Students present their research on the impact of the invasive spotted lanternfly on urban ecology. Photos by Taylor Ha

More than 40 students presented their research at ARS Nova, Fordham College at Lincoln Center’s annual arts and research showcase, on April 18. 

Finding Her Biological Grandmother

Among them was Christine Irlbeck, a senior psychology major who wrote a 100-page memoir about her search to find her biological grandmother.

Irlbeck with her mother and adoptive grandmother: “[Adoption] led to my mother being able to have a stable and beautiful life with her adoptive family.”Irlbeck’s mother, an adoptee from Illinois, had never tracked down her biological mother. But Irlbeck had many questions.

“We’ve always dealt with these overhanging questions about what my mother’s family looks like. When people asked us about our family history at doctor’s appointments and family discussions, we didn’t know it. I also wanted to know whether my biological grandmother had dealt with a lot of life experiences that all of us had shared,” Irlbeck said, referring to the “grief” and “guilt” that can be associated with adoption. 

Irlbeck eventually discovered that her biological grandmother passed away from COVID-19. But she plans to meet her mother’s other biological relatives in person for the first time later this spring. 

“[This journey] gave me … a deeper appreciation for motherhood, in all senses of the word,” said Irlbeck, who interviewed her family and completed a literature review on different adoption processes as part of her research. 

The Subway’s Social Code 

Joseph Cook, a junior urban studies major, studied the social behavior of New York City subway passengers. 

“I’ve been a train nerd my whole life, and I’ve also been taking a lot of sociology and anthropology classes here at Fordham, so I thought it would be a great idea to combine two of my passions,” said Cook.

Last summer, Cook rode 30 train lines and more than 400 trains, observing each route—from beginning to end—at every time of day. He used computer programs to analyze trends in behaviors, including where people chose to stand or sit, the most common behaviors on each line, and different behavioral patterns on weekday trains compared to weekend trains. 

“Somewhat expected was the unspoken social code to keep to yourself. But it’s … not just not talking to other people. It’s where you stand, where you sit, where you grab onto the poles,” said Cook. “Another interesting finding is that post-COVID, the social code doesn’t specify responses to a lot of situations, so a lot of people are left doing nothing in a situation that could be potentially dangerous for other riders. I talk about this more in my documentary on YouTube.”

Cook said his research can help people stay safer on the subway. 

“It can help people stick to that social code and keep themselves safe, and also helps us propose possible solutions, such as expanded cell coverage in the tunnels to record incidents that we can propose to the MTA,” said Cook, who aspires to become an urban planner.

‘Just an Artist’s Dream’ 

Morgan Gregory, a senior dance and African & African American studies double major, directed a documentary that reflects her Black identity as a person and an artist. The film portrays the stereotypes that exist within the Black narrative and the ways that the Black body can transcend these stereotypes and labels, said Gregory, adding that it complements her senior thesis on Afrofuturism. 

“When I first started my research, it was very hard to find anything like what I produced. I think it’s important for work like this to be out there and talked about because everyone needs a voice,” Gregory said. 

“Because I’m in New York, I have the option and opportunity to try out different things, put myself out there, and see what happens,” said Gregory, who aspires to become a professional dancer. “You know, just an artist’s dream.” 

Learn more about each student and their research.

Using Gels to Help Purify Fuel Sources

Marie Thomas, Ph.D., an assistant professor of chemistry, has done a lot of research on ionic liquids—salts that take the form of liquid at room temperature—and how they can be used to break down materials. This year she worked on a project with some of her students, including seniors Maria Nettgen, who is majoring in environmental science, and Julia Milczanowski, who is majoring in natural science, to use these liquids to create ionic gels that could be used in environmental remediation efforts.

For their research project, they created a variety of gels that will eventually be tested for their effectiveness.

“The eventual goal is to see if those gels would be able to purify petroleum fuel sources by removing nitrogen and sulfur from petroleum,” Milczanowski said. “Because when you burn petroleum with those things in it, it gets into the atmosphere, can lead to acid rain and basically overall bad things to the environment, so our goal is to prevent that from happening.”

Nettgen said that these gels, if they work at capturing the nitrogen and sulfur, could prove helpful in a world that isn’t going to stop burning fuels any time soon.

“If we’re trying to create a greener environment, the idea is then if we’re still going to be burning fuels, let’s make them as green as possible so that they’re impacting our atmosphere in the most minute way,” she said.

‘Risky Behaviors’ in Adolescents

Janessa Rangel, a senior majoring in integrative neuroscience, focused her research on adolescent life experiences and the transitions that come with them.

“There are a lot of social and psychological changes, and with that come negative life events, inevitably,” said Rangel, who was particularly interested in adolescents in New York City.

She said previous research shows that compared to their higher-income peers, lower-income adolescents “experience more overall negative life events, based on the amount of chronic stressors that they have [and] neighborhood disadvantages.”

She wanted to build on that research and explore the connection between adolescents’ life experiences and their willingness to engage in “risky behaviors.” Oftentimes, Rangel noted, lower-income adolescents are depicted in the media as “the bad influences” and the ones engaging in risky behaviors, such as drug use.

But her research, using data from two separate questionnaires, found lower-income adolescents did not engage in as many risky behaviors, something she said might come from a desire to not “lose it all” and face negative consequences. On the other hand, she found that higher-income adolescents “don’t have a lot of chronic stressors, and there is that wealth cushion, so they’re able to engage in risky behaviors.”

Homeless Shelters: A Local Perspective

Bennett Reinhardt, a senior majoring in urban studies, has been involved with local housing justice and homelessness-related organizations for the last five years.

“I knew that I wanted to bring an academic perspective to this issue,” said Reinhardt, who will be working as a community organizer around housing and homelessness after graduation. “Homelessness is one of the biggest crises facing the contemporary city.”

Reinhardt embedded himself with a local organization running a respite shelter one day a week in a church basement in Manhattan. Up to 14 people stay in the volunteer-run shelter each Sunday, and they’re provided with a bed, home-cooked meals, and other resources.

Through his research, which included observations and interviews, Reinhardt tried to show “what’s good about this model, [which]is that people feel it’s a protected environment, it’s a safe environment, and that the food is far better because it’s cooked by volunteers,” he said. “What’s challenging about this model is that it’s difficult to replicate at a [large] kind of scale.”

How Queer Arab International Students Are Finding Community

Minwa Alhamad, a senior majoring in anthropology and political science, said she was inspired to do her research project after taking a class with Professor Aseel Sawalha, her mentor, on the anthropology of gender and sexuality.

“That’s where I started wanting to write ethnographic research on queer and Arab people specifically and the intersectionality of that—I’m queer and Arab—and so I wanted to know more about it because there’s not a lot of academic research out there.”

Alhamad said that she started this research focusing on “nonbelonging.”

“I wanted to talk about how they didn’t belong in their origin countries because of their queerness, and they didn’t belong here because of their Arab-ness,” she said.

But as she started conducting interviews with international students from Arab countries, her respondents inspired her to shift her theme from one of identity to the idea of forging community.

“They told me how they use social media and other various mediums to create a queer Arab community,” Alhamad said. “They have slang that’s specific to that community so that if someone’s using it, you know that’s a safe place for you.”

The gathering, which took place in two sessions in the Lowenstein Center’s 12th-Floor Lounge, featured 32 students who shared the results of their research with friends and colleagues.

“It feels so great. It really feels like a relief to be able to gather in a room and talk to students about their research,” said Rebecca Stark-Gendrano, Ph.D., assistant dean for juniors and transfer students.

“We’ve had Zoom events the last two years, and those were a reasonable substitute, but there really is nothing like having the energy that comes from being together in one room.”

Stark-Gendrano said that social justice was a common factor in many of this year’s presentations, but that the projects spanned many disciplines.

Disinformation Through the Years

Inspired in part by his experience interning with NBC News/MSNBC in 2019 and 2020, Gabe Samandi, an international studies major, presented “A general history and theory of Mind Control,” which he completed under the mentorship of Mathias Klang, Ph.D., professor of communications and media studies.

The idea for the project, which traces the history of techniques associated with misinformation and manipulation of public perception since the 1950s, came to him when he started hearing people saying that critical race theory (CRT) was being taught in elementary schools. He had studied critical race theory during his time in Fordham’s study abroad program at the University of Pretoria in 2020.

“I can assure you it’s not,” said Samandi, who studied CRT during Fordham’s Ubuntu program in 2020, between his two internships at NBC News/MSNBC.

“I had to go all the way to South Africa to learn about it. So I was really curious about how misinformation could spread so quickly,” he said.

Critical race theory is not being taught in elementary schools, but anti-racist curriculum is, and the two are being conflated in disinformation campaigns.

“A lot of conspiracy theories and misinformed narratives actually end up having a lot of grains of truth, and, interestingly, common roots in real historical events that have historically gone ignored or underreported.”

One example, he said, is Operation Paperclip. The secret United States intelligence program featured the U.S. government recruitment of more than 1,600 Nazi German scientists, engineers, and technicians after the end of World War II, for work in the Cold War arms race. It has been a common starting point for a lot of right-wing misinformation and conspiracy theories, including QAnon, because it’s held up as proof of the U.S. government’s willingness to work with criminals.

“I wanted to provide a historical record about some of the common routes of these conspiracy theories and set the record straight about some of the most confusing and truly alarming aspects of the history of psychological and information warfare in the United States,” he said.

Koreans who Call Japan Home

In addition to a posterboard, Kia Fatahi Faz Abad, also an international studies major, had on display newspapers from his visit to Japan this past summer. He traveled to Tokyo to conduct ethnographic research on ‘Zainichi Koreans’ — Koreans who migrated to Japan during the Japanese occupation of Korea and have lived there since the early 1920s, along with their descendants. His finished project “What’s It Like Being Korean in Japan? The Complex Identity of Zainichi,” was overseen by Asato Ikeda, Ph.D., associate professor of art history.

Abad visited 10 schools in Tokyo that were originally established to promote the teachings of former North Korean president Kim Il-sung, and interviewed Zainichi people. But the idea that because the Zainichi attend the schools, they are ideologically tied to North Korea, is a misconception held by many Japanese.

“They have transitioned from the ideological education, and are more tied to the perseverance of the Korean identity as a whole, dating back to when Japan occupied Korea,” he said.

That’s because even though many Zainichi were born in Japan and have spent their whole lives there, in the eyes of the Japanese state, they are still Korean.

“If you’re born in America, you receive an American passport, and you’re considered American, regardless. But in Japanese immigration law, they view you as Korean,” he said.

“This creates a much more complicated identity. Zainichi have suffered discrimination and also hate speech from right-wing parties and Japanese nationalists. They are not viewed as a different ethnic identity, but as a foreigner.”

The Zainichi’s plight begs the question: What does it mean to have a homeland that you’ve never visited? For Abad, whose parents are from Japan and Iran, the question was worth the hassle of COVID-related travel restrictions that made the trip challenging.

“It was one of the most important life lessons for me. This was the first time I’ve conducted independent research. It took a lot of paperwork, but it worked.”

A More Inclusive Dining Experience

Hannah Kang, an English major, and Sayema Abedin, a political science major working on an M.A. in ethics and society stayed close to home for their research. In “Islamic Foodways: Texts, Cultures, and the Practical-Political Ethics of Campus Dining,” they detailed the ways they felt that Fordham could improve dining for Muslim students such as Abedin.

For the research, which they conducted under the guidance of associate theology professor Christiana Zenner, Ph.D., the students surveyed schools and universities in New York City to better understand how they accommodate Muslim students. They also explored ways to help non-Muslims understand the importance of Halal food, which is available at the Lincoln Center campus.

“Instead of thinking of it as a restriction, we want people to think of it as a lifestyle. Our main goal is to just educate everyone on what it is, and why we follow these rules,” said Abedin.

“We also talk about the social lives of students, and how we can make them feel more comfortable.”

Although the University has made strides to welcome Muslim students to campus, Kang and Abedin said additional steps to improve the dining experience, including lowering the price of Halal meals, and making them more widely available. They are also advocating for separate prayer rooms for men and women and a Wudu station, which allows for washing before prayers.

Kang said they interviewed students from Fordham’s Muslim Students Association and contacted the Interfaith center of New York City, which provided them with policy proposals for K-12 schools.

“We would love to conduct more quantitative work, but for this moment, this was just making sure we have a foundation for others who want to do further research,” she said.

Peeking into the Brain

Across the room, Rabia Gondur, an integrated neuroscience major, shared the findings of “Left-handedness and language: A brainwave analysis of semantic processing and familial left-handedness.”

Her research, which she conducted under the supervision of Sarah Grey, Ph.D., assistant professor of Spanish and linguistics, featured 25 volunteers who were asked to read sentences while their event-related potential (ERP) waveforms were measured.

In the majority of the population, language is thought to be predominantly controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain, but in left-handed, or familial sinistral people, it’s thought to be controlled by the right hemisphere. The effect is thought to also affect blood relatives of left-handed people, a phenomenon known as familial sinistrality. This means they process language in a fundamentally different way.

The goal of the study was to see the effects of familial sinistrality on language processing in real-time, via ERP waveforms. In the experiment, participants visited Grey’s Rose Hill campus lab, and were asked to read a sentence aloud. Familial sinistrals were expected to show a greater N400 brainwave activity while those who were non-familial sinsitrals were excepted to show smaller P600 or N400 waves.

Because the research was interrupted by the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, the number of participants who were familial sinistrals was lower than ideal, and as a result, Gondur said she didn’t get enough results to make a firm conclusion about familial sinistral participants. She was still excited to talk about the work in person though.

“While we weren’t able to see a lot of significant results for our familial sinistral group, we were able to see that non-familiar sinistrals showed a bigger P 600 response. This shows that they use a different mechanism to process semantic information. They look at grammar cues to pick up semantic information.”

She said that while some people prefer Zoom, she feels it’s easier to be in person.

“Because I talk so fast, and I don’t know if everyone knows the terms and stuff, this gives me enough time to explain them,” she said.

These were among the 161 projects presented at the twelfth annual Undergraduate Research Symposium at Rose Hill on April 10. The symposium was part of Fordham’s first-ever Undergraduate Research Week, which celebrates undergrad research at Rose Hill, Lincoln Center, and the Gabelli School of Business.

Fordham College at Rose Hill

The Rose Hill symposium marked a milestone in Fordham history. Since the University’s first symposium in 2007, students have co-authored more than 100 publications with faculty mentors. More than 150 students are first or second authors on non-Fordham conference presentations. And their research has made its way to conferences across the U.S. and beyond, as far as France, Germany, and Spain.

“This symposium started 12 years ago, and it was pretty small, according to my archival records—about 30 presentations, mostly in the sciences,” said Maura Mast, dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, addressing the students, faculty mentors, administrators, and guests on the second floor of the McGinley Center. “As you can see, we’ve grown quite a bit.”

Through oral presentations and glossy research posters, this year’s symposium showcased the work of more than 300 undergraduate students across disciplines.

“You’ll learn about crystal structures, the effects of pollution, and how cortical vision changes with age,” Dean Mast said. “But you’ll also learn about the relationship between linguistics and music, the fascist aesthetic in Italian films, and how the theme of justice appears in Shakespeare’s plays.” 

Does An Internship Lead to a Post-Graduation Job?

Kirsten Anastasio, FCRH ’19, weighed the value of having a college internship. Her main question: “What is the likelihood of getting hired [after graduation], given that you have internship experience vs. not having internship experience?”

“I was driven to conduct this research because of the inequities that exist in the market for undergraduate internships,” she said. “As many internships are unpaid or even require one to pay for college credit to pursue, there is an incredible barrier to entry for lower-income students.”

To find out, Anastasio and her colleagues created more than 1,400 fake resumes for 2018 graduates applying to summer and fall positions based in New York City. Each resume pair was virtually identical. However, only one had internship experience; the other had campus-related experience.

Every pair was then submitted to the same, real-life job application. In total, Anastasio’s team applied to more than 700 jobs. Then they waited to see which resumes received call-back interviews.

They found that those with internship experience were more likely to receive a call-back than those who didn’t. However, their results also varied by job industry. In the finance sector, resumes with internship experience received call-backs 6.3 percent more than those without. But in the human resources and marketing industries, those numbers were 2.4 and 2.8 percent, respectively.

“Our results, though preliminary, point to the fact that not all industries place a greater value on internship experience than on-campus/extracurricular work,” said Anastasio, who plans on pursuing her Ph.D. in economics. “There are many opportunities to advance oneself personally and professionally while in college.”

Which Skills Lead to Higher Productivity in College Students?

Itunu Ademoyo, FCRH ’19, wanted to pinpoint which skills predict better productivity in the workplace. There are two types of skills: “cold skills,” which involve planning and working memory, or “hot skills,” which involve emotional perception, sympathy, and social connection, she said.

She and her partner Natasha Chaku, GSAS ’20, asked 30 Fordham students to complete online games and a survey, which evaluated their mental skill set. After analyzing the students’ results, Ademoyo found that cold skills, which are linked to academic achievement and success, predicted higher productivity.

She said that these tests could be a handy tool for employers across disciplines.

“[The goal is] being able to help employers figure out what helps employees have a more productive day or what makes them work more effectively,” said Ademoyo, a psychology major and member of the Rose Hill Honors Program who plans on applying to consulting jobs this summer. “So having this series of tasks for them to perform will help employers figure out what makes each employee more productive in a given work setting.”

Powering the Future with Fuel Cells

William Beatrez, FCRH ’19, is helping to develop more efficient fuel cells for cars—cells that are good enough to make renewable energy a viable way of powering vehicles, rather than nonrenewable resources.

Beatrez is a chemistry major whose research focuses on nanotechnology and renewable energy. Through a collaboration between Fordham and the University of Connecticut, he and his team have synthesized a new type of catalyst, he said. Catalysts are microscopic substances that speed up chemical reactions. Normally, they aren’t hollow. But Beatrez and his team decided to do something different.

“We bore a hole in it so that it’s more effective in doing the reactions that it’s supposed to do,” Beatrez said. “It’s more effective because [now]there’s more surface area. Catalysts are all about high-surface areas.”

These catalysts are present in fuel cells. And the faster the catalyst, the more efficient a fuel cell can be.

“Renewable energy is viable,” said Beatrez, who will study catalysts this summer as an intern at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “We just need to get the science right.”

Lauren Beglin, FCRH ’19, delivered one of the 39 oral presentations at the symposium. She spoke about her research with dye-sensitized photoelectrochemical cells—devices that can convert sunlight into chemical energy.

“Think solar panels, but instead of generating electricity, they generate chemical compounds,” said Beglin, an environmental science major and chemistry minor.

These compounds can be used for fuel cells, a type of cell that can cleanly produce electricity, water, and heat. The only problem, said Beglin, is these cells are expensive and difficult to produce on a widespread scale. Her research aims to increase their efficiency.

Just two weeks ago, Beglin’s team made their first batch of devices in the lab. Beglin, a graduating senior, won’t be able to watch her project grow. She recently accepted a teacher-in-residence position with Achievement First Public Charter Schools and will be working toward becoming a high school chemistry teacher. But her team has recruited a student to continue her work.

“I’m looking forward to passing on my project to the next generation,” Beglin said.

Fordham College at Lincoln Center

With 38 presentations filling Platt Court and more than a dozen performers and artists spread out through galleries in Lowenstein, plus a makeshift dance studio downstairs, Fordham College at Lincoln Center’s annual Arts and Research Showcase highlighted student research on a wide variety of topics. Dubbed ARS Nova, the event featured poster presentations on biology, history, chemistry, and psychology as well as choreography, painting, and acting.

In Unrequited Research, Student Finds a Calling

For senior Katrina Arutunyan, who was participating in the ARS Nova undergraduate research fair at Fordham College at Lincoln Center on April 11, her research didn’t pan out as she had hoped. Arutunyan, an art history major, was examining the Round City of Baghdad, which was built in the 8th century and resembles a spoked wheel with the caliph’s palace at the center surrounded by a swath of empty space.

“I was interested in the fact that there was such a concentration of power surrounded by vast empty space. The plan reminded me of an astrolabe, which is an astronomical instrument,” said Arutunyan. “The fact that the caliph Al-Mansur, who established the city, was very into astronomy and into geometry, led me to believe that maybe there was some cosmological symbolism going on in the design.”

Arutunyan interns at the Islamic Art Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She worked her contacts and they helped her find additional sources. She tapped into the Aga Khan Documentation Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she connected with expert resource librarians. She eventually concluded that the design had more to do with defense purposes than the stars, even though she found that the caliph had consulted several astronomers before building the city.

“When I first read that, I got really excited, because I thought I was about to get proven right, but really, the astronomers were more for what were called electional horoscopes, which basically calculates the best day for you to do something with a big event, like the establishment of the city,” she said.

She continued to dig, and found similar designs in the Firuzabad Plain of Iran, in a city called Gur. There too, defense was the central design component.

With funding coming in from the Fordham Undergraduate Research Grant, Arutunyan said she felt she “wasted Fordham’s money.” But her adviser, Maria Ruvoldt, Ph.D., chair and associate professor of art history, told her that it was quite the opposite.

“My adviser basically told me this happens all the time, especially in art history and especially with cases of something that is so old that we barely have any documentation on,” she said.

Arutunyan said the experience has only whet her appetite to find work in museum administration.

“I definitely went into this research with a holistic point of view because, I was kind of grasping at the air, trying to find non-concrete things and making them into something concrete,” she said. “But in the end, I found there are other areas of art history that I’m really really obsessed with and though I probably don’t see myself going into research, I definitely want to work in museums.”

Through Theater, Student Meets Grandfather He Never Knew

Senior James Kenna took a familial approach to his project, titled Italian Rose. The theatre major’s research combined a solo show and an educational workshop. The project sprung from a need he saw as a teaching artist in public schools that are cutting back on the arts.  

“As artists, the impetus is on us to keep arts education going and provide the next generation of artists with the tools that they need,” he said.

The show, which is about his grandfather Harry, who he never knew, was created through a series of interviews with family members. He traveled back to his high school alma mater in central New Jersey to perform the piece, offer a workshop, and show students how it was created.

“I demonstrate that this is a creative process, then I get into the assembly, and show them tools that I actually used in my process of writing the show,” he said. “I’m showing students that the creative cycle doesn’t have to be as endless and as impossible as it seems. Then I give them really concrete strategies if they want to write a play or do a movie, but also writing their own papers.”

Even with concrete strategies in place, Kenna said the project took some unexpected turns. In interviews with his Italian American family, he began to get the sense that some family had dealings with the mafia.

“I think it was probably the brother figure, the older brother is the one who was involved,” Kenna said of his great uncle. “He left New Jersey at some point to go to Arizona. It happened all very fast. There’s a lot of questions about why that happened. Harry stayed home.”

In the play, he plays all the characters, including the grandfather he never met, and whom family members say he looks like. He also plays his great Aunt Rose, who provided him with the richest material.  

“In our interview, she had a moment where she paused and it got emotional for her,” he said. “She got up and found some journals where she had written down memories.”  

The two poured over the journals and black and white photos as his aunt reminisced.

“She’s an amazing person. It was therapeutic. I never met my grandfather. And I’ve heard so much about him. So, it’s interesting, now I feel like I know him.”

Making a Magazine

When junior Emma Childs was in high school, she created a magazine called Childs Play. At Fordham, she honed her publishing skills by majoring in new media and digital design. That, plus a Fordham Research Grant, allowed her to realize her high school dreams in print and online with a website.

“The grant enabled me to print, commission photographers and models, set up the website, and allocate funds for sets and production,” said Childs.   

Childs said the focus of the magazine is for “female identifying individuals,” and takes on meaty subjects with titles like, “Conversations on Privilege.”

“We discussed how privilege plays into their lives, whether it’s with race, social media, women’s health, menstrual health, and then whether they’re privileged or a victim of the systematic oppression,” she said.

Childs called herself a one-person team, so she had to create deadlines and make sure they were met.

“It required me to stay on top of things, and it was a healthy pressure for me,” she said. “So, it is online too, but with print, I had got through a lengthy process of checking and double checking. A friend who is training to be an editor looked it over as well.”

She said that she was very happy to be able to use whichever media she finds best to address a subject.

“I personally always want text, because a big part of how I process things is through reading, but sometimes a photo or video is all you need,” she said.

Gabelli School of Business

On the same day as the Rose Hill symposium, the Gabelli School of Business hosted its eighth undergraduate business research conference, where students shared their original findings.

Does Market Competition Lead to Accounting Fraud?  

John Lichtmann, a senior at the Gabelli School of Business, wanted to know if market competition could predict a company’s likeliness to commit fraud.

“If there’s too much competition, perhaps that’ll incentivize fraud. Since there’s such a small market and a lot of people fighting over that market, it seems harder for someone to get better because you’re kinda stuck where you are. And so the only way to pretend that you’re better than someone is to commit fraud,” said Lichtmann, who studies accounting at Fordham. “Some managers feel they need to do that in order to make their investors or customers happy.”

To find out, he conducted statistical analyses on financial data for several firms between 1991 and 2011. He measured multiple factors: the size of firms, profit margin measures, complex codes. Based on his research, he thought there would be no correlation between marketing competition and the probability of fraud. But ultimately, he found that competition helps mitigate fraud.

“The higher competition you have, the fewer fraud results,” said Lichtmann, who will intern at KPMG this summer and return to Fordham in the fall for his master’s degree in public accounting. “The mere presence of competition seems to have a healthy effect on preventing companies from committing fraud, given that everyone is monitoring each other.”

A Graphic Novel Delves into A World Without Weapons

In senior Mary Cleary’s first year at Fordham, children of Sandy Hook Elementary School were shot and killed. In her senior year, high schoolers in Parkland, Florida, were gunned down. In the years in between, she said, she began to contemplate what a world without weapons would look like. As a new media and digital design major, she began to think about expressing her thoughts in a graphic novel titled Nath for its lead character.

In Cleary’s imagined world with no weapons, Nath is a college athlete in a street gang. But the author pointed out that just because there are no knives or guns, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was a world without violence.

“I was curious how people may adapt to something like that, so I settled on hand-to-hand combat,” she said. “In Nath’s world there’s a lot of emphasis on honor in fighting, and I thought about how in martial arts they focus on protection and not on harming others.”

Set in an urban landscape that combines the density of 20th-century New York with the sprawl of modern Tokyo, Cleary’s novel wrestles with many contemporary issues, such as the need for weapons in the first place. Nath’s cousin tells her that hand-to-hand combat isn’t always fair, that sometimes a stronger person will attack a weaker person.

“So, he proposes weapons do have a purpose and they can be used with an honorable purpose, which is protecting your own life,” she said. It’s a concept that Nash, however, resists.

Her novel, which she hopes to “shop around” after graduation, is part of an ongoing series with Nath continuing to wrestle with issues that are far more American than Japanese.

A Humanist Interpretation of the Conquest of Mexico

Junior Joshua Anthony examined the humanist interpretation of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. He noted that 16th-century scholars from Europe viewed the experiences of the Aztecs through the lens of ancient Greece and Rome.

“They used [their]Renaissance ideas about clashes and conflicts with different cultures as a way to read history,” he said.

He said today there are a variety of methods to examine a particular culture.

“I like to look at narratives and how people think of things,” he said. “My favorite historians of this period can read the Aztec language, look at their writings, and contextualize those.”

He noted that Aztecs were far from a homogeneous culture, but instead represented a variety of cultures and languages, not unlike Europeans.

“Studying the Aztecs showed me how many different sides of the story there are,” he said. “That’s crucial to understanding history and not getting bogged down by your preconceived beliefs.”

The Compatibility of Islam with French Values

As a native of Egypt, senior Mariam Moustafa brought an outsider’s perspective to the issue of Muslims living in France. Her research examined the compatibility of Islam with the values of the French Republic. She began by looking at Muslim-French relations starting with the seventh century and the establishment of the French state and continued on to 1962 and the Algerian War of Independence.

She noted that 18th-century agreements between the church and the French Republic led to modern-day values that separated the church from the state. She said that sometimes the ideals associated with secularization can be radicalized in much the same way the ideals of Islam can be.

“The state should be neutral and not represent any religion, but it gives the right to practice religion,” she said. “But some say, ‘No you can’t practice religion outside the house and once you go out onto the street, take off your [hijab]scarf.’”

Moustafa hopes to move to Paris after graduation and work as an interpreter of language and of culture.

“If we can get the French to understand that different cultures can become compatible, then I want to be a part of that,” she said.

Reimagining Shakespeare and the Dark Lady 

Junior Rachel Jarvis wrote a screenplay that turns notions of Shakespeare’s plays on their head. Riffing on a Virginia Woolf’s essay, “A Room of One’s Own,” which imagined that Shakespeare’s sister had his talent but not his male privilege, Jarvis imagines that Shakespeare’s “Dark Lady” wrote his plays instead.

The identity of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady has been a mystery for centuries. The subject of several Shakespeare sonnets, some say she ran a brothel in the Clerkenwell section of London, where Fordham’s new London Centre is undergoing renovations. She has alternately been referred to as Black Luce or Lucy Negro. Jarvis’s screenplay is called “Lady Lucy.”

“You could read Shakespeare at face value, you could read it contextually, or you can think about race relations and about female authorship at the time,” she said. “But since this is 2018, I want to project more of what race relations were back then, but also what race relations are now.”

Toxicity of Weed Killer on the Horseshoe Crabs in Jamaica Bay

Senior Karin Khoder grew up in Brooklyn near Jamaica Bay, an area that she drove by without paying much attention. But her research, which examines the toxicity of a weed killer on the area’s horseshoe crabs, has made her see her neighborhood in a different light.

Monsanto, the agriculture giant, manufactures the weedkiller Roundup. Khoder said the company touts the weed killer’s non-toxic qualities. Indeed, she tested reactions of horseshoe crab larva when in contact with Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, and found it to be relatively harmless. But the inactive ingredient, a detergent called decylamine, caused the larva to become an opaque white color, rather than the greenish-brown they should be. Unfortunately, Monsanto doesn’t make the exact formula available to public, so Khoder does not know the amount of decylamine used.

“I think that corporations should be more transparent in what they’re doing because the only way we can make things safe is to be able to do scientific research,” said. Khoder.

As a Brooklynite, her view of the area has been transformed through her work.

“I never had the opportunity to go to the beach and explore all the wildlife,” she said.

She said the there used to be a landfill nearby and the water came right up to the highway. After the beach was restored, nature returned. “Now, we see all these different horseshoe crabs, snails, and fish.”

Dancing to Your Own Tune

Junior Isabel Mallon’s video series “Talking Bodies” allows dancers to improvise. “As dancers, sometimes we get less of a say,” she said. “When you’re in the room with a choreographer, they have the power.”  Rather than direct their movements, Mallon allows her subjects the freedom express themselves. In voiceovers, the subjects discuss body image, self image, and “how they feel about themselves.”