He is the founder of two scholarships at the Gabelli School, including one that honors the memory of his brother, Jonathan Gach, GABELLI ’82, who died from cancer in 2018. He also created a research award named for his parents, Harold and Sydelle Gach, and has given to various academic centers and other initiatives at the Gabelli School. He’s a member of the Fordham University President’s Council and a supporter of the Founder’s Undergraduate Scholarship Fund.

Gach’s teaching and philanthropy are informed by his own student experiences but also by values honed during his varied career with Accenture, the global technology and consulting firm he served for 37 years.

Tell me why you created the scholarship in your brother’s memory.
Ours was a working-class family, and our parents didn’t have money for the University, so my brother and I both worked to pay for school. We were not really beneficiaries of campus life because of our working schedules. As much as I loved the Gabelli School, and it set me up for life, I know I missed out on some opportunities, so I want to afford students a chance to have that broader experience.

Why do you support so many different areas?
One of the things I’ve come to appreciate is the school’s integrated objectives. I’m involved in the Responsible Business Center, which is geared toward research on many of the world’s challenges. I started off with the endowed scholarships, but as I started to understand better the importance of research, I’ve started to give in that area as well.

You teach a course called The Ground Floor that’s popular beyond the Gabelli School. What does it cover?
We give the students a business foundation. They get a little bit of accounting, marketing, finance, operations, etc., but also mission and ethics. We have guest speakers who help them with career discernment. We also ask them to develop an idea for a startup that addresses at least one of the U.N.’s sustainable development goals, and almost every year, at least one or two teams try to launch their business. A few have even gone to the Fordham Foundry for help.

What’s your approach to teaching students about ethics in business?
The point I make to students is that very seldom do companies’ ethical issues arise from malevolence. It’s a slippery slope, and I teach them about the warning signs. Management is not infallible. They make mistakes. You can’t just assume, “I’m in the corporate world, I need to toe the line”; you need to have your own point of view. To me, this is deeply ingrained in Fordham and the Jesuit culture, and I think this is a broader lesson for the role of a citizen in a democracy or an employee in a company. Almost every company has whistleblower channels.

What other lessons do you emphasize in your courses?
The importance of maintaining relevancy in the business world. That’s terribly important, because business is changing very fast. Companies used to do five-year strategic plans; now they do one-year strategic sprints. You have to stay relevant in your domain and continue to invest in your ongoing education.

Scholarship gifts support access and affordability, one of the pillars of Fordham’s $350 million fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student. Learn more about our campaign and make a gift.

She was also a double Fordham graduate who, whenever she could, encouraged people to give back. “She always instilled in her [students] who ‘made it’ that it’s your responsibility, because people helped you,” said her daughter, Susan Smith.

Monta died in 2020, but will be helping Fordham theater students posthumously through a scholarship that Smith recently created out of her mother’s estate. It comes as another Fordham alumna, actress Patricia Clarkson, FCLC ’82, is also creating a scholarship for students in the Fordham Theatre program.

Smith is certain her mother would approve. “She really, really liked contributing to education and providing opportunities for students,” Smith said.

Lessons from an Irish Immigrant

Growing up in New Jersey and Virginia, Monta was “the dramatic one in the family,” an aspiring actress who later set her sights on a career in education. Its importance was brought home to her early, when her live-in grandfather would always “sit there with a book in his hand,” reading voraciously to carry on the education that was cut short during his childhood in Ireland, Smith said.

Monta studied speech, English, and speech education at Fordham, earning a bachelor’s degree from the Undergraduate School of Education in 1952 and a master’s from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1953. She later earned a doctorate in theater arts from Cornell University.

Arriving at what was then Pan American University in 1971, she established the theater area within the communications department and set about building the program, sometime sewing the costumes for productions herself, according to a statement from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, as the university is now known.

‘Pay It Forward’

Over the years, she gave to charities, created a theater scholarship at the university, and helped others in numerous small ways, Smith said. One day, headed out to eat with colleagues, she gave away her brown-bag lunch to a student—and then kept bringing a lunch for him when she learned he was struggling financially.

When one of her former students—Valente Rodriguez—launched his acting career in California and tried to repay the money she had given him for moving there, she declined, telling him to “pay it forward” by funding a scholarship. And when her colleagues wanted to throw her a party upon her retirement in 2007, she declined again, citing the expense—until someone suggested turning the party into a fundraiser.

As a teacher, she was “a character,” known for blunt, colorful comments, Smith said, but she was also “incredibly loving.”

“She came across like a real hard-ass,” Smith said, “because she expected more of you than you expected of yourself.”

Scholarship gifts support the Access and Affordability priority of Fordham’s current $350 million fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student. Learn more and make a gift. 

Throughout her career, Clarkson has sought out diverse and challenging roles and won wide acclaim for her performances on stage and screen. In an interview, she noted her parents’ sacrifices for her education, as well as her part-time work at a diner as a student. “I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to give someone just a little bit of help, a little bit of extra, because that’s what I needed when I was there,’” she said. “It would’ve been easier for me. I’m thrilled to be doing this, and I’m excited.”

Clarkson said she received mentoring and support at Fordham that were crucial to her career. “My heart is always with Fordham,” she said. “I’m proud of my alma mater, and I’m proud to help out in the little way I can.”

An engaged alumna, she regularly returns to campus to speak with students in the theatre program. Clarkson was inducted into Fordham’s Hall of Honor in 2016 and, in 2018, received an honorary doctorate from the University.

“Patricia Clarkson embodies the best of Fordham,” said Tania Tetlow, president of Fordham University. “Her determination and blazing talent make us so very proud. She is our ambassador, telling everyone how much her Fordham education matters to her. Best of all, she wants to pass that gift forward to other students, both with her generous gift and in the time she gives them every year on campus.”

May Adrales, director of the Fordham Theatre program, said Clarkson is “an exemplar of Fordham Theatre education, a consummate actor who radiates curiosity and vibrancy.”

The scholarship will go to students who possess Clarkson’s same fervor and fortitude in the pursuit of acting, as well as demonstrated potential, she said. “We are grateful for her support and hope to honor her immense talent and extraordinary body of work.”

Diverse and Compelling Performances

A New Orleans native, Clarkson attended Louisiana State University before transferring to Fordham as a junior. After earning her bachelor’s degree in theatre, she earned an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama. Clarkson won Emmy Awards in 2002 and 2006 for her portrayal of the free-spirited Aunt Sarah on the HBO drama series Six Feet Under, and in 2022 earned a third Emmy for her role in the British comedy series State of the Union.

In 2019, Clarkson won a Golden Globe for her performance in the HBO miniseries Sharp Objects, in which she plays the matriarch of a troubled family of three daughters. Rather than portraying her character as “a one-note monster,” Variety noted, “Clarkson ensured there were complicated layers to peel back not only with every episode but every scene.”

In 2003, she was nominated for both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for her portrayal of a dying mother confronting her anger with her estranged daughter in Pieces of April. Her performance in The Elephant Man on Broadway earned her a best-actress Tony nomination in 2015.

Clarkson has spoken out on behalf of causes including environmental protection, LGBTQ rights, and giving women more opportunities in theatre and film. In the new movie Monica, released in May, she plays an ailing woman who is unknowingly being cared for by the transgender daughter she had expelled from her home many years before.

Scholarship gifts advance Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, the University’s $350 million campaign to enhance the entire Fordham student experience. Learn more about the campaign and make a gift.

Sociology is “unrecognized in its potential,” said Josephine Ruggiero, Ph.D., GSAS ’70, ’73, professor emerita of sociology at Providence College. It presents rich possibilities for cross-disciplinary research, as shown by an online journal she founded. And, she said, it often refutes widely accepted notions about societal problems.

“One of the things sociologists have done more and more … is to test out ‘common sense’ notions against real data and to see whether they are supported,” she said. “Many times, in fact, they’re not.”

To invest in its next generation of practitioners, Ruggiero is creating a Fordham scholarship—via a bequest—for undergraduate students majoring in sociology who are aiming for public service or social justice-related careers.

She spent her career helping sociology students grow as researchers and get professional experience. In the classroom, she taught research methods and statistics, as well as introduction to sociology—a class she thinks everyone should take.

“Sociology was the first great love of my life,” she said, “because it really helps you to understand not only yourself and the life circumstances from which you come and the situations into which you move, but also the bigger picture of how other people operate.”

Refuting Stereotypes

Ruggiero discovered sociology as an undergraduate at Albertus Magnus College before earning master’s and doctoral degrees in the field at Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where she specialized in urban sociology, research methods, and social statistics.

Rigorous sociological research “grounded in data” often contradicts so-called common knowledge, she said. For instance, past studies have shown that, contrary to the stereotype of being “lazy and looking for a handout,” nearly all welfare recipients are elderly, mentally ill, physically challenged, or children of mothers who have few skills, she said.

Also, studies have shown that rape is most often a learned behavior, rather than something driven by mental illness, she noted. Another study found that children who have no siblings, far from being more spoiled and selfish, tend to be more mature and socially adept than those who do.

Ruggiero taught sociology at Providence College for 41 years and founded the New England Undergraduate Research Conference in Sociology, which ran at the college for 20 years, through spring 1995. In the 1980s, she offered an applied sociology course with an internship component. She later developed two internship courses that placed sociology and women’s studies students in government agencies, the public defenders’ office, and various nonprofits and human service agencies.

Today she serves as editor in chief of an online journal, Sociology Between the Gaps: Forgotten and Neglected Topics, featuring research in sociology but also in global studies, political science, health services, and other areas.

Ruggiero founded it in 2014—the year she retired from teaching—to show students the growing importance of sociology. “The more complex the world gets,” she said, “the more it matters.”

Scholarship gifts support advance Fordham’s $350 million fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student. Learn more about the campaign and make a gift.

“He was a very, very popular math professor” and also “into computers in the sixties, before anyone knew what computers were,” Father Regan said. “He just had such an incredibly interesting life.”

Thus inspired, Father Regan pursued his own career as a Jesuit and an educator. After graduating from Boston College, he earned master’s and doctoral degrees from Fordham in 1982 and 1984; served as a philosophy professor and dean at Fairfield University and Loyola University Chicago; and came to Fordham as a visiting associate professor of philosophy from 2010 to 2011.

He was provincial of the New England Province of the Society of Jesus for six years, and in 2020 he returned to Fordham. He sits on the Board of Trustees, co-chairing its Mission and Social Justice Committee. And he is also superior of Fordham’s Jesuit community, housed in Spellman Hall on the Rose Hill campus.

Jesuit Benefactors

This latter role has exposed him to a new joy of the Jesuit life: philanthropy. While he’s done his share of fundraising, he said, “coming here as rector was the first time I actually got to give away money.”

That’s because the Jesuits of Fordham Inc., incorporated in 1970, donate the lion’s share of their salaries, in compliance with the laws of the Society of Jesus. As superior of the community, Father Regan is the one who conveys the funds—to Fordham University and to Cristo Rey New York High School, Jesuit middle schools, and other nonprofits including Jesuit Refugee Service and Catholic Charities.

“Over the years, we’ve been able to send a lot of money back to the University,” Father Regan said, noting that the 31-member Fordham Jesuit community numbered more than 100 when he arrived as a graduate student in the late 1970s.

The community endowed the St. Ignatius Loyola Chair, supported programs across the University, and, in the 1990s, created the Jesuits of Fordham Endowed Scholarship Fund.

In recent years, the community has made new, generous gifts to this fund, supporting the University’s $350 million fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, and its goal of providing equitable access to a Fordham education and making it more affordable.

The scholarship is designated for high achievers with high financial need, with consideration for students from Cristo Rey high schools. Seeing its impact on the lives of students is one of the many joys of Father Regan’s decades-long career in Jesuit education.

Tell me more about your community’s decision to make new gifts to its scholarship fund.
Access to education is what the Jesuits are all about. If we’re going to break the barrier of poverty, the best way to do that is through education. Father McShane [Joseph M. McShane, S.J., now president emeritus of Fordham] wanted us to designate our gifts to scholarships, and coming in as the superior, I just couldn’t agree more. To go to graduation and see first-generation students getting their diploma and the smiles on their parents’ faces, and their pride at what their daughters and sons can do—to be able to assist in that process is just wonderful.

I also think it anchors us more in the Bronx, so we can have more local students from the Bronx here. And I think that the more students of color come and see people like themselves here, it just reinforces that we’re here for them and they’re part of this community, and that this is why we’re here. So I think it’s exciting.

You’ve been in liberal arts education a long time. What do you think of current questions about its value?
I wrote my dissertation on the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, and he said an educated person has to avoid knowledge “in a groove,” because the people who are going to lead society are the people who can see beyond the grooves. Someone once told me, “Throughout my professional life, I always could tell, when people were making presentations or just interacting with people, who went to tech schools and who had a liberal arts education.” These days, parents are rightfully looking at return on investment and asking, “If you study English, what are you going to do for a job?” Well, you might minor in data analytics, for instance, just so you have the skill set that’s marketable, but major in literature, because you never know when that door to another opportunity is going to open. It’s not surprising to find out how many of the best CEOs majored in philosophy.

How can Jesuit universities maintain their character and traditions in light of the declining number of Jesuits?
When I was provincial, people always asked that question, and I said, “I never get nervous about the number of Jesuits.” Looking at this historically, after World War II we just went crazy in terms of numbers, and that was an anomaly, because Jesuits never had those kinds of numbers before. And now we’re getting back to homeostasis. So I’m not too worried. And then there’s the quality of the younger guys that we’re getting in—they’re coming in with advanced degrees already. They’re just incredibly talented, very articulate. And so what we’re losing in quantity, we’re certainly making up in quality.

Is there a greater role to be played by lay people in Jesuit education?
In the Arrupe seminar for faculty and staff, which I teach with John Cecero, S.J. [vice president for mission integration and ministry at Fordham], we see so many people who work at Fordham and want to embody Jesuit values in their life. When I was in Boston as provincial, when I would go to these national meetings of Jesuit secondary education, I would be on a high for months afterwards, after meeting all these lay people who have given their lives to the mission. There would be very few Jesuits there. We just have to make sure that lay men and women have the opportunities to have the training that they need, because there’s no lack of desire.

Has your career as a Jesuit and an academic lived up to the inspiring example from your childhood?
My entire adult life has been in a higher education community. I can’t imagine a more charmed existence. I’ve been teaching pretty much since 1980, and I’ve done 200 weddings, I don’t know how many baptisms. It’s just an incredible opportunity that I’ve been given to be part of so many lives. Not a day goes by that I don’t interact with four or five former students. The new president of Loyola Chicago is someone I taught in freshman honors at Fairfield. And Rob Parmach [Fordham’s inaugural director of Ignatian mission initiatives] is also someone I taught as an undergraduate at Fairfield. Probably the best thanks that you can get is to see people that you taught do so well. And the Society of Jesus is at the center of this. Anyone who’s had my experiences has the same story to tell. I mean, we’re just so at home in so many different families. It’s incredible.

To inquire about giving in support of scholarships or another area of the University, please contact Michael Boyd, senior associate vice president for development and university relations, at 212-636-6525 or [email protected]. Learn more about Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, a campaign to reinvest in every aspect of the Fordham student experience.

And then came the news of the full scholarship she had been awarded. Learning about it in February of senior year, she was overjoyed, but also momentarily anxious—as in, “did I hear that right?” she joked.

It was a gift with far-reaching effects, said Vojtech, who graduated from the Gabelli School of Business as valedictorian in 2000. Her Fordham experiences set her on a trajectory of opportunities, including investment banking experience in New York, that led to her current role as a principal economist with the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C.—her dream job, she said, in part because of its public service mission that resonates with Fordham’s ethos of being a person for others.

And that ethos, of course, is reflected in the act of creating a scholarship like the one she received. “Your heart overflows when you know that someone is so willing to do that and provide that opportunity to students. It’s such a beautiful thing,” she said.

Today, she is acting on that gratitude, contributing to the University’s $350 million fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, in a way that will bring future students the same kind of joy she experienced—while also advancing the cause of diversity in the world of business.

A Benefactor and Friend

Vojtech was the first recipient of an endowed scholarship created by John E. Toffolon Jr., GABELLI ’73, ’77, who died in April, and his wife, Joan Toffolon, GABELLI ’77. (See related story.) They created it in 1995 for students in the Gabelli School, and included a preference for women to help address the gender imbalance in business. Vojtech became friends with John Toffolon, meeting with him periodically, and saw his enthusiasm for the scholarship and the impact it would have.

Vojtech drew inspiration from his generosity, and has long given to various causes and institutions, including Fordham. When she received a financial cushion following her uncle’s passing, she decided this year to move forward with something she had long thought of doing: creating the Vojtech Family Scholarship to help students at the Gabelli School meet the cost of attending the University.

When fully established, it will be awarded with a preference for first-generation college students, economically disadvantaged students, or those who come from underrepresented groups.

She doubts she would have come to Fordham if the Toffolons’ scholarship hadn’t made the costs more bearable. With her own gift, she hopes to support those coming from backgrounds less affluent than hers.

She noted that, over and over, studies have found diversity in business is good for business. “You want the diversity in the room because you get better ideas, you get better brainstorming,” Vojtech said. “It’s easier to fall into groupthink if you have people from the exact same lived experiences, exact same perspectives.”

Vojtech also gives back to the University as a member of its President’s Council, a group of accomplished alumni who contribute to students’ education. She was active in Campus Ministry at Fordham and in Fordham athletics, earning a place in the Fordham Athletics Hall of Fame for her achievements on the volleyball team and rowing team, and still feels connected to the University’s distinctive community—something that played into her decision to create a scholarship.

“It’s just a testament to the culture of Fordham and wanting to give back, wanting to pay it forward, being a person for others,” she said. “That’s what I think of when I think of Fordham.”

“Both of them loved Fordham,” said their son, William J. Toppeta, FCRH ’70, a University trustee who with his wife, Debra Toppeta, created the scholarship in 2000 to honor them and benefit Fordham students—just one of their many generous gifts to the University.

The scholarship has turned out to be a richly rewarding way to honor his parents’ legacy.

For years, it helped bring a Fordham education within financial reach for several students at a time. Then, five years ago, the Toppetas modified the scholarship to cover full tuition as well as living expenses for one student facing high financial hurdles, in the process forming a bond with the students—two, so far—who have received this full support.

In 2020, seeking to advance the cause of racial justice, the Toppetas once again modified the scholarship so that it’s awarded with a preference for students who, in addition to showing academic merit and financial need, are first-generation college students or come from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. The murder of George Floyd “had a huge impact on us,” William Toppeta said. “We wanted to actually do something that was impactful as an anti-racist example in action.”

They are also making a new contribution to their scholarship fund, advancing two priorities of the University’s $350 million fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student: access and affordability, as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion.

A Personal Bond

The current Toppeta Scholar, Gianna McGrath, a sophomore in the Gabelli School of Business, got the news in her second week at Fordham and was immediately moved to tears of joy. “It’s kind of an indescribable feeling, an eternal gratefulness,” she said.

The scholarship allayed her and her family’s worries about her loan amounts and allowed her to cut back on part-time work in favor of other things, like exploring the city and joining student clubs. She soon learned that the Toppetas were personally interested in her success. After meeting them at dinner with her family, she found they were “very genuine and down to earth,” said McGrath, who was born in Jamaica. “They’re so loving of all cultures, all people.”

The first recipient of the full scholarship, Huiling Cai, GABELLI ’21, immigrated from China seven years ago and earned an associate degree from LaGuardia Community College in New York City, learning English along the way. Receiving the Toppeta scholarship made possible her Fordham education and everything that has flowed from it, including her former job at EY and her current job at PwC, she said.

And the Toppetas became a welcome presence in her life in many ways, such as visiting her during her first month at Fordham; attending a ceremony for her and other Dean’s List honorees; and providing advice and support during challenging moments. “They are truly my angels,” she said.

The benefits go both ways. “It’s not just Gianna and Huiling who’ve benefitted from this. We’ve gotten a lot back,” Debra Toppeta said. “It’s just enriched our lives tremendously.”

In an interview, they elaborated on their reasons for modifying the scholarship, as well as lessons learned over the course of their careers—he, as an executive at MetLife and president of management consulting firm Macomber Peak Partners; she, as an attorney and founder and publisher of the award-winning website Woman Around Town.

Can you tell me more about your decision to refocus the John and Rita Toppeta Endowed Scholarship on students from underrepresented groups?
William Toppeta: My father felt very strongly about Jesuit education. He thought that the training that he got at Fordham was strongly morally based. And I think that again sort of connects to what we’re trying to do here with the scholarship. We believe very strongly that this is the right thing to do. Racism is still part of this country, but it’s been part of this country for hundreds of years, and each of us needs to do something about it.

What we’re doing, we think, is 100% consistent with Fordham’s history and philosophy. Fordham has always been a place that was focused on the underdog, the people who did not have the advantages. What Bishop John Hughes had in mind when he founded Fordham is that he wanted to give opportunity for people to get a higher education who otherwise would not have had that opportunity. At the time, most of those people happened to be Irish, and he, of course, was Irish. Then later on it was others—it was people from Eastern and Southern Europe. My father was one of those people.

Your mother knew something about facing discrimination too, I think?
William: She did talk about it. Her father was a lawyer, and she and my father practiced with him in New York City for a time. She said to me that when her father first sent her to court, she answered the calendar call for her client and the clerk of the court said to her, “No, no, no, you have to be a lawyer to answer the calendar call.” And she said, “I am a lawyer.” So she faced a lot of obstacles, but I think it made her tougher.

What career advice would you offer students?
William: When I was at Fordham, we learned a lot about the Ignatian and the Jesuit perspective, and one of its fundamentals is that a person should have a contemplative life and an active life. I think part of the contemplative part of life is to think about getting to know yourself and understanding yourself, and your abilities and qualities, in as objective a way as you can. Somewhere along the line, either someone else is going to ask you or you’re going to ask yourself, can I accomplish that? When you’re offered a job or an opportunity, you’d better know the answer, because you may not be given much time to decide. I’ve had situations in my career where I was given 24 hours to decide whether I was leaving the country or not for an opportunity. I think in our times, things happen very, very fast, and so if you don’t take time to think quietly about things, you’re going to miss a lot of chances. A lot of life comes down to fundamental principles and understanding, and I think Fordham is very strong on these.

Debra Toppeta: My advice would be to always continue to grow. The way to really get to know yourself is to just keep pushing forward and trying new things. Stay flexible, keep informed, and keep never stop learning so you’re always prepared for your next opportunity, because they’ll present themselves in ways you didn’t expect. I started in business, and then I went to law school, and then I started Woman Around Town. My partner, Charlene Giannetti, came up with the idea; she was a journalist at Businessweek and wanted to branch out on her own, and she knew I could write, and that I was a lawyer and was looking for my next endeavor.

So I jumped at it, and it’s been terrific. It was very challenging when we started, but we also had great opportunities because it was during the Great Recession, when print media was laying off reporters, and we were able to offer them work. We’ve received over 30 awards for journalism from various organizations.

Is there a book that has had a lasting influence on you?
William: I would point to categories of books. I read a lot of history and biography because they’re the story of challenges that people faced, when they succeeded, when they failed. I don’t necessarily think that history repeats itself, but we can certainly learn from history and see parallels. I just finished reading a very good history by Simon Sebag Montefiore of the history of the Romanovs, the family that ruled Russia for 300 years. And if you read that history, and then you think about what’s going on today with Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukraine, you can see very clearly that Putin is just a continuation of the czars in a slightly different form.

Debra: I read The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson, about the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North and West. It’s a collection of stories that shows you just what people will do to improve their lives and their family’s lives. Each one of those stories is like a profile in courage and very inspirational.

Looking at the world today, what are you optimistic about?
William: I’m optimistic about a couple of things. One, people are still free to think and say what they want within very broad parameters in this country. So it makes me optimistic that at least at the moment, we are still operating democratically. The other thing I’m optimistic about is the young people. The more young people that I meet, the more confident I am about the future. I really do think that the younger generation is better equipped than we were, and that they’re genuinely trying, in most cases, to do the right thing.

To inquire about supporting scholarships and financial aid or another area of the University, please contact Michael Boyd, senior associate vice president for development and university relations, at 212-636-6525 or [email protected]. Learn more about Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, a campaign to reinvest in every aspect of the Fordham student experience.

The state was North Carolina, and many of the people he met there were immigrants who had suffered greatly before coming to work at the cooperatives that he was visiting with other Fordham students. Listening to their stories “just put a lot of things into perspective for me,” he said.

Grullon is one of many students who spent their spring break with Global Outreach, Fordham’s service and cultural immersion program that runs projects—in the United States and abroad—that are centered on social justice and community engagement.

For Grullon and eight other students, the experience was a gift—quite literally. As students who came to Fordham via its Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP), they have high financial need. Except for the small portion for which they raise funds themselves, the students’ costs for the weeklong projects in North Carolina, Puerto Rico, and St. Thomas were covered by members of the Fordham University President’s Council, a group of accomplished alumni who mentor students and help advance the University.

By giving in support of the students, they were advancing a key priority of the University’s $350 million fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student—ensuring that the full Fordham experience is accessible and affordable for all students.

A Southern Excursion

The experience in North Carolina was eye-opening for Grullon and other students. “The culture is so different,” he said, noting how open and friendly everyone was. They were visiting worker-owned cooperatives making a variety of clothing and, at the same time, learning firsthand about sustainable sourcing and ethical business practices.

Giovanni Alva, FCRH ’22, a Bronx native who is now a first-generation college graduate, said the work at the clothing cooperatives made him appreciate the exhausting textile work that his own parents performed in New York City after immigrating from Mexico.

“Being able to see it in person made me realize, so much, the sacrifices that they went through … to give me the opportunity to even attend Fordham and reach my potential,” he said. The workers in the co-op seemed grateful to have health care and other benefits, and to be able to become co-owners of the company, he said.

Grullon, a first-generation college graduate himself whose parents come from the Dominican Republic, said he met immigrants including a young Hmong woman who played a managerial role in one of the cooperatives. She had spent a lot of time healing from scars, both physical and mental, that she had suffered in an internment camp before coming to America. “There were so many people just telling us similarly tragic stories,” he said. “It just taught me that … everybody just has their own struggle in life, even though you don’t see it.”

He was happy to be able to bond with other students in a way that he hadn’t before, since he was a commuting student for most of his time at Fordham. “I got a lot of good friends because of this trip, and I don’t feel as alone as I did before,” he said. “And that’s a huge thing.”

 A Gift of Experience

For the past few years, when he has visited New York City high schools to tell students about HEOP, Biswa Bhowmick, associate director of the program, has been telling students about Global Outreach as a way to show what Jesuit education is about and illustrate cura personalis—or care of the whole person—in action.

In fact, he said, “this is basically our dream, to make [Global Outreach] an integral part of the HEOP experience” for all who seek it. In 2018, Anne Williams-Isom, FCLC ’86, became the first President’s Council member to give in support of this goal, and others have since contributed, including Christina Luconi, PAR, and Christine Valentic, FCRH ’04.

After meeting with Bhowmick and learning more about HEOP, Valentic said, “I just really fell in love with the program and the idea of being able to give these students the experience that they might not have been able to have.” She knew what it was like to benefit from others’ giving, since her parish’s “adopt a student” giving program had funded her Catholic school tuition. At Fordham, she had wanted to take part in Global Outreach but hadn’t had the means.

The Global Outreach program has been growing its funding sources for students; today, it offers scholarships to about a third of participants, and students also organize fundraisers to cover a portion of the trips’ cost, said Vanessa Rotondo, assistant director of immersions and senior adviser on Ignatian leadership with the Center for Community Engaged Learning, which oversees Global Outreach.

Costs for the spring break trip ranged from $600 to $1,600 per student, which they can find daunting, Bhowmick said. When they learn that their share of the cost is much smaller, he said, “that really changes the whole perspective for them.”

One HEOP student, Najelly Almonte, who is going into her senior year at Fordham College at Rose Hill, first learned about Global Outreach during the summer before her first year at Fordham, and found that financial worries never took hold.

“HEOP has always been open to the idea, ‘If you want to do anything on campus, we will help you with the funding,’” she said. “It feels nice to have that support and feel like you’re not alone and, like, ‘Oh, I can’t afford this, I can’t do the same thing as everybody else in college.’”

Discovering Education in Puerto Rico

Almonte was one of the students who went to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to help paint a mural on a middle school building that was being restored after hurricane damage. They worked with the Puerto Rican artist Pablo Marcano García on the mural, an illustration that celebrates the importance of teachers and the past, present, and future of education.

Meanwhile, the teachers at the school were on strike, which the students learned was “a regular thing,” said Cira Merlin, a participant who is going into her junior year at Fordham College at Rose Hill. “As we were painting to show teacher empowerment, how important these teachers are … they’re fighting for their pay,” she said.

The students were hosted by APRODEC, a nonprofit corporation that promotes local, sustainable economic development. They had the chance to tour historic sites, talk with students at the school, and learn about local culture and Puerto Ricans’ pride in their heritage.

“When I talk about this trip, I wouldn’t dare say ‘community service,’ because this was so much more than that,” Merlin said. “We were learning from the school, from the students, from the community. It was so much more than a service trip.”

Because of the project, she said, “I would say my love for education really grew.”

To inquire about giving in support of the Higher Education Opportunity Program, Global Outreach, or another area of the University, please contact Michael Boyd, senior associate vice president for development and university relations, at 212-636-6525 or [email protected]. Learn more about Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, our campaign to reinvest in every aspect of the Fordham student experience.

His acceptance was especially joyous for his parents, neither of whom had been able to go to college. Later, when he brought them to the Rose Hill campus, “you could see how proud they were that I was going there. And I felt exactly the same way,” he said. “So I developed a love for Fordham that never left me.”

That love stayed in the background during the busy decades following his 1969 graduation from Fordham College at Rose Hill as an English major. Within two years he was a newly married father of twins. He went into banking, earning an MBA from Pace University at night, and built a successful executive career at firms including American Express; Black Rock Capital, which he co-founded; and Cannon Capital Ltd.

He is also a generous donor to the University. Among their other gifts to Fordham, he and Jane established two scholarship funds: one named for Roy E. Haviland, GABELLI ’69, a Navy pilot and classmate of Jim’s who was killed in a midair collision off the coast of North Vietnam in 1973, and one named for Jane Flaherty, to which he is making a new contribution. Jim serves on the committee for Fordham’s current campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, which seeks to raise $350 million for priorities including access and affordability.

Those were always key priorities for the Flahertys—as an undergraduate, Jim faced financial challenges that nearly derailed his Fordham education. His own struggles informed the Flahertys’ commitment to giving scholarship support to students who, by now, number in the dozens.

Who is someone at Fordham who made a difference for you? 
Father George McMahon [former dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill and namesake of McMahon Hall on the Lincoln Center campus]probably had the biggest impact on me when I met with him in junior year. I had ripped my knee up playing baseball at Fordham and had withdrawn from school for a semester, which was exciting because it meant I lost all my scholarships. Then my father had a stroke when I was beginning my junior year. I had to really juggle things around—because I didn’t have much money and because one parent was no longer able to work, I went to work on Wall Street, at the Bank of New York, running a collating machine that processed mutual fund statements.

And so I had to go see Father McMahon to talk about things, and he did me a world of good. I didn’t think I was going to be able to stay at the University, but he did all sorts of things for me that let me hold on to my scholarships, and he also let me fit classes into my work schedule. He went out of his way to make sure that I stayed in school, and I wound up, fortunately, graduating on time.

How did your undergraduate experience impact your giving?  
My last two years at Fordham were a bit of a blur—I worked from midnight to eight o’clock in the morning, came up to Rose Hill, did my classes, went home to Brooklyn, slept for four hours, and then went back to Wall Street and worked from midnight until eight o’clock again. So it wasn’t exactly the kind of educational experience I think you’d want anybody to have. I don’t want anybody to ever have to go to Fordham the way I did.

My wife, Jane, also wanted us to support Fordham, for two reasons: Neither she nor any of her four brothers got to go to college, because their parents couldn’t afford for any of them to go. Also, she watched how hard it was for me, although she was extraordinarily supportive of what I was trying to do.

You once said she loved Fordham even more than you did. Can you elaborate?
When I was at Fordham, she was with me up on the campus every weekend, going to basketball games, all sorts of things. She had a college experience in a vicarious way, and she just loved every minute of it. In the years after I graduated, she was at Fordham fairly often with me, and then when we moved back from England, we were busy with Fordham things quite a bit.

By the way, when I was asked to go on the Board of Trustees by [Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham], I said no, for a variety of reasons. Well, if you know Father McShane, you know he doesn’t give up. So he kept asking—I’m on the phone with him, in a car with Jane, having just landed in London, and I’m saying no, and there are pauses, and Jane finally said, “What’s this all about? Give me the phone.” So I handed her the phone and Father said he wanted me to go on the board. “Oh, OK,” she said. “He’ll do that.” End of story!

What was it like meeting your scholarship recipients at Fordham’s annual Scholarship Donors and Recipients Reception?  
Our scholarship recipients would show up, and my wife would sit down with them all around a table. She treated them like their mother—urging them to eat something, asking how things were going for them. Like me, they were enthralled by her. Some of them would tell her they would never have been able to come to Fordham if they didn’t have the scholarship that she gave them. In some respects, it was a little bit like repeating my history. There was one young man whose father had died two months after his acceptance to Fordham. He was a policeman who had been killed. And it was a real question, whether this young man was going to be able to attend. And so every year for four years, he’d be the first one of the scholarship recipients in the room so he could have a private conversation with Jane. When he was a senior, his mother came, and that was a pretty tearful meeting. But yes, we had several students thank us.

Roy Haviland’s sister, Dorene Prinzo, still comes to the scholarship reception every year. He was my best friend at Fordham. Who, by the way, just to make it clear, my wife had a terrible crush on before she even agreed to talk to me.

Do you have advice for today’s graduates?
I’ve told students that they had better like what they do for a living and like the people they do it with. It would be better to quit their job than to do a job they hated, because it would become obvious that they hated what they were doing, and that kind of spills over as you go look for different jobs. If you’re doing something you don’t like to do, sooner or later, you’re going to do a bad job at it.

Is there a book that had a lasting influence on you?  
There are two books, and the first is The Power and the Glory. It’s a novel by Graham Greene about a Catholic priest during the repression of the church in Mexico in the 1930s, and it shows what happens if you have the intestinal fortitude to do the right things. The other book is The Wall, by John Hersey, and it’s about the ghetto in Warsaw, Poland, in World War II, and how the Poles had to outwit the Nazis simply to survive. I went to Warsaw with my oldest son, and we saw the train station where they made the Jews get on the train to the concentration camps. He still talks about that. The Wall has stuck with me forever. I have a copy of it on my nightstand.

What are you optimistic about?  
I am an optimist because America’s still far and away the greatest nation in the world. I think Americans will survive and thrive on the opportunities that America creates time and time again for its citizens. I am a believer in the movement toward diversity that’s underway, and Fordham’s history is all about diversity and opportunity—we were created in 1841 because Catholics couldn’t go to university.

What’s the best piece of advice you ever received? 
My Irish Catholic mother, who doted on her only child, said, “You should marry that girl as soon as she’ll have you,” referring to Jane. Fundamentally, the most important decision I ever made was to marry my wife, and I did that in part because my mother told me to.

Jane M. Flaherty died peacefully on February 4, 2019, after an illness. On December 16, 2019, the University posthumously awarded her the Fordham Founder’s Award, noting, among other things, her dedication to the cause of Catholic education, her generosity of spirit, and the opportunities she created for the students of Fordham.

 Learn more about the story behind the Roy E. Haviland Endowed Dean’s Scholarship Fund.

To inquire about supporting scholarships and financial aid or another area of the University, please contact Michael Boyd, senior associate vice president for development and university relations, at 212-636-6525 or [email protected]. Learn more about Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, a campaign to reinvest in every aspect of the Fordham student experience.

The $2.5 million gift by Fordham alumna and former trustee Christina Seix Dow, TMC ’72, and her husband, Robert Dow, adds to the $2 million they gave nine years ago to establish their scholarship fund for CSTEP students. The new gift, announced in January 2021, comes in the midst of a Fordham fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, that comprises four pillars including access and affordability. The gift is now producing an uptick in funding for students and, within a few years, could provide aid to nearly half of the students in the program, said its director, Michael A. Molina.

The fund has been a “godsend” for students, said Michael A. Molina, director of the CSTEP and STEP programs at Fordham. The additional gift is “really going to enable us to help a lot more students meet their financial need.”

In establishing the scholarship fund, the Dows were supporting students who remind them of themselves.

“My wife and I came from very little. For a long time, we’ve felt we’ve been fortunate, and it’s time to pay it forward or pay it back for students who may come from even more difficult situations than we had,” said Robert Dow, a former managing partner at Lord Abbett, an investment management company.

Support for the Underrepresented

CSTEP is a statewide program designed to support those who tend to be underrepresented in professions related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as well as the the licensed professions, including health care.

At Fordham, the students it serves tend to be Black, Latinx, first-generation, economically disadvantaged, and members of immigrant families living in the Bronx or its environs, Molina said. It has provided them with academic support, counseling, internships, scholarships, and research opportunities since 1987.

The original $2 million scholarship gift has helped 40 or 50 CSTEP students per year, providing sums ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars that can make all the difference for families that have pulled together every last resource—grants, loans, scholarships—to meet their students’ costs, but who still need financial help, Molina said.

“Anything that we can help them with that helps tof ill in those gaps, that’s important,” he said. “If you come from an immigrant working class family … and you’ve got a $1,500 or $2,000 or $2,500 balance from your previous semester that you’ve got to take care of? That’s a lot of money for working class families,” he said.

With the new $2.5 million gift, the Dows’ scholarship fund could help nearly half of the approximately 270 students in the CSTEP program within a few years, Molina said.

Paying It Forward

The Christina Seix Dow College Science and Technology Entry Program Endowed Scholarship Fund is a need-based fund, with a GPA requirement, established to help CSTEP students stay at Fordham and graduate with less debt. “We hope that whatever they do, [the recipients are]they’re successful in life,” Robert Dow said. “And if they become successful financially, hopefully they’ll think about what gave them a start and pay it forward as well.”

Seix Dow has much in common with the CSTEP students she supports. She’s Puerto Rican, from the Bronx, and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Fordham. She was raised in a small apartment with limited resources, but, she has said, was surrounded by a loving family that developed her core values.

She became a multimillionaire bond manager, eventually forming her own investment management firm. She later founded the Christina Seix Academy, an independent school in New Jersey for underserved children. Seix Dow was among the first class of pioneering women in philanthropy at the inaugural Fordham Women’s Summit in 2017.

Preparing Students to Serve

The scholarships are a significant gift for the CSTEP students, many of whom are thousands of dollars in debt, said Renaldo D. Alba, associate director of the CSTEP and STEP programs. They not only help graduates leave Fordham in good financial health, but also prepare them to give back to their own communities.

“Our students often require graduate or professional school training, and at that level, there’s little to no financial aid. But if they’re in good [financial]health after graduation, they can take on additional loans at the next level. And if they do well and manage their loan debt as graduate students, they’re more likely to consider working in fields that may not be as lucrative in compensation, in communities that often don’t have the resources or money, because they don’t have to pay off these loans,” Alba said.

“A scholarship of this magnitude is so significant for students like these that are naturally inclined to stay in their community.”

Among the Seix Dow scholarship recipients is Leslie Abreu, a Dominican student from the Bronx who realized that Fordham was her “dream school” while attending the adjacent Fordham High School for the Arts, where she became class valedictorian.

“At one point, I was considering not going to my dream school because of finances,” said Abreu, who is enrolled in a five-year program to earn both a bachelor’s degree from Fordham College at Rose Hill and a Master of Science in Teaching from the Graduate School of Education. “Receiving help like that gives you reassurance that you are on the right path.”

Life hasn’t been easy for Abreu. Her father passed away in her senior year of high school, but he had encouraged his daughter to apply to Fordham. In her time at the University, she has advised two seventh graders in the Mentoring Latinas program, served as a peer counselor for pre-college students, and tutored middle and high school students in math as a tutor in CSTEP’s sibling STEP program for junior high and high school students. Someday, Abreu plans on following Seix Dow’s and her husband’s footsteps and paying it forward.

“[Seix Dow’s story] reassured me that that path is possible,” Abreu said. “And the fact that she has been able to help people like us shows me that I can also do that in the future.”

Learn more about Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student and make a gift.

If you have a question about giving to Fordham, call 212-636-6550 or send an email to [email protected].