Highlights from the Center for Community Action and Research

Students at the Pleasantville Poll Site

On-site voter outreach in Pleasantville

Pace Named a 2024 Most Engaged Campus for College Student Voting

Pace University is proudly one of the campuses in New York State that have secured on-campus polling sites following a 2022 law to make voting easier across the state. On the New York City campus, nine student employees worked on voter outreach, six additional students volunteered with voter outreach, and five students served as poll workers through the Board of Elections at the on-campus polling site. In Pleasantville, five student employees worked on voter outreach. These results were achieved:

  • 743 students registered to vote in the fall semester in New York City and Pleasantville.
  • Approximately 950 citizens voted on campus in New York City and 500 in Pleasantville.
  • Pace was named a 2024 Most Engaged Campus for College Student Voting by the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge.
group of people standing in front of a screen

L to R: Erin Mysogland, assistant director, CCAR; Toby Parks ’26; Michael Anaya, SAGE member; Jose Luis Sanchez, SAGE manager of volunteer and corporate engagement; Professors Welty and FitzGerald.

Continuing Community Partnerships

In New York City, CCAR’s partnership with SAGE, an advocacy and service organization for LGBTQ+ older people, thrives both in and outside the classroom with these results:

  • 20+ students volunteered with SAGE as part of their Introduction to Peace and Justice Studies course.
  • In September 2024, a SAGE staff member and SAGE member joined our fall volunteer fair to connect students with volunteer opportunities.
  • In December 2024, CCAR partnered with the LGBTQA+ Center and the Women’s and Gender Studies department’s Queer Studies program to host a holiday gathering on campus for Pace students volunteering at SAGE and SAGE members, featuring talks from the queer elders about history and intergenerational community building.
Garrett FitzGerald, PhD

Professor Garrett FitzGerald

Garrett FitzGerald Appointed CCAR Civic Engagement Faculty Advocate

Assistant Professor of Peace and Justice Studies (PJS) Garrett FitzGerald, PhD, joined CCAR as a Civic Engagement (CE) faculty advocate, a position that centers faculty voice in the work of CCAR. He focuses on programming for faculty, including Student Safety and Success in CE courses, a workshop designed as a vertical toolkit to help faculty support student safety and success in all aspects of their CE experiences and beyond. He also focuses on outreach to Pace faculty interested in adding CE designations to new or existing courses. Part of his role includes acting as co-chair for the CE section of a conference being hosted by Pace’s Office of Research and Graduate Education, titled Innovative Solutions to Contemporary Challenges: Scholarly Creativity in the Service of Humanity.

“Working with CCAR as the CE faculty advocate has been a wonderful opportunity to support faculty, staff, and students in community-engaged learning and service experiences. CCAR is such a unique and important resource at Pace. Helping students connect theory to practice through civic engagement is one of the most enriching aspects of our PJS curriculum, so it has been particularly exciting for me to work with faculty teaching everything from the natural sciences to business to the arts on how to best integrate CE learning into their courses as well,” he said.