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At the very time the newest school of the University was scoring notable successes, Pace's oldest division, Lubin, was equipping itself for the future. In 1980 the Lubin School of Business Administration and the Graduate School of Business were consolidated. Three years later, the combined undergraduate and graduate enrollment of the Lubin Schools was in l988, the largest of any private college or university in the United States and the fourth largest of all institutions of higher education in the country, exceeded by only three large public universities, the University of Texas at Austin, Arizona State University and Baruch College of the City University of New York.      Guiding the tremendous growth of the Lubin Schools during this period was Dr. Tony Bonaparte, who was named Dean in 1980 to replace Dr. Joseph Pastore, who became Vice President for Academic Affairs. Prior to being named Dean of the Lubin Schools of Business, Dr. Bonaparte had served as Dean of the Graduate School for five years. In 1982 Dean Bonaparte became Vice Provost for Corporate and International Relations while retaining his position as Dean of the Lubin Schools of Business. A year later Lubin was one of a half dozen schools chosen by the United States Department of Education to create comprehensive undergraduate programs in international business studies. Following the resignation of Dr. Bonaparte, in the fall of 1985, Dr. Verne S. Atwater served as Acting Dean of the Lubin Schools until July 1986, when Dr. Parks, formerly Dean of the Rich School of Business Administration and Professor of Management at Emory University in Atlanta, became Dean of the Lubin Schools of Business. Dr. Parks served as Dean until his death in 1990. Dr. Parks was succeeded by Dr. Arthur Centonze.

    Among the programs administered by Dr. Parks was the M.S. in Management. Initially authorized by the New York State Board of Regents in 1974, the most striking feature of this degree was the Executive Management program. Only six schools in the United States offered such programs at the time. Another highly innovative program was the joint degree in Management Science with Polytechnic Institute of New York. This was introduced in 1975, just one year after another program designed to meet specific needs, the Graduate Management Program for Women, Made its debut. Supported by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant totaling almost $300,000, the two-year program helped exceptionally qualified female Liberal Arts graduates prepare for an increasing number of managerial careers in business. Every student accepted for the program received, a partial scholarship and following the first year of full-time study, students were placed in corporate internships. Upon successful completion of the second year of the program, participants were awarded a master's degree.

     For Pace undergraduates majoring in business, a new option in 1976 was the Retailing program, which combined classroom instruction with actual positions in the field. The program was conceived and implemented by Pace trustee William Humphrey, who had been chief executive officer of Abercrombie and Fitch and Executive Vice President of Lord and Taylor. By the mid 1970s qualified undergraduates were also able to take advantage of B.A./M.B.A. and B.S./M.B.A. programs, which shortened the time required to obtain both the, baccalaureate and master's degrees. For graduate students wishing to accelerate, the M.B.A. day program, introduced in 1977, was a welcome option. Full-time employees of AT&T, IBM, and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International were also afforded an opportunity to study at Pace. An Executive M.B.A. program designed for AT&T began in 1984, as did an International Management Development Program for the Bank of Credit and Commerce. An IBM/Pace Graduate Business Management Program held its first sessions, on the Briarcliff campus, in 1986.

     Other innovative programs of the Lubin Schools of Business were the Master's degree in Economics, introduced in 1983 and designed to train economists for the marketplace; a 1984 pilot program in Computers in Accounting Education; a Business Communication program, which began in 1985; a Hotel Management program, launched in 1986; and a program in Certified Financial Planning which debuted in 1988. The Doctor of Professional Studies program, the first of its kind when introduced in 1972, was still enabling upper-level executives, to combine full-time work with part-time study.

     Besides the array of degree and certificate, programs offered by the Lubin Schools of Business, a number of centers and institutes affiliated with Lubin were doing pioneering work in the 1970s and 80s. They included Small Business Development Center, the Center for Applied Research, established in the mid-seventies the Institute for Brazilian-American Business Studies, the Institute for International Banking and the Center for International Business, each of which was found eighties, the Small Business Development Center, and the Canada-U.S. Business Studies Institute, both created in the mid-eighties. An outgrowth of the Canada-U.S. Business Studies Institute was an exchange program, in research, teaching and executive training, between Pace and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales in Montreal. The Corsi Institute for Labor/Management Relations, established in 1967 to honor New York State Industrial Commissioner Edward Corsi, was placed under the auspices of the Lubin School in 1983.

     In addition to their various institutes and centers, the Lubin Schools afforded their constituents abundant intellectual stimulation through the Breakfast with the Chief program, which brought top business people to Pace for interactive early morning sessions with business students; the well-attended Tax Seminars, which annually lured professional accountants to Pace; the Peter Drucker Management Development Program; the incorporation of Robotics into the undergraduate Management program; AISEC, a student managed international Business organization; honor societies in Business; and the Lubin Lecture Series, which brought top business people to Pace campuses for both formal presentations and informal interaction with students, faculty and alumni.

     Distinguished visiting professors and executives in residence also constituted invaluable on-campus resources, as did the individuals named to academic chairs in the Lubin Schools of Business. In 1983 Dr. Stephen Eyre, Senior Vice President and Corporate Secretary of Citibank and Citicorp, was appointed to the Citicorp Chair in Finance. The following year William K. Grollman was named to the Schaeberle Professorship in Accounting. In 1985 a New York Stock Exchange Chair in Economics was established and Dr. William C. Freund, Chief Economist of the New York Stock Exchange, was appointed to the chair. While distinguished new faculty were coming to Pace, a number of professors who had been with the University for some time were given an opportunity to teach in Pace-affiliated programs in such far-flung places as Sao Paulo, Brazil, Lyon, France, the United Kingdom, India, Switzerland, Nigeria, Morocco and the People's Republic of China.

     At the same time it was expanding overseas, Pace was seeking accreditation for its business programs from the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business, an association organized in 1919. AACSB had been accrediting business programs since 1961. After meeting with representatives of AACSB in 1981, Pace Vice President Dr. Ewald Nyquist analyzed the pros and cons of accreditation. While admitting that AACSBs criteria were highly quantitative, Dr. Nyquist, nevertheless, recommended that Pace "immediately undertake the necessary steps to seek accreditation."

     In October 1982, Dr. Joseph Pastore, Vice President for Academic Affairs, submitted a lengthy report to the Educational Policies Committee of the Board of Trustees on AACSB accreditation. Dr. Pastore noted that "until 1982, AACSB, standards were viewed as highly quantitative, process-oriented, and inflexible." However, "recent changes in AACSB standards show AACSB as more open to qualitative, product-oriented assessments." Dr. Pastore then proceeded to analyze the pluses and minuses of accreditation before concluding that "it is reasonable to argue that the incremental cost relating directly to our seeking AACSB accreditation is nominal considering the benefits." He also noted that "while accreditation may not help, the absence of it may hurt." In this regard he observed that a number of colleges and universities in the New York area already possessed AACSB accreditation and that "our competition, more and more, is citing their AACSR accreditation at student recruitment fairs and in public advertising." Dr. Pastore also expressed concern that graduate schools might discriminate against applicants from schools lacking AACSB accreditation and that foundations would react negatively to grant applications submitted by non-AACSB accredited business schools.

     Perhaps the most compelling reason for Pace to seek AACSB accreditation, however, was that lack of accreditation might negatively impact the University's internationally recognized accounting program. According to Dr. Pastore:

AACSB accreditation of our business program is a condition for accrediting our accounting program. The latter should carry accreditation (and will probably be easier for us to achieve, given business accreditation). Consider the worst, (and hopefully least likely): What if States begin to require that certification as a C.P.A. be conditioned upon study in an accredited program?

     Pace institute had been faced with a similar problem in the 1930s. At that time Homer Pace did what was required to guarantee the viability of the school's excellent accounting program. In the 1980s, nothing less would do. The Educational Policies Committee of the Board of Trustees, therefore, resolved to seek AACSB accreditation in 1982. By the end of 1986 Pace had complied with most of the AACSB requirements, but was deemed deficient in the area of research and publications. Over the course of the next few years, the Lubin Schools addressed this problem and continued to actively pursue AACSB accreditation.

     Just as the absence of AACSB accreditation was perceived as negatively impacting the Lubin Schools, so, too, was an article published in the November 19, 1984, issue of Forbes magazine. Entitled "The M.B.A. Mills," the article painted an erroneous portrait of exhausted, unqualified students pursuing Master's degrees at Pace at night. Forbes charged that Pace's admissions standards were low; yet, in 1984, Pace's admissions index was 160 points higher than the minimum index recommended by AACSB. On the matter of AACSB accreditation, the article referred to "unaccredited Pace," conveying the impression that the voluntary AACSB accreditation the University was seeking was more significant than Middle States and other forms of accreditation which the institution had possessed for years.

     The Forbes piece also conjured up the image of ridiculously overcrowded classes simply because the reporter who wrote the article happened to observe one of the few truly large classes in a university where only one percent of the classes exceeded 60 students and the average class size was 25, Adding insult to injury, the article insisted that the ratio of part-time to full-time faculty was 2:1, whereas 60 percent of the courses in the university were taught by full-time faculty members and 70 percent of the faculty of the Lubin Schools were full-time.

     Perhaps the best refutation of the Forbes piece was the success of Pace graduates. For six years prior to the publication of the error-filled article, a Pace graduate earned the highest score from New York State on the national C.P.A. examination. In 1980 the highest score in the entire United States was earned by Pace graduate Sally Hoffman. That year 57,000 people sat for the grueling 19.5 hour examination which was administered over a three-day period. Paceite Sally Hoffman's scores on each of the four parts of the exam ranged from 92 to 99. The Rye, New York, mother of three, who had earned a degree in Sociology at the University of Toronto in the 1960s, before enrolling a decade later in the graduate business program on Pace's Pleasantville campus, claimed that "her training at Pace was absolutely instrumental to her achievement on the exam." Exceptionally qualified Pace graduates such as Sally Hoffman have historically enjoyed splendid career opportunities.

     Proof positive of this was a 1984 Executive/College Survey by Standard & Poor's which ranked the University "in the top 12%, or 58th nationwide in the number of alumni from a single institution holding leading management positions in business. " In the same survey Pace ranked 8th in New York State. The 1985 Executive/College Survey ranked Pace in the highest 11.4 percent, or sixty-second nationwide and eighth in New York State. A 1986 survey by AACSB, found that Pace's Lubin Schools were the largest private business schools in the United States and the second largest, after Baruch College of the City University of New York, of all institutions, public as well as private. In 1988 a U.S. News and World Report survey placed Pace's Graduate School of Business among the top four eastern regional schools of business.

In 1986 the B.S. program in Computer Science was accredited by the Computing Sciences Accreditation  Board, making Pace University one of only 22 accredited schools nationwide. The M.S. in Information System was established.

In 1987 Dr. William G. Sharwell became President and Chief Executive Officer of Pace University.

The Lubin Graduate Center in downtown White Plains was completed.

The 90's........ "Starting a new decade."