co-curricular experiences and civic engagement opportunities.

This course will explore the unique aspects of university life by engaging the student in personal discovery through readings, writing and discussion. In addition to the classroom hours, students will participate in co-curricular experiences and civic engagement opportunities. Each section pursues a special topic meant to introduce students to liberal arts inquiry.

This course will explore the unique aspects of university life by engaging the student in personal discovery through readings, writing and discussion. In addition to the classroom hours, students will participate in co-curricular experiences and civic engagement opportunities. Each section pursues a special topic meant to introduce students to liberal arts inquiry.

This course will explore the unique aspects of university life by engaging the student in personal discovery through readings, writing and discussion. In addition to the classroom hours, students will participate in co-curricular experiences and civic engagement opportunities. Each section pursues a special topic meant to introduce students to liberal arts inquiry.

This course will explore the unique aspects of university life by engaging the student in personal discovery through readings, writing and discussion. In addition to the classroom hours, students will participate in co-curricular experiences and civic engagement opportunities. Each section pursues a special topic meant to introduce students to liberal arts inquiry.

This course will explore the unique aspects of university life by engaging the student in personal discovery through readings, writing and discussion. In addition to the classroom hours, students will participate in co-curricular experiences and civic engagement opportunities. Each section pursues a special topic meant to introduce students to liberal arts inquiry.

This course will explore the unique aspects of university life by engaging the student in personal discovery through readings, writing and discussion. In addition to the classroom hours, students will participate in co-curricular experiences and civic engagement opportunities. Each section pursues a special topic meant to introduce students to liberal arts inquiry.

This course will explore the unique aspects of university life by engaging the student in personal discovery through readings, writing and discussion. In addition to the classroom hours, students will participate in co-curricular experiences and civic engagement opportunities. Each section pursues a special topic meant to introduce students to liberal arts inquiry.

This course will explore the unique aspects of university life by engaging the student in personal discovery through readings, writing and discussion. In addition to the classroom hours, students will participate in co-curricular experiences and civic engagement opportunities. Each section pursues a special topic meant to introduce students to liberal arts inquiry.

This course will explore the unique aspects of university life by engaging the student in personal discovery through readings, writing and discussion. In addition to the classroom hours, students will participate in co-curricular experiences and civic engagement opportunities. Each section pursues a special topic meant to introduce students to liberal arts inquiry.

This is a combined UNV 101A2 University Life and World History course. It is a course designed to prepare you for the rigors of college and is also a general survey of world history, a study of the world's major cultural areas of the modern era, their unique achievements, and their interaction with and relation to other societies. It will emphasize academics, study skills, community building, and an introduction to resources on campus.

This course will explore the unique aspects of university life by engaging the student in personal discovery through readings, writing and discussion. In addition to the classroom hours, students will participate in co-curricular experiences and civic engagement opportunities. Each section pursues a special topic meant to introduce students to liberal arts inquiry.

This course will explore the unique aspects of university life by engaging the student in personal discovery through readings, writing and discussion. In addition to the classroom hours, students will participate in co-curricular experiences and civic engagement opportunities. Each section pursues a special topic meant to introduce students to liberal arts inquiry.

This course will explore the unique aspects of university life by engaging the student in personal discovery through readings, writing and discussion. In addition to the classroom hours, students will participate in co-curricular experiences and civic engagement opportunities. Each section pursues a special topic meant to introduce students to liberal arts inquiry.

This course will explore the unique aspects of university life by engaging the student in personal discovery through readings, writing and discussion. In addition to the classroom hours, students will participate in co-curricular experiences and civic engagement opportunities. Each section pursues a special topic meant to introduce students to liberal arts inquiry.

This course will explore the unique aspects of university life by engaging the student in personal discovery through readings, writing and discussion. In addition to the classroom hours, students will participate in co-curricular experiences and civic engagement opportunities. Each section pursues a special topic meant to introduce students to liberal arts inquiry.

This course will explore the unique aspects of university life by engaging the student in personal discovery through readings, writing and discussion. In addition to the classroom hours, students will participate in co-curricular experiences and civic engagement opportunities.

This course introduces the critical issues of social justice and human trafficking, exploring the historical, social, and legal frameworks that shape modern efforts to combat exploitation. Students examine the root causes of trafficking, including poverty, inequality, and systemic discrimination, and analyze real-world case studies and advocacy strategies. Designed as a First-Year Seminar, students will explore their role in fostering change and promoting human rights, through discussions, guest speaker visits, and interactive projects.

This First-Year Seminar acclimates nursing students to Pace University by introducing the critical role of nurses in patient care and preparing them for the academic rigor of the nursing curriculum. Through storytelling and real-world case studies, students explore the healthcare delivery system and become immersed in the language, roles, and practice settings of the profession. The course emphasizes the analysis of patient-centered care from within the healthcare system, examining how social, cultural, and environmental factors influence nursing and healthcare delivery. By connecting with the professional culture of healthcare, students develop essential academic skills while gaining critical insight into the nursing profession and our nursing community at Pace.

This First-Year Seminar acclimates nursing students to Pace University, introduces them to the critical role of nurses in patient care, and prepares them for the academic rigor of a nursing curriculum. Through storytelling and real-world case studies, students explore nursing roles, interdisciplinary teamwork, and patient-centered care. The course emphasizes analysis of human experiences, healthcare systems, and scientific concepts that shape patient care. Students examine how social, cultural, and environmental factors influence nursing and healthcare delivery while also developing critical academic skills. By engaging with diverse perspectives and real-world healthcare challenges, students explore the interconnected human, social, and scientific dimensions of nursing practice.

Hudson Valley Arts and Culture is an interactive First-Year Seminar that explores the story of place through arts and culture. From present-day everyday culture to archives to the close noticings of the tiniest of details, we explore place as a living text. We visit galleries and local cultural institutions, as well as meet artists, writers, curators, and scholars. Through creativity, writing, observation, and cartography, we consider how certain stories of place are carried forward, while others remain hidden or overlooked. Walks, wanders, and our collections of notes, images, sketches, and recordings become the archive used to build upon for both critical and creative contributions to bringing culture forward. Designed as a First-Year Seminar, the course supports students’ transition to college through shared exploration of Hudson Valley Arts and Culture.

Living and studying in the midst of the "city that never sleeps", we will slow down to take in all the different kinds of performances that surround us: from subway characters to dancers on the streets, from city buildings to pop-up stages, from the sounds of people and animals to the music of the machines and the rhythms on the radio waves. We will have the chance to learn from New York City through the lens of performance and, drawing on the work of artists, writers, thinkers and activists, we will develop our own creative strategies for engaging in the city itself. Designed as a First-Year Seminar, the course aids in students' transition into college with an emphasis on academic development and community building by learning their way into and through the city together.

This seminar explores remix and mixtape culture as a lens for understanding creativity, media, and interdisciplinary thinking. The mix is a remix but also a mixtape: a carefully curated arrangement of tracks layered across digital space, capable of being heard, rewritten, and reimagined. Each voice in a stream can interrupt another or redirect attention, recalling prior moments, inserting new voices, looping and overlaying meaning. At stake is not just how we read, scroll, annotate, and share, but the material experience of hybridity that challenges ideas of standardization, assimilation, and specialization. In this class, we move through sensory experiences with re-recordable media, from sound and video cultures to the work of artists and scholars writing across borders, engaging fields such as film, music, migration, performance, and Indigenous studies. Designed as a First-Year Seminar, students will engage with sensory experiences and re-recordable media while exploring how the concepts of “mixtape” and “remix” apply in other classes and in their own lives.

This seminar explores how public education systems develop, function, and respond to contemporary challenges. Students examine the historical roots and philosophical foundations of schooling, the role of policy and government, and how social and socioeconomic conditions shape educational outcomes. Through case studies and discussion, the course investigates issues such as equity, access, and standardized testing while considering what education means in a democratic society. Designed as a First-Year Seminar, the course supports students’ transition to college through critical inquiry, reflection, and collaborative learning.

This course will explore the central themes of New York City politics and government, using the 2025 mayoral and city council elections to examine the roles of the institutions, interest groups and social movements in the city. We will examine how federalism impacts candidate’s strategic decisions and study the interests which compete to influence candidates and government decisions. At the end of this class, students will be able to: identify the structure and organization of the institutions that comprise New York’s local city government, discuss the key issues and sources of power in New York city politics, and evaluate how the mayoral candidates communicate their agendas to voters.

This seminar course introduces students to critical making, a design-led methodology for thinking through making. Using a variety of making techniques (drawing, knitting, sewing. 3d printing, procedural design), each class examines a different creative prompt through readings, making exercises, and reflective discussions. Taught in Pace's makerspace, the course supports students' transition to college with additional critical engagement experiences and open lab time with an emphasis on become active makers member of a community of makers at Pace.

This first-year seminar explores the history and ongoing debates surrounding banned and challenged books. Through close reading of literary texts, historical documents, and contemporary accounts, students examine why books provoke controversy, what they reveal about cultural assumptions, and how censorship has been used across time to regulate ideas. We begin with core questions such as why we read and what messages about reading shape our world. The course investigates key moments in book banning history, from 19th-century obscenity trials to contemporary challenges, alongside works by writers such as Ida B. Wells, Toni Morrison, and Maia Kobabe. Students also consider how schools, libraries, and cultural institutions shape access to literature and remain sites of debate about intellectual freedom. Designed as a First-Year Seminar, this course supports students’ transition to college through discussion, research, and creative work while exploring the ethics of censorship and the enduring power of literature.

This experiential course examines how Hispanic and Latino migrants have shaped New York City’s cultural landscape through visits to museums, neighborhoods, public art, and collaborations with local organizations, artists, and curators. By engaging with literature, film, music, visual culture, and community spaces, the course fosters interpretive and cultural literacy, deepening students’ familiarity with Hispanic and Latino cultures and the historical, social, and political contexts that shape them. Site visits may include El Museo del Barrio in Spanish Harlem, the Little Dominican Republic in Washington Heights, the Bronx Music Hall, the Corto Circuito Latino Short Film Festival, and Cuban Union City. Students also connect with Make the Road New York and the Mixteca Organization, which support Latin American immigrant communities. For the final project, students create a collaborative digital atlas highlighting migration histories and contemporary Hispanic and Latino community spaces across New York City. Designed as a First-Year Seminar, the course supports students’ transition to college with an emphasis on building academic strengths through collaborative exploration and shared inquiry.

This course is devoted to exploration of the rich history of political speech and activism in New York City. Drawing upon the study of rhetoric as a tool for production and criticism of civic discourse, it invites students to consider how key moments of public communication were shaped by their time, place, and cultural milieu. To that end, we will visit several such sites of rhetorical intervention in order to consider how context-specific conditions may have influenced their development and reception. This First-Year Seminar is designed to spark student interest in academic theory and criticism, encourage civic participation, and illuminate the city’s profound impact on national culture and politics.

How does writing become something people actually read, hold, and share? In Making Books, Editing, and the Work of Public Writing, we will explore how writing moves from draft to publication. Throughout the course, we will study and practice the processes of writing, editing, and publishing across forms such as books, magazines, and digital texts. We will visit sites in and around New York City to see how publishing happens in real time, from independent presses to public-facing writing spaces. In the classroom, we will make our own work, experimenting with book and magazine production while considering audience, design, and circulation. Designed as a First-Year Seminar, the course supports students’ transition into college with an emphasis on academic development and community building.

Pop Culture and the Law explores how law is portrayed in various forms of pop culture, including movies, television shows, music, internet memes, podcasts, and graphic novels. Students will critically examine these portrayals, comparing them to real-world legal principles, practices, and controversies. Through engaging discussions, creative assignments and field trips to New York Supreme Court and City Hall, students will develop an understanding of how the law interacts with society and culture. The course encourages connections between classroom learning and civic life. Designed as a First-Year Seminar, the course supports students’ transition to college through collaborative exploration, critical thinking, and shared learning experience as a community.

The Hudson Valley is revolutionary. It is a place where democracy was fought for and where subjects became citizens. In this class we will explore the ideas and ideals of figures from our own backyard who were central to staging the revolution and laying the foundations of the democracy we have inherited. We will explore perennial themes and questions, endeavoring to ask, what is this democracy anyway that was the product of revolution? What form of community nourishes democratic rule? What does it mean to be a citizen, question how government should best be organized. We will question further, how democratic is our community and government? Designed as a First-Year Seminar, as we consider these questions, we will also be building community in a smaller sense, in the classroom, we will inquire what it means to be a good citizen and steward of our own university, and ask how we can enhance our education.

Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch a pail of water. That sentence has structure. So does an equation. In this course, we explore how language and math are built from similar building blocks. Together, we examine the connections between grammar and algebra, noticing patterns in our everyday lives and communities. Through writing, collaborative problem-solving, and foundational logic, together, we will experiment and uncover the patterns that connect our thinking about math through writing. No advanced math experience is required! Just curiosity! Designed as a First-Year Seminar, the course aids students’ transition to college through developing academic skills and building community.

How does the past show up in your everyday life, and what does it shape that you might not even notice? In History and You: How the Past Defines You, we will explore how major moments, movements, and exchanges across the modern world continue to shape the present and influence how we think, see, and understand our place in it. Rather than treating history as something fixed or distant, we will focus on connections, patterns, and ideas that still matter now. Along the way, students will read, talk through ideas together, and make sense of how history connects to their own experiences. Designed as a First-Year Seminar, the course supports students’ transition into college with an emphasis on academic development and community building.

Activist, philosopher, and farmer Wendell Berry often claims, “If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are.” Place-based education takes seriously the need for a grounded intellect that connects theory to the land, water, and air around us in order to responsibly exercise power in the world. This class will introduce students to the many histories of New York City—its unique places and peoples, its sites of struggle and resistance—through weekly walking tours of the Five Boroughs. By focusing on the shared experience of walking, we will examine how individuals and communities contest alienation through the act of reclaiming public space, as well as the challenges of that resistance. Designed as a First-Year Seminar grounded in this interdisciplinary and situated approach, the course treats place as both subject and method, using the city itself as an entry point for exploring history, politics, culture, and community.

In How to Escape a Zombie Apocalypse, we will explore the social and physical geography of the metropolitan region in and around NYC. Throughout the course we will walk, subway, and bus to locations and communities to better understand the cultural, economic, political, and environmental contexts within which urban centers unfold. We will consider issues such as climate change and its impact on local communities. In the classroom, we will study the history, infrastructure, and landscape of the NYC metropolitan region to understand how the city has evolved. Students will learn about Pace and the surrounding community, as well as ways to navigate life as a college student. Designed as a First-Year Seminar, this course supports students’ transition into college with an emphasis on academic development and community building, with no prior experience required.

This course will explore the study of leadership theory and it applications in the community with a focus on Social Justice.

What would NYC be without food cart vendors, subway musicians, community organizers, nannies, taxi drivers, and artists? The city thrives on the labor of immigrants from around the world, but so many live in fear of raids, discrimination, poverty, and broken dreams. We will read, interact with, and create zines, young adult novels, poetry, fiction, music/sound projects, and textile projects to understand the global politics of a city teeming with immigrant communities. Prepare to dive into an immersive experience of “singing the immigration blues,” at the border of beauty and desperation, belonging and exclusion, liberation and oppression, with an eye to gender, race, class, and other social constructs. Designed as a First-Year Seminar, this introductory course offers students the opportunity to explore these themes through collaborative discussion, creative inquiry, and shared academic discovery.

This course introduces students to New York City’s proud history as an immigrant city. Immigrants have shaped nearly every aspect of New York’s development, from the laborers who built its physical landscape to the vibrant neighborhoods that pioneered new cultural and culinary traditions and the ethnic and political associations that expanded the city’s public life. Students gain an overview of immigration history from the colonial period to the present. Taking advantage of Pace’s downtown NYC location, the course incorporates place-based learning through walking tours of neighborhoods that may include Five Points, Little Syria, Little Italy, and Chinatown, along with visits to cultural and historic sites. The semester concludes with a visit to a local organization working with asylum-seeking communities. Designed as a First-Year Seminar, the course supports students’ transition to college by building academic skills through collaborative exploration of New York City’s history and communities.

Feminist New York introduces students to Pace University and the New York City campus from the perspective of womxn’s leadership and feminist activism in the city. Students will learn about historic and contemporary feminist visionaries, makers, artists, and activists who have impacted the city we know and love today. Together, we will study the histories of these change makers and consider how their experiences intersect with different movements for rights, equity, and justice. We will travel to the places and spaces associated with their work and dreams for the city, bearing witness to this critical history while creating a shared digital walking tour and archive for others to experience the city in new, exciting ways. As a First-Year Seminar, the course is designed to prepare and assist students in their academic and social development as they transition into Pace University life and as proud New Yorkers!

Why do so many of us feel overwhelmed by information, yet less connected to the people and issues in our own communities? In an age of constant updates and trending topics, trustworthy local news and information can be difficult to find. This course investigates the decline of local news and the rise of information deserts, examines how misinformation and disinformation spread, and considers the consequences for trust, belonging, equity, democratic participation, and political polarization. We will discuss how to develop healthy media habits while learning how local newsrooms, community organizations, and residents can work together to meet civic information needs. Designed as an interactive First-Year Seminar, students have the opportunity to engage directly with community leaders to identify information gaps, develop solutions to serve local residents, and measure the impact of their work. Along the way, students also transition to Pace and the local community in Pleasantville.

Transitioning to college can be a wonderful and exciting time, but it can also come with new challenges and stressors. In this course, we will gain an understanding of psychological stress and how the ways we respond to it are linked to our psychological and physical health. We will discuss effective coping strategies, such as shifting our perspective (or reappraisal) and turning to friends and family for support. We will also explore practices that reduce the emotional and physical toll of stress, including meditation, movement, and cultivating positive emotions like gratitude. Designed as a First-Year Seminar, students gain perspective on the connections between stress, stress reactivity, and health while developing tools to better manage the transition to college and beyond.

In Mind of a Dog, we seek to understand what man’s best friend is thinking. Throughout the course we investigate popular ideas about dogs and expert perspectives through scientific inquiry. We interview professionals, read research, design experiments, and gain hands-on experience. We will explore dog cognition, including how dogs understand humans and other dogs, how they communicate, and what they know about the world. Using this lens, we compare dogs and humans to better understand human psychology and central evolutionary questions about why we are the way we are and how our abilities are similar to and different from those of dogs. For anyone interested in animals, psychology, or curious about the world in general, this First-Year Seminar supports exploration of science at the most basic level, with no prior experience required.

This course introduces students to environmental communication and the role effective communication plays in environmental science. Throughout the semester, students engage in experiential learning that integrates scientific research with speaking, writing, and presenting project processes and outcomes. Working in a variety of settings, students develop practical skills for communicating environmental topics and issues to diverse audiences. Designed as a First-Year Seminar, the course supports students’ transition into college both with academic preparedness and community building, such as in collaborative projects and exploring environmental communication and the communities it serves together.

This course offers a hands-on introduction to what it means to thrive in college and create a balanced, meaningful life through exploration of the eight dimensions of wellness—emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual, occupational, physical, social, and spiritual. Students explore these dimensions through discussions, reflections, collaborative projects, and field trips in the Lower Hudson Valley that connect course concepts to real-world settings, from campus resources to community organizations. Designed as a First-Year Seminar, the course supports students’ transition to college as they develop a personalized toolkit for well-being and examine how the dimensions of wellness intersect through diversity, equity, and inclusion in a shared learning community.