Lee Evans, EdD, Professor
Professor Lee Evans, EdD, performing arts, passed away on August 29, 2023. Professor Evans joined Pace as an adjunct professor in 1989 and became a full-time associate professor in theater and fine arts in 1993. He also served as chair of the Theater and Fine Arts department, which is now the Sands College of Performing Arts at Pace. Evans was a pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader, music coordinator, contractor, and conductor for such show business luminaries as Carol Channing, Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. He recorded several albums for Capital Records, Command Records, and MGM Records in the 1960s. He was also a prolific author, composer, and arranger of approximately 100 music books published in the United States, 38 in Japan, and two in the former Soviet Union.
Charles Masiello, PhD, Dean and Professor Emeritus
Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, and Dyson College Dean Emeritus Charles Masiello, PhD, passed away on September 9, 2023. Dean Masiello served Pace University for 45 years, joining the Mathematics department in 1968, and retiring from full-time teaching in 2013. During his long tenure, he served as Dean of Dyson College from 1990 to 1999, and as chair of the Mathematics department from 2009 to 2013. The Dyson College Society of Fellows Class of 1999 was named after him in recognition of his commitment to student scholarship and success. After stepping down as Dyson College dean in 1999, he continued to teach mathematics on the Pleasantville campus. After retiring from full-time teaching in 2013, Masiello continued as an adjunct professor from 2014 to 2015. Dean Masiello was collegial, kind, and always put the students first. He will be remembered as a thoughtful and methodical educator and administrator who was dedicated to the Dyson College community.
Jean Fagan Yellin, PhD, Professor Emerita
Distinguished Professor Emerita of English Jean Fagan Yellin, PhD, passed away on July 19, 2023. Professor Yellin began teaching at Pace in 1968. She wrote and edited dozens of books, articles, and presentations about literature, race, and women in 19th century America. Through years of research, Yellin verified that Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl indeed had been “written by herself,” as the book’s promotion proclaimed. Yellin’s definitive edition of the work, published in 1987, was quickly accepted by scholars, making Incidents a classic part of the American literary canon. In 2004, Yellin published Harriet Jacobs: A Life, a biography that went beyond Incidents to reveal Jacobs’s inspiring roles in the movements for women’s suffrage and the education of former enslaved people. The book earned her an award from the Modern Language Association and the $25,000 Frederick Douglass Prize from the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale for the best historical research of the year on slavery.
