“We have not given you a perfect world, but we have instead given you dynamic opportunities for leaving a lasting, enduring legacy as a generation that proved to be fearless and imaginative, tireless and selfless in pursuit of solutions to these monumental problems, a generation that emerged from this financial tsunami and rebuilt the landscape of their lives with an underpinning of sound values and an eye for proportion, knowing that in fact less can be more.”

That was former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw, addressing Fordham’s Class of 2009 at the University’s 164th Commencement at Rose Hill on May 16. Brokaw, who has covered his share of turmoil in 47 years of journalism, told the new graduates that “it will not be easy, but I promise you it will be rewarding in ways that a Wall Street bonus or a shot on American Idol cannot compete.”

More than 16,000 graduates, family, friends, faculty and staff members packed Edwards Parade under cloudy skies, and gave Brokaw rousing cheers at every full stop.

Fordham conferred a doctorate of humane letters, honoris causa, upon Brokaw, and likewise conferred honorary degrees upon Hon. Michael Bloomberg, mayor of the City of New York; Justin Lin, chief economist of the World Bank;Frank J. Macchiarola, former chairman of the New York City Charter Revision Commission; and Kathryn Wylde, chief executive officer of the Partnership for New York City.

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham University, told the happy crowd, “Members of the Class of 2009, this is above all your day. This is the day on which we celebrate you. We celebrate hopes that have been realized, dreams that have come true, loves that have blossomed and lives that have been changed—changed utterly.”

Father McShane noted that the University has honored presidents, cardinals, foreign ministers and other dignitaries on Edwards Parade. “Today, it honors you on the same site. …You too are our heroes. You too are worthy of praise. You too. U2. You knew that was coming,” he said, provoking a roar of approval with the reference to the Irish rock band that had occupied the same spot on Keating steps in March.

Mayor Bloomberg got his share of cheers and applause in his brief address to the Class of 2009, when he imparted some serious advice, couched as humor.

“I am not going to tell you right here the secrets to success, although it never hurts to be the first one into the office each morning and the last one to leave. I am not going to tell you how to choose a career, but it doesn’t hurt to pick that first job based on how much you’ll learn, not how much you’ll earn. I’m not going to tell you how to avoid getting fired, because I have been fired, and it was the best thing that ever happened to my career,” Bloomberg said. “I am not going to tell you how to spend your free time, but there’s nothing more important than giving back to your community.”

The University conferred bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees upon roughly 3,200 students in fields ranging from anthropology to social work. Including students who graduated in August 2008 and February 2009, Fordham conferred approximately 4,400 academic degrees.

Joel Klein, chancellor of the New York City public school system, received a doctorate of laws,honoris causa, on May 17 at Fordham Law School’s diploma ceremony. Joe Moglia (FCRH ’71), chief executive officer of TD Ameritrade, received a doctorate of humane letters, honoris causa, on May 19 at the Graduate School of Business Administration’s diploma ceremony.

In addition, Mindy Fullilove, M.D., professor of clinical psychiatry and clinical sociomedical sciences at Columbia University Medical Center, delivered the keynote on May 21 at the diploma ceremony for the Graduate School of Social Service.

Before enrolling in the Graduate School of Business Administration, Chip Garner had a television career many would envy.

He worked his way up to associate producer at ABC News, where he spent eight years. Shortly afterward, he produced for20/20, covering the O.J. Simpson trial and working with Barbara Walters. As a freelance producer, he had a hand in creating reality TV shows, industrials and pilots, and later helped produce two award-winning independent films, Lena’s Dreams (1997) and The Love Machine (2000).

So why graduate school?

“I spent the last year before I came to Fordham producing infomercials, and I realized then that I wasn’t going to get where I wanted to go—financially, educationally and emotionally—unless I went to school,” said Garner, who will earn his MBA in communication and media management. “There was a big gulf between the creative side, where I was, and the business side. I could do budgets, but I didn’t understand how to run a business.”

Garner began as a part-time student, but decided that he wanted to attend full time after realizing two of his classmates were vice presidents of film companies.

“I was so blown away by that,” he said.

Since then, he has received the Linda Perin Taber Pollack and Roy Howard Pollack Scholarship for academic merit, become co-president of the Media and Entertainment Alliance, and a member of the Black and Hispanic MBA Association.

Garner has traveled far from the tinge of insecurity he said he felt at the outset of his studies.

“I knew I’d be older than most students and thought my age would be a barrier,” said Garner, 44. “It turns out my age actually was an advantage. I knew more, I had worked more, and I knew how to work with people. I didn’t have necessarily better, but greater, experience. I really wanted to be in school. I cherished it more.

“I took away from that the fact that there is really very little I can’t do,” he said. “If I set my mind to it, I can do anything.”

One thing Garner did was network himself into some top internships. He worked on the consumer research side at Showtime networks and is currently on the digital marketing team at The New York Times.

“I love it,” he said. “It’s really challenging, and it’s a job where I’m using the skills I learned at school. I work on the dot-com edition and on the company’s international marketing initiatives. It’s a challenging time in the industry, so there’s a sense of mission to make it happen, to save the company, in a sense.”

Garner hopes to continue working at the Times. In the future, he would enjoy working in consumer research, digital marketing or business development. In the meantime, he takes away what he describes as an “excellent education, a fantastic network of alumni” and a good dose of self-knowledge.

“I learned a lot about myself as a man, student, classmate and colleague,” Garner said. “I also learned what it is I’d like to see myself do in the future. I didn’t quite have that before. Maybe not the exact position, but I know the kind of person I’d like to be and how I would like to work as that person.

“I have a lot of hope for the future. I feel uniquely prepared having my creative background and my business school training to take on many different endeavors.”

When Tara Chaboda began working three years ago at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, she found herself in an unusual situation.

Tasked with disseminating two manuals of biology and microbiology curriculum to New York City public school teachers, she found herself teaching and working alongside educators who possessed advanced degrees.

Chaboda was well versed in the curriculum. She majored in biology as an undergraduate at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego and had worked with animals at a Manhattan veterinarian hospital and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.

Still, teaching the manuals instilled in her the desire for more expertise. So she turned to the innovative master’s program created by the Fordham Graduate School of Education (GSE) in partnership with the Wildlife Conservation Society(WCS)/Bronx Zoo.

“Because I had been doing informal education at the Hall and at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, I had a solid grounding in the subject matter, but not in the theory and foundations of education that formal educators need,” she said.

The yearlong program has garnered her a master’s degree in education and an initial New York State teacher certification in adolescent biology/conservation life sciences for grades 7 through 12. The program was challenging in that it required her to work full time, take classes and student teach. It presented content with which she was familiar, but in a different way.

“I’d never worked at a zoo before or seen how they use the content,” Chaboda said. “Learning the theory and the foundation of education, and then bridging that with what I already knew—it’s kind of like I did education backward.”

A huge benefit of the program was access to the Wildlife Conservation Society’s resources, she said. For example, a technology course included a trip behind the scenes at the Bronx Zoo’s new Madagascar exhibit. There, students saw cameras used to create virtual visits and digital learning workshops linked to a lemur exhibit.

The class also sat in on lunch talks with the zoo’s head veterinarian and researchers who are working abroad in conservation biology. Because of her own work experience, Chaboda said she sometimes felt like she was talking to peers at the zoo instead of teachers.

“Most of the other students in the cohort don’t have the background that I have in education, so it was kind of awkward at times,” she said. “It was really nice for me because I got to chime in with my own experience, and they were willing to ask for it from time to time.”

Chaboda enjoys working in informal education, but is giving serious consideration to working in schools and doing her own research in the classroom. In the meantime, she is proud to be part of the first cohort in the GSE/WCS partnership.

“There’s no other program that I know of that bridges an informal and formal institution,” she said. “Fordham and the Wildlife Conservation Society get to be on our diploma. So that’s kind of cool.”

“You will be challenged and nurtured to overcome limitations that you wrongly think you have,” Father McShane told a standing room-only crowd in the Leonard Theatre at Fordham Preparatory School on the Rose Hill campus. “Never be satisfied with mediocrity—be hungry for knowledge and bothered by injustice.”

Father McShane also reminded students to take advantage of all the benefits that go along with attending classes in the capital of the world. “Students at other schools read history—our students walk off campus and see history,” he said. “If you learn from New York, you’ll be prepared to take on and change the world.”

Coming to New York from the Lonestar State, freshman Sarah Weynand said she is excited about attending college in Manhattan, where she can see Broadway shows and meet people from all over the world. Weynand, who scored a perfect 1,600 on the SAT, graduated from Incarnate Word High School in San Antonio, Texas, and is enrolled in the honors program at Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC).

Here’s a look at some other dynamic students in the class of 2009:

Chris Araujo, the first of his siblings to attend college, will be commuting to Fordham College at Rose Hill (FCRH) from Sleepy Hollow, N.Y. Araujo is a graduate of Hackley High School in Tarrytown, N.Y., where he was a member of the Unity Club—an organization that he said aims to “bring minorities together.” He said one thing that attracted him to Fordham was the diverse array of the more than 100 student clubs and organizations on campus, which give him an opportunity to continue the efforts he started at his high school.

Tara Nelson (FCLC), from Granite Bay, Calif., was selected as a presidential scholar after earning near-perfect SAT scores. She said the Big Apple was “much bigger” than she expected and “very different than the California suburbs,” but, coupled with the Fordham education, it is indeed the place she will be happy to call “home” for the next four years.

Naujeet Sandhu (FCRH), also the first of her siblings to attend college, will be commuting from Queens, N.Y. A graduate of Brooklyn Technical High School, Sandhu, whose first name means “New Victory,” aspires to one day enter the corporate world. She said the program offered at Fordham’s College of Business Administration made the University her first choice.

Fordham’s incoming freshman class reflects the increasing geographic diversity of the University’s student body, with students coming from as far away as Taiwan, South Africa, Bangladesh and the U.K. This year’s incoming class was also selected from among the largest undergraduate applicant pool in the University’s history. Fordham received 15,200 applications, which is a 7 percent increase over last year and four times larger than it was in the 1990s.

“This has been one of the most competitive admissions cycles in the University’s history,” said John Buckley, assistant vice president of Undergraduate Enrollment. The mean SAT score as of Aug. 17 was 1209, up from 1187 last year. Additionally, 35 percent of the incoming class graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class, 74 percent graduated in the top 25 percent.

“When I visited Fordham it instantly felt like a place I could call home – both the school and the community,” said incoming freshman Sarah Weynand of San Antonio, Texas. “I didn’t get that feeling at any other school that I visited.”

Weynand, who scored a perfect 1,600 on the SAT, graduated from Incarnate Word High School and is enrolled in the honors program at Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC). Coming to New York from the Lonestar State, she said she is excited about attending college in the Big Apple where she can see Broadway shows and meet people from all over the world.

Fordham’s incoming freshman class reflects the increasing geographic diversity of the University’s student body, with students coming from as far away as Taiwan, South Africa, Bangladesh and the U.K. This year’s incoming class was also selected from among the largest undergraduate applicant pool in the University’s history. Fordham received 15,200 applications, which is a 7 percent increase over last year and four times larger than it was in the 1990s.

Weynand said the small class sizes were also a key factor in her decision to choose Fordham over major scholarship offers from New York University and the University of Southern California. She said she was impressed with the amount of small classrooms, which she sees as a sign that she will receive one-on-one attention from the Fordham faculty.

The individual attention or cura personalis — the Latin word for “personal care” which is a hallmark of a Jesuit education — is another reason many of the brightest high-school seniors choose Fordham. The academic quality was considerable for this incoming class, which continued an upward trend of increasing SAT scores and numbers of students ranked in the top of their class.

“This has been one of the most competitive admissions cycles in the University’s history,” said John Buckley, assistant vice president of Undergraduate Enrollment. The mean SAT score as of Aug. 17 was 1209, up from 1187 last year. Additionally, 35 percent of the incoming class graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class, 74 percent graduated in the top 25 percent.

Mia Mata, an incoming freshman from J.K. Mullen High School in Denver, Colo., wasn’t as concerned with these statistics as she was with what she saw during a visit to campus last year. She said Fordham already feels like home and added that the faculty and staff feel like family.

“The enthusiasm of students and everyone who works there – I could tell they really and truly cared,” said Mata, who is enrolled in Fordham College at Rose Hill.

“When I visited Fordham it instantly felt like a place I could call home – both the school and the community,” said incoming freshman Sarah Weynand of San Antonio, Texas. “I didn’t get that feeling at any other school that I visited.”

Weynand, who scored a perfect 1,600 on the SAT, graduated from Incarnate Word High School and is enrolled in the honors program at Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC). Coming to New York from the Lonestar State, she said she is excited about attending college in the Big Apple where she can see Broadway shows and meet people from all over the world.

Fordham’s incoming freshman class reflects the increasing geographic diversity of the University’s student body, with students coming from as far away as Taiwan, South Africa, Bangladesh and the U.K. This year’s incoming class was also selected from among the largest undergraduate applicant pool in the University’s history. Fordham received 15,200 applications, which is a 7 percent increase over last year and four times larger than it was in the 1990s.

Weynand said the small class sizes were also a key factor in her decision to choose Fordham over major scholarship offers from New York University and the University of Southern California. She said she was impressed with the amount of small classrooms, which she sees as a sign that she will receive one-on-one attention from the Fordham faculty.

The individual attention or cura personalis — the Latin word for “personal care” which is a hallmark of a Jesuit education — is another reason many of the brightest high-school seniors choose Fordham. The academic quality was considerable for this incoming class, which continued an upward trend of increasing SAT scores and numbers of students ranked in the top of their class.

“This has been one of the most competitive admissions cycles in the University’s history,” said John Buckley, assistant vice president of Undergraduate Enrollment. The mean SAT score as of Aug. 17 was 1209, up from 1187 last year. Additionally, 35 percent of the incoming class graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class, 74 percent graduated in the top 25 percent.

Mia Mata, an incoming freshman from J.K. Mullen High School in Denver, Colo., wasn’t as concerned with these statistics as she was with what she saw during a visit to campus last year. She said Fordham already feels like home and added that the faculty and staff feel like family.

“The enthusiasm of students and everyone who works there – I could tell they really and truly cared,” said Mata, who is enrolled in Fordham College at Rose Hill.

Approximately 1,100 students will be moving into residence halls on Fordham’s Rose Hill campus and more than 250 students will be settling in on the Lincoln Center campus. Marymount College of Fordham University in Tarrytown is welcoming more than 200 first-year students. Students, parents and visitors can find additional University information at http://www.fordham.edu/Audience_Path/Visitors__Parents_15883.html.