“One word: resilient.”

Resilience was an apt, recurring theme at the ceremony, held at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus in the Bronx, as the grads prepare to meet the surging demand for social workers in and beyond New York City. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently projected that employment for social workers will grow faster than the average for all occupations.

“All of us have come to this profession for one reason or another: a history of trauma, the yearning to help those in need, or to be the advocates that they did not have when growing up,” said Wallace-Mills, who directs the supplemental nutrition and home energy assistance programs in Ulster County, New York.

As she looked out on her 900-plus classmates, she said she saw “faces of resilience, motivation, and hope,” people with the desire and skills to make a difference.

‘Do Good by Doing No Further Harm’

For Jennifer Jones Austin, LAW ’93, CEO of the anti-poverty Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, the ceremony was a kind of homecoming. Exactly 30 years after she earned a J.D. from Fordham Law School, the University awarded her an honorary degree for her “commitment to creating economic opportunity and greater social mobility for the most marginalized in our communities.”

Wiping away tears, she encouraged graduates to “do good by doing no further harm,” which, she noted, would require them “to do the things that aren’t always easy to do, to be the lone voice at the table, to have the courage to not look away, but lean in.”

Jones Austin, who once described herself as a “lawyer with a social worker’s heart,” said she has worked side by side with social workers throughout her career, including as deputy commissioner of the New York City Administration for Children’s Services and senior vice president of the United Way of New York City. In February, she moderated Fordham’s annual James Dumpson Symposium, this year titled “Leading for Change: How to Create Sustainable Impact in Children and Family Services.”

On a personal note, she said she’s grateful for the way social workers accompanied her 13 years ago when she was diagnosed with a life-threatening cancer and a “99% chance of imminent death.” They were instrumental to her own “mental and emotional journey to complete healing,” she said.

Finding the Right Balance

Addressing graduates and the friends and family who’ve supported them along the way, Tania Tetlow, president of Fordham University, joked that she could omit some of her staple advice.

“At all of my other graduation speeches, I urge students to go out and matter to the world,” she said. “But I don’t have to say that here. You’ve already made that choice. You will literally go out to feed the hungry, comfort the grieving, visit those who are imprisoned, and gather the little children.”

Indeed, Fordham social work students, in particular, know what it means to practice the Jesuit principle of cura personalis, or care of the whole person, she said.

Sharing a few anecdotes from her days running a domestic violence law clinic in New Orleans, Tetlow encouraged attendees to take a practical approach to solving societal problems.

“I hope you will balance the need to turn up the pressure by railing against injustice with the need to sit at the table and find the answers, mired in the complexity necessary to solve complicated problems,” she said.

‘Be Relentless’

At the beginning of the ceremony, Debra M. McPhee, Ph.D., dean of the graduate school—the largest school of social work in New York state—told graduates that “connection is the lifeblood of the social work profession,” and they’d need to foster it as they “step into the lives of those who are struggling, disenfranchised, and often in pain.”

“Social workers bear witness to the nation’s deepest flaws,” she said. “Our work confirms that inequality, racism, and oppression are not just political buzzwords, but systemic realities that shape lives.”

McPhee implored the graduates to “be relentless in shining light into dark corners, exposing the consequences of oppression and injustice, and working tirelessly to rectify them.”

“You turned challenges and losses that you faced into your best teachers,” she said. “You didn’t let your experiences disadvantage you, but rather they inform the way you show up in the world: with compassion and a rare sense of humanity and humility.”

In an address, one of this year’s graduates, Samantha Ives, spoke about the challenges of going back to school—in her case, resuming her studies after a 20-year gap, during which she raised two children and sought to clarify her direction through various efforts such as volunteering and serving on a nonprofit board.

“I considered going back to school, but three years of actor training 20 years ago wasn’t worth much anywhere I looked—until Fordham,” she said. She brought her 1997 transcripts to one of the school’s information sessions, “and they [oriented] all of who I had been and all of who I was at that moment toward a degree that spoke to who I wanted to become,” said Ives, who earned a bachelor’s degree in organizational leadership.

The school bestowed degrees on 124 graduates at the ceremony, held at Fordham Preparatory School, adjoining Fordham’s Rose Hill campus. They included approximately 25 military veterans and a principal dancer with New York City Ballet, Ashley de Florio, who earned a bachelor’s degree in political science magna cum laude.

The Charles A. O’Neill, S.J., Memorial Award was presented to Angela-Filomena C. LoCascio, who completed the school’s honors program while earning her bachelor’s degree in English. After that, graduates crossed the stage to receive their ceremonial scrolls.

One of them, Carmen Damiani-Hacker, was joined onstage by her daughter, Marissa Hacker, who graduated that day from Fordham College at Rose Hill.

Reading Kant on Lunch Breaks

In her remarks, Ives touched on the experience of returning students and the particular strengths they brought to their schooling. “We took science with classmates who had just finished high school science. We read Kant on our lunch breaks,” she said.

“Many of you coached your own kids through their own transitions to college,” she said. “You changed jobs, you moved once or twice, and you’re still here. We all came here. We didn’t need to find ourselves. We needed to hone the tools we carried. Those tools are battle tested. They are worn, they are strong. We’ve spent the last few years sharpening them up.”

“We’re going to need them,” she said. “We’re going to go apply for that promotion, ask for that raise, start grad school or law school or a brand new profession.”

She acknowledged the graduates’ loved ones who were present, watching online, or present in spirit.

“Every late night, every missed dinner, every Zoom class broke down old walls and made room to grow. But we needed you,” she said. “We need your hearts and your hands, because we’re not done building.”

“Our foundation is strong. Our tools are sharp. We have become architects, and the world we are going to build will be spectacular.”

These were some of the words of encouragement and inspiration that Fordham President Tania Tetlow shared with the Graduate School of Education (GSE) Class of 2023 on Monday, May 22.

At the diploma ceremony, held in front of the Walsh Family Library on the University’s Rose Hill campus, Fordham bestowed master’s and doctoral degrees upon students across GSE’s programs, from newly minted classroom teachers and school psychologists to educational leaders and administrators looking to advance in their careers.

Accelerated Teaching Program Leads to ‘Amazing’ Job

For Margaret Costikyan, the day capped a five-year journey that began in 2018, when she enrolled at Fordham College at Rose Hill as an undergraduate. She knew she wanted to become a classroom teacher—and she knew Fordham’s accelerated five-year Master of Science in Teaching program would get her there faster.

Now, having earned an M.S.T. one year after receiving a B.S. in psychology and sociology, she’ll be teaching full time at the Bronx public school where she did her student teaching.­

“The school where I was placed, PS 71—the community there is amazing,” Costikyan said. “I’ve met so many teachers who want to support me as a first-year teacher, so I’m really excited and thankful to Fordham for that.”

A Focus on the Socioemotional Needs of Children

Fordham GSE’s partnership with the New York City Department of Education was a draw for Samantha McCusker, who received a master’s degree in school psychology.

“Being able to use that as a connection to network was a big point,” McCusker said, adding that when she initially met with professors at GSE, “it just felt like home to me.” Since 2021, her second year in the program, she’s been working as a school psychologist in Harlem, and she takes pride in being able to serve her students.

“Learning from the kids that I’m around and how they live, and seeing how I can best support them, is probably the most impactful part of my job,” she said.

The socioemotional needs of students have been front of mind for most educators, especially as schools have tried to catch up from the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, remote learning, and all the associated stressors.

Shannon Urabe, who completed the online M.S.T. program, began teaching sixth and seventh graders at the Windward School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side during her time in the program. She has felt increasingly optimistic as she’s watched her students readjust to in-person learning.

“Seeing how the kids have swung back around from COVID and seeing how they’re re-learning how to engage with one another has been good to see. They’re embracing connecting with one another,” said Urabe, whose parents came from Hawaii to watch her graduate.

Finding Community—and Benefiting from Program Flexibility

Urabe said the flexibility of the online program was a big factor in her grad school experience. “It was an easy transition [beginning the program in August 2020, during COVID],” she said, “because they were already prepared for this type of learning,”

The flexible nature of GSE’s programs was also a draw for Joseph Dujmovic, a Queens native who earned a Master of Science degree in the Educational Leadership, Administration, and Policy division. Over his two years in the program, which included courses in person and online, he was able to keep up with classes while spending summers in Croatia and working as division head of the upper school at the Academy of St. Joseph in Greenwich Village.

Dujmovic said he appreciated receiving one of the faith-based scholarships Fordham offers to employees of Catholic schools, and he built close relationships with faculty. A particular highlight, he said, was a class with adjunct professor Anthony Miserandino, Ph.D., GSE ’77, ’84, on implementing change at an institutional level. “It was incredible, and he’s been a great mentor ever since.”

For Maria Cimina, who began the master’s program in mental health counseling fully online in 2021 but transitioned to in-person classes over her two years, building close relationships with her cohort was central to her experience. She became one of the leaders of the Student Association for Mental Health Counseling, a network for both students and alumni of the program, with Professor Eric Chen, Ph.D., calling her “a star of our mental health counseling student leadership team.”

“Finding a space in the community was really important for me,” Cimina said. “We had such a strong cohort, and it was really important to reinvest in the people and the work that we were doing, and really drive home how important it was to be present on campus.

“There’s a beautiful sense of community. If you’re willing to take advantage of that, the program itself will expand in value tenfold.”

Read the full story at Fordham Law News.