It’s almost time for this year’s graduates to walk the walk, and as we bid adieu to the Class of 2013, here are a few things you need to know before the big day.

Event Dates
The Law School kicks off Commencement with the first ceremony of the season scheduled for Tuesday, May 14 on the White Plains Campus. New York City undergraduate and graduate level ceremonies return once again to Radio City Music Hall on Wednesday, May 15. Commencement on the Pleasantville Campus is planned for Friday, May 17 at the Ann and Alfred Goldstein Health, Fitness, and Recreation Center.

Honorary Degree Recipients
This year, the University is pleased to announce Michael Clinton, Vartan Gregorian, Joel Klein, and the Honorable Malachy E. Mannion as this year’s Honorary Degree Recipients.

Joel I. Klein, attorney and advocate, will be the Honorary Degree Recipient at the graduate level ceremony. He built a career in Washington, D.C., where he opened his own law firm, argued 11 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, and served as Deputy White House Counsel to President Bill Clinton. Later, he was appointed to Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice. Since leaving the D.C. area, Klein served eight years as Chancellor of New York City’s public school system, where he helped raise the city’s graduation rates by 20 percent. He currently serves as the CEO of Amplify and the Executive Vice President, Office of the Chairman, for News Corp.

The Pleasantville undergraduate ceremony’s Honorary Degree Recipient Michael Clinton received his MBA from the Lubin School of Business in 1983. Since then, he has scaled the impressive heights of Mount Kilimanjaro and the even more impressive heights of the publishing industry. Today, he is Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer and Publishing Director of Hearst Magazines, where he oversees the publishing side of 13 different Hearst titles and more than $1 billion in annual revenues.

Vartan Gregorian, the Honorary Degree Recipient for the New York City undergraduate ceremony, began his work as a professor, teaching at San Francisco State College, UCLA, and the University of Texas at Austin. He worked his way up the ladder to the position of Provost at the University of Pennsylvania. Eventually, Gregorian took on the presidency at Brown University, where he was able to raise millions of dollars and create new avenues for intellectual growth. In 1981, he became the president of The New York Public Library—during his tenure there he doubled the Library’s budget and raised more than $300-million. Gregorian is currently the president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

On May 14, Pace Law School will honor the Honorable Malachy E. Mannion, a Pace alumnus and U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania (MDPA), with a Doctor of Laws degree. Mannion was nominated by President Barack Obama and appointed to the MDPA in December 2012. He served as an Assistant District Attorney in the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office, then as an Assistant United States Attorney in the MDPA where he was chief of the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Forces, and then as a United States Magistrate Judge, and soon-to-be Chief Magistrate Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, until his present appointment.

Award Ceremonies
Prior to the Commencement ceremonies, award ceremonies and receptions will be held on both campuses. Please click here to view the dates and times of the ceremonies.

For more information on Commencement, visit http://www.pace.edu/commencement.

“I took my first dance class with Rhonda Miller when I was nine. Then when I was 16 or 17, I ran into her again. She told me Pace had a dance minor and that she was starting a dance major at Pace, had written the program but it wasn’t in place yet. She asked if I would like to be the student to help get the program started,” recalls Embrey. “I was planning on going to Fordham for either pre-law or political science, but the opportunity to not only be at a university in the city, but to be at the forefront of a program I believe so strongly in, I couldn’t say no.”

And it looks like things paid off for Embrey, who has thrived at Pace, both academically as a Pforzheimer Honors College student and in her field, performing in the Dance Out Loud showcase and alongside six Broadway stars in Carnegie Hall Community Sing, all in one week, which she cheerfully called her “second week of Christmas.”

“I don’t think it gets any more ‘real world experience’ than right here,” she says.

Additionally, through a connection with her music theory teacher and musical director for the Broadway show Chicago Leslie Stifelman, who worked with Carnegie Hall to start the Carnegie Hall Musical Exchange, Embrey has served a student ambassador to the program, which connects artists to young musicians (ages 13-25) to share their performances and compositions and provide feedback. She’s also taken on a role in the Performing Arts department in recruiting, giving tours to prospective students, and bringing in nearly 25 new students to the program.

Inspired by the impact Rhonda Miller had on her, Embrey also returns to her home state of Michigan each summer to give back to middle school age students, teaching, giving private lessons and workshops, choreographing, even helping out with national dance conventions.

And now, she’s taken it to a national level, inspiring youth through her pageant platform for Miss New York. In March 2013, Embrey was crowned Miss Southern New York, the official preliminary to Miss New York and Miss America, and she will compete for Miss New York on July 13. Her platform “Pursue Your Passion” is meant to encourage people, especially middle school and high school age youth, to find what they love and pursue it.

“So many people want to give, give, give, and few give to themselves,” she says. “For younger people, it’s about finding something you’re passionate about. Whenever I was stressed out about something, I had dance to go to. I wanted to find a platform that was important to everyone and to encourage everyone to find that something they love. I was so fortunate to have so many amazing mentors in my life and I want to become one of those mentors for the next generation.”

All this success and Embrey has managed to stay grounded, just not literally. After graduation, though she has not crossed off getting her master’s degree or pursuing law school, she’s going to keep dancing.

“My plan is to pursue a professional performance career. Coming to Pace and working with professionals in the industry, it feels like a really tangible goal,” she says. “Because the faculty at Pace is amazing and they’re working in the industry, it doesn’t feel like there’s a glass wall between myself and a professional career in the performing arts. If I keep putting in the hard work and making connections, it’s going to happen.”

Interested in seeing Embrey in action? Check out some of her 2012 Dance Out Loud performances here and here and watch her perform “Oh the Places You’ll Go” at the American Dance Awards Nationals here. Make sure to stay tuned for more about her journey to the Miss New York crown.

Graduating in a few weeks? Share something you’ll miss, a professor who opened a door for you, words of advice for current students, your plans after graduation, etc. and we’ll include your quotes in next week’s issue. >>Submit your testimonial now!

Best Place to Eat Off-Campus
Chipotle (NYC) and Jerry’s Pizzeria (PLV)—both two-time winners!

Best Place to Eat On-Campus
Starbucks and Café 101 (NYC) and Pace Perk (BRC—two-time winner)

Best Coffeeshop or Sweets Shop
Starbucks and Baked by Melissa

Best Place to Shop
SoHo (NYC) and The Westchester (PLV)

Best Place to Volunteer
New York Cares (NYC) and Pace Makes a Difference Day (PLV)

Best People Watching Spot
Courtyard (NYC) and Shirley Beth’s Way and Kessel tie (PLV)

Favorite Place On-Campus
Courtyard (NYC) and Library (PLV)

Best Professor
Barry Morris (NYC); Paul Londrigan (PLV)

Best Student Organization/Club
Kappa Delta Sorority (NYC) and The Pace Chronicle (PLV)

Best Park/Green Space
City Hall Park (NYC) and Miller Lawn (PLV)

Best Class
POL 303A: Model UN

Best Dorm to Live in
Fulton (NYC) and Martin and North Halls tie (PLV)

Best Hidden Gem
Elevated Acre (NYC); PLV has no consensus

Best On-Campus Event
Kappa Delta’s Shamrock (NYC) and Relay for Life (PLV)

Best Internship/Co-op Experience
Too many to list: from Discovery to Deloitte, Conde Nast to the NYPD Cadets, MSG to MTV, and much more.

Best Thing About Being a Pace Student
NYC and internships

Written by Pace student Sarah Aires ’14

To have a conversation with P.V. Viswanath, PhD, is to be immersed in his amazingly vast knowledge of every topic from religion and languages to finance and economics. When Viswanath isn’t in a classroom lecturing both undergraduate and graduate students on financial practices, he can be found advising undergraduate students on their honors theses in finance, or embarking on his newest endeavor to learn Chinese (he is fluent in several languages including French, Spanish, Tamil, and Hindi.) He, along with colleague Professor Rebecca Tekula, recently applied for a grant to perform research in urban microfinance—an innovative field in the economic world that investigates people in urban areas who are underserved by commercial banks. They will try to uncover why 8 percent of people in the entire U.S., and nearly 14 percent of New Yorkers, do not have a bank account at all. His research will compare un-banked citizens of NYC and Mumbai, where Viswanath was born and raised. He is extremely interested in anthropology and diverse cultures. Last summer, Viswanath visited a group of people in Northeast India called the Bnei Menashe, who believe that they are descended from the lost Israelite tribe of Menashe, expelled from Israel in the 8th century BCE by the Assyrians. The group is actively seeking to reestablish its connections to Jewish society and many members of the group wish to immigrate to Israel. His previous research includes innumerable academic papers on topics like law and marketing. He is certainly an asset to the Pace Community—and extremely fun to boot.

What was your favorite class as a student? Least favorite?
My favorite class in high school was French. It was the first of many languages I’ve studied in my life. In undergraduate school, I found an interest in English literature and economics.

My least favorite class in school was biology. Where I went to school in Mumbai, we did not have a lot of great teachers in the sciences and you were not required to take science courses if it was not in your area of study.

What one thing or person made you passionate about your current career?
Since coming to Pace I have become much more passionate about teaching. I believe I have a very analytical mind and I’ve always loved to do research. But it’s only since coming to Pace, that I really developed my interesting in teaching. I’ve realized it is a great responsibility [to be a professor]. Sometimes when a student does not like a course, it is the way in which the material is presented. I make the effort to learn how to improve my teaching.

What quality do you most value in your students?
I value students who think about a question or topic and ask questions. Something I do in my class (which I know isn’t always popular) is I don’t always give an answer to a question. In some other classes, perhaps there is an answer to a question, but I think, in general, it is more important to be able to think critically. Especially in economics and finance students are always saying, “But what is the right answer? I need the answer!” but often times it is not about the answer, but learning how to think about a topic and evaluate it.

What’s your advice to students to make the most out of their time in college?
Take courses outside your major and expand your horizons past your primary area of study.

If you had to do it all over again and took another path, what profession would you like to attempt? What profession would you not like to do?
I mentioned earlier how I didn’t have a lot of education in the physical sciences. And I’ve always enjoyed research. I am a researcher first. So, if I could I would study the physical sciences and perhaps become a research scientist.

I think I probably would be a terrible musician. But I do enjoy music… I learned to chant from the Torah. With each character there is a specific pitch to chant at and I’ve studied that.

What is your favorite book/TV show?
My wife and I really like Jay Leno—we try to watch him. And I really liked Cheers a long time ago. I read a lot. One genre I really enjoy is crime fiction like Clive Cussler, who writes thrillers that take place in New York. I also enjoy historical and locale-based crime fiction, e.g. by Qiu Xiao Long writes crime stories based in modern-day Shanghai. I was also a big fan of the Brother Cadfael series of murder mysteries set in 12th century England.

What would you do if you had an extra hour every day?
I’d probably read—I also like movies and don’t see enough of them. In fact, I would also like to study film editing—which I hope to do eventually. It amazes me how editing of the film can completely change a movie. Even the film industry’s connection to finance is interesting. For example, if you’re a film maker with debt financing, you are likely to have to give up artistic control. Since the lender just wants to make sure he gets his money back and doesn’t participate in any upside in case the movie does really well, he wants to reduce his risk exposure. This is particularly true of studio financing. With debt financing, the director has much more control. S/he doesn’t have to worry about the studio insisting on changing a movie ending, for example.

What is your favorite journey/experience?
I traveled to China and taught in Beijing for three weeks. That was a very interesting experience because I was exposed to a whole different culture, but one that has been connected with India since the times of the Buddha.

What is your favorite saying/words to live by?
My favorite saying that I try to live by is from Hillel in the 2nd century. Don’t do something to someone else that you would not want done to you.

If you could have any five people, living or dead, imagined or real, as guests at a dinner party, who would you choose?
Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus, Muhammad, Adolf Hitler, and Ashoka, a 3rd century Indian king who was instrumental in the spread of Buddhism to China and throughout Asia. He underwent a change of heart after a very bloody war and became more interested in the welfare of his people.

The Tutoring Center in NYC will host extended hours in the Library, Tutoring Center, and dorms on Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays through May 7 in a variety of subjects including math, accounting, economics, biology, chemistry, and CIS. Visit their website for more information.

In PLV? The Tutoring Center is offering one-on-one and group math, accounting, business, economics, chemistry, CIS, and language tutoring seven days a week. Stop by Room 309 in Mortola Library and check out their finals schedule here.

Looking to get your study on in the Library? Both the Birnbaum and Mortola libraries will have extended hours for the final exam period. Need help with research for your final projects or papers? Ask a Librarian!

And finally, if you’re looking for less quiet and more puppy love, you’re in luck. After making several appearances in PLV, the Good Dog Foundation pups are heading to NYC, with a visit to the Birnbaum Library on Tuesday, May 7 at 6:00 p.m.