An alumnus of the program, he had traveled to the U.S. in the summer of 2010 with nine other South African students for six weeks, studying alongside students in Fordham’s graduate program in International Political and Economic Development (IPED), part of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS).

“There is something about having that program on my resume that I think has certainly made a difference and was a signal to potential employers,” said Venter, who is now an economics consultant in Pretoria and who joined the nearly 100 participants at an Aug. 19 celebration.

“Now that I’m doing the hiring, I tend to look twice to see if they did attend these sort of summer classes.”

The Emerging Markets program, which began in 2008 and continues today, is open to all IPED students and students from South Africa’s University of Pretoria. Students learn about monetary and fiscal policies and explore issues of economic partnership between South Africa and the United States.

In addition to classes, in both locations, they visit businesses as well as labor and government representatives. Each year, about 15 South African students visit New York in June, and an equal number of Fordham students visit South Africa in August.

When Venter’s cohort came to New York City in 2010, they attended classes on political risk analysis and finance and visited Washington D.C., Broadway, and the U.S. Stock Exchange.

A Promise Fulfilled

The Emerging Markets program originated with a conversation between Fordham President Emeritus Joseph McShane, S.J., and Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who visited Fordham in 2005 to accept an honorary doctorate.

Booi Themeli, Ph.D., a senior lecturer of economics and a native of South Africa, said Father McShane told him the archbishop had joked that in return for his visit, the University would have to do something for South Africans.

Three years later, the first cohort of Fordham students traveled to South Africa, and five years later, Venter’s cohort traveled to the U.S. To date, 208 Fordham students have visited South Africa, while 213 South African Students have visited Fordham.

Henry Schwalbenberg, Ph.D., director of the IPED program, said the goal was to create an opportunity for South Africans who traditionally weren’t part of the educational system to get an advanced degree.

“It really tied in with the end of Apartheid, the establishment of a wider democracy, and Fordham making a contribution to empowering the people who were left out,” he said.

A Transatlantic Romance Blossoms

Elena Konopelko, GSAS ’13, came to the Bronx in 2011 from St. Petersburg, Russia, on a Fulbright scholarship to study with the IPED program.

She joined the Emerging Markets program and visited South Africa in the summer of 2012. There, she met Sokhana Caza, GSAS ’13, an alumnus of the program who was now a program assistant.

The following fall, he returned to the Rose Hill campus to earn an IPED master’s, and the two reunited. They married in 2016, and today, they share a home in Johannesburg with three children.

Konopelko said living in three different countries has opened her eyes to different approaches to business and academia.

“There are so many different options in how to conduct yourself professionally and how best to learn that you can make your own path forward,” she said.

Fireflies and Real-World Lessons

Studying in New York City was life-changing for Caza. Times Square and the subway were new to him, but there were also smaller, unexpected moments—like seeing fireflies on a warm July evening at Rose Hill.

“I’d never seen them in my whole life. Just watching them at night, it was probably one of the most memorable moments of my time,” he said.

After nine years working for BP and Bloomberg, Caza now works for a financial technology firm affiliated with the Singapore Stock Exchange.

“The thing that I really liked when I got [to Fordham IPED]was that most of the professors had experience working for a corporate or financial institution,” he said.

“When they taught, it wasn’t all theory; it was always related to the real world.”

Changing Lives, Changing Families, Changing the World

Ann Gaylin, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, said the August reunion was one of the most moving experiences she’s had in her career.

“There was such a sense of joy and energy in the students. It wasn’t just about changing lives but changing families and changing the world,” she said.

Margaret Chitiga-Mabugu, Ph.D., dean of the faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at the University of Pretoria, credited the program with creating global leaders.

“I have seen first-hand how the program enriches the student’s academic knowledge and provides a platform to interact with influential business leaders and policymakers,” she said.

“It not only benefits the students who participate; it has created opportunities for staff members at the University of Pretoria to enlarge their networks and has created prospects for future collaboration.”

Watch students from the 2023 cohort visit New York City last summer below:

“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.”

Gaylin came to Fordham from Yale, where she had served as associate dean for graduate education since 2017. She has held several leadership positions at other institutions, including associate dean of undergraduate education for academic support at Harvard University, associate dean at Brown University, and program officer at the American Council of Learned Societies. Gaylin, who has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton University, is a scholar of English and French 19th- and 20th-century literature and culture who has taught courses at Yale, Princeton, and Brown universities. She was born in Chicago and raised in Washington, D.C. 

In a Q&A with Fordham News, Gaylin reflected on her personal journey in higher education and shared her vision for GSAS. 

You told me you once wanted to become a museum curator. How did you become an administrator in higher education? 

I was one of those people who enjoyed many things but didn’t have a single passion. I loved reading, studio art, ceramics, folk dancing, and learning about art and history, as well as French literature and culture. After I graduated from college, I spent three years in the art world. But I came to realize that I wanted to surround myself with people, not just objects.

I returned to my first love—literature—and learned how to teach. For 11 years, I taught at Yale. I thought, ‘I can’t believe I am paid to talk about the books and ideas that I love.’ But I gradually recognized that being a faculty member in a single field—even one as broad as comparative literature—wasn’t for me. What I really enjoyed was getting to know students outside the classroom and helping them grow in ways that weren’t just academic. I remember talking with a senior who was worried they didn’t know what they wanted to do after graduation and, after a long conversation, helping them realize that they would be okay; they would figure things out. That’s cura personalis, right? Care for the whole person. It was something I was instinctively drawn to, but didn’t have a name for at the time.

I discovered I wanted to continue to bring people and ideas together, but not as a faculty member. I found a job at the American Council of Learned Societies, where I helped to convene faculty and researchers across the humanities and social sciences to think broadly about the humanities and to award research fellowships to scholars in these disciplines. But I missed being able to walk across a campus and see students excited about their first day of classes, being goofy on a beautiful day, or just sitting outside in a circle with a faculty member in a seminar. I was recruited to serve as an associate dean at Brown University, where I worked for six years, and then I became an associate dean at Harvard University for three years. At Harvard, as much as I appreciated creating better systems of academic support for students, I wasn’t able to interact with students and faculty in a direct and sustained way, and I missed those interactions. Finally, I moved to Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. I loved thinking holistically about the health and development of graduate programs and their students and working in a faculty-facing position. Having been a faculty member myself, I believe I also understood where they were coming from, the concerns and pressures they faced, and their aspirations and goals for their students and programs. 

What drew you to Fordham? 

This was an opportunity to bring all that I had learned throughout my many years in higher education to a leadership position at an institution that places value on principles that resonate with me. It was also very exciting to hear about Tania Tetlow’s appointment and to realize that the institution was poised to enter a new era of leadership and innovation. I think she is going to make all kinds of amazing changes here. It will, no doubt, take me a while to understand fully the Ignatian philosophy undergirding Fordham, having been in secular institutions for most of my career, but I was drawn to its commitment to cura personalis—that sense that the institution is attentive to more than the intellectual life of students. 

What are your goals for GSAS? 

One of my biggest goals is to create robust professional development programs that can enable our students to think about a variety of career paths. I want to connect them with alumni to help them think about how they can use their skills in the broader world, for the greater good. For example, I would like to create easier access to internships at publishing houses, archives, and museums for students in the humanities, together with career placements in less traditional sectors of employment. Fordham is uniquely placed in an amazing metropolis filled with cultural institutions, non-profits, industry, etc. I also want to encourage more undergraduates to stay for an accelerated degree, which is a great way to get a master’s degree at a discount. 

In addition, I aim to strengthen our partnerships across the New York area, especially in STEM, with the Bronx Science Consortium. Can we connect our students in the health administration program more deeply with local hospitals and create pipeline programs with health care companies to encourage professional development of their staff through graduate coursework? What about our student historians with cultural institutions like the New York Historical Society? How can we revitalize the Co-tutelle program, where our doctoral students learn from mentors at other institutions—a great way to encourage intellectual cross-fertilization between Fordham and other graduate schools in New York City like NYU and Columbia? Also, can we increase the number of students from other institutions who take classes with our faculty, so that intellectual communities are not just within a single institution, but across institutions—especially since we’ve now learned, thanks to the pandemic, that we can do this without having to get on a plane, train, or a bus? Even more importantly, how can we enhance the pipeline of students from all backgrounds and walks of life to come to Fordham for graduate study and support them while they are here, and afterwards?

I also want to develop programs that capitalize on Fordham’s strengths. This year, we’re launching a new dual-degree program in economics and data science, and I’d love to work with faculty to identify other such possibilities. We already have a dual-degree program between the School of Law and IPED. A J.D. with a Ph.D. in theology or history would be really interesting, since we already have strong theology and history programs. Dual-degree programs are a great way for humanities students to think about how they can put their education to use for the global good. Also, our interdisciplinary medieval studies program and Center for Medieval Studies draw from strengths across a number of humanistic disciplines. Could we create a new program for early modern studies across a number of disciplines? What about a program that brings together ethics and another field, such as computer sciences, the biological sciences, or health administration?

Essentially, I see myself as the connector who brings people together and enables innovative  ideas to come to fruition. None of these are short-term goals or easy wins. But they are exciting challenges, and I’m looking forward to working with our students, faculty, staff, and administrators to address them. 

What’s something that most people don’t know about you? 

I have a commuting marriage in order to work at Fordham. I live in New Rochelle during the week and go home on weekends to my husband and our poodle, Colette, in Hamden, Connecticut. Within the family, we think of her as ‘Coalette’ because when we first got her, she looked like a little lump of coal. She keeps us laughing and reminds us not to take the world too seriously, as well as to find pleasure in the smallest of things.

Not living with my husband and our dog—and giving up my garden, which has been a great solace in the pandemic—has been difficult. But I was eager to come to Fordham. My husband has been very supportive in all of this, and we cherish our time spent in person together. And when I come home, Colette gives me the best greeting; it’s as if she hasn’t seen me for a month, rather than just a few days.

What advice do you have for new graduate students? 

Our entering class has students from Azerbaijan to Zambia—literally from A to Z. I met some of them at our new student orientation, including a young, gifted Lebanese woman in our humanitarian studies program, as well as a couple from Egypt. The diversity of not only the countries of origin, but also life experiences that our students bring to Fordham is amazing. 

In my welcome speech at their orientation, I gave them the following advice: 1. Get to know your faculty outside of the classroom. These are people who have devoted their lives to preserving and advancing knowledge; you can learn a great deal from working closely with them, as well as your peers. 2. Be intellectually adventuresome, and explore courses and events across Fordham, not just within your own program. Great ideas often come from bringing fields of knowledge together. 3. Learning happens both in and outside the classroom. You’re in one of the most exciting places in the world, so take advantage of all that New York City has to offer. 4. Consider doing an internship. It’s a wonderful opportunity to help you investigate a career path or two. New York is a great place to learn more about not just academia but industry, non-profits, international organizations, and more, and Fordham has alumni in all kinds of fascinating sectors of employment. 5. Don’t be afraid to ask for help; it’s a sign of strength and wisdom. 6. Give back to your community. There are many opportunities for public service, and you learn as much from the people you serve as they will learn from you. 7. This is a precious moment in your lives. Take the time to reflect about what you are studying and why, as well as its effect on the people around you. Consider how you can apply what you learn here at Fordham to the creation of a more just, equitable, and better world. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

It is with great pleasure that President Tetlow and I announce the appointment of Ann Gaylin, Ph.D., as dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, effective August 1, 2022. Dr. Gaylin comes to Fordham from Yale University, where she serves as associate dean for Graduate Education. Before arriving at Yale in 2017, Dr. Gaylin was the associate dean of Undergraduate Education for Academic Support at Harvard University. She has also served as an associate dean at Brown University, and as a program officer at the American Council on Learned Societies.

Dr. Gaylin earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton University. She joined the faculty in the Department of Literature at Yale University in 1994 and has taught a wide range of literature courses at Yale, Princeton, and Brown Universities. A scholar of English and French 19th- and 20th-century literature and culture, Dr. Gaylin is the author of Eavesdropping in the Novel from Austen to Proust (Cambridge 2002).

Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences offers degrees in 29 different fields of study and enrolled 917 students last fall. As dean, Dr. Gaylin will serve as the chief academic officer of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; bear responsibility for setting and implementing the vision for the School; work in close partnership with the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, the dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center, and faculty of Arts and Sciences; and report directly to the provost.

Dr. Gaylin is a seasoned administrator with a deep knowledge of and commitment to graduate education. She brings a wealth of experience working with faculty in promoting academic excellence, encouraging programmatic and curricular innovation, fostering a diverse and inclusive community, and developing student support services. Through her many prior roles, Dr. Gaylin has consistently demonstrated a collaborative style and a pragmatic approach to solving problems. She impressed the search committee, faculty, and graduate students, with whom she met during her campus interview, as she conveyed her vision for how the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences can honor tradition while forming the next generation of teachers and leaders. President Tetlow added, “Dr. Gaylin will further Fordham’s distinctive Jesuit mission of cultivating critical thinkers who seek to put their learning in the service of a more just world.”

I would like to thank the search committee, chaired by Vice Provost Jonathan Crystal, Ph.D., for a comprehensive and successful national search under the unusual circumstances occasioned by the tragic and untimely death of Dean Tyler Stovall. I likewise extend my profound gratitude to Patrick Hornbeck, D.Phil., professor of theology, who ably served as interim dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from January through June of 2022. I have appointed Sara Lehman, Ph.D., to serve as acting dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for the month of July in anticipation of Dr. Gaylin’s arrival on August 1, at which point, Sara will return to the role of associate dean in the Graduate School.

Please join me in enthusiastically welcoming Dr. Gaylin to the Fordham community.

Sincerely,

Dennis C. Jacobs, Ph.D.
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs