The study published last month in the Journal of Urban Health shows that the child populations in some neighborhoods are not being tested as completely as they should be, said Khalifa Afane, a student in the M.S. program in data science who wrote the study with his advisor, Juntao Chen, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the computer and information science department.

For the study, they used the city’s publicly available lead testing data, which he said “nobody has analyzed before” at the neighborhood level.

A Toxic Heavy Metal

Lead is a toxic heavy metal that can cause learning disabilities and behavior problems. Children pick it up from lead-based paint or contaminated dust, soil, and water. Lead exposure risk “remains persistent” among vulnerable groups including low-income and non-Hispanic Black children, the study says.

The city promotes blood lead level testing and awareness of lead poisoning in high-risk communities through a variety of educational efforts and partnerships.

But some high-risk neighborhoods still don’t get enough testing, Afane said.  A case in point is Greenpoint in Brooklyn vs. South Beach in Staten Island. The study says that despite similar numbers of children and similar rates of lead testing, Greenpoint has consistently averaged eight times more cases—97 out of 3,760 tests conducted in 2021, compared to just 12 in South Beach that year (out of 3,720 tests).

There should actually be more testing of children in Greenpoint, Afane said, because their risk is clearly higher. While testing efforts have expanded in the city, he said, “it matters much more where these extra tests were actually conducted,” since lead is more prevalent in some neighborhoods than in others, he said.

More than 400 Cases May Have Been Missed

For the study, he analyzed test result data from 2005 to 2021, focusing on children under 6 years old who were found to have blood lead levels of 5 micrograms per deciliter. Afane applied a machine learning algorithm to the testing data and projected that another 410 children with elevated blood lead levels might be identified per year citywide, mostly in vulnerable areas, by expanding testing in neighborhoods that tend to have higher case rates.

The highest-risk neighborhoods are in Brooklyn, Queens, and the north shore of Staten Island, and average about 12 cases per 1,000 tests, compared to less than four in low-risk neighborhoods, Afane said.

The city helps coordinate care for children with elevated levels and also works to reduce lead hazards. Since 2005, the number of New York City children under 6 years old with elevated blood lead levels has dropped 93%, a city report says.

Using a Data-Informed Strategy

But the study recommends a better, data-informed, strategy to focus more lead testing on high-need areas. “What we wanted to highlight here is that this needs to be done and reported at the neighborhood level, not at the city level,” Afane said.

The study also recommends awareness campaigns in high-risk areas emphasizing early detection, and it calls on local authorities to step up monitoring of water quality and blood lead levels in pregnant women.

“Our main goal was to use data science and machine learning tools to genuinely improve the city,” Afane said. “Data analysis is a powerful skill that could be used much more often to make a positive impact in our communities.”

In addition, Fordham leaped to No. 57 in the U.S. News & World Report rankings of the best colleges for veterans, released earlier this fall.

The two rankings reflect Fordham’s many efforts to meet all student veterans’ needs—from career development to health and wellness to help with the transition to college life, said Matthew Butler, PCS ’16, senior director of the Office of Military and Veterans’ Services at Fordham.

“We’re engaged on multiple fronts,” he said. “We’re not just offering an education but supporting the full student veteran life cycle.”

The recognition coincides with rising enrollment numbers for veterans: The number of new student veterans who enrolled at Fordham this fall is up 131% over fall 2023, and the 470 student veterans and veterans’ dependents now enrolled marks the highest total in at least five years, noted Andrea Marais, Fordham’s director of military and veteran higher education, engagement, and transition.

Free Tuition for Student Vets: No Cap

Likely important for the rankings, Butler said, was Fordham’s decision last year to eliminate its cap on tuition benefits under the federal government’s Yellow Ribbon Program/Post-9/11 G.I. Bill. The University covers 100% of tuition and fees for eligible student veterans or their dependents

He said the Military Times ranking was particularly welcome because of the publication’s presence on military bases and stations around the world. In its ranking, Military Times cited other things like Fordham’s Veterans Promise program, which guarantees undergraduate admission to the School of Professional and Continuing Studies (PCS) for students who graduated from New York high schools with a 3.0 and meet other standards.

Butler also noted Fordham’s career-focused events for student veterans such as the Veterans on Wall Street symposium that Fordham will host on Nov. 7. “Veterans make great hires,” said Butler. “They can make good decisions under pressure, they know how to build a team, and they are not afraid of hard work.”

Commander’s Cup

The Military Times ranking closely follows an event that highlighted the University’s tightly knit military-connected community. On Saturday, Oct. 26, Fordham hosted nearly 700 students in Junior ROTC programs from 17 area high schools for the annual Commander’s Cup competition.

The event included drill competitions, physical fitness tests, and tours of Fordham’s Rose Hill campus, as well as opportunities to learn about the ROTC program at Fordham and its scholarship opportunities, said Lt. Col. Rob Parsons, professor of military science at Fordham.

Students at the event were able to see that there’s “an affordable way to go to school and continue to serve,” he said.

“I don’t think it can be overstated how robust and integrated the veterans community in New York is, and how many ties exist to Fordham and Fordham grads,” he said.

Student Veterans of America Build Community

Members of Fordham’s Student Veterans of America chapter volunteered at the event, fielding questions from JROTC members, said Rico Lucenti, a student in PCS and chapter member.

“A lot of kids came up to the booth asking about the veteran presence and military-connected families on Fordham’s campus and what Fordham is doing for those families and students,” he said.

Jorge Ferrara, a PCS student and SVA chapter president, said the chapter arranges service and social events that help student veterans transition to college.

“What we’re doing is trying to establish a sense of community and bring everybody together so everybody knows we’re all going through the same thing,” he said.

A Veterans Day Mass will be celebrated at the Rose Hill campus on Sunday, Nov. 10, the day before Veterans Day. Other upcoming events for Fordham’s student-veteran community include the RamVets Fall Social on Friday, Nov. 8.

Environmental themes can clearly be seen in scripture, and not just in an incidental way, said Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J., professor emerita of theology. That’s the message of her new book, Come, Have Breakfast: Meditations on God and the Earth, published earlier this year by Orbis Books.

“This isn’t just [one] point in the Bible,” Sister Johnson said, “it runs through everything—Genesis and the Psalms and the prophets and the Wisdom literature and … into the very last book of the New Testament. You could trace this theme all the way through.” Her book is replete with examples, including these four:

Having Dominion over Nature Doesn’t Mean What You Think.

The biblical passage about God giving humans “dominion … over all the wild animals of the earth” has been taken to justify domination and exploitation of nature, which is “not even remotely” correct, Johnson writes. Rather, in biblical contexts, dominion means good governance—as practiced, for instance, by a stand-in who oversees part of a king’s realm and carries out his will. In Genesis, God is entrusting humanity with wise stewardship of nature, “a responsible service of protection and care,” according to Johnson.

Animals belong to God, and “the Creator is not a throwaway God,” she said. “It’s like anyone who creates anything. You don’t want it to be ruined.”

The Bible Puts Humans in Their Place.

Christian thought and prayer have often treated nature as a “stage set” for the story of God’s relationship with humanity, Johnson writes. But the Bible often paints a different picture, as in Psalm 104, a lengthy paean to the greatness of God’s creation. It glorifies everything from the sun and the moon to Earth’s landscapes and its variety of life, including humanity in the mix. “We’re in the middle, and we’re part of this community,” rather than being at the apex, Johnson said. But “in no way does this deny human distinctiveness” and our special capacities and obligations, she writes.

Animals Have God’s Ear Too.

“Scripture is threaded with verses that depict animals giving glory to God,” Johnson writes. As St. Augustine described it, she said, animals “are giving praise because they’re reflecting the goodness of the Creator.”

Indeed, during the Great Flood in the Book of Genesis, God establishes a covenant with not only Noah but also “every living creature” aboard his ark. “It precedes the covenants with Abraham, Moses, David, and the one established by Jesus,” Johnson writes. “It is never revoked.”

Jesus Valued Nature.

Raised as an observant Jew, Jesus was steeped in the creation theology of the Jewish religious tradition, Johnson writes. He viewed nature with fondness and wonder and speaks of its intrinsic value: In the Gospel of Matthew he speaks of “the lilies of the field” that “neither toil nor spin” yet are clothed in glory, as well as “birds of the air” who “neither sow nor reap” yet are cared for by God nonetheless.

“Pope Francis calls it the gaze of Jesus—like, how did Jesus look on the natural world?” Johnson said. “That gaze is what we should be trying to emulate.”

That tech, called generative AI, holds the key to a new system “that not only anticipates potential attacks but also prepares systems to counteract previously unseen cyberthreats,” said Mohamed Rahouti, Ph.D., assistant professor in the computer and information science department and one of Fordham’s IBM research fellows.

He and a crew of graduate students are working on new systems that, he said, are needed to get ahead of sophisticated attacks that are constantly evolving. Their focus is a type of easy-to-launch attack that has proved crippling to companies and government agencies ever since the internet began.

Denial of Service Attacks

Cybercriminals sometimes overwhelm and freeze a company’s or government agency’s computer systems by bombarding them with way more internet traffic than they can handle, using multiple computers or multiple online accounts. This is known as a distributed denial of service attack, or DDOS.

A typical attack could cost a company $22,000 a minute, he said. Nearly 30,000 of them take place every day around the world. Many of them are foiled by programs that use machine learning and artificial intelligence.

But those programs don’t always know what to look for, since they typically rely on snapshots of past traffic, Rahouti said. Another challenge is the growing number of internet-connected devices, from smart watches to autonomous vehicles, that could provide cybercriminals with new avenues for attack.

Generative AI

Hence the research into using generative AI, which could produce a far wider range of possible attack scenarios by working upon computer traffic data to make new connections and predictions, he said. When it’s trained using the scenarios produced by generative AI, “then my machine learning/AI model will be much more capable of detecting the different types of DDOS attacks,” Rahouti said.

To realize this vision, Rahouti and his team of graduate students are working on several projects. They recently used generative AI and other techniques to expand upon a snapshot of network traffic data and create a clearer picture of what is and isn’t normal. This helps machine learning programs see what shouldn’t be there. “We were amazed at the quality of this enhanced picture,” Rahouti said.

This bigger dataset enabled their machine learning model to spot low-profile attacks it had previously missed, he said.

Large Language Models

For their next project, they’re studying a large language model—the kind that powers ChatGPT—for ideas about how generative AI can be applied to cybersecurity. They’re using InstructLab, an open-source tool launched by IBM and Red Hat in May.

With all the companies and university researchers invested in new uses for generative AI, Rahouti is optimistic about its future applications in cybersecurity. The goal is to develop a system that runs on its own in the background, detecting both existing and emerging threats without being explicitly told what to look for.

“At present, we don’t have a fully autonomous system with these capabilities,” Rahouti said, “but advancements in AI and machine learning are moving us closer to achieving this level of real-time, adaptive cybersecurity.”

They both appeared at the annual On the Record gala hosted by Fordham’s public media service, WFUV, to receive awards named for alumni who learned their trade working at the station as students.

Chung received the Charles Osgood Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism, named for the beloved CBS News broadcaster who died in January. “May I say to the Osgood family, I knew Charlie so well and loved him so dearly,” Chung said in accepting the award. 

“I’m very, very thrilled to have this wonderful honor in Charlie’s name.” (She was introduced by her husband, television host Maury Povich, who told a familiar story about once being referred to as “Mr. Chung” by a hotel doorman during a visit to New York.)

Chung was in the midst of a tour to promote her new bestselling book, Connie: A Memoir. Visser received the Vin Scully Award for Excellence in Sports Broadcasting, named for the acclaimed announcer for the L.A. Dodgers, who died in 2022. She began by lauding Scully for his “humility and passion and professionalism” and joked with Scully’s family members, who attended. “To hear that voice coming across the breakfast table, not out of the TV? I can’t imagine. You’re so spoiled!” she said, to laughter.

She gave shout-outs to colleagues in attendance, including those who work on her weekly sports show, We Need to Talk. “We are the only all-sports network talk show produced, directed, and hosted by women, and you’re all here!” she said.

At the event, attendees viewed a video about the WFUV student journalist experience—ranging from news and public affairs reporting to sports journalism, audio production, and more.

“At the end of the day, my friends,” he said, “it’s really all about bringing the Gospel to life.”

He delivered the annual Economos Orthodoxy in America Lecture—one of many initiatives of Fordham’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center—at the Joseph M. McShane, S.J. Campus Center, named for him in 2022 to honor his 19-year tenure as president. Father McShane spoke to a packed house and received warm accolades from former colleagues and his successor as president, Tania Tetlow, who told him “it has been the honor of a lifetime to attempt to fill your shoes.”

In his address, “Building an Alliance of Grace: The Work of Ecumenism in an Age of Anxiety,” Father McShane spoke of efforts by Pope Francis and His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to overcome the divide between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Known as the Great Schism, it dates from 1054, when religious disagreements and political conflicts drove the two churches apart.

From their words and actions, Father McShane said, “I think that it’s fair to say that the patriarch and the pope believe that we will find unity in the apostolic work that we do far more easily and convincingly than we can find in theological discussions and debates.”

Bringing Faiths Together

Both leaders have been working together “for the sake of God and suffering humanity,” as shown by their work on environmental and ecological issues, and seek to include other faiths—Islam, the Anglican church, and others—in their work, Father McShane said.

Such an alliance has a role to play in addressing world issues that, he said, are “moral at their roots” and not solely questions for secular political leaders.

“They cry out for moral answers of the sort that can only be offered by the members of an alliance of grace whose lives have been touched by God, and whose hearts have been transformed by grace itself,” Father McShane said.

Both Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew are leading in this direction, he said. They “always call us to take up the task … through lives not of conspicuous consumption, but lives of conspicuous compassion, for that is what will turn heads and hearts to God,” he said.

“This is what the early Church was about: Living the Gospel message with such generosity of heart and such fullness,” Father McShane said. “It was a shock to the ancient world. People would love one another, go out of their way, they would give things up for one another. This caused people to stop and ask the question, well, why would people do this? Is it worthwhile? Is it the right way? Is it ultimately the truth?”

The Lived Gospel

“The lived Gospel changes hearts and minds, stops people … in their tracks, and attracts people to the message at the heart,” he said.

Father McShane was introduced by Tetlow, who said she was thrilled to carry forward the legacy of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center as a “center of ancient intellectual and religious tradition.”

A New Space for Orthodox Christian Studies

She also announced that Fordham will provide a long-sought home for the center in two adjoining buildings on Belmont Avenue, near the Rose Hill campus. Tetlow gave thanks to two major benefactors of Orthodox Christian studies at Fordham, Solon and Marianna Patterson, seated in the front row, who will provide a $1 million matching gift toward the costs of renovating the buildings.

Watch the entire lecture:

“The Holy Spirit desires welcoming communities,” he said, “and Fordham, as a Catholic university following the Jesuit traditions in this city of New York, is uniquely positioned to appreciate and foster the creativity with which God acts.”

He warned against attitudes of exclusivity—aimed at both individuals and groups.

“Selfishness, envy, and pride can have both the personal and collective forms,” said Cardinal Parolin, the second-highest-ranking official in the Vatican after Pope Francis.  “The latter, much more harmful, can grow so vast and apparent that it turns invisible to the individual, who can continue to live by dedication, service and humility towards his ‘we’—like a bandit remains loyal to the gang.” (Read the cardinal’s homily.)

‘Messengers of Peace’

The cardinal’s visit came four months after the University’s president, Tania Tetlow, and other members of Fordham’s leadership met with him during a four-day visit to the Vatican that was focused on Ignatian spirituality and the University’s Jesuit mission.

View and download photos from Cardinal Parolin’s visit to Fordham.

Sunday’s Mass was attended by members of the University community including students, staff, alumni, trustees, Jesuits of Fordham, and President Tetlow. The cardinal also toured the Rose Hill campus and met with students at Walsh Family Library and the Rose Hill Gym.

He was accompanied by Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, apostolic nuncio and permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, where the cardinal had spoken the day before about the increase in violent conflicts worldwide.

Tetlow expressed gratitude to the cardinal at the end of the Mass. “We are so grateful for your presence today,” she said, “and for your visit here this week to do the work of the Gospel: bringing messages of peace to the U.N. General Assembly and to the nations of the world.”

“You see in the faces of our students here hope for the future,” she said. “We teach them that they are loved by God. We teach them to be men and women for others, and we teach them to be messengers of peace. Your eminence, you bless us with your presence and you inspire us in our work. Thank you.”

Watch a video of the Mass below.

The campaign officially closed over the summer with $371 million raised, exceeding its goal by $21 million. That success reflects the generosity of the Fordham community and the Jesuit principle of magis that for 183 years has prompted Fordham to go beyond expectations in serving students, said Tania Tetlow, president of Fordham.

“Today, more than ever, Fordham is attracting students who are passionate about engaging with the great issues of our time and building a better future for humanity,” she said. “With this campaign, we have shown that their desire to make a difference is more than matched by our community’s willingness to support them in every way possible. To all who gave, no matter the size of your gift, thank you, and I hope you will take pride in what you have accomplished for our students.”

Educating the Whole Person

The Cura Personalis campaign—named for the Jesuit principle of educating the whole person—was formally launched in 2021. Its four pillars were access and affordability, academic excellence, student wellness and success, and athletics, and embedded within each pillar was the overriding imperative of fostering a sense of welcome and belonging throughout the University.

Visit our Cura Personalis campaign site for stories of students who benefited from donors’ gifts.

Varied gifts both large and small propelled the campaign. Thirty-five percent of the gifts were less than $100. Thirty-one donors gave $1 million or more for the first time. Bequests and planned gifts account for 29% of the total. And 37% of the campaign total was contributed by members of the Fordham University Board of Trustees.

“Through this campaign, the entire Fordham family of alumni, parents, faculty, staff, students, and friends of the University has shown the depths of its generosity,” said the board’s chairman, Armando Nuñez, GABELLI ’82. “And I’ve never been prouder to serve on the board with this extraordinary and generous group of trustees.”

Among the campaign contributions was the largest gift the University has ever received: a $35 million gift to the Gabelli School of Business from Mario Gabelli, a 1965 alumnus for whom the school is named, and his wife, Regina Pitaro, a 1976 alumna of Fordham College at Rose Hill.

Impacts Large and Small

The campaign left its mark across the University—perhaps most prominently with the creation of the Joseph M. McShane, S.J. Campus Center on the Rose Hill campus. The project combined an 80,000-square-foot addition with existing buildings, providing vastly greater space for student activities and University events. It also provided bigger, upgraded spaces for the Career Center, Campus Ministry, and the Center for Community Engaged Learning, enabling students to gather, socialize, and take greater advantage of their resources.

A ‘W’ for Students

In the athletics arena, the campaign supported a host of new and improved facilities as well as the New Era Fund for the basketball program, which boosted the number of wins by the men’s team and helped with revving up Ram spirit on campus.

Many gifts were tailored to the goal of inclusion—including those made to the Trustee Diversity Fund for economically disadvantaged students from historically underrepresented backgrounds, a fund spearheaded by Fordham Trustee Valerie Rainford, FCRH ’86. Another new fund, the LGBTQ Student Wellbeing Fund, was led by Joan Garry, FCRH ’79.

Scholarships, Advising, Internships, and More

Students benefited in numerous other ways: Campaign contributions created 153 new financial aid funds, supported student-faculty research, fueled an expansion of community engaged learning courses, helped create the Fordham College Advising Center, and funded the popular Serving the City internships with local cultural institutions. The campaign also supported an emergency fund and other resources for student veterans who often live on tight budgets while pursuing their studies.

Susan Conley Salice, FCRH ’82, one of five co-chairs of the campaign, noted one of the through lines connecting this and other Fordham fundraising campaigns: financial aid.

“Fordham was founded by an immigrant, and the University has a proud tradition of serving students of limited means, including first-generation college students,” said Conley Salice, a first-generation college graduate herself. “Thanks to all who supported our campaign, Fordham is well positioned to sustain its tradition of welcoming the most talented, committed students, regardless of their financial need.”

Supporting STEM

Campaign gifts provided new resources in the STEM fields, such as research fellowships, a new laser for optics research, and an endowed professorship, one that evokes the legacy of one of the University’s most involved and generous alumni.

With a $5 million gift, Fordham Trustee Kim Bepler, recipient of a 2022 honorary doctorate from the University, created a chair in the natural and applied sciences in honor of her late husband, Stephen E. Bepler, FCRH ’64. It was the fifth endowed chair in the sciences created by gifts from Kim Bepler and the estate of her husband, who served as a Fordham trustee and gave generously to many areas of the University before he died in 2016.

The campaign’s success bodes well for future fundraising efforts, noted Roger A. Milici Jr., vice president for development and university relations, who leads Fordham’s fundraising division.

“The pace and level of support for this campaign are a reflection of the energy and passion for Fordham’s Jesuit and Catholic mission in a fractured world desperately in need of hope,” he said.

Milici noted that Fordham just completed its second-best fundraising year ever, with more than $80 million in total gifts and pledges. “With the successful closure of this campaign,” he said, “we are also building a more mature advancement operation capable of greater impact, thanks to so many mission partners.”

The fund dovetails with one of the key priorities of Fordham’s recent fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, with its emphasis on equity and inclusion as well as the wellness of every student. Here are five examples of the numerous activities it has made possible:

No. 1: Ignatian Q.

With support from the fund, 10 Fordham students traveled to St. Louis University in April for this annual conference organized by the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities to promote community and spirituality among LGBTQ students. (Fordham hosted Ignatian Q in 2023 with support from the wellbeing fund.) In the words of one Fordham graduate student who attended, Tatum Allen, FCLC ’24, “it offered me a space to feel less alone as a queer person of faith.”

No. 2: Students Together for Acceptance, Respect, and Support (STARS).

Piloted last year by professors and students in the psychology department and the Graduate School of Social Service, this network brings Fordham students together with local high school students seeking to engage with LGBTQ peers, find support, and build community. Two of the high schoolers also took part in a year-long research project on LGBTQ experiences in school and presented their research at the Eastern Psychological Association Conference in Philadelphia.

No. 3: Oral History Project with SAGE Center Bronx.

Last year, undergraduate students in a communications class—titled Photography, Identity, Power—worked with residents of the SAGE center, a community center for LGBTQ seniors, to produce a digital exhibition of their photography that includes an oral history element. Students in an art class, Visual Justice, later met with the seniors and made portrait photographs of them.

No. 4: Queer Prayer Book.

The book Queer Prayer at Fordham was developed in 2023 and distributed at Ignatian Q when it was held at the University. 

No. 5: NYC Interfaith Pilgrimage/Retreat

This daylong retreat at the Lincoln Center campus, held in February, centered on art as a way to explore the intersection between spirituality and queerness. About two dozen students and alumni gathered for morning presentations, toured sites important to the LGBTQ community in Greenwich Village, and reconvened on campus to produce their own art. 

No. 6: Urban Plunge and Global Outreach Scholarships.

With support from the wellbeing fund, LGBTQ students received scholarships to take part in Urban Plunge and Global Outreach, two programs of the Center for Community Engaged Learning.

Sources: Fordham Campus Ministry, Center for Community Engaged Learning 

A new student fan section, the Shirtless Herd, fired up the fans and brought “Rose thrill” to the Rose Hill Gym, in the words of Keith Urgo, who has overseen the men’s team’s resurgence since becoming its head coach in spring 2022.

Because of the New Era Fund and Fordham-wide support, “the culture and outlook around the program have shifted dramatically in the right direction,” said Fordham’s interim athletic director, Charlie Elwood. As the final buzzer sounds for the Cura Personalis campaign, Fordham basketball walks off the court with big wins on the board. Here are five: 

No. 1: Historic Record.

Men’s basketball achieved its highest three-year win total since joining the Atlantic 10 in 1995. The highlight? Going 25-8 in the 2022-2023 season, tying the second-best season total in the team’s history and coming in just win one shy of the famed 26-3 season of 1970-1971.

No. 2: Surging in the Atlantic 10.

The men’s team tied for second in the final A-10 standings in 2022-2023 and reached the semifinals of the A-10 Tournament for just the second time.  

No. 3: New Women’s Coach Scores Big.

In the 2023-2024 season, her first season as head coach of the women’s team, Bridgette Mitchell led the Rams to the most wins by a first-year Fordham women’s basketball coach since 1993-1994.

No. 4: Ram Spirit Revived.

In a sign of growing enthusiasm for Fordham basketball, ticket sales for the men’s team games grew 113% from the 2022-2023 season to the 2023-2024 season.

No. 5: A Bigger Public Profile.

Fordham has been covered on CBS, NBC, FOX, ABC, and PIX11, and in the New York Post and Newsday, because of the men’s team’s performance. The Feb. 23, 2024, home men’s basketball game against Duquesne marked the Rams’ first appearance on ESPN2 since 2008.

“This program has shown me how important it is to be organized because it’s so massive,” said Cintron, a Bronx native majoring in finance.

That program is the Gabelli School’s Corporate Communications High School Pipeline Program, begun six years ago to help students from underrepresented groups enroll at Fordham or comparable schools, thereby increasing their presence in university classrooms and in the world of business.

Scholarship Support

A key part of the program is scholarships. As a student co-leader, Cintron receives the Gabelli Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Scholarship, established in 2021 to support students who, like Cintron, took part in the program as high schoolers and serve the program in administrative roles as students at Fordham.

It has proved to be a critical piece of his financial aid, said Cintron. “The scholarship has lifted a huge financial burden and created a sense of security for my mom and me,” he said. “I have so many opportunities and resources at Fordham, and to have lost those resources because I can’t pay tuition would be heartbreaking.”

The pipeline program prepares students for business school through mentoring, corporate site visits, a class on the Fordham campus, and a business class taught in the high schools by Gabelli School students to prepare the high schoolers for a year-end pitch proposal competition.

Over the past six years, the program has served approximately 300 high schoolers, and nearly 100 Gabelli School students have served in the program. About two dozen of the high schoolers are either enrolled at Fordham or have recently graduated, said Clarence E. Ball III, former director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the Gabelli School, who founded and built the pipeline program.

Dramatic Growth

The program has grown dramatically, he said—since beginning in 2018 with 12 students at Cardinal Hayes High School, Cintron’s alma mater, it has expanded to six Catholic high schools in the Bronx and East Harlem. Because of that growth, Cintron was extra busy last year managing other Fordham students who joined the program as mentors and classroom instructors.

Thanks to a spate of alumni donations in recent years, the Gabelli School will soon be able to award scholarship funds to more students who, like Cintron, play leadership roles in the pipeline program, Ball said.

Leadership Skills and an Internship at Citi

As he looks ahead to his career, Cintron is grateful that being able to attend Fordham helped him land an internship at Citi this past summer. And his experience at the head of a high school classroom should come in handy as well.

“Leading a classroom is very transferable to leading any group, and just understanding how to get through to people, how to get the group back on track,” he said.