John F. Walsh, Ph.D., FCRH ’57, a Bronx native who set foot on the Rose Hill campus as an 18-year freshman and, except for a four-year absence, didn’t leave until 53 years later, died on Oct. 21 in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, at age 83.

After earning an undergraduate degree at Fordham College at Rose Hill, Walsh went on to earn a Ph.D. in 1962 at Clark University. He wasn’t gone long though; he returned to his alma mater in 1961 as an instructor in the department of psychology. He would eventually be promoted to full professor in 1972, a position he held until he retired in 2006, and was named professor emeritus.

David Glenwick, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and longtime colleague, said Walsh would be missed.

“John was an extremely caring person with a great deal of integrity,” he said.

“Having been a Fordham undergraduate himself, he was a devoted member of the Fordham community and particularly committed to Fordham as a high-quality teaching institution, especially for undergraduate psychology students.”    

An expert in the field of human behavior and statistics, Walsh came to be known as a steadying force within the department. In a 1981 Bene Merenti citation celebrating his 20th anniversary at Fordham, Walsh, who’d chaired the department for six years, was lauded for having “constantly demonstrated formidable organizational talent and an impressive capacity to find creative, workable solutions to ostensibly insoluble problems—all accomplished with forbearance, collegiality and unfailing humor.”

In 1994, after a six year hiatus, Fordham College at Rose Hill revived the tradition of bestowing Excellence in Teaching Awards upon faculty; Walsh was one of three honored for “achieving excellence in the fields of the humanities, social science, and natural and life science.”

Seven years later, his reputation as a “classroom magician,” able to transform difficult statistical formulae into readily understood concepts, was still intact; his 40-year Bene Merenti citation noted that while teaching statistics was difficult, “John has succeeded in getting his students to ‘learn their stuff.’”

Frederick J. Wertz, Ph.D., Interim Dean, Fordham College at Lincoln Center, and professor of psychology, was chairman of the department when Walsh retired.

“He contributed tremendously to the education of both undergraduate students at Fordham College at Rose Hill and the graduate students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, most of all in the area of statistics and quantitative psychology.  He was also generous in service to the department and was a wonderful colleague,” he said.

Walsh wasn’t the only one with deep Fordham roots. Like Walsh, his wife, Nora Walsh, FCLC ’90, grew up in the Bronx neighborhood of Highbridge. The two attended the same grammar school and church, Sacred Heart. They didn’t connect until his junior year at Fordham though, when a mutual friend who was dating him told him that Nora could help him type up his papers. They hit it off, wed in 1958, and were married for 60 years. Nora eventually earned a degree—in social sciences—at Fordham. Two of their children, Christopher J. Walsh, GABELLI ’96, and Maura E. Walsh, FCRH ’97, followed suit. His grandson Christopher is currently a sophomore at Fordham College Rose Hill and his grandson James is a junior at the Fordham Prep. In addition, his son Timothy D. Walsh attended Loyola University Maryland and his daughter Meghan A. Walsh attended LeMoyne University, both Jesuit schools.

Nora Walsh said she was touched to meet former students at her husband’s funeral who had traveled to Scarsdale, where the couple lived until recently, from as far away as Boston to attend the service. It was evidence, she said, of the impact he had on their lives.

“He had so many things that he was interested in, his brain seemed like a storage room. It had so much in it, and he could pull pieces out at the drop of a hat. He was a gentle loving person, a generous man,” she said.

“I don’t ever remember him ever being critical of anything I wanted to do, and he would have supported me as he supported his children in anything we wanted to do.”

In addition to his wife, Walsh is survived by his children, Kerry Walsh Skelly and her husband, Jerome; Timothy Walsh, and his wife, Kristine; Aileen Schast, and her husband, David; Christopher Walsh and his wife, Corinne; Meghan Walsh; and Maura Walsh. He is also survived by his grandchildren Patrick, Christopher, Nicholas, James, and Julia; his older brother James, and his wife, Catherine; and 13 nieces and nephews.

Memorial donations in Walsh’s honor may be made to the Bowery Missions, 432 Park Ave. South, New York NY 10016.

The answer is yes, according to a study by David Glenwick, PhD, professor of psychology.

In collaboration with Cassie Fichter, a senior at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, Glenwick studied two groups of 4-to-5-year-olds at the Bloomingdale Head Start Program in Manhattan, comparing their accuracy and persistence in throwing a ball into a basket. Each group consisted of 26 students.

They found that when humor was incorporated into the task, the children performed better.

One group of children in the study performed the task with a typical basketball set-up, which researchers deemed a “neutral condition.” The other group performed the same task, except with a cut-out of a clown behind the basket. Researchers labeled this a “humor condition” and asked the group to help the clown make a “silly cake” with ingredients—an umbrella, an elephant, and a duck, which were pictured on the balls.

Glenwick and Fichter found that for the first five shots, the groups did not differ in their success rate—probably because the activity was new and the interest was strong in both groups. However, with greater repetition came more disparity. After many shots, the children participating in the humor conditions showed a 72 percent success rate, while the success rate of the neutral conditions group was at 53 percent.

Drawing upon previous research on humor, Glenwick proposes that there are several possible reasons why the kids in the humor group performed better. One reason could be that the humor helped the children focus their attention and maintain their interest and motivation. Additionally, he said, humor may have helped to reduce their anxiety in the test situation.

Another hypothesis, said Glenwick, is that humor “helps kids achieve a sense of mastery. When you understand a joke, it brings in certain cognitive processes involving problem solving, and you feel a sense of mastery because you get the joke.”

According to Glenwick, though humor had been studied in regard to cognitive learning and the acquisition of information, before his study with Fichter, no one had considered how humor positively affects young children’s acquisition of motor behaviors.

He believes an understanding of the positive effects of humor on children’s motor skills may have some important broader applications, particularly in physical education classes and with participation on sports teams.

“What we’re suggesting here is that in addition to the kind of tough-love approach that a lot of gym teachers and coaches take, the introduction of some elements of humor might actually improve performance and cause kids to be more motivated and engaged,” Glenwick said.

Humor may also help children who are undergoing physical therapy, keeping them interested and focused in what can sometimes be challenging or very repetitive tasks.

Glenwick and Fichter’s article on their findings, “The Effect of Humor on Preschoolers’ Motor Task Performance,” has been published in the April 2015 issue of the Psychology and Education.

–Nina Heidig