“As you lined up for the procession and saw one another maskless for the first time in months, you performed the sacred, boisterous rituals of college friendship. You high-fived, shook hands, and hugged one another without fear or guilt,” Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, told students and their loved ones on Saturday at the first of four diploma ceremonies for the Class of 2020. “Now, you sit in honor at the center of Edwards Parade … Savor the moment. Capture every rich detail of it: its sounds, its images, its emotions, so that you can store them away in your hearts. For my friends, I promise you that this is a day that you will tell your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren about.” 

More than 1,200 undergraduate students from Fordham College at Rose Hill, Fordham College at Lincoln Center, and the Gabelli School of Business returned to the Rose Hill campus for in-person diploma ceremonies. It was the fulfillment of a promise that Father McShane had made to the Class of 2020 when traditional in-person festivities were cancelled due to the pandemic last year—a promise to celebrate the “visionary dodransbicentennial Class of 2020” when the time was right. 

“You, my friends, receive your diplomas after the terrible ordeal of the past fifteen months,” said Father McShane, standing atop Keating Hall’s terrace, to the graduates seated on the lawn below. “You receive your degrees at a time when the city that never sleeps slept, a year that was for you a non-stop, non-credit-bearing internship in the meaning of life. Therefore, in the course of your capstone away from your campus in senior year, you have discovered what is really important in life: faith, family, virtue, love, truth, and character.” 

‘I’ve Waited Over a Year For This’

In four separate ceremonies, students streamed past Keating Hall to the familiar music of Pomp and Circumstance while waving and blowing kisses to their family and friends in the audience. Guests moved their lawn chairs beneath the trees surrounding Edwards Parade—the temperature sometimes soared past 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and shade was scant—but many people stood beside the metal guardrails in the middle of the lawn, hands shielding their faces from the sun, waving cardboard cutouts of their children and raising their smartphones to capture a moment that was one year late, but never to be forgotten.  

While waiting in line before the ceremonies, students reflected on what this day meant to them. 

“I graduated at my desk, I worked at my desk—everything happened at my desk. I’m still working at my desk,” said William Kann, GABELLI ’20, an information systems major from New Rochelle, New York, who has worked remotely as a data analyst for health care marketing company Veeva Systems since July. “But I’m really excited. I’ve waited over a year for this.” 

Erik Gonzalez, FCRH ’20, an economics major and aspiring CPA who is working at a New York City public accounting firm, said it was “meaningful” that his mother would be able to see him walk across the stage, since he’s a first-generation college student. He appreciated the University holding the in-person ceremony and being able to see friends in person after the “rough goodbye” in March 2020.

A ‘Full Circle’ Moment with a Roommate of Four Years

Gabrielle Pfeffer, FCRH ’20, said it was like coming “full circle” to be walking in the procession with her best friend and roommate for four years, Presley Mekeel, whom she met on her first day at Fordham at orientation. 

“We hadn’t been on campus for over a year, and I was excited to see all my friends and see the beautiful graduation ceremony,” said Pfeffer, a biological sciences major from Baltimore who is attending podiatry school this fall. “We left so abruptly, so it’s like an end to our journey here.”

Mercy Adoga, FCRH ’20, a political science major and a current student in Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service who is virtually interning with an immigration lobbyist in Washington, D.C., said she was “happy, relieved, and just really grateful to be here.” 

Kimberly Larios, FCLC ’20, a psychology major who will become a nursing student at New York University this fall, said she is most grateful to her parents, who flew from Los Angeles to New York to celebrate their daughter.

“They never told me no. I wanted to move to New York at 18, and they didn’t try to stop me,”  Larios said. “They said, ‘We’re happy if you’re happy.’” 

Francisco and Maria Menendez, parents to another Fordham College at Lincoln Center graduate—Bernadette Menendez—said their daughter commuted as early as 7 a.m. on a ferry and bus from New Jersey to Manhattan for four years. But Bernadette, a political science major who will be attending law school at Seton Hall University this fall, loved Fordham so much that she visited campus almost every day. 

“She’s going to be a Pirate soon,” said Maria of her river-crossing daughter. “But we have Fordham in our hearts.” 

‘Thank You for Being Fordham’ 

In speeches to their former classmates, graduating seniors reflected on their fondest memories at Fordham. Tina Thermadam, former president of United Student Government at Lincoln Center, recalled the day she first arrived at McKeon Hall with her parents, and spoke fondly of the Argo Tea employees who knew her order by heart. But the end of her speech looked toward the future.  

“Commencement does not mean farewell or goodbye—it means beginnings. So let’s begin to celebrate the victories of our undergrad career,” Thermadam said. “Let’s celebrate the precariousness of being a post-grad in today’s world. Let’s embrace new opportunities knocking at our door. Let’s celebrate our growth from this past year and the growth that’s yet to come.” 

In her congratulatory remarks, Maura Mast, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, thanked the new alumni for their resilience and ability to build community in one of the most challenging years in history. 

“There is something special about being here, even if the sun is super hot—hearing the birds singing, admiring the beautiful campus. Feeling it [is]not the same as watching it on Zoom. And so today is special not just because you’re graduating, but because you’re back home,” said Mast. “While you have spent a lot of time here at Fordham learning, I want you to know that we have learned from you. And I am grateful for everything that you have taught me. Thank you for teaching us about resilience, about how to learn, about how to build community even when we aren’t on Eddies Parade together. Thank you for bringing your Fordham and New York toughness to meeting the challenges. Thank you for being Fordham, and for sticking with it.” 

—Chris Gosier contributed reporting. 

“I came into college just really trying to have this one focus. … On the first day of sophomore year I realized I wanted to change my major,” said Singer. “I found these two things that I’m really interested in. My thinking was, ‘Well, I might as well try them both and see what sticks.’ Turns out they both stuck, so here we are.”

Recently, the two disciplines have converged in unexpected ways, particularly when people became infected with COVID-19 at religious gatherings and when large religious gatherings were subsequently banned. As a theology major and a religious Jew, Singer understands the importance of religious rituals in times of crisis. But as a biologist who interned at a virology lab for animals, he understood the public health risk. He doesn’t believe anyone should be in large gatherings during this time for any reason.

“I wasn’t working with the virus directly, but I saw how careful you needed to be and how easy it was to contaminate everything,” said Singer, whose concentration was in organismal biology. “A public health response really needs to have a lot of empathy to be successful. Just in a utilitarian sense, you’re not going to accomplish what you’re hoping to accomplish if you’re not cognizant of what that takes for people.”

Curiosity Beyond the Familiar

Singer said that being a Jew in a Jesuit institution has taught him a lot about understanding others. He said the starting point for any dialogue should be a genuine curiosity about those outside one’s intimate circle.

“It’s not out of trying to debate or find points that you disagree on, because that’s not productive, and that’s not the point of having theological conversations at a school like this,” he said. “It’s more about trying to really understand how another person is thinking, without trying to point out flaws in their argument and break them down. It’s about practicing empathy through logic.”

His mentor, Assistant Professor of Theology Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Ph.D., said Singer is poised to understand the sometimes-rocky intersection of science and theology.

“One of the things that we’re learning right now is how science and medicine are very much connected to all of the other dimensions of our lives: to urban planning and to race and to religion and communities,” said Kattan Gribetz. “Understanding how tied people’s spiritual lives are to their physical health is something that is really important. Someone like Michael who is really comfortable in both worlds can navigate that in really creative ways.”

Separate Interests Converge

The clash between ideology and science is nothing new, said Singer. But studying them together in today’s specialization culture is rare. He recalled his semester studying abroad at Trinity College in Dublin. His European counterparts were confused when he discussed his double major.

“It was completely unheard of for a lot of professors and students that a person could do two unrelated majors,” he said. “But I wouldn’t say they’re completely unrelated disciplines.”

In his studies, he learned that in the 18th century, before science was a fully established profession, theologians attempted to reconcile the two disciplines to show that the scientific discoveries of Newton and Galileo were indeed connected to the spiritual realm.

“They ended up with this really impersonal deity that was divorced from people’s spiritual reality, and ultimately ended up being a very poor reflection of physical reality,” he said of deism, which espouses a belief in a supreme being, though one that doesn’t interact with the natural world.

Though he’s aware of and inspired by the many ways they intersect, he considers his areas of study to be two separate pursuits, with science concerned with the physical and theology focused on the metaphysical, he said. Indeed, some of his theology professors had no idea he was also majoring in biology until he told them.

“I wouldn’t have even guessed he was a biology major, except for that he told me. I would say he’s such a deep humanist. I’m sure he has this really intense, scientific side too, but I really felt, when he was in the class, he was in the class because he was deeply invested in learning theology,” said Kattan Gribetz.

She added that while she imagines Singer has a very bright scientific future ahead of him, he could have had a promising career in theology as well.

Trusting the Text

Singer just completed an internship in a lab at Rockefeller University and will spend the next two years working in a lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering. At Sloan Kettering he’ll be focused on epigenetics, researching DNA in the developmental process to see if mutant signals that lead to cancer can be intercepted. From there, he expects to grasp the research he wants to pursue in graduate school. It would seem that the scientific side of Singer will be at the forefront of his budding career, with theology continuing to inform his life.

“I think one of the things I learned at Fordham is that even though they’re so different, there are these weird places of contact. There’s a concept in theology called exegesis, which, especially when reading the Bible, refers to the idea that you’re supposed to draw out the meaning inherent in the text. You’re not looking for anything in the text. You trust that the text knows what it’s saying and will tell you,” he said.

The concept of exegesis has become very helpful to him in the lab.

“You’re not trying to impose your existing conception of reality on your experiment; that’s data fudging. That’s extremely bad. People lose careers over that,” he said. “What you’re trying to do is just let the observation show you what the real meaning behind the data is. I suppose it’s sort of Zen. … It’s the concept of sort of just working really hard at surrendering to whatever the text is telling you, or the observations are telling you.”

“When I look at Edwards Parade, I see it very differently than the way that you do,” he said, speaking from the Terrace of the Presidents during the videocast 175th Commencement ceremony. “As I gaze out on it, it is packed to overflowing, with you, the members of the Class of 2020, and the throngs of fans who gathered to hail and to toast you. So my dear friends, welcome home.”

Though the coronavirus pandemic made it necessary to postpone the traditional pomp and circumstance, Fordham’s video webcast of the 175th Commencement recognized more than 5,500 graduates, many of whom celebrated in their own homes while tuning in. The University plans to hold an in-person Commencement on campus when public health officials and the governor deem it safe to do so.

During the ceremony, the deans of each of Fordham’s schools and colleges, dressed in their traditional academic robes and participating from their own homes, presented their candidates for graduation to Father McShane, who officially conferred their degrees. Each school also set up a recognition page with audio slides for all of the graduates—some of which contained photos and personal messages. Fordham Law held a virtual diploma ceremony on Monday; the graduate division of the Gabelli School of Business will hold one on Tuesday.

A Longing to Be Together

The Class of 2020 was always a unique class, Father McShane said, but what they’ve had to face in the last three months truly sets them apart.

“You are a class that has been tried and tested as no other class in our history has been,” he said. “Three months ago, your final semester Fordham, a semester that should have been a joyous and carefree victory lap, was disrupted. Your world was turned completely upside down. Innocent pleasures vanished overnight. You experienced the loss of sacred memories with your friends, and understandably, you mourned.”

At the Baccalaureate Mass on Friday night—also presented via videocast—James Martin, S.J., editor-at-large of America magazine, said that these feelings of mourning were natural. Participating from his home, Martin received an honorary doctorate of humane letters and served as homilist at the Mass, which was celebrated in the University Church and featured a Zoom choir performance with students singing from their respective locations.

In thinking about the Class of 2020, Father Martin said, he was reminded of the Gospel passage about the Road to Emmaus. Two disciples were walking along the road, and before the resurrected Jesus joined them, they uttered what Martin called the saddest words in the New Testament—“we had hoped.”

“And I bet I know that you may have been thinking some version of those words in the last few weeks—we had hoped,” Martin said. “We had hoped that we’d be able to say a real goodbye to some of our classmates. We had hoped that we would have an amazing and fun last semester. We had hoped that things would have been different for graduation. And it’s okay to feel those feelings—they’re natural, human, and real.”

Still, Martin urged the graduates to remember that they were not on this journey alone.

“Even amidst the sadness, confusion, and fear, God is on your side,” Martin said. “When you think about your future right now—figuring out what to do, looking for a job, mapping out your life, remembering that it’s not just you struggling on your own, know God is with you.”

Fordham College at Rose Hill valedictorian Rosemarie McCormack, FCRH ’20, said that the day was full of ironies for her, particularly since she had worked at previous commencement ceremonies as a student.

“But the bittersweet ceremonies today are a testament to something special about Fordham,” said McCormack, speaking from her home in Missoula, Montana. “We are a community. We only miss each other because there is something to miss.”

The Resilient Class

It’s that ability to try and find the bright side that gives the Class of 2020, dubbed both the dodransbicentennial class and the visionary class by Father McShane, another attribute to their names, according to Kaylee Wong, GABELLI ’20.

“When we arrived on campus back in 2016, Father McShane called us, the Class of 2020, ‘the visionary class,’ but in the past few months we have learned we are more than that,” she said in a video to her classmates. “We are the resilient class.”

Father McShane echoed that sentiment and said the class, which had to move back home and finish their semester online, had learned a new set of lessons.

“In the process, you learned to see things in entirely new ways,” he said. “You learned to see things with the eyes of the heart. You became men and women of wisdom and character. You became women and men who became, as your class here calls you to be, truly visionary.”

Michele Kalt, a new graduate of the Graduate School of Social Service, said that the Class of 2020 was uniquely prepared to handle this challenge.

“I find great comfort knowing that you, my fellow classmates, will be dispatched as torchbearers of hope and beacons of light in a world that needs us now more than ever,” she said in a video speech to her classmates.

Hayley Williams, FCLC ’20, said in a video message just after the Baccalaureate Mass that she had been trying over the last few weeks in quarantine to handle feeling helpless and apathetic.

“My actions seem to impact little outside of my own home,” she said.

This left her thinking, “after four years at Fordham, what did I gain? Where is my purpose in this?”

Williams said that a sentence from Father McShane kept coming back to her—“Fordham students will leave being bothered.”

“Simple, yes, but this is the most valuable lesson I learned in college,” she said. “Fordham asked me to be a woman for others. I could not be a Fordham student and be numb to the needs of my city, my community … With all the hurt and disappointment and loss plaguing our world, I cannot let myself be unbothered by it. We cannot let ourselves be unbothered.”

‘Bold and Infectious Love’

It’s these lessons learned by graduates, both over the course of their time at Fordham, but in particular, over the last three months, that can help shape them into men and women for others, Father McShane said.

“Never forget the hard, necessary, and saving lessons that you have learned in the course of the past three difficult months,” he said. “Shape the world’s future with and through them. Teach these lessons to others, not by preaching about them, but by living by them and living them. Live heroically. Live with bold and infectious love. For this, my dear friends, this is your special burden, your mission, and your pride.”

In their reflections before the Baccalaureate Mass, students Joseph Papeo, FCRH ’20, and Emma Quinn, FCLC ’20, said that although the Class of 2020 is separated right now, they will always be connected by their Fordham roots.

“This celebration reminds us that no matter where life may find us, we are united by our memories and our experiences as Fordham students,” Papeo said.

Most of all, Papeo urged his classmates to be prepared to embrace the values Fordham taught them as they approach the next phase of their journey.

“As we’ve heard so many times before, but need to hear now more than ever, let us all go out, when it’s safe, and set the world on fire,” he said.

To view the full commencement ceremony and class videos, visit fordham.edu/commencement.

Enoch has seen nearly every corner of the Harlem community, and from several different perspectives. He’s seen the inside of its drug clinics as both a patient and later as an advocate. He served on the board of several nonprofits, sat on community board committees, worked with the homeless, marched in dozens of protests, fought for voter education, and ran for New York City Council. As he leaves the Graduate School of Social Service (GSS) with a master’s in social work, he’ll return to his community, this time as founder of a new nonprofit for the visually impaired called the 145th Street Alliance. 

A Head Start

Enoch’s story has auspicious roots. He attended the prestigious Ethical Culture Fieldston School before heading off to Boston University in 1976. Despite problems with his eyesight that began when his left eye was hit with a baseball as a child, forcing his right eye to work harder, he continued to play baseball in college. But he left Boston after two years under the false impression that he wasn’t doing well in school. He took a job offer at a bank in back in New York City.

“I fooled myself into thinking I was doing badly at school so I could come back to New York,” he said. “I was making good money at the bank, but I also wound up working at some famous nightclubs.”

He said he’d stay up all night at the club and try to work the next day at the bank. Something had to give, so he dropped his job at the bank, stayed at the clubs, and worked a bit in real estate. He was the living the quintessential lifestyle of what became known as the Go-Go ’80s, until things took a turn for the worst. He became addicted to cocaine, which lasted until the mid-2000s. He became homeless.

Getting Back Up to Run

A shaky recovery began in 2003. He joined Picture the Homeless, an organization founded by and serving New York’s homeless population. By 2007 he was officially clean. Among the established nonprofits he worked for are Hope Community, Working Families Party, and most recently for Transportation Alternatives, the nonprofit advocating for cyclists, pedestrians, and straphangers. There, he helped strategize with the group to gather more than 45,000 signatures in a campaign to improve public transport. But by 2012, issues with his eyes became very serious.

“My eyesight was bad for a while, but then it started getting really bad and I realized I could no longer do that work. I was tired of running into things on the bike,” he said.

He had been diagnosed with glaucoma and cataracts and could no longer work with Transportation Alternatives. To make matters worse, he was battling lung cancer. He had two lobes removed. On recovering, he decided he wanted his voice heard, loud and clear.

“One door closes, another door opens,” he said. “I was like, ‘Well what can I do?’ I said, ‘I know what I’ll do, I’ll run for City Council.’” And he did, in 2013.

“I lost to Mark Levine, but that’s cool. Him and I are still close. He’s a good guy.”

Enoch knew his chances were slim, as most of the candidates had already secured union support and political endorsements, but he had grassroots support. At the time of the race, New York Amsterdam News, the august African-American newspaper, called him “a Harlem resident with a rough past.” It was a description he wore proudly; Enoch made no secret of his battle with cocaine addiction—a struggle many voters in the district understood, he said.

“If you look at my history and the history of Harlem, it’s the same,” he told the website DNAinfo during his run. “We’ve had our downtimes and now we are where we’ve always wanted to be.” 

Learning to Learn

In 2015, he formed the 145th Street Alliance as an LLC, in an effort to keep the issues of the blind at the forefront of politicians’ minds. But his failing eyesight became something he could no longer ignore. He went to the New York State Commission for the Blind, which offers an array of services for the blind, including career services and training.

A counselor there suggested he apply to City College, though he was warned, to his secret relief, they would not likely accept his 40-year-old credits. As an older student, he was more than a little reluctant to return to school. But his relief was cut short by a surprise. When his transcript arrived from Boston University it turned out that he had actually excelled in college, despite his youthful insecurity about his grades. He was accepted into the college’s prestigious Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership.

“I thought, come on, will somebody say no? Will somebody stop this madness?” he said with a laugh.

Though he graduated magna cum laude, he didn’t get into the law school. Again, he breathed a sigh of relief—until Fordham’s GSS accepted him.

“I’m like, [expletive], I guess I have to go,” said the reluctant scholar.

Leadership Realized

Enoch’s journey continued to evolve. The GSS faculty began to recognize Enoch’s growth and his potential as a leader within the school’s community.

“Brodie’s background brings that connectivity between being an advocate and his own resilience and that makes for a great social worker; we’re just putting on the final touches to mint him as a part of our profession,” said Ji Seon Lee, Ph.D., associate dean at GSS. “Like a lot of people who come to this work, Brodie has a sense of what he wants to do; we provide structure so he can have a guided purpose to achieve his goals.”

Enoch’s field placement with Pastors for Peace allowed him to delve into his passion for policy via a street-naming project that put him back in touch with community board members and City Council. Alongside his placement, he continued with his own work with the 145th Street Alliance.

“It was at that point that I spoke to a couple of people at Fordham and realized that it would be better for me to start a not-for-profit, and that’s what I did in January of this year,” he said.

The 145th Street Alliance’s improvements to the built environment for the blind help create safer streets for the elderly and for young children through the group’s Walk Safe 20/20 project, he said, which addresses street safety.

“If you’re doing stuff for the visually impaired, it works for everybody,” he said.

Ador’s assigned gender at birth was female. While he identified as a lesbian in his late teens, he eventually transitioned to male four years ago. He spent his early years near an old mill town in Massachusetts with a religious family that held fixed views on gender and sexuality. At 13, the family moved to the deep south, an environment that was even more defined by strict cultural codes.

“There was always this animosity and it not being right with God. I was ready to get out of there when I could,” he said.

He attended college for a bit, majoring in theater, but soon left to go back north and move in with a more accepting aunt.

Cooking at Sea

Ador loved to cook and attended culinary school. But after living from paycheck to paycheck working at restaurants, he decided to join the Navy in 2012. He rose to the rank of third class petty officer as a culinary specialist. His highly honed skills brought him to the officer’s mess, where he became a private chef for 30 of the ship’s top brass.

“The people on the downstairs galley would have to follow these recipe cards and a menu plan, but if it was steaks, I could do the sautéed mushrooms and onions with it and those little extra things,” he said. “I enjoyed being able to express myself a little bit more.”

He was stationed on the ship for about five years, based primarily out of Spain from 2014 to 2016. He said he enjoyed the traditions of the Navy, but what he misses most is the sense of belonging that many veterans express during their transition to civilian life.

“There’s obviously a huge sense of camaraderie and that’s something a lot of people, including myself, miss and look for when we get out,” he said.

Ador had been out of the closet as a lesbian when Obama rescinded the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and the armed services had begun to accept trans people. But under the current administration, he said, that support was rescinded.

“I didn’t fully come out as trans until about four months before I was leaving the ship,” he said. “It wasn’t a lot of time so I kept it pretty hush, hush.”

Transformation in New York

He was discharged from the Navy in Virginia, where he enrolled in a community college and began to study photography. His transition to male was concurrent with his transition to civilian life. It was around that time that a Navy buddy and two-time Fordham graduate told him about Fordham. In short order, he moved to New York City.

“My first summer in New York City really changed my life,” he said. “It was the first place that I had ever been since my transition where nobody knew me by the name I lived with for 24 years of my life,” he said.

While he continued to concentrate on photography at Fordham, the required core courses in philosophy and theology gave him back something that was essentially denied to him by evangelical upbringing.

“I’m a very spiritual being and a deep thinker and I’m interested in having these types of conversations,” he said. “I didn’t really know what to expect. Then I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is what I love.’” He’s now planning to pursue a master’s of divinity.

A Return to the Bible Belt

Ador said his theological work began to inform his photography. With the help of Joe Lawton, associate professor of visual arts, he qualified for an Ildiko Butler Travel Award and a Fordham Summer Research Grant to go to Tennessee and photograph people like himself.

“I wanted to go back to the Bible Belt and photograph the LGBTQ community and interview them. Just talk to them and try to better understand their relationship between their identity and God,” he said.

He said he held philosophical conversations about his vision and with longtime Adjunct Professor Anibal Pella-Woo, whose wife happens to be going for her Ph.D. in theology, so the conversations were familiar.

“This project was more than outside of himself, this was digging into his own past in his own upbringing which was very, very rough, so we spoke about that and we were concerned about his safety,” said Pella-Woo. “We wanted to make sure he had contacts down there and a safe place to stay, so all that was part of the discussion.”

The results are quiet and plainspoken photos of LGBTQ people of faith.

“There’s a real empathy to his photos so that they’re both familiar and familial, with a sense of recognition that’s a hard thing to do in photos,” said Pella-Woo. “It goes back to the level of life experience that many of our veterans have had that really informs the way they think about their place in the world, which is also why they’re great to have in classes.”

A Spiritual Reckoning

Ador said that he felt “extremely fulfilled” by his photography professors, in particular Lawton, Pella-Woo, and artist-in-residence Carleen Sheehan. He was also a student worker at the School of Professional and Continuing Studies’ Lincoln Center office, where he said he got additional support from all the deans.

“For me, Fordham was place of learning, stimulating the mind, and having earnest discussions—and needed discussions,” he said.

For now, he’s planning a nine-month break to do a wilderness program in Washington State before moving forward to pursue his master’s in theology.

“It’s been a full circle journey, coming from my family and my upbringing I had this resentment toward God,” he said. “But I always had a feeling that I was a spiritual seeker, and then I came to this understanding of who God is, in my opinion, and who the Christian God is. I now believe that every God that everyone believes in is the same God manifested in different ways, because we all resonate with things differently.”

He paused before continuing.

“These are just my own thoughts but these are the things that I’m interested in exploring more and the things that have really helped me get back in touch with my ability to believe,” he said.

As of May 11, Fordham students and alumni have received 105 prestigious awards this year, including eight Fulbright Scholarships, one Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship, one Goldwater Scholarship, one Boren Fellowship, one Coro Fellowship, and two Department of Defense Cybersecurity Scholarships. In addition to the winners, 41 scholars were named as finalists for prestigious awards, including two finalists for the Truman Scholarship.

(Updated August 24)

Every year, students apply for these competitive awards with the help of Fordham’s St. Edmund Campion Institute for the Advancement of Intellectual Excellence and Office of Prestigious Fellowships. These experiences often shape students’ career paths and strengthen their international perspective. This year, many programs have temporarily postponed participation due to COVID-19; others have developed remote options.

“I feel tremendous pride in the achievements of our students who, with the assistance of the Campion staff and the generosity of the Fordham faculty, have brought great honor to the University during a most difficult and trying period,” said John Ryle Kezel, Ph.D., director of the Campion Institute.

Joshua Somrah, FCLC ’20, an international studies and political science double major and an anthropology and theology double minor, won a Fulbright English teaching assistantship to India. He’ll begin the nine-month program in June 2021—a year later than originally planned, due to the pandemic.

“I wanted to go there because of my family heritage. My dad is Guyanese, and my mom is Trinidadian, but our ancestors are from India. Because of colonization, my ancestors were brought from India to the Caribbean to work as indentured servants, but Indian culture is still a big part of our family today,” said Somrah, who now lives in Long Island with his family. This will be his first trip to India. “I wanted to go to the place where it all started.” 

Someday, Somrah hopes to become a U.S. diplomat for the United Nations or a similar organization. He will begin a master’s program in government and politics at St. John’s University next month, starting with remote classes and hopefully transitioning to in-person classes in the fall.

In the meantime, Somrah is still excited about his 2021 trip to India. He said he loves watching Bollywood movies and has been teaching himself Hindi by watching videos and Googling unfamiliar words. He has traveled to Brazil and Cuba through Fordham’s Global Outreach trips, but he’s ready to experience a new, yet familiar culture. 

The last time his family lived on the subcontinent was nearly two centuries ago, he said. 

“I want to learn from the people there, just as much as I’ll be teaching them,” Somrah said.  

Natalie Migliore, FCRH ’20, a journalism major with a minor in communication and culture, won three awards from the New York State Broadcasters Association for her work with WFUV this year. She is also a finalist for four awards: three from the New York State Associated Press and one from the Society of Professional Journalists. 

Her collaborative project “Bronx Connections: When Gun Violence Becomes Personal,” produced by WFUV in partnership with The Norwood News and BronxNet Television, won for outstanding public affairs program or series in two categories from the New York State Broadcasters Association. The five-part series explores how gun violence has impacted the Bronx community. 

Last fall, Migliore interviewed Bronx residents whose lives were changed by gun violence.  

“I talked to one person who was on the other end of a gun, who pulled the trigger. I spoke to one person whose brother actually died from gun violence in his neighborhood … And I talked to another woman who actually became an activist after her 4-year-old grandson got shot in the elbow and survived,” said Migliore. “What I learned from this series is when something impacts your life, and you’re that passionate about it, you can change the community, and you can change the way people think about it.” 

Migliore said she caught the “news bug” when she joined WFUV in her first semester at Fordham. She steadily moved through the ranks, from reporter to news anchor to newsroom student manager. What she loves most about journalism is connecting with people, she said—especially when communities trust her to tell their stories. 

Like many graduating seniors, Migliore is now searching for a job. She says it’s been difficult in the midst of the pandemic, thanks to the hiring freezes at many news organizations across the country. But she’s reporting for WFUV until the end of the semester and writing stories on how COVID-19 is affecting local businesses, health care workers, and college students like herself. And no matter where her career takes her, she wants to continue being a reporter. 

“That’s what all the stories I’ve covered have given me the privilege of seeing,” said Migliore. “I can see through people’s eyes. And I love that.” 

Aamnah Khan, FCLC ’20, a humanitarian studies major and peace and justice studies minor, won a Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs. Starting this October, she will participate in projects across multiple sectors in public affairs in New York City. The nine-month fellowship will culminate in a final independent project. 

“I’m excited to get an overview of what our city’s programming looks like and the politics behind it,” said Khan, a Pakistani-American Muslim from Kensington, Brooklyn. “As we continue to move on to the next phase of this pandemic, [I’m sure we’ll see] the effects it’ll have on our city, including the upcoming local 2021 elections.” 

Khan hopes to become a human rights lawyer for a non-profit organization. She said she especially wants to support survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and intergenerational trauma. 

What fuels her desire to help other people is her family’s own experience with racial discrimination. In the aftermath of 9/11, her father was targeted for his cultural attire. Her extended family has experienced racism, too. 

“During the 2016 presidential elections, my family—my extended family in Ohio—were victims of hate incidents. They [experienced]vandalism. They had an attempted shooting at their mosque,” Khan said. “Because of that, I vowed to never stop fighting for their rights, to stand in solidarity with the rest of the world, and to question when humanity is no longer being preserved.” 

As of May 11, prestigious awards received this year include: 

• With Joshua Somrah, eight Fulbright awards: Mobeen Ahmed, FCLC ’20, to Indonesia; Jonathan Alegria, FCLC ’20, to Israel; Stephen DeFerrari, FCLC ’22, to Tajikistan; Valerie Márquez Edwards, FCRH ’17, to Mexico; Sally Mo, FCLC ’20, to China; Amanda Racine, GSAS ’24, to France; Thomas Zuber, GSAS ’15, to Senegal and Burkina Faso
• Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship: Gregory Ferraro, GSAS ’20, to Cote d’Ivoire
• Goldwater Scholarship: Morgan McGrath, FCRH ’22
• Boren National Security Fellowship: Megan Madeo, GSAS ’21
• Two U.S. Department of State Overseas Summer Internships: Megan Farr, FCRH ’22, to the U.S. Embassy in the Hague, and Ben Guo, GABELLI ’21, to the U.S. Embassy in London
• DAAD RISE (Research Internships in Science and Engineering) in Germany: Alessandra Marino, FCRH ’21
• NYC Urban Fellows Award: Mahbuba Hossain, FCLC ’20
• Critical Language Scholarship: Wilson Cooper, FCLC ’23, Seana Epley, GSAS ’24, Lea Phillips: GSAS ’24
• Technology and Public Purpose Fellowship: Devin Gladden, FCRH ’09
• Patrick Mayrisch, GABELLI ’20 and Peter Jennings, FCRH ’20, received the Department of Defense Cybersecurity Scholarship program (DoD CySP). Upon graduation from the Fordham MS in Cybersecurity program they will go to work for a DoD agency.

Additional awards are still being announced. 

Caballero Jaime is a pastoral mental health counseling student at the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. This May, she will graduate with her master’s degree and plans to transition in the future from her full-time job as a liaison at the Mexican consulate in New York City to a job in her new field. 

“I would like to continue helping women especially, and children, to be with them in this journey they have, and try to help them in any way possible as a pastoral mental health counselor,” Caballero Jaime said. 

An Immigrant from Mexico

Caballero Jaime was born and raised in Mexico City, the fifth most densely populated city in the world, according to the United Nations. She grew up in a conservative Catholic family with her parents and two older brothers. Her father, a lawyer, passed away when she was 9 years old, but instilled a love for reading and writing in his daughter—“one of the best presents you could ever have,” said Caballero Jaime. 

She said she also found a role model in her mother, a family housewife who became a vice-director in a cosmetics company. 

“I am here because of her hard work,” she said. 

Caballero Jaime went on to serve as deputy director of public relations for the Senate of the Republic of Mexico and political adviser for the National Action Party in Mexico City. In 2008, she moved to the U.S. to work for the Consulate General of Mexico in New York, where she currently works to assist the Mexican population living in the tri-state area. The consulate provides passports, IDs, records, visas, and consultations on protection and community affairs. Its members travel to more than 60 locations, including regions that are eight hours away from its main office in Manhattan.

“She articulates a deep desire to improve the quality of life of Mexican immigrants in the United States,” said Faustino “Tito” Cruz, S.M., dean of GRE. “In many ways, she is an insider-outsider who attempts to address both the personal and systemic/communitarian quest for human dignity.”

Five years ago, she realized she wanted to help people in a different way. From 2015 to 2018, she served as a pastoral care volunteer at the Brooklyn Hospital Center, where she supported patients with neurocognitive disorders, addictions, trauma, and terminal illnesses. It was an eye-opening experience that made her want to do more, she said. 

One day, she sought advice from her pastor. “I think I have this call[ing],” she remembered telling him. “I think you should look at this,” he said, pulling out a copy of Fordham Magazine and showing her a story referring to the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. Later that night, she returned home and browsed the GRE website. She was hooked. 

‘You Are Here, and You Are More Than Welcome’

For three years, she learned about a new world. Instead of studying translation and political science, as she had done for her prior degrees, she learned about psychopathology and diagnosis, trauma, and ethics. She studied religion and theology from different perspectives and learned how important it is to embrace the culture and country you come from. In a supervised clinical internship at the Family Health Centers at NYU Langone in Brooklyn this year, she said she realized the need for bilingual psychotherapists—especially with a background like her own.

“One of my patients, I remember, she told me when she first saw me, she thought, oh my goodness, she’s not going to understand where I am coming from because she’s white,” said Caballero Jaime. “She said she felt identified when I described myself. I said, ‘Well, my name is María, I’m Mexican, and I’m also an immigrant.’ That was the link. That was the click.” 

She said that experience reminds her of one of the most important lessons she learned from GRE. 

“It’s something that Fordham has taught me. It doesn’t matter where you come from. It doesn’t matter if you are Latina, if you are Chinese, Korean, Egyptian. You are here, and you are more than welcome,” Caballero Jaime said. 

In the years ahead, Caballero Jaime said she wants to empower her clients, especially women who have been physically or sexually abused. And no matter what that role looks like, Caballero Jaime will do a great job, said one of her mentors at GRE. 

“She’s very impressive, personally, intellectually, and in her own work in pastoral counseling studies,” said Francis X. McAloon, S.J., associate professor of Christian spirituality and Ignatian studies at GRE, to whom Caballero Jaime served as a research assistant for three years. “She is a godsend, really. And I know whatever she’s going to pursue in the future—presumably some kind of pastoral counseling practice—she’ll do a great job.”

“I’m not coming from a background where my entire family is doing finance,” he said. But some of the other students, he noticed, had been exposed to the fields of corporate banking and hedge funds because of their families’ experience in the field.

So Li, an international student originally from Shanghai, decided to learn everything he could from his classmates—from etiquette to insight into how financial markets work. Many of them, he said, began interning as early as freshman year.

“They had their part-time career, part-time jobs—and I was kind of jealous, honestly,” he said. “So that really pressured me a little bit, but at the same time, it encouraged me to do a better job.”

He continued applying throughout sophomore year, and landed an internship at Aflac. Around that time, he also began working with Jennifer O’Neil, associate director of career advising in the Gabelli School’s’s Personal and Professional Development office, who helped him improve his resume and tell his own story better.

“Before he even came to see me, he had gotten his first internship at Aflac and he did a great job of [not just]taking…an internship but leveraging his foreign language skills and coming up with an idea to penetrate the Chinese business community for [Aflac’s] products,” O’Neil said. “He’s just always thinking outside the box.”

This thinking allowed him not just to add an internship to his resume, O’Neil said, but “add value to Aflac in a way that another intern couldn’t.”

O’Neil said that her biggest role was helping Li take the skills he had acquired from Aflac, his work in school, and other hobbies and showcase them on his resume to highlight his unique interests, which extended beyond finance and academics. His first year on campus, he auditioned for the Fordham University Choir.

“When I went to the audition, I did not expect that it would be for this formal University choir,” he said with a laugh. “I thought it was a club, somewhere that could give you some kind of lesson—Justin Bieber, Justin Timberlake, Eminem, something like that.”

Li said that he was the only one who hadn’t been singing since high school or middle school, but after the director took a chance on him, he decided to stick with it for all four years.

“I learn very quickly. I think that’s one of the things the director [saw in]me” he said.

It’s that dedication that helped him land a summer internship his junior year with Bank of America as a fulfillment, service, and operations analyst.

“I was lucky enough to get a return offer from them,” he said.

After Li graduates, he’ll be starting as a full-time corporate banking analyst at their headquarters in Shanghai.

“I will be covering multinational corporations’ subsidiaries that are operating in Asia, in China, who have a revenue of $2 billion and above as well as some local corporations,” he said.

O’Neil said, often international students have to work hard to overcome some of the challenges they face, such as language barriers or lack of familiarity with the country. Li was a great example of how that hard work can pay off, she said.

“I tell a lot of the international students—get on the treadmill next to your American counterparts and put the incline on 10 and put the speed about two miles per hour faster than them, because that’s how much harder you’re going to have to work,” she said. “And he did it.”

Li said that he was grateful for the support from Fordham faculty and staff, like O’Neil, as well as the unique education Fordham offers.

“Studying in the city at Fordham Gabelli, you’re able to talk to people from all over the world; being able to emerge from such an environment has definitely broadened my horizons and given me more insight from different people of different backgrounds.”

“I said, ‘You know Mo, if it was anyone else I’d be really, really concerned, but I wasn’t concerned because it was you,’” he said. “She was able to do it all.”

From starting as a walk-on in her first year to breaking records her senior year, from juggling internships to pursuing a passion for storytelling, Morgan Williams, a television and film major in the Fordham College Rose Hill Class of 2020, proved her coach right.

Williams started all four years on the volleyball team as a libero—a defensive specialist position. Her senior year, she became the first Fordham player to win the Atlantic 10 Libero of the Year award. She broke seven school records and tied an eighth, making her Fordham’s most decorated libero.

Lately she’s been reflecting on some of the excitement of past games.

“There’s so many little moments that I’ve been thinking about,” Williams said.

One of those was the match against George Washington near the end of her senior season.

“We were down in the fifth set, I think 11 to 14—we had one really long rally and won. For as long as I’ve been playing volleyball, it feels like whenever the game is on the line and nobody wants to be the one serving, it always ends up being my turn,” she said with a laugh. “It happened in the George Washington game, and we came back and won and it was just such an amazing feeling.”

Williams became the program’s all-time digs leader, finishing her career with 1,862. She finished her senior season with 641 digs, at a pace of 6.05 per set, ranking her in the top 10 nationally in both categories.

Add it all up, and Williams is now one of the most decorated Fordham volleyball players of all time, something she never thought possible when she began her career as a walk-on.

While Williams, originally from Los Angeles, planned to play volleyball like her sister Ashlie, who played at Georgetown, she was a late recruit to Fordham, committing in April of her senior year of high school. By then, all of the athletic scholarships had been distributed. Still, Williams decided to bet on herself.

“I had a plan to earn my spot, and then also hopefully earn a scholarship,” she said. “I was really intimidated at first because there were two liberos ahead of me. I worked really hard and … when it was time for our fall preseason game, my coach read off the starting lineup and she read my name off as the libero.”

Once Williams got the spot, she never let it go, missing just three sets in her entire career. She was awarded a scholarship for her final two years.

“It was calculated by her, and it was self-actualized,” Choi said. “She demonstrated more than enough value.”

Volleyball was Williams’ first love, but her passion for storytelling grew alongside it.

At one point in high school, she said, her love for the game also began to cause her some anxiety.

“So my dad found me this writing class at UCLA … and it was three hours long and all you did was write stories. It was the best outlet.”

She grew to love writing dialogue and set her sights on screenwriting, which inspired her to major in television and film. When Williams got the chance to intern at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, she knew she couldn’t let it slip away. Still, the internship would require her to miss a few practices, something that traditionally wasn’t allowed.

Williams presented the opportunity to her coaches who helped her come up with a workaround, albeit one that required long hours on her part.

“Mondays would start with an early morning lift,” she said. “[I’d] get out, shower, get dressed, hop on the train, get to work around 8:30, 9 … and when it was over, I’d head straight back to the gym, and one of my assistant coaches would be there with the court set up and we would do an hour, hour and a half of reps…and then I would go home and do my homework.”

“That was most definitely my toughest semester at Fordham,” Williams added, but also said it gave her some incredible memories.

“It was just really cool to watch Stephen [Colbert] test out jokes to make sure that when it was showtime he gave the people the funniest stuff he could,” she said. “Soundcheck was awesome because I could watch it for both the house band, which is stacked with super cool jazz musicians, and for the music guest.”

Choi said that he was proud of her for being able to balance it all that semester.

“Spot on for Mo to finish her career with this award—the only Libero of the Year I know who got to work with Stephen Colbert,” Choi said. “I’m happy to see her go out this way.”

Williams plans to continue to play volleyball recreationally and hopes to volunteer to teach it at local schools. She’s also applying for jobs in the media industry and working on a few side projects, including a book about the journey of a volleyball player and the lessons learned along the way.

“It’s been a really crazy ride, but something I wouldn’t trade in a million years,” she said.