The Big Picture – Fordham Now https://now.fordham.edu The official news site for Fordham University. Wed, 18 Dec 2024 15:17:57 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://now.fordham.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/favicon.png The Big Picture – Fordham Now https://now.fordham.edu 32 32 232360065 Fordham Makes Waves in Water Polo https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/the-big-picture/fordham-makes-waves-in-water-polo/ Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:17:49 +0000 https://now.fordham.edu/?p=198683 “Is this undefeated team the best story in college sports?” Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Gay asked readers in November. He was referring to the Fordham water polo team that went on to win all 28 of its regular-season matches, besting East Coast rival Princeton and California powerhouses alike.

The Rams rose to a tie for No. 1 in the nation—higher than any Fordham team ever—after winning their fourth straight Mid-Atlantic Water Polo Conference title. “We’re in the strongest position we’ve ever been in as a program,” said head coach Brian Bacharach, a former national champion at UC Berkeley who recently completed his 12th season at Fordham.

A big reason for the team’s historic success? Members who are as tightly knit as they are talented.

“What I like the most about playing water polo is the energy [of] being part of a team,” said Jacopo Parrella, a senior from Italy. He and his teammates are a worldly group, with players from as close as Brooklyn and as far as South Africa. First-year student Andras Toth, pictured in action above, is one of four players from Hungary.

After winning the conference title, the Rams earned the No. 3 seed at the NCAA Championship, held at Stanford University. They beat Long Beach State 16-11 on December 6, but their incredible undefeated season—and their quest to become the first East Coast water polo team to win a national title—ended in the semifinals, where they lost to USC in overtime.

Still, the Rams finished with a 32-1 record, their finest season ever, and advanced farther than any Fordham team in an NCAA Championship tournament.

]]> 198683 Bringing Oysters Back to the Bronx https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/bringing-oysters-back-to-the-bronx/ Fri, 22 Dec 2023 22:40:10 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=180302 Perched on a skiff bobbing off the shores of City Island one sunny August morning, Kevin Horbatiuk, FCLC ’78, LAW ’81, watched a fellow volunteer with City Island Oyster Reef pull a steel cage from the water. It had been three months since the cage—containing recycled oyster shells seeded with larvae called spat—was lowered into the waters off the East Bronx as part of the community group’s effort to restore the local oyster population.

Horbatiuk, an attorney who majored in history at Fordham College at Lincoln Center before earning a J.D. at Fordham Law School, has been enthralled by the storied bivalve since reading Mark Kurlansky’s 2006 book The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell. In public talks, he recounts oysters’ emergence as New York City’s leading export in the 19th century, when “New York had street cart vendors selling oysters for a penny a shell.” He also describes the demise of the city’s oyster beds due to overharvesting and pollution.

The Environmental Benefits of Oyster Restoration

In recent years, New Yorkers like Horbatiuk have been reintroducing oysters, not to be eaten but for the environmental benefits—the mollusk’s circulatory system filters contaminants from the city’s waterways, and the reefs help create habitats for other marine life. On Saturday mornings from May through September, he travels to City Island to measure the oysters’ growth, determine how many of them are growing on each craggy shell pulled from Long Island Sound, and pal around with a diverse group of volunteers devoted to the research project.

A man wearing blue gloves holds a cage containing oyster shells that had just been pulled from the water
In August, City Island Oyster Reef volunteers pulled oyster research station cages from the water to count and measure the oysters growing on recycled shells that had been seeded with spat in spring.

Measuring and counting the oysters is painstaking work that demands focus and dedication. Horbatiuk clearly has both, as he works methodically through an orange plastic pail filled with oysters affectionally labeled “Kevin’s Bucket.” His volunteer efforts that sunny Saturday morning in August were part of City Island Oyster Reef’s research study on oyster propagation and biodiversity in Long Island Sound. Among the species found living with the oysters that morning were grass shrimp, bristle worms, skillet fish, slipper snails, and boring sponges.

A few small crabs in the palm of a person's hand next to a book opened to a page about mitten crabs
In addition to charting the oysters’ growth, volunteers documented the species found living with the oysters.

Horbatiuk recalls that in the 1830s, as many as 39 million bushels of oysters were harvested annually, with New York the center of the world’s oyster trade. Since industrialization, however, the oyster beds died. And today’s oysters, while helping to improve water quality by filtering up to 50 gallons of sea water a day, are inedible because the toxins that get filtered out remain in the oyster flesh.

“The history grabbed me first,” said Horbatiuk, who grew up on New York’s Lower East Side and now lives in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. “Very few people realize how important they are historically and what they do for the water’s health.”

A man wearing blue gloves holds an oyster shell in one hand and a measuring instrument in the other.
Horbatiuk measures the live oysters growing on a shell recently pulled from one of City Island Oyster Reef’s research stations.

‘Oysters for a Penny a Shell’

Horbatiuk’s love of the city’s past dates back to his undergraduate days at the Lincoln Center campus. His favorite courses focused on social and intellectual history, which helped illuminate developments in pop culture in American society.

His Saturday morning efforts on City Island dovetail with his role as a volunteer as an ambassador for the Billion Oyster Project, which does public outreach on oyster restoration and monitors oyster propagation in New York waterways. That outreach includes talks he gives throughout the metropolitan area to New Yorkers interested in learning more about the history of oysters. At his talks, he’ll mention that the Fanny Farmer cookbook from the 1860s had 40 recipes for oyster dishes. He’ll also hearken back to the early 1600s, when the Lenape people, who had lived in the region for centuries, traded oysters with the Dutch and piled them high in middens along the coast.

“It’s an easy sell to the public,” he says. “It just captures their imagination when you tell them you could find oysters in Spuyten Duyvil in the Bronx, and instead of hot dog carts on the street, New York had street cart vendors selling oysters for a penny a shell.”

In June, he manned a table at the New York Philharmonic performance at Lincoln Center that featured three classical pieces inspired by water—one depicted foreboding ocean moods and a vicious storm, while another portrayed the role of water in an Australian myth. During intermission, he chatted with concertgoers about the oyster project.

In mid-July, he participated in the City of Water Day by visiting the Sebago Canoe Club in Jamaica Bay in Brooklyn to talk about conservation and oyster restoration. That same month he spoke at the Beczak Environmental Education Center in Yonkers about the history of oysters in the Hudson River estuary. That’s where he’s a member of the Yonkers Paddling and Rowing Club and served as club commodore from 2019 to 2021.

“Kevin may be a lawyer, but he’s found another passion: the history of oysters,” said Bob Walters, executive director of the Beczak Center. “He tells that story with such enthusiasm and passion. And he’ll share what he’s learned at the drop of a hat.”

A man wearing a Fordham hat and City Island Oyster Reef T-shirt holds an oyster shell, Long Island Sound in the background

]]> 180302 Fordham Magazine Earns UCDA Design Award https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/fordham-magazine-earns-ucda-design-award/ Thu, 10 Aug 2023 22:44:25 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=175142 An image of the cover of the winter 2023 issue of Fordham Magazine, featuring a collage illustration highlighting objects (microphone, headphones, transistor radio, vinyl record, boombox, etc.) meant to highlight the 75-year history of WFUV, Fordham's public media station, in a variety of colors: yellow, salmon, teal, pinkThe cover of the winter 2023 issue of Fordham Magazine has earned a UCDA Design Award of Excellence from the University & College Designers Association.

To illustrate the cover story—“WFUV at 75: Behind the Scenes at New York’s Home for Music Discovery”—the magazine’s creative director, Ruth Feldman, turned to artist Tim Robinson, a fan of Fordham’s public media station whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications.

Like WFUV itself, Robinson’s illustration incorporates retro, classic elements in a vibrant collage. He created several other collages for the story, written by Kelly Prinz, FCRH ’15. Taken together, Prinz’s words and Robinson’s illustrations highlight how Fordham’s public media station connects an impressive legacy with an increasingly national reputation as a multimedia training ground and home for music discovery.

The UCDA Design Awards, established in 1971, recognize exceptional design and creative work done by communication professionals to promote educational institutions. Fordham Magazine will be featured among 145 other award winners at the 2023 UCDA Design Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, this fall.

]]> 175142 Postcard from Yellowstone Country: Rams, Raptors, and ‘Raw Nature’ https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/postcard-from-yellowstone-country-rams-raptors-and-raw-nature/ Thu, 22 Jul 2021 17:38:41 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=151866 Drive west from Cody, Wyoming, and you might spot bighorn sheep leaving Shoshone National Forest—a lamb and ewe trotting across the highway, rams butting heads on the asphalt. “We’ll see them pretty regularly, and that always ties me back to Fordham a bit,” Corey Anco, GSAS ’16, said of the rams, the University’s mascot.

After earning a master’s degree in biology at Fordham five years ago, Anco moved to Wyoming to serve as assistant curator of the Draper Natural History Museum, part of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody. The museum, about 50 miles east of Yellowstone National Park, features a live raptor education program and introduces visitors to the sights, sounds, and smells of the region’s diverse ecosystems, from alpine to mountain meadow to plains.

Corey Anco secures the tarsi of a fledgling golden eagle, an apex predator in Wyoming's Bighorn Basin.
Corey Anco secures the tarsi of a fledgling golden eagle, an apex predator in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin. Photo by Penny Preston

Anco hadn’t considered museums as a career path until he worked closely with Fordham biology professor Evon Hekkala, Ph.D., conducting genetic research using historical African leopard specimens at the American Museum of Natural History. Beyond their educational mission, he realized, museums are “actively involved in research and, in some instances, conservation action.”

That’s what drew him to the Draper museum, which Anco said has been monitoring the occupancy, distribution, reproduction, and diet of golden eagles in the Bighorn Basin since 2009. He said he’s humbled and inspired by his work and where he does it.

“When I climb over a ridge and see how expansive this alpine landscape is, and that there’s literally no sign of human impact for miles and miles and miles, I get such a visceral feeling of raw nature that inspires me to care for it.”

]]> 151866 On Guardian Angels: A New York Photographer Reflects on His Catholic Roots https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/on-guardian-angels-a-new-york-photographer-reflects-on-his-catholic-roots/ Tue, 07 Jul 2020 17:51:33 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=138280 At Saint Michael the Archangel grammar school in Brooklyn, they taught us that each and every person had their own guardian angel. I believed it in some way, but never really thought about it. It was just part of growing up in an Italian- American Catholic family in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood in the 1950s.

I’m 72 years old now and no longer remember exactly when I stopped being a “practicing Catholic.” As Ernest Hemingway wrote about going bankrupt, it happened gradually, then suddenly.

While at Fordham from 1965 to 1968, I learned about other religions and spiritual practices, other traditions and virgin births. My worldview simply expanded and eventually my parents’ and grandparents’ faith was no longer mine.

Or so I thought. In 1971 I began photographing, first in Brooklyn, then throughout New York City. As I published and exhibited my work in the following decades, I became increasingly aware that many of my extended projects focused on some aspect of religion. Hidden or neglected, my Catholic roots had influenced my choice of subjects.

In 2005, the Museum of Biblical Art presented 80 of my photographs in The Word on the Street. The photographs in this exhibit captured various forms of religious expression in everyday New York City life: from memorial walls with paintings of Sacred Hearts to crucifix tattoos and home altars.

When asked in a 2002 PBS interview about the distinctive essence of being an American Catholic, the priest, sociologist, and novelist Andrew Greeley emphasized the power of traditional Catholic imagery. “They like the stories. Christmas, Easter, May crowning, the souls in purgatory, the saints, the angels, the mother of Jesus. These are enormously powerful religious images.”

This insight has proven especially true for me because religion was intertwined with ethnicity and geography. The flickering candles and statues of saints on my grandmother’s dresser in her Brooklyn apartment fascinated me when I was a boy. I photographed it in 1975 and 30 years later made a print of it for The Word on the Street.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, I began sheltering at home in early March.  I’ve had even more time to think about how these themes have affected my work. I’ve been looking at contact sheets from the 1980s and scanning negatives I never printed. I photographed the top half of an old calendar on the wall of my Park Slope apartment in 1983.

This black-and-white photo shows the top half of a wall calendar featuring an 
image of a guardian angel and two children crossing a bridge.

This image of a guardian angel and two children crossing a bridge is well known and frequently reproduced. It reminds me of the schoolbooks I had as a child. A drawing in one of them depicts my guardian angel with its hands on my shoulder as I cross the street.

The website catholic.org lists 39 prayers to guardian angels. I would say them all, every day, to get my guardian angel back.

—Larry Racioppo, FCRH ’72, was the staff photographer for New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development for more than 20 years. He has earned several grants, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, for his own work documenting the urban landscape. His most recent books are B-BALL NYC (South Brooklyn Boy Publishing, 2019) and Brooklyn Before: Photographs, 1971–1983 (Cornell University Press, 2018).

]]> 138280 Postcard from San Francisco: La Bocce Vita https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/postcard-from-san-francisco-la-bocce-vita/ Wed, 27 May 2020 21:21:59 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=136706 Fordham Law graduate Christina Chiaramonte practices bocce throws outside the Ferry Terminal Building on San Francisco’s Embarcadero at dusk in October 2019, with three birds flying in the sky above and the Golden Gate Bridge and a sailboat visible in the background.Watching the players of San Francisco’s Ferry Bocce league during an autumn sunset, one could be forgiven for thinking they were anywhen else but now.

As vintage trolleys roar and clang past down that city’s charming waterfront Embarcadero, teams of loosely affiliated local groups—company clubs, government employees, and the Bronx Ballers, a group of Bay Area Fordham alumni—roll bocce balls down two even, well-maintained lanes. The sport they’re playing was originally an Italian peasant game, a variant of lawn bowling, brought over in the 1800s by southern Italian immigrants and passed down over a century and a half, sparingly, to their grandchildren and theirs.

It’s a world that feels distant, right now, but one that will be ours again. As the players take part in a pastime that largely dwindled in its mother country a century ago, dancy modern remixes of tinny music nearly just as old—think Al Jolson and early Nat King Cole, if they’d heard of hip-hop—play over adjoining speakers. No matter how hot it might be in sunny California, here on the shorefront bocce court it is a cool, refreshing 1927.

The team is always looking for new players, always, and their Fordham paraphernalia reliably attract the attention of one or two far-flung alumni during any given match. Team captain Mark Di Giorgio, FCRH ’87, keeps an eye out for new recruits, pointing out that no one takes it seriously, and no real skill is required. “If someone can do this,” he says, holding up a glass of red wine in one hand and a bocce ball in the other, “and talk at the same time, well, they can play.”

—B.A. Van Sise, FCLC ’05

]]> 136706 Yankees Clinch Playoff Berth on Fordham Night https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/yankees-clinch-playoff-berth-on-fordham-night/ Fri, 27 Sep 2019 20:03:00 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=125074 The more than 1,600 Fordham alumni, students, faculty, staff, and friends who attended Fordham Night at Yankee Stadium on September 19 had more to celebrate than just school spirit. They also witnessed the Bronx Bombers clinch the American League East division with a 9-1 victory over the Los Angeles Angels, guaranteeing them a spot in the MLB Playoffs.

For this third annual Fordham Night at the stadium, the Fordham University Alumni Association worked with the Yankees to give the first 1,000 ticket-buyers a custom jersey with a Fordham patch on the sleeve.

Prior to the game, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham—and perhaps the University’s No. 1 Yankee fan (he once threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the stadium)—stopped by the YES Network broadcast booth. He provided Fordham hats to the announcers, including former Yankee Paul O’Neill, who was calling the game with Michael Kay, FCRH ’82. When Kay gave Fordham a shoutout and mentioned Father McShane during the broadcast, O’Neill remarked on his “nice new (maroon) golf hat,” and recalled going to a Fordham basketball game once at the “really cool” Rose Hill Gym.

Also in attendance was Laura Auricchio, Ph.D., the new dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center, a native  New Yorker and longtime Yankee fan whose great-grandfather once staged a production of Verdi’s Aida at the original Yankee Stadium. In an update to an Instagram post celebrating the home team’s victory, she noted that one lucky fan, Patrick Mulvey, FCLC ’78, even caught a foul ball hit by Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner. “Truly a magical night!” she wrote.

[doptg id=”163″]Photos courtesy of Sally Benner, Barbara Ann Hall, Sara Hunt Munoz, and Bryan Zabala.

]]> 125074 Fordham Presents: The 13 Nights of Halloween https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/fordham-presents-the-13-nights-of-halloween/ Tue, 30 Oct 2018 16:16:11 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=107687 Even on our beautiful Fordham campuses, evening shadows can play tricks on us. Especially near Halloween. Check out these haunting illustrations by Peter Stults … if you dare.

A new image will be revealed every night as we count down to Halloween 2018.

]]> 107687 The Class of 2018 on Instagram https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/the-class-of-2018-on-instagram/ Wed, 23 May 2018 20:44:11 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=90002 We all know a picture is worth a thousand words, but when it’s accompanied by a Fordham hashtag, something special happens. We asked our graduating students to share their favorite memories, and they came through in spades. Congratulations, Class of 2018!

Daydreaming about being back at Fordham in a week ❄

A post shared by Michael Theodore (@michael_theodore) on

Saturdays at Fordham are my favorite (feat. Fr. McShane) 🐑❤🏈

A post shared by madison koury (@madisonkoury) on

]]> 90002 On Commencement Caps, Ebullient Messages from the Class of 2017 https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/on-commencement-caps-ebullient-messages-from-the-class-of-2017/ Tue, 23 May 2017 09:28:52 +0000 http://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=68068 As they prepared to graduate on May 20 at Fordham’s 172nd Commencement, members of the Class of 2017 wore their joy on their sleeves—and also, here and there, on their commencement caps. Here are some of their artistically expressed messages of exuberance and gratitude.

[doptg id=”86″] 

]]> 68068 Former Lab Partners Reconnect, Reflect on Fordham’s Influence https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/former-lab-partners-reconnect-reflect-on-fordhams-influence/ Thu, 27 Apr 2017 02:34:01 +0000 http://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=67264 They’ve been teasing each other about the 1976 Maroon yearbook photo for years.

“Just look at my hair and beard!” said Christopher Proto, D.D.S. “I was wearing the uniform of the day—flannel shirt. You can tell who lived on campus and more or less rolled out of bed, and who commuted. Maybe that’s why Gloria looked more put together.”

Like Proto, Gloria Coruzzi, Ph.D., majored in biology at Fordham, but after graduation, the lab partners went their separate ways to start careers and families. She earned a doctorate in molecular and cell biology at NYU, where she’s the Carroll & Milton Petrie Professor and a former chair of the biology department. He earned a doctorate in dental surgery at Georgetown and has been in private practice since 1981.

They reconnected about six years ago, Proto said, after a chance encounter in a restaurant on Arthur Avenue, near Fordham’s Rose Hill campus.

Proto was having lunch with his wife, Monica, and their son, Andrew, FCRH ’12, when he spotted Coruzzi walking back to a table to join her husband and son. “I stopped her and said, ‘Gloria?’ She hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘Chris?’” The friends embraced, and introduced their spouses and sons. “We couldn’t believe that we reconnected in the Bronx after all these years,” he said. “It was like a movie.”

They later met for lunch near NYU, where Proto is now a clinical instructor at the College of Dentistry, and eventually brought two other former classmates into the fold: David Perricone, M.D., a pediatrician; and Diane Esposito, Ph.D., who earned a doctorate in biology at Fordham in 1982 and is now director of research compliance at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

“We were an unusually balanced, fun foursome,” Coruzzi said.

“But,” Proto added, “Gloria was always the one who told us to stop fooling around! She kept us on task.”

Last June, the foursome returned to Rose Hill for Jubilee.

“We were all connected at some level, but our 40th reunion brought us together on campus for the first time,” Coruzzi said. “We walked down memory lane, even went into some of the labs.”

Both Proto and Coruzzi recalled the challenges of being pre-health majors—the long hours in the lab, the competition and anxiety associated with getting into grad school. But they said the support they received from professors and peers at Fordham continues to serve them well.

“As in any walk of life, we found that common adversity helps you develop strong bonds. You see it in the armed forces, on sports teams—we supported each other,” Proto said. “That sense of teamwork was very important to me.”

Biology professor E. Ruth Witkus in a Fordham classroom, circa 1974
Biology professor E. Ruth Witkus, Ph.D., pictured here circa 1974, taught at Fordham for more than 40 years.

Coruzzi said she found a mentor in biology professor E. Ruth Witkus, Ph.D., who joined the Fordham faculty in 1944 and chaired the biology department from 1966 to 1978.

“She was chair of the department when women weren’t in many faculty positions,” Coruzzi said of Witkus, who died in 2008 at the age of 89. “She was way ahead of her time—razor-sharp smart, very decisive—and that really influenced me, especially when I was chair of the biology department at NYU. I’ve always thought of myself as a scientist, not a ‘woman scientist.’”

Coruzzi added that the Jesuit model of cura personalis, or care for the whole person, is something she tries to convey to her own students.

“You’re embraced by it,” she said, “and it stays with you as a person. Those ties that you make in college really can follow you for the rest of your life.”

 

Register here for Jubilee ’17, scheduled for June 2 to 4. And go to fordham.edu/reunions for information about all of this spring’s events, including the Lincoln Center reunions.

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