A New Vision for Conservation

The New Suburban Biodiversity Conservation Center

In the spring of 2025, the Dyson College Institute for Sustainability and the Environment (DCISE) changed its name to more closely reflect its focus and purpose, to the Suburban Biodiversity Conservation Center at Dyson College. The Conservation Center includes both the physical property located on the Westchester campus and the intellectual resources within Pace University’s Department of Environmental Studies and Science, located on both the Westchester and New York City campuses.

DCISE was originally formed in 2015 to support the many environmental and sustainability activities at Pace University. The newly renamed Center will continue to support teaching, training, and research to advance environmental knowledge, ecosystem protection, wildlife conservation, and smart decision-making in the Lower Hudson Valley and New York City regions, with an emphasis on the just development of healthy and diverse communities.

Cultivating Justice

On May 2, 2025, 25 Pace students, staff, faculty, and community members gathered at the Pace Land and Labor Acknowledgment Farm. Lauren Peters of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe led the group in a series of traditional practices, handed down by generations, to plant corn and later plant beans, squash, and sunflowers at the site. This was the final of four Cultivating Justice events held at the Farm, funded by the Pace Center for Wellbeing. The Farm is a collaboration among Pace’s Anti-Racism Advocates, Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Pace Sustainability Initiative, and the Department of Environmental Studies and Science.

The Pace Land and Labor Acknowledgment Urban Farm is a new initiative at Pace University’s New York City campus that launched in fall 2025. It’s part of a larger effort to incorporate land and labor acknowledgments into the university’s curriculum and campus spaces.

Native Plant Propagation Project

On Earth Day 2025, the Center launched the Native Plant Propagation Project, an educational program to showcase the diversity of local native plants and their benefits to the biodiversity of a region. This project will serve as an educational resource for the Pace community and the public to learn about native grassland and pollinator plants. The plants will be used for environmental science coursework, labs, and research projects for pollinator insect monitoring and native plant growth monitoring.

The Center has been named one of Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation’s 2025 Pollinator Habitat Project partners. Through this partnership, Pace University received hundreds of native pollinator plants to be used throughout the Center. In addition, Hilltop Hanover Farm and Environmental Center donated 100 plant starts to the Native Plant Propagation Project.

Rockefeller State Park Preserve staff and local volunteers helped Pace staff dig the planting plots for this project and helped plant approximately 600 native plants in the Center.

Nesting Boxes

As part of a unique collaboration of the Center, wooden bird nesting boxes were installed in various locations of the campus. The Center is an officially recognized NestWatch Chapter, which allows for organizations to train individuals in the techniques needed to successfully collect nesting data and educate the public on the importance of the program.

These boxes are being monitored for breeding bird activity, and the recorded data is submitted to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology NestWatch program. This is a participatory science program that allows the public to submit valuable data on breeding birds, their movements, and their behavior.