The interdisciplinary degree will give students computational tools and techniques from the field of data science, as well as economic theory and statistical training from the field of economics.

“Many employers want students who can manage and analyze large data sets,” said Johanna L Francis, Ph.D., chair of the economics department.

While similar to the dual MA/MS program currently offered by the departments of Economics and Computer and Information Sciences, the new degree will be a single M.S. It will be offered by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. 

Meeting Employer Demand

Francis said the degree was created to meet the employer demand for graduates with expertise in Python, a high-level, general-purpose programming language, and R, a programming language for statistical computing and data visualization.

“There’s software that you can use where you don’t need to have much programming experience, but many employers would prefer students who are able to at least code some of their own analysis.”

The degree, which is the first and only program of its kind currently available on the East Coast, will comprise 10 courses from the economics and data science departments, including three electives. Students will also complete a capstone, internship, or thesis.

Francis noted that economics is still a very traditional liberal arts degree that incorporates political science, history, and psychology but has become much more quantitative. 

Data science offers skills that provide students with a much deeper understanding of algorithms, which is why the dual MA/MS Degree in Economics and Data Science program was first developed in 2021. While students who pursue the dual degree gain a deeper understanding of economic theory and computational methods while having the time and expertise to engage in research projects, this new degree combines the two disciplines even more seamlessly.

“This new degree allows students to do the degree in a year and a half, or a calendar year if they do summer courses, and it is much more intense than the dual degree,” she said. 

Gaining a Competitive Edge

Yijun Zhao, Ph.D., associate professor of computer and information science and program director of the M.S. in Data Science program, said data science students will equally benefit from immersing themselves in the field of economics.

“For data science students looking for jobs, one of the major challenges is that they have the technical skills but lack the knowledge or language of a particular field,” she said.

“This degree will help data science students gain the necessary knowledge in economics, giving them a competitive edge.”

Francis said the emergence of AI large language models, or LLMs, has made the degree like even more valuable.

“Economics is a very analytic discipline with a basis in human behavior, and when you combine it with a knowledge of algorithms that are the backbone of LLMs, you give students a very solid background in problem-solving.”

To learn more, visit the program webpage.

“I’ve always been fascinated by small-town America and the different pockets of our country,” said Escobar, who is originally from San Francisco, California. “It’s really exciting to get to see a new place and build out my own beat in a new environment.” 

The diversity beat is brand new for these newsrooms, said Escobar, one of approximately 60 journalists who were awarded the competitive fellowship. He will work on stories that explore how demographics in the Adirondacks have shifted over time, as well as efforts to diversify the area. 

‘There’s This Switch That Goes Off In Me’ 

What draws him to journalism is the interesting people he meets along the way, as well as getting to understand them better, said Escobar. 

“I don’t really see myself as a very extroverted person. But there’s this switch that goes off in me when I get behind a mic or talk to people in the field,” said Escobar, an on-air news reporter and producer at Fordham’s WFUV. “It allows me to be somebody who I never thought I could be … and helps me bring meaning to other people’s lives through the stories that I present.” 

Escobar, who double majored in journalism and digital technology and emerging media as an undergraduate, credited much of his success to his Fordham mentors, especially Beth Knobel, Ph.D., associate professor of communication and media studies, and Robin Shannon, WFUV’s news and public affairs director and morning news anchor.   

“They are the two biggest people in my life here. I owe a lot of my success to them teaching me and helping me find the right people to network with,” said Escobar, who will finish his master’s program this August. “Fordham [also]does a great job through its curriculum and programs like WFUV.” 

Becoming a Compassionate Storyteller

The University emphasizes cura personalis—and sometimes, that’s exactly what journalism is, said Escobar.

“You’re hearing people out. There needs to be more of that, in general. … That’s become a big problem in the industry: whose stories are we really hearing, and a lot of other editorial decisions like that,” said Escobar, who aspires to host a flagship public media show for a local station someday. “But when you just sit down with somebody and hear them out, they’re going to tell you amazing things.” 

“More people can benefit from quality journalism, and Fordham does a great job … training people to become compassionate storytellers.” 

“It’s really gratifying to see how many of the projects lean into our identity as a Jesuit institution,” said Ann Gaylin, dean of GSAS, “and strive to advance knowledge in the service of the greater good.”

Students displayed posters on topics that ranged from biology to theology to economics to psychology.

Nina Naghshineh, Ph.D. in Biological Sciences

Topic: The Role of Bacteria in Protecting Salamanders

How would you describe your research?
I study the salamander skin microbiome and how features of bacterial communities provide protection against a fungal pathogen that is decimating amphibian populations globally.

Why does this interest you?
I’m really interested in how microbes interact and function. My study system is this adorable amphibian, but the whole topic is so interesting because microbial communities are so complex and really hard to study. So the field provides many avenues for exploration. These types of associations are present in our guts and on our skin. I’m interested in going into human microbiome work after I graduate, so I have a lot of options available to me because of this research.

Nicholas McIntosh, Ph.D. in Philosophy

Topic: Using AI to Help Scholars Distill Information from a Vast Body of Texts

How would you describe your project?
It’s a digital humanities project that uses natural language processing to help read and understand many texts at once. There’s this vision we have of a really great humanities scholar who is able to know a text so well that they could almost quote it from memory. That is really difficult for us to do right now in the same way we might have when there were only a couple of touchstone classical texts.

What do you hope this will accomplish?
Scholars are scanning texts either for our classes or for our own research. So this would help us figure out, number one, how can you look at a text and be able to recognize— is this text useful for me? Number two, what are the most important concepts that we should be tracking in a text? And number three, what is the text as data telling us that maybe scholarship is overlooking or overemphasizing given traditional readings?

I would also like to show that those of us who do philosophy don’t have to be afraid of these technologies.

Angel Villamar, Siphesihle Sitole, and Virginia Scherer, M.A. in International Political and Economic Development (IPED)

Project name: Climate Mitigation: The Role of a People’s Organization in the Philippines

What were you investigating with this research?
We looked at the role of the grassroots organization Tulungan sa Kabuhayan ng Calawis in dealing with climate mitigation. It was formed after Typhoon Ketsana hit in 2009. There is an area right outside of Manila that, over the years, has been deforested, so this organization organized to help incentivize reforestation. The farmers in the area, who are mostly women, develop the seedlings, do the land preparation, and plant the trees.

What do you hope people learn from this project?
We want to think about reforestation not as a one-time thing but as a long-term sustainable way. What incentives do you need so that you can keep doing this? We are showing that you can involve ordinary individuals at the grassroots level in something that is much bigger than them.

This fall in Arizona, advocates used a research report from Alexander Meyer, a Fordham student in the international political economy and development graduate program, to get the state to change its policy around SNAP benefits for community college students.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, access to a food assistance benefit called SNAP—Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—was expanded.

By analyzing data from the Arizona Department of Economic Security, Meyer found that during this time, there was at least a 22% increase in Arizona college students accessing this benefit.

“My primary research question was, is there a population of college students that is in need, but is cut off from accessing SNAP because of too-stringent eligibility requirements?” said Meyer, who is from Arizona.

“The answer to that question is there is indeed a large population of college students in need of SNAP.”

Expanding Access

Across the country, about one in five college students face food insecurity, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education.

In order to qualify for SNAP—outside of the pandemic emergency—applicants must meet federal income guidelines. In addition, “able-bodied” adults also have a work requirement, which can include everything from having a job to being in a career training program. Being a student in traditional colleges and universities, however, usually does not make them eligible, so many students can’t access the benefits unless they also work part time.

During the pandemic, that requirement changed and college students became eligible. But when the emergency declaration ended in the spring of 2023, those expanded benefits went away, leaving many college students facing food insecurity issues again, Meyer said.

In stepped the Arizona Food Bank Network, where Meyer once worked and still maintains connections. The organization advocated for college students, or at a minimum, community college students, to maintain their access to SNAP.

“Hunger and food insecurity on college campuses is a growing issue across the nation,” a memo from the Food Bank Network, which cited Meyer’s paper, read. “Increased food insecurity and decreased education levels can have detrimental and long-lasting effects not only to individuals but also to the health and economic well-being of communities as a whole.”

Their work, backed up by Meyer’s paper, helped convince Arizona’s Department of Economic Security to count community college as a career training program, which allows students at those schools to satisfy the work requirement.

Next Steps

For Andrew Simons, Ph.D., associate professor of economics, seeing his student’s work—which started in his applied econometrics course last fall—be used to change state policy is a huge achievement.

“Some part of me wants to say this is the goal, but this is far exceeding the expectation,” he said. “You always want your research to be influencing the world.”

Simons and Meyer are doing a bit more analysis and work on the paper with a goal of getting it officially published in an academic journal. They’re also continuing the research, with a plan to look at the next set of data from 2023.

“We can analyze what that drop-off looks like and use that to further bolster our findings, saying, ‘You allowed this temporary exemption to allow more students to qualify for SNAP. Participation went up, and then you took it away, and participation went back down,’” Meyer said.

Meyer said he’s proud that his work had an impact, and that he hopes his research can be used to expand eligibility for all college students in Arizona and support similar policy changes in other states.

“Frankly it’s a dream—who doesn’t want to contribute via their research to expanding policy that in a very real way will touch tens of thousands of college students, making sure they have food to eat, and via that food, that they can thrive in their studies,” Meyer said.

At Fordham, students can participate in the meal swipe donation program, where students with extra meal swipes can donate them and students who are facing food insecurity issues can access additional meal swipes through campus ministry. In addition, students facing food insecurity-related challenges can reach out to staff in student affairs, campus ministry, financial aid, or their dean’s office for additional resources.

First in Their Families

Lori-Ann Andrews was inspired to pursue a dual degree in early childhood and early childhood special education at the Graduate School of Education, where she wanted to “utilize the downtime” that came with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Andrews, who is in her seventh year teaching, saw a need to provide support to students receiving special education services.

“I’m getting chills right now,” she said. “Every day, I see children across the board where they need services pertaining to special ed, but they’re not getting those services, because the general ed teachers don’t have the knowledge as to what to look for. As a special ed teacher, I will be able to make sure that those students receive all the services that they need.”

Andrews was surrounded by her family, many of whom traveled to see her graduate.

“I’m really so proud of her, I actually flew in from Florida to be able to support her,” her sister Cavell Lilly said. “She really is amazing.”

Andrews said that earning a master’s degree with her family’s support felt very significant

“I’m the first [in my family]to receive a master’s degree, so it’s breaking that generational curse.”

Mardoqueo Arteaga, who earned a Ph.D. in economics from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and served as the president of the Graduate Student Government, said a speech six years ago by Joseph M. McShane, S.J., then president of Fordham, inspired him to enroll in the doctoral program.

“I was a DACA recipient,” said Arteaga, referring to the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows young people brought to the U.S. as children to remain in the country. “In 2017, Father McShane sent out a message that was pretty convincing about this place being a place where I felt safe to come—and inclusive. I knew I wanted to get a Ph.D., and I thought this would be a good place to kind of be intellectually free, while also knowing that the community was rather supportive of someone like me.”

Arteaga, who goes by Marc, will be starting work as an economist with KPMG. He views earning a Ph.D. as both a privilege and responsibility.

“It’s a privilege to do so because I know that my family, and where I come from—you don’t have those kinds of opportunities,” he said. “But more than anything, I also consider it a responsibility, because I’m changing a narrative that would otherwise remain unchanged.”

New York City: The Finance and Fintech Capital

Shafrin Mustafa said that the reputation of the Gabelli School of Business’ MBA program and its location drew her in.

“I know that they had a really great reputation and it was located in New York, and this is where I wanted to be,” said Mustafa, who is graduating with an MBA with a double concentration in finance and fintech.

Mustafa, who is from Canada, said her time in the program flew by, as she’ll be starting work with American Express in July.

“It’s been a very exciting journey. It almost feels like it just started yesterday so I can’t believe we’re here already.”

Research for Single Mothers and Education

Three students graduating with their doctoral degrees from the Graduate School of Social Work, Carolyn Peguero Spencer, Danielle Jimenez, and Denise Gosselin, said that they leaned on the community they developed at Fordham.

“You really have to have a beautiful cohort to get through. You’re not going to get through this alone,” said Spencer, a licensed clinical social worker, who got her master’s at the Graduate School of Social Work in 2000. She decided to return for the doctoral program to finish some “unfinished work.”

“I just saw a lot of things and we didn’t have data for it and research for it, so I was told, ‘You do it. You research it.’”

And so she did, putting together her thesis on single mothers in the Latina community, titled Intersecting Identities, Education, and Economic and Subjective Well-Being: A Qualitative Testimonio Study Among Latina Single Mother Community College Students.

Additional reporting by Patrick Verel

Ysabella Escalona, GSAS ’22, a recent graduate, and Viviana Villalva, a current student in the master of public media program, currently work at the station’s state-of-the-art facility, located at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

A Full-Time Associate Producer Position

A native of Venezuela, Escalona started in the public media program in 2022, interning for HITN for a year as an assistant producer. After she graduated, she was hired by the station as an associate producer for Estudio DC, the station’s political affairs show. The job entails everything from booking guests to writing summaries of episodes to tracking down video footage. Sometimes she gets to work on a podcast—a skill she learned at Fordham.

“At Fordham, I did a podcast for my capstone, and now I sometimes work on the podcast for Estudio DC. When they need someone to cut a video clip or do a small promo, I know how to do that because of the audio and video production classes,” she said.

In addition to the sound and video editing skills she learned at Fordham, Escalona, who is fluent in Spanish, credits the advanced writing class she took with helping make her a better multi-media journalist.

“It really helped me with my storytelling in terms of thinking through the order of everything,” she said.

The opportunity to work at place like HITN, which reaches 40 million homes across the U.S., was the biggest draw though for her to enroll.

“The experience has been just very enriching. I feel like I’ve grown so much.”

Media with a Mission

Villalva, a native of Queens who is also fluent in Spanish, and is interning in the HITN’s government affairs and community relations office, came to the program from John Jay College, where she graduated in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in English.

“What stuck out to me was the public media master’s motto, ‘Media with a Mission,’” she said.

“Other programs sounded great but were more focused on the technical aspects. I liked this idea that we’re going to tell stories that matter.”

Working on the government and community affairs team has shown Villalva how important it is to nurture relationships between elected officials and community leaders. Her department is also responsible for organizing events and programs that educate and advance the Latino community.

“Learning about the disparities and the challenges that communities face when they lack resources has been eye-opening for me,” she said.

Because it’s a small organization, she has also worked with Escalona’s team in the master control room, focusing on things like the structure of a show.

Beth Knobel, Ph.D., associate professor of communication and media studies and director of the master’s program said she knew HITN would be a great opportunity for students after her first visit to the station.

“Their studios were stunning, and we found out we were really on the same page about what media is supposed to do to serve its audience,” she said.

The public media master’s program-—run by Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences—will graduate its sixth cohort this year, and Knobel said partnerships have always been a key component of it, including those with public television station powerhouse The WNET Group and Fordham’s own WFUV.

“It’s easy when you’re in a classroom to forget what it’s like in the real world. Our partners keep us grounded on how public media is evolving so that we’re able to give our students the cutting-edge skills they need,” she said.

Helping Media Outlets Appeal to a Younger Audience

Michael Nieves, president, and CEO of HITN, noted that the internship program has long been an important part of the station’s recruitment process. Four current members of the staff, including Escalona, started out as interns. In Fordham, he said, the station gets access to students who are bilingual, experienced, and driven.

“Right now, our audience is in the 45 to 65, age group, and we want to appeal to the 25 to 35 group as well, so these college-age kids become our own little mini focus groups,” he said.

“It’s a successful partnership. And a lot has to do with the preparation they get before they come here.”

“Asian American literature always responds to the historical moment, whether it’s Japanese American incarceration, whether it’s 9/11, Asian American writers always want to remind us that we shouldn’t be so quick to judge people based upon how they look,” Sohn said at the April 25 installation ceremony.

In this case, Sohn highlighted how the COVID-19 pandemic and its roots in China spurred a rise in racism and attacks against Asian Americans. But, Sohn noted, Asian American writers have to tackle the issue of racism against their community “every 20 years” or so, dating back to Japanese internment camps during World War II.

“It reminds us that we’re all interdependent, meaning that we all have to rely on each other to create a collective social awareness, that we need to treat each other with complexity,” he said.

Since 2020, more than a dozen books have been published by Asian American authors on the pandemic, and for his lecture, Sohn read all of them, aiming to find common patterns and themes. As he was reading, he said he was most drawn to the “life writings,” such as memoirs, essays, and autobiographies.

He cited three examples that provided a deeper understanding of the pandemic period: disability advocate Alice Wong’s Year of the Tiger essay collection; The Monsoon Diaries: A Doctor’s Journey of Hope and Healing from the ER Frontlines to the Far Reaches of the World by Dr. Calvin Sun, who worked as an emergency room physician; and Laura Gao’s Messy Roots graphic narrative.

“[They’re] telling us that we have to be careful about the different vulnerable subjects,” he said. “And it’s not just Asian Americans, obviously, it’s lots of other communities, it’s disabled communities. It’s health care workers like Dr. Sun. And it’s everyday individuals like Laura Gao, who just want to be connected with their family.”

In Gao’s graphic novel, she depicts herself playing ping-pong with a woman in January 2020 who keeps talking about China in a racist way, until Gao gets fed up. At first, Sohn showed that it was just her dealing with this one instance of racial aggression, but later in the piece, Gao shows a multitude of examples from news coverage of Asian Americans being blamed for the pandemic and abused in response to it.

“It tells us about the social structure that has changed in that three month period, and ramped up, and it’s something affecting a larger group of people,” he said. “You can’t have this individual microaggression without that larger social structural overlay.”

A Connection with Tom Mullarkey

Sohn was officially hired to fill the Mullarkey Chairin January 2020, but with the pandemic, the official installation ceremony was put off. He recalled how when he first found out about the position, he felt a tug to apply due to some of the parallels between him and Thomas Mullarkey, one of the chair’s namesakes.

“I share a key affiliation with Tom as we’re both the children of immigrants who no doubt saw America as a land of opportunity and refuge,” Sohn said.

But Sohn also noted that their interactions with Korea overlapped—Mullarkey had served in Korea in the armistice period from 1954 to 1956, which was exactly what Sohn was researching for his book project. This “strange parallel” helped encourage Sohn to apply.

Sohn also shared with the audience some history about Mullarkey, who was a double Ram—graduating from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1954 and Fordham Law School in 1959. He served on the Board of Trustees for almost 10 years before he passed away in 1993.

“The legend goes that [Mullarkey] originally planned to major in business, but a Jesuit tapped him on the shoulder and told him, ‘No, you should probably go into the humanities. It would be better for you,’” Sohn said. “He ascended the ranks of Wall Street and was very successful in finance. But what you might not know is that he was always well known for his abilities to write and speak eloquently—skills no doubt cultivated in part by his time as an English major here at Fordham.”

This inspired Mullarkey to want to give back, Sohn said, something continued by his wife Theresa, who received an honorary doctorate from the University in 2005.

Sohn said that becoming the Mullarkey Chair has been “transformative.”

“I’ve been able to travel, go to archives, do the kind of research that I’ve always wanted to do without some of the obstacles that we would traditionally have,” he said. “So it means everything to me to have this opportunity.”

“It’s particularly exciting to see how data science is being used to enhance ethically informed and motivated research,” said Ann Gaylin, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. “I’m also pleased to note how this research aligns so closely with GSAS’s mission of graduate education for the global good.”

Social Media’s Impact on LGBTQ+ Students

Xiangyu Tao, a fourth-year doctoral student in the applied developmental psychology program, used survey data to illustrate social media’s effects on LGBTQ+ students. She found that the more time the students spent on social media, the more discrimination and hateful language they were exposed to, which caused higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression.

Tao’s research also found that while LGBTQ+ students reported some positives regarding social media, such as finding a community and resources online, they did not outweigh the negatives. She shared her findings with members of the undergraduate Queer Student Advisory Board who had some insights.

“[A] member brought up that positives that happen on social media fade away when you close your phone, but the negatives on social media, like discrimination, will linger and impact a person’s mental health,” she said.

Making Scientific Advancements

Understanding the relationship between brain activity and behaviors is a main focus of neuroscience, said Rabia Gondur, an integrative neuroscience major who graduated from Fordham College at Lincoln Center in 2022 and is currently part of the accelerated master’s program in data science in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

“How do we relate these rich, complex naturalistic behaviors to their simultaneously recorded neural activity? With our research we are trying to answer this question,” she said.

But Gondur noted that oftentimes models for documenting these, are “restricted to only one data modality, so either neural activity or behavior, but usually not in conjunction.”

With Stephen Keeley, an assistant professor of natural sciences, Gondur worked to combine existing models to better show how that conjunction of neural activity and behavior is related. She gave an example of a fly and showed how the model tracked both the neural activity in the brain taking place and what the behavior of the fly was, such as moving its left limb or right limb.

“We hope that [this combined]model can be a general tool for understanding the relationship between the brain and behavior,” she said.

Nolan Chiles, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill majoring in integrative neuroscience, worked with chemistry professor Joshua Schrier to conduct research on a classification algorithm that he hopes, with some additional work, can be used for drug discovery.

“The predominant way that we discover new drugs, say for HIV, [is by trying]to find molecules that are effective in inhibiting infection,” he said.

Traditionally this is done through a method called “High Throughput Screening,” which involves testing many molecules, often blindly, Chiles said, for how effective they are.

“This is often costly and time inefficient, and so we are beginning to find other ways of using computational prescreening so that we can cut down on the number of molecules that we actually have to evaluate in the lab,” he said.

Data Poisoning

Courtney King, a doctoral student in computer science who received her master’s degree in the subject from the Graduate School of Arts and Science in 2022, worked with Juntao Chen, an assistant professor of computer and information sciences, to examine how an “attacker” can manipulate data to make something like a chatbot do something it was not made to do.

King gave the example of the chatbot Tay from Microsoft, which was “not supposed to be able to be taught offensive language,” but “through policy poisoning, Twitter users were able to make her say racist things.”

“Data poisoning is reported as a leading concern for industry applications,” King said.

Their research helped to identify a “potential vulnerability” where an attacker can trick the machine learner into “implementing a targeted malicious policy by manipulating the batch data,” such as a chatbot saying racist phrases. By pointing out this vulnerability, the researchers showed that it is crucial for a system to “actively protect its stored data, and specifically its sensor data, for trustworthy batch learning.” King’s paper stated that future work could include exploring how to detect or protect against this type of attack.

Breadth and Depth of Research

Other presentations included a look into Project FRESH Air and how the citizen science program uses monitors to detect air quality at schools in the Bronx and Manhattan; how functional difficulties, such as vision impairment, can be mapped by region; and how algorithms can be used to identify data vulnerable to ransomware attacks.

Gaylin praised all of the presenters, particularly the graduate students, for their research.

“It’s heartening to see that graduate students in the first cohorts of our two newest programs—the Ph.D. in computer science, and the dual master’s degree in economics and data science—have hit the ground running,” she said. “These students are our future.”

“I’ve always been intrigued to find out more about communities,” she said. She’s also always wanted to work in New York City. So she applied to Fordham’s public media master’s program in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

“New York City has always been the goal for me,” she said. “I think the fact that New York has such a rich diversity to it definitely helps when you’re in public media.”

Journalism and Strategic Communication

The one-year master’s program offers two tracks for students: a multi-platform journalism track, which Sargent is on, that focuses on reporting using audio, video, web content, and more; and a strategic communication track that focuses on areas such as social media marketing, public relations, and fundraising for nonprofits. The program’s evening schedule allows for daytime employment as well as fellowships and internships, which advisers help students to secure.

After getting accepted to the program, she applied for and received a fellowship with WFUV, a NPR-affiliate public media station on the Rose Hill campus, where she works as a reporter, host, and news editor. She hosts the station’s weekly news podcast and hosts the daily news podcast What’s What one day each week.

WFUV Podcast Earns Gracie Award

For the daily podcast, she did a piece in the fall on maternal health care in New York City, for which she interviewed Mayor Eric Adams, city council members, and a doula service that the city partnered with.

“Coming from the U.K., and being able to see what maternal health care is [like]here, obviously in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned as well, it felt like a very important time to be talking about that,” she said.

Sargent also created and launched a new podcast for the station called Urban Tales, which explores the impact of operating a business in New York City and how it influences the personal and professional lives of young entrepreneurs. Urban Tales also led to national recognition as she received a Gracie Award from the Alliance for Women in Media for her work on the podcast.

“I’ve been collaborating with so many different founders of businesses across New York City, specifically people who moved from outside the city to New York,” she said. “I feel like New York’s always where you go to achieve your professional dreams, so I was hearing about those experiences and their successes, but also about the trials and tribulations of being a founder and how young people are navigating that space.”

Learning Reporting Skills in the ‘Epicenter of Cultural Engagement’

Working at WFUV has also allowed her to put the skills she’s learning in class into practice, particularly lessons from her cross-platform journalism class. The course teaches students how to report and create content for traditional outlets, like broadcast television, as well as social media. And she said the reverse is also true–her work at WFUV is informing her studies.

“I think the best thing about WFUV is I’ve gotten so much support, but I also was thrown into audio and production—it’s so hands-on,” she said. “You really do learn how to find your own way and navigate through it. Being able to take the skills that I’ve learned here in a working environment and apply them to my studies has just enhanced my education massively.”

Sargent said getting to tell the stories of people from different backgrounds that have come together in New York City is one of her favorite parts of the master’s program.

“New York kind of feels like the epicenter of cultural engagement,” she said. “And I think that really injects a lot of life into the media that we produce.”

“Going through this adventure with my daughter has taught me what it means to be truly human,” said Martone, who spoke at the Rose Hill campus on Nov. 9. “The time I sat by her … when she was comatose was the most meaningful time of my life. It made me realize that persons with disability are discriminated against—not because of who they are, but because of who we are and what we wrongly value.”

Martone is an associate professor emerita of moral theology at St. John’s University in Jamaica, New York. She is the recipient of several awards, including a National Endowment for the Humanities grant on “Justice, Equality, and the Challenge of Disability” and a fellowship on disability ethics from Weill-Cornell Medical College and the Hospital for Special Surgery. She wrote and published Over the Waterfall, a memoir of her daughter’s accident, in 2011. Since retirement, she has worked with Ladies of Charity USA to establish a national homecare agency. In 1995, Martone earned her Ph.D. in moral theology from Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. 

In her lecture “From Trauma to Disability: Examining Our Cultural Values,” Martone offered an emotional account of her daughter’s journey from her perspective as a mother and caregiver. In addition, she spoke about the shortcomings of America’s health care system and how our societal values marginalize those with disabilities.   

A Health Care System That Neglects People Living with a Chronic Condition

On February 22, 1998, an elderly woman lost control of her car and hit several students from the University of Chicago, including Michelle. For nearly eight months, Michelle was unconscious. She had 10 brain surgeries, a respirator, and a feeding tube inserted into her stomach, said her mother—and she nearly died a few times. 

Today, Michelle continues to live at home. She is able to use a walker to move around, answer her email, play games on her computer, and even go horseback riding, with the help of her family members and professionals. In 2016, she celebrated her 40th birthday with family and friends. 

But during the two years following the accident, her family experienced a difficult journey through the health care system. When Michelle’s doctors determined that she would not be restored to independence in a short period of time, her care became less important to the system, said Martone. Everyone in the intensive care unit received the same level of care based on their needs, but those who left the facility without the possibility of a full recovery experienced disparities in care, she said. For example, she was able to get all the MRI scans she needed for her daughter, but after she left the hospital, it was difficult to find home care workers and therapists. 

Michelle was discharged from one facility to another, including large research hospitals that underwent frequent changes in residents and staff, said Martone. In the process, Martone discovered that on her daughter’s medical records, someone had falsely written that she had undergone a lobotomy procedure. 

When Michelle finally awoke, she began to make progress, but it wasn’t fast enough for her insurance companies, said Martone. “If a patient doesn’t respond quickly, she’s documented as having plateaued and services are cut back and soon eliminated,” said Martone. 

Eventually, Michelle needed to move back home or into a nursing home. Thanks to money earned from a major lawsuit, they were able to afford the former, along with personalized care. Her condition improved with time and the help of professionals and close family members. But insurance only covered a few hours of daily nursing care, and Michelle needed round-the-clock care. 

Too Much Emphasis on Independence

Throughout this experience, Martone said she has learned that people with chronic conditions, especially those who can no longer live independently, are neglected by the health care system. 

This speaks to a deeper problem embedded in the U.S., she said. Our society overwhelmingly favors independence and often rejects dependency. Many of us live in a world where we think we are independent because we can buy whatever products or services we need. But that isn’t true, she said. Even the able-bodied all rely on people and services. 

“We delude ourselves into thinking we are independent. Our health care system also favors this approach. … It puts vast resources into keeping people alive and returning them to independence and few resources into teaching people how to die or live with a chronic condition,” she said, including the 1.7 million Americans who have a traumatic brain injury. “We have to give chronic care more serious thought … [and]do something about the fragmentation of our health care system,” Martone said. 

‘I Am So Much More Than What You See’

Dealing with the health care system was difficult, but the hardest thing for her to experience as a mother was discrimination against her daughter, she said. 

“There were so many places where we were made to feel unwanted. Her friends drifted away, and her world was reduced mostly to her immediate family and her paid caregivers and therapists,” said Martone. 

Martone showed the audience a scene in the documentary “Your Health: A Sacred Matter,” aired on PBS, where her daughter sings about her desires in a song that she composed herself: “I am so much more than what you see. There is so much more inside of me. A sense of humor and gratitude for life. … You may think I’m less of a person, only because you see I can’t walk. But if you took the time, you would know I could talk. Could you stop a moment and say hi?” 

Martone said we need to do more to accommodate persons with disabilities: “We need to stop viewing our work with them as acts of charity on our part and recognize our interdependence. They are not here to make us feel good about ourselves. They are us.”

At “Singing Truth to Power,” a medieval concert and roundtable discussion held on Oct. 5 at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus, performers and scholars used medieval songs to connect the music of the middle ages to present day issues. They also reflected on how music can inspire people to take action.

The event was co-presented by Fordham’s Department of Art History and Music, Fordham’s Center for Medieval Studies, New York State’s Council on the Arts, and Alkemie, a medieval music ensemble group.

Some of the connections between today’s issues and medieval songs were made quite literally. As Alkemie performed medieval chants, Niccolo Seligmann, a performer with the group, inserted poems that added present-day commentary to the themes expressed in the songs.

“They tell us that their greed is good, tweeting atop the tower/They say, ‘work harder and you could join us and wield our power,” Seligmann recited between medieval songs, which were performed primarily in Old English and Old French. “They tell us their prosperity is earned through God’s just grace/They show the press their charity and warn us to pick up the pace. But those of us out on the streets engaged in mutual aid/can often barely make ends meet and expect no press parade.”

In the panel discussion that followed, Sian Ricketts, a performer with Alkemie, said the group has been trying to figure out how to best convey the messages, both past and current, in their work.

“Are we supposed to be making a political message as we engage with these materials of the past that are so overtly political? And we have to process what that means to project it into the world,” Ricketts said. “All the music on this program is all written by clerics, essentially people who are working in the system—they don’t have a lot of power; they had an education. And that’s the position we can really identify with, so I find it fascinating to grapple with that.”

Reflecting on Activism

For others, the concert made them reflect on their own activism and work in their daily lives.

“When I got the invitation to be a part of this panel, my initial reaction was to ask myself, ‘Am I an activist?’” Natalie Reynoso, a Ph.D. candidate studying the history of Christianity at Fordham said. “But I think for me, and maybe for many of us, the image of someone outside protesting is the image that often comes to mind. And it is not the way my activism looks in my work.”

Reynoso said the performance helped her reflect on how her work studying gendered violence in early Christianity can be considered activism.

“The questions that I ask are really where my activism comes in—who gets to be human in the ancient world and who doesn’t? Who gets left out? And my interest is in those who get left out and telling those stories,” she said.

Patrick DeBrosse, a Ph.D. candidate at Fordham currently studying the political culture of Latin Europe during the Middle Ages, said that the performance reminded him of one of his biggest sources for his dissertation—the music of troubadours from that time period.

“It’s full of protests essentially,” he said. “It’s one of the few places that you can really get perspectives on power, you can get critiques of power… I think this performance was a great way for me to sort of reflect back on the relationship between my sources and protest in general—who gets to protest? What’s the purpose of it?”

DeBrosse also said that the concert made him think back to how music was used in history to bring attention to an issue and “draw a crowd” around a performance.

“Sometimes I think we in the modern world forget that music does this so powerfully because we consume it through headphones,” he said. “In a pre modern society, all of the things we just heard are intended to be consumed, with a much bigger crowd of people who have chosen to … listen to and then go on to presumably comment on whatever message has been given to them by the singer.”

Nicholas Paul, Ph.D., an associate professor of history and the director of the Center for Medieval Studies, said that the “lasting partnership” between the center, Fordham, and Alkemie has been very beneficial and has led to many “great events.”.

“It’s a great joy to be able to see that continuing, to be able to benefit from that partnership by being able to have events like this evening where we premiere new work,” he said.