Last year’s Russian invasion of Ukraine dramatically expanded long-festering divisions in the Orthodox Christian Church.

In a lecture at the Lincoln Center campus on Monday, Oct. 30, Nadieszda Kizenko, Ph.D., will examine this problem from a historical perspective and consider how Orthodox Christianity can move forward.

“What Russia’s attack on Ukraine did was expose the problems in Orthodoxy that had been simmering for a long time,” said Kizenko, a professor of history and director of the religious studies program at the University at Albany.

The tensions between the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Russian Orthodox Church began in earnest in 2018 when some Ukrainian Orthodox clerics asked for permission to become autocephalous, or independent.

His All Holiness Bartholomew, the archbishop of Constantinople and Ecumenical Patriarch, granted the request, but Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, questioned whether he had the authority to approve it. After Kirill backed the Russian government’s invasion in 2022, the two churches became estranged.

In “A Vanishing Point: Unity in Orthodoxy and the Ukraine Crisis,” Kizenko will highlight three structural issues that Orthodox Christianity needs to address: The authority to grant autocephaly; the process that Orthodox Christians rely on to work together, known as conciliarity; and the wisdom of establishing a “state church.”

The Russian Orthodox Church fully embraced the church/state model, while the Ecumenical Patriarchate hasn’t been attached to a single country since the end of World War I, and has therefore been much more international in focus, said Kizenko.

“These are two extremes, and other Orthodox churches fall somewhere in between,” she said.

“But the question for Orthodox Christians is, ‘When we think about the church and the world, is the world a dangerous, secular place that we need to turn our back on and be extremely cautious about? Or do we accept that the world, as it is now, is where God has put us and his church?”

Aristotle Papanikolaou, Ph.D., a professor of theology who along with George E. Demacopoulos, Ph.D., co-founded the Orthodox Christian Studies Center, said that Kizenko’s talk will be of interest to anyone concerned with the rise of religious nationalism.

Far-right movements in Europe have latched onto religion in ways that are reminiscent of the way the Russian government has partnered with the Russian Orthodox Church, and he noted that there are also similar movements afoot in the United States.

“People often try to box things in and say ‘This is a religious issue,’ ‘This is an ethnic issue,’ ‘This is a cultural issue.’ I don’t think they realize how those things are intertwined, and what we’re seeing in post-Communist Russia and Ukraine and the Orthodox world in general is how much religion, ethnicity, culture, and politics are all intertwined with each other,” he said.

“Nadieszda can definitely illuminate that history and help us understand why it’s still the case in the present.”

Register for the event here.

The minor is part of Fordham’s new Asian American studies program, which faculty members hope to continue to expand.

“The student population is really diverse,” said Stephen Hong Sohn, Ph.D., English professor and Thomas F.X. and Theresa Mullarkey Chair in Literature. “Not only do we want Asian American students and Asian students to have a place to explore their backgrounds and identities, but it’s really important for all students to take these types of classes because they need to learn about other cultures, other identities.”

Coursework

The minor will require students to take six courses: Introduction to Asian American Studies; four electives, such as Asian American Art and Representing Asians in Journalism and Media; and one course in another race and ethnic studies area such as African & African American studies.

Students will pay particular attention to themes such as race, gender, sexuality, capital, and empire.

Faculty said the minor will help provide students with skills and knowledge they can utilize for future graduate studies as well as careers in law, education, health care, government, journalism, and more.

“Being able to give students greater vocabulary to contextualize the things that are actually going on—and the currents that are going on with Asian American populations—and to think of them with more complexity, that’s the key,” Sohn said. “It’s always about thinking more broadly, thinking more expansively, so that you’re not in a rush to make sort of surface-level judgments.”

The program involves faculty from a variety of disciplines, including literature, journalism, and history.

“No one discipline, or even set of disciplines, is really adequate to understanding Asian America as a political project, Asian America as a social relation, Asian America as an identity,” said James Kim, Ph.D., associate professor of English and comparative literature, who helped lead the efforts to launch the program. “You need all these disciplines—and the conversations that get generated between these disciplines.—in order to have any type of understanding of Asian America.”

A New York Education

Kim said that New York City will be a large part of the learning experience for students, through partnerships and experiences with local organizations, like the Museum of Chinese in America or the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.

“One thing that’s going to make us distinctive is we’re in New York,” he said. “This is home to the largest Asian American population in the continental United States, so we’ll be able to create a bunch of learning opportunities for our students.”

Kim also said that they’ll be working closely with Fordham Law School’s Center on Asian Americans and the Law.

“One of the founders [of that program]is the Hon. Denny Chin [senior judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit], and he’s very eager to collaborate with the minor, do things like guest lectures, co-teaching, maybe event programming,” Kim said.

A Better Understanding of History and Culture

Faculty members who had been developing the program said it became even more necessary in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which increased discrimination against Asian Americans, as well as the 2021 shooting of Asian American women in Atlanta spas.

“There was a clear need on campus for spaces and conversations around Asian American identities and backgrounds,” Sohn said.

Kim said that having an Asian American Studies program is essential to helping students understand the “larger social, historical, and political forces that are producing these kinds of crises,” particularly because these types of “traumatic events change communities.”

Both Kim and Sohn said there was strong interest in and support for the program, both from current students and alumni.

“Asian American communities have been going through a pretty traumatic time for the past few years, and I would love for students to gain a sense of historical perspective that we have been here before, this has happened before,” Kim said.

“We are so honored and excited to have the incomparable visionary artist Tonya Pinkins at Fordham Theatre. Her presence will have a transformational impact on the program and within Fordham University,” said May Adrales, director of the Fordham Theatre program.

The endowed chair was established in 2011 by acclaimed actor and alumnus Denzel Washington, FCLC ’77, to connect students with well-known industry professionals. Every fall semester, the chair teaches and works closely with students on performances and productions. Past chairs include Golden Globe-winning actress Regina Taylor, Tony Award-winning director Kenny Leon, and, most recently, Tony award-winning set designer Mimi Lien. 

Pinkins, the 13th chair holder, is no stranger to the stage. She has “won or been nominated for nearly every award there is in the American theater,” according to her IMDb profile. She was nominated for three Tony Awards, winning one in 1992 for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, Jelly’s Last Jam. She also earned Clarence Derwent, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel, Obie, and AUDELCO awards, and has been nominated for numerous other honors. 

Pinkins’ talents span the entertainment industry. She is an actress with more than 20 years in daytime television, appearing in popular television shows like Fear the Walking Dead, Madam Secretary, and Gotham, and performing in nine Broadway shows. Pinkins is also a filmmaker. Her award-winning debut feature film Red Pill was named an official selection at the 2021 Pan African Film Festival, won the Best Black Lives Matter Feature and Best First Feature at the Mykonos International Film Festival, and is nominated for festival awards worldwide. As an author, she has written two books, Get Over Yourself! How to Drop the Drama and Claim the Life You Deserve (Hachette Books, 2006) and Red Pill Unmasked: A Movie Making Memoir (Red Pill Movie 2020 LLC) and essays that have received international attention. She is also a podcaster, a singer who is performing in Manhattan this summer, an activist, and a mother of four. 

Pinkins is also a longtime educator. She has taught young artists at institutions across the world, including American University in Beirut, Old Globe London, the National Theater, Yale, ACT, UT Austin, Rutgers, UCSD, USD, University of Louisville, City College in New York, and New York University. 

Beginning this fall semester, Pinkins will become an integral part of the Fordham Theatre program, attending and offering feedback for student performances and leading workshops that center on building resilience, learning through failure, and taking creative risks. She will also teach an advanced course in her discipline, Creating a Character, where students will develop the skills necessary to breathe life and imagination into their performances.

“I am looking forward to learning how my work and experience can be of service to the architects of the future of the arts in our world,” said Pinkins.

“Asian American literature always responds to the historical moment, whether it’s Japanese American incarceration, whether it’s 9/11, Asian American writers always want to remind us that we shouldn’t be so quick to judge people based upon how they look,” Sohn said at the April 25 installation ceremony.

In this case, Sohn highlighted how the COVID-19 pandemic and its roots in China spurred a rise in racism and attacks against Asian Americans. But, Sohn noted, Asian American writers have to tackle the issue of racism against their community “every 20 years” or so, dating back to Japanese internment camps during World War II.

“It reminds us that we’re all interdependent, meaning that we all have to rely on each other to create a collective social awareness, that we need to treat each other with complexity,” he said.

Since 2020, more than a dozen books have been published by Asian American authors on the pandemic, and for his lecture, Sohn read all of them, aiming to find common patterns and themes. As he was reading, he said he was most drawn to the “life writings,” such as memoirs, essays, and autobiographies.

He cited three examples that provided a deeper understanding of the pandemic period: disability advocate Alice Wong’s Year of the Tiger essay collection; The Monsoon Diaries: A Doctor’s Journey of Hope and Healing from the ER Frontlines to the Far Reaches of the World by Dr. Calvin Sun, who worked as an emergency room physician; and Laura Gao’s Messy Roots graphic narrative.

“[They’re] telling us that we have to be careful about the different vulnerable subjects,” he said. “And it’s not just Asian Americans, obviously, it’s lots of other communities, it’s disabled communities. It’s health care workers like Dr. Sun. And it’s everyday individuals like Laura Gao, who just want to be connected with their family.”

In Gao’s graphic novel, she depicts herself playing ping-pong with a woman in January 2020 who keeps talking about China in a racist way, until Gao gets fed up. At first, Sohn showed that it was just her dealing with this one instance of racial aggression, but later in the piece, Gao shows a multitude of examples from news coverage of Asian Americans being blamed for the pandemic and abused in response to it.

“It tells us about the social structure that has changed in that three month period, and ramped up, and it’s something affecting a larger group of people,” he said. “You can’t have this individual microaggression without that larger social structural overlay.”

A Connection with Tom Mullarkey

Sohn was officially hired to fill the Mullarkey Chairin January 2020, but with the pandemic, the official installation ceremony was put off. He recalled how when he first found out about the position, he felt a tug to apply due to some of the parallels between him and Thomas Mullarkey, one of the chair’s namesakes.

“I share a key affiliation with Tom as we’re both the children of immigrants who no doubt saw America as a land of opportunity and refuge,” Sohn said.

But Sohn also noted that their interactions with Korea overlapped—Mullarkey had served in Korea in the armistice period from 1954 to 1956, which was exactly what Sohn was researching for his book project. This “strange parallel” helped encourage Sohn to apply.

Sohn also shared with the audience some history about Mullarkey, who was a double Ram—graduating from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1954 and Fordham Law School in 1959. He served on the Board of Trustees for almost 10 years before he passed away in 1993.

“The legend goes that [Mullarkey] originally planned to major in business, but a Jesuit tapped him on the shoulder and told him, ‘No, you should probably go into the humanities. It would be better for you,’” Sohn said. “He ascended the ranks of Wall Street and was very successful in finance. But what you might not know is that he was always well known for his abilities to write and speak eloquently—skills no doubt cultivated in part by his time as an English major here at Fordham.”

This inspired Mullarkey to want to give back, Sohn said, something continued by his wife Theresa, who received an honorary doctorate from the University in 2005.

Sohn said that becoming the Mullarkey Chair has been “transformative.”

“I’ve been able to travel, go to archives, do the kind of research that I’ve always wanted to do without some of the obstacles that we would traditionally have,” he said. “So it means everything to me to have this opportunity.”

“We need to change from thinking that we are masters of the universe to realizing that we are siblings, or kin, with all other beings in the community of creation, loved by God,” she said.

Sister Johnson’s talk, “Theology & the Earth: Human Beings in the Community of Creation” helped launch a new initiative, the Elizabeth A. Johnson, C.S.J., Endowed Fund for Theology & the Earth. The fund, which has received initial donations from Margaret Sharkey, PCS ’15, will go to advance the study of theology and our responsibility to the Earth.

Sister Johnson was joined by respondents Jason Morris, Ph.D., professor of biology, and Michael Pirson, Ph.D., the James A. F. Stoner Endowed Chair in Global Sustainability at the Gabelli School of Business.

Creation is Ongoing

The need for change has become apparent: A report issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the planet is likely to cross a critical threshold for global warming within the next decade.

To spur action, Sister Johnson said humans need to feel a greater connection with living things. That means casting aside old ways of thinking about the world, such as the idea that the creation of the world ceased entirely once it was done.

“One striking metaphor from a British philosopher puts it this way: the Creator ‘makes all things and keeps them in existence from moment to moment, not like a sculptor who makes a statue and leaves it alone, but like a singer who keeps her song in existence at all times,’” she said.

Once we realize we’re part of that same journey, she said, it’s easier to see the intrinsic value in all living things. Pope Francis addressed this in his encyclical Laudato Si, when he wrote, “Creation is a gift in which every creature has its own value and significance.”

“As creatures, we have more in common with other species than what separates us. We are kin to the bear, the raven, and the bugs,” Sister Johnson said.

Obstacles to Overcome

Sister Johnson said we need to stop thinking that humans stand apart from the natural world. She blamed this thinking on the “hierarchy of being,” a concept that ranks beings according to their “spirit.” In it, rocks are at the bottom, followed by plants, animals, humans, and angels.

“Instead of a circle of kinship, this structures the world as a pyramid,” she said, noting that in the European world, this also led white men to rank women and minorities below them.

Who Needs Who?

One way to shake off the idea that humans are superior to all else is to engage in a thought experiment.

“Take away trees, and humans would suffocate. Take away humans, and trees would do just fine,” she said. “So who needs who more?”

Ultimately, human hubris about our place in the world needs to be addressed through what Sister Johnson called a “robust creation theology.” She conceded that to some religious ears, it might seem strange to be “converted to the Earth,” but noted that in Laudato Si, Pope Francis provided guidance with his words:

“Eternal life will be a shared experience of wonder, in which each creature resplendently transfigured will take its rightful place.”

“You know that famous question’ Will I see my dog in heaven?’ The answer is right here,” Sister Johnson said.

Anna Nowalk, a senior at Fordham College at Lincoln Center majoring in theology, was eager to see Johnson speak after reading her book She Who Is (Crossroads Publishing, 2002).

“The idea that God is lovingly willing us into existence constantly is one of my favorite theological concepts,” she said.

“I’m also really glad that they had someone from the Gabelli School there. If you’re talking about the need to have a sense of conversion to the environment, I think it’s very important to include business in there.”

Christian Ramirez, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill also majoring in theology, said She Who Is radically changed the way he thinks about faith and brought his copy for her to sign.

“I love this idea of the circle of the kinship of creation, rather than a pyramidal hierarchy of being. I was really interested in how she was going to incorporate feminist theology into ecological theology,” he said.

“When we create a circle of kinship where the man is displaced from the top and becomes part of the circle, that elevates all creatures.”

After seven years of working closely with a team from New York City’s Department for the Aging on a new educational intervention, Linda White-Ryan, Ph.D., and Janna Heyman, Ph.D., have developed an intervention that has proved successful on both fronts.

“As a person ages, there are many changes that take place in their life, such as the way we metabolize any substance, even if it’s aspirin in combination with alcohol, said White-Ryan, associate dean of academic affairs at the Graduate School of Social Service (GSS).

“We wanted to see if this educational intervention could really make a difference in the understanding of older adults about any of the possible risks, and how they communicate with their health care providers,” said Heyman, a professor and the Henry C. Ravazzin Chair at the GSS.

White-Ryan and Heyman began working on the intervention in 2016 with funding from the New York Public Trust.

Their research partners included Thomas Caprio, M.D., a professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center, Jacquline Berman, director of research at the New York Department for the Aging, and Manoj Pardasani, Ph.D., a former member of the GSS faculty who is now provost and vice president of academic affairs at Hunter College.

In 2018, after two years of design work, the team conducted a randomized control trial in older adult centers in Staten Island, Manhattan, and the Bronx. Participants were assigned to either the intervention group or a control group that received traditional services. The intervention group received educational material about health, physical and other aging changes, medication use, and possible adverse interactions between alcohol and medications, as well as strategies to initiate communication with physicians and other healthcare providers.

The authors of the study, which was published last fall in the journal Gerontology & Geriatrics Education, also made the information given to the intervention group available to the control group after the study was complete.

The intervention was titled Communicating with your Health Care Providers. It involved two meetings, held 10 days apart, with a total of 115 participants—55 in the intervention group and 60 in the control group. The median age of participants was 72, and 60% were women.

Role-Playing to Instill Confidence

The meetings were conducted in group settings, which was key to the intervention’s success, said Heyman.

“This intervention was so powerful because it allowed older adults to really be in a room with their friends and peers and say, ‘It’s OK, we need to ask important questions to our physicians and pharmacists,” she said.

The sessions also involved role-playing, with participants attempting to have conversations with actors portraying clearly distracted healthcare professionals. They were coached on how to be assertive and ask questions they might otherwise have shied away from.

A Growing Need for a Rapidly Population

The need to help older adults feel confident about asking their doctors for information is rapidly growing. By 2034, the U.S. Census Bureau has predicted there will be more people aged 65 and over than those under 18 in the United States. At the same time, the National Council on Aging has predicted that the number of older adults struggling with substance abuse, depression, and anxiety is expected to reach 15 million by 2030.

Results

Surveys administered to participants afterward found that those in the intervention group displayed a greater awareness of the implications of combining alcohol with prescription drugs and more confidence in their ability to communicate with their doctors and pharmacists.

Although the intervention took place pre-pandemic, White-Ryan said the reception that they received from participants was so positive, they’re hopeful that it can be replicated in the future.

“These are the physiological changes and emotional changes that happen as we age, but you can have good health, and communication with your health care providers is a big piece of that,” she said.

“So this intervention gave them important information and taught them about engaging with health care providers, advocating for themselves, and reaching out to get the information so that they age well or as well as possible.”

This was the challenge that a panel of experts—together with one Holocaust survivor—addressed at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus on Jan. 26.

The event, “Remembering: Talking About the Holocaust in the 21st Century,” took place on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorates the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on Jan. 27, 1945.

Fred de Sam Lazaro, a correspondent for PBS NewsHour and director of the University of St. Thomas’ Under-Told Stories Project, moderated the evening, along with Peter Osnos, founder of PublicAffairs Books.

The discussion began with a screening of de Sam Lazaro’s 2022 PBS NewsHour segment on Nicky & Vera: A Quiet Hero of the Holocaust and the Children He Rescued (Norton Young Readers, 2021). Written and illustrated by Peter Sís, who was in the audience at the Jan. 26 event, it tells the story of Nicholas Winton, known as the “British Schindler,” who helped 669 children escape from Czechoslovakia just before the Nazi occupation.

One of ‘Winton’s Children’ Shares Her Story

One of those escapees, Eva Paddock, was interviewed by de Sam Lazaro at the event. She spoke just before the panel of experts addressed diminishing public awareness of the Holocaust amid a rise in disinformation and revisionism. In 1939, when she was 4, Paddock and her sister were placed by their parents on the last Kindertransport train leaving Prague and taken in by a foster family in England. Unlike the majority of “Winton’s children,” as they came to be known, Paddock was reunited with her parents in 1940.

Because she was so young, she needed people like her parents to help her fill in the gaps in her memory, she said. When they talked about their experiences, they did not dwell on the evil that drove them from their home, but on the gratitude they felt toward the British people.

She also shared the harrowing details of her father’s escape, which was made possible only because of the altruism of individuals, from an S.S. officer who looked the other way when he encountered him, to a stranger who paid for his flight from Brussels to London when he was told his Czechoslovakian money was no good with the country in enemy hands.

Educating Young People About the Holocaust

Holocaust education, which is mandated in schools in only 27 U.S. states, is due for a change, and her and her father’s stories should be a part of that change, Paddock said. Both stories show how even a single person has the potential to do enormous good.

“It has to come out of the history books and be made relevant to today’s generation, and I believe the way to do that is to reframe the way it’s taught,” she said.

“Certainly, it’s important to teach [people] to honor the millions lost, but I think it needs to be reframed to demonstrate the power of altruism and the power of one. Because of course, I look at Nicholas Winton, and here’s a prime example of the power of one.”

The panel that followed featured Judy Woodruff, senior correspondent, PBS NewsHour; Magda Teter, Ph.D., the Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies at Fordham; James Loeffler, Ph.D., the Jay Berkowitz Professor of Jewish History at the University of Virginia; and Linda Kinstler, author of Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends (PublicAffairs, 2022).

Their wide-ranging conversation touched on everything from the war in Ukraine and the 2017 “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally at the University of Virginia to the challenges faced by U.S. news organizations when newsworthy politicians use extreme rhetoric that was once beyond the pale.

Building a Framework for Memories

Loeffler said that when it comes to sustaining the memory of the Holocaust, it helps to remember that many people are involved—each with a different memory. This partly explains why Russian president Vladimir Putin could make the preposterous statement that Russia was invading Ukraine to fight Nazis and fascism, he said.

“One of our challenges is to build a frame so we can build an ethical response that takes the memory and brings people back together to understand what it was and what it wasn’t,” he said, noting that Paddock’s experience is instructive.

“When she was describing her own experience … she also talked about how her memory had been nursed and supplemented by people explaining to her her experience, describing things that had happened to her family and to her when she didn’t even remember,” he said.

“Memory is not just an individual flame that we nourish. It’s a social endeavor, and one of our challenges today is to figure out how we can rebuild that frame to make Holocaust memory relevant, and also build a common understanding of the past.”

Teaching About Events Leading to the Holocaust

Teter said that discussions with her students have convinced her that it might be better to place more emphasis than in the past on the lead-up to the events of the Holocaust. It’s something she does already and feels strongly about its value.

“That is what makes it relevant because they can see the processes, they can see the mental frameworks, they can see the media environment, the propaganda work that resonates with them, and the world that they are living in,” she said.

“It doesn’t just spring up in 1933. This is an outcome of a longer process. We need to recalibrate that story to include that longer story too.”

Unreliable News Sources with a Platform

Complicating the effort to recalibrate the way that the Holocaust is taught is the fact that those who would muddy the waters with obfuscation and ambiguity have access to more communications tools than in the past. Woodruff said journalists at NewsHour have had to come up with a new construct over the last several years to cope with the shattering of the traditional news delivery model.

“How do you both cover the news, be fair, cover it all, and call out something that is not the truth, that is a lie? I will tell you flat out, I’ve had difficulty with that,” she said, because she believes you cannot call someone a liar unless you know what’s in their heart and mind, an admittedly tricky endeavor.

She and her colleagues have adjusted by explicitly labeling false information as such. But given the plethora of news sources available online now, more responsibility has fallen on us as individual consumers.

“There’s a much larger burden placed on news consumers to figure out, ‘Can I trust this, can I believe this? How do I know?’ she said.

“We’re living in a much more complex, complicated moment when it comes to understanding what to believe.”

The event, which was livestreamed, can be viewed in its entirety below.

“Data science is something that’s quite interesting to me … and I knew how important it was working in my neck of the woods, but what I didn’t really quite understand was how important it is right now to everything,” said Gilmer, who presented the Clavius Distinguished Lecture at Fordham on Nov. 16—the first held since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It is really the glue, the binder of nearly every academic department— from English to psychology to biology to the hard sciences. It is opening up profound new venues across the board.”

Held in Lecture Room 3-03 at the Law School, the lecture drew more than 80 students, faculty, and guests. Since 2010, the Clavius Distinguished Lecture Series, has brought scholars, researchers and entrepreneurs to Fordham to share their knowledge with the community and the general public. The series is named after Christopher Clavius, S.J., a 16th-century mathematician and astronomer who helped develop the Gregorian calendar.

Using Data Science in Energy

Gilmer said that data science in the oil and gas industries is used to help predict what types of rocks are under the surface, locate where oil and gas might be found, prescribe how to frack a well for the best return and lowest environmental impact, track supply and demand, and predict future needs and prices.

Gilmer gave some examples of how utilizing data analytics can make a company more efficient and effective. For example, data analytics can help a company learn how to frack oil and gas with the least amount of wells into the ground.

“How do you go out there and do it with a minimum number of well bores on the surface because you have a surface impact when you’re doing any of these things, and then also trying to figure out how you’re going to keep your aquifers safe—those are all pieces in the dynamics of this project,” he said.

Utilizing informatics can also help a company operate more efficiently, Gilmer said. His software company does a lot of work in seismics—exploring below the ground to find rocks that produce oil and gas.

“In this case, [our machine]was looking for discontinuity—discontinuity in these waveforms—it was going out there and it was a way of being able to very quickly identify fault patterns [in the Earth],” he said. “The machine went out there to find the faults—this would have taken a geologist a month to figure all this stuff out.”

With that data, they were able to see how production was impacted by faults.

“You can see that the closer you were to a fault, the less production you were making,” he said.

He also highlighted how informatics can be used to track and improve upon the environmental impact of a project.

Still, Gilmer told the students that while data was essential, they should use it to address bigger problems, not get stuck in the details.

“Whether you’re a physicist, a chemist, a geologist, or what have you—you should not look at your job as being a series of formulas,” he said. “You should be thinking about how to address real problems and how to think about them.” This, he said, is “where greatness comes from.”

In addition to sharing information about data science at lectures like this one, Gilmer—who was named an EY Entrepreneur of the Year in Texas in 2012—is also committed to helping others learn more about it. He established the data analytics program at the University of Texas El Paso, with D. Frank Hsu, Ph.D., the Clavius Distinguished Professor of Science at Fordham, who also attended UTEP.

“If you don’t have the interest in doing it yourself, become good friends with somebody who’s really good at this stuff, because sometime during your lifetime, sometime in the next five or 10 years, you’re going to have a big need or a big use for these skill sets,” he said.

From Fracking to Film

While Gilmer’s background is as a geoscientist who worked in energy, he’s also had a passion for film, calling it “one of the best ways of storytelling.” He’s a managing partner of Redbud Studios and AHuevo Films, which produces and finances feature films and streaming content. Their upcoming film Alina of Cuba, starring James Franco and Ana Villafane, has made headlines as it tells the story of Fidel Castro’s daughter and her defection from Cuba.

Gilmer said he’s tried to also incorporate analytics into his film company’s work.

“We’ve been producing films for the last few years, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to do it in a smarter way,” he said. “It’s an industry that does not have a lot of good data, it doesn’t have easy access to [the data]—it is a closed-off system. It’s a very difficult business environment in which to go out there and make wise decisions.”

They’ve had to get creative to gather feedback from their audience, such as pushing out requests for Amazon reviews on social media.

“It’s really a business of building up a lot of different proxies with regards to figuring out how any of these things are going to work,” he said.

Hsu said that this was one of the best talks he’s heard, particularly in terms of the variety of topics discussed. He also joked that Gilmer—or one of his students—had their next task laid out for them: “Create a new field of movie informatics.”

This year’s Pioneering Women have enhanced all areas of the University, from endowed faculty chairs and student scholarships to community engagement programs, academic research, and facilities. Many of them have advanced Cura Personalis | For Every Student, the University’s $350 million campaign that is creating a wealth of learning opportunities for students and helping to make a Fordham education more accessible and affordable, particularly for lower-income, underrepresented, and first-generation college students.

The 2022 Pioneering Women in Philanthropy at Fordham honorees are

Kim Bepler

A Fordham trustee and the executive trustee of the Stephen E. Bepler Estate and Trust, Kim Bepler is one of the University’s most generous supporters. Since her retirement in 2002, she has devoted much of her time to philanthropy, focusing her efforts on causes directly related to the Jesuits and Jesuit education. She received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Fordham in May, and in 2007, she was a recipient of a Fordham Founder’s Award, alongside her late husband, Steve Bepler, FCRH ’64.

She recently supported the creation of an endowed chair in the natural and applied sciences, adding to the four endowed chairs—in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology—she and the estate of her husband established five years ago. She also has helped create and support student scholarships, including the Fordham Founder’s Undergraduate Scholarship Fund, and contributed to renovations to the University Church and the McShane Campus Center, among many other initiatives.

Mary Byrne, Ph.D., TMC ’72, GSAS ’78, ’83, PAR

A three-time Fordham graduate, Mary Byrne is a clinical psychologist with a private practice in Eastchester, New York, that focuses on individual psychotherapy for adults with anxiety and depression. Previously, she was a staff psychologist at Four Winds Hospital in Katonah, New York, and worked on the crisis unit of the Community Mental Health Center in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

In 2009, Byrne and her husband, Thomas Rogan, established an endowed scholarship fund at Fordham to benefit doctoral candidates in psychology. They named the fund in honor of Marvin Reznikoff, Ph.D., her doctoral dissertation mentor who became a family friend. After he died in June 2013 at age 88, Byrne spoke at a memorial service at Fordham. She said Cicero “must have been thinking about someone like Marvin” when he observed: “The life given us by nature is short, but the memory of a life well spent is eternal.”

Joy Fernandez, GABELLI ’88

After graduating from Fordham with a degree in accounting, Joy Fernandez began her career at EY in the entrepreneurial services group. After her children were born, she adopted a flexible work arrangement—and it didn’t stand in the way of her making partner in 2003: Fernandez was the Long Island office managing partner for five years before transitioning into her U.S. East regional independence leader role. She has been a generous supporter of the Gabelli School of Business Undergraduate Scholarship Fund and the school’s accounting program. EY is also an annual sponsor of the summit.

Kathleen Anne Ford, J.D., FCRH ’75, LAW ’78

Kathleen Anne Ford was a member of the first class of women to graduate from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1975. After earning a J.D. from Fordham Law School three years later, she spent her entire career in public service, including roles at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, the Organized Crime Strike Force, the United States Attorney’s Office, the Office of Enforcement Operations at the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. She received numerous awards throughout her career, including the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service, the FBI Director’s Letter of Recognition, and the SEC Chairman’s Award for Excellence.

At Fordham, she and her husband, Joseph Ford, established the Kathleen Anne Ford, FCRH ’75, LAW ’78, Endowed Scholarship Fund in 2013. Since then, it has provided financial support for two students at Fordham College at Rose Hill and two at Fordham Law.

Theresa Lim Mao, Ph.D., GSAS ’60, ’64

Theresa Lim Mao is a retired chemist, businesswoman, and philanthropist. A native of Taiwan, she moved to the U.S. when she was 18 years old. In 1964, after earning her Ph.D. from Fordham, she was hired by Exxon Mobil Corporation, then known as Esso Research, as the company’s first female chemist with a doctorate. Unfortunately, when Mao was 46, her husband, Peter T.H. Mao, M.D., died suddenly, leaving her to provide for their two daughters and prompting a career switch to real estate investment. At Fordham, Mao recently started a fund to support Campus Ministry retreats and other events to foster a greater sense of community among graduate students.

Ann Marino, R.S.H.M., MC ’63

A Catholic nun, Ann Marino grew up in the Bronx and graduated from Marymount College in Tarrytown in 1963. Sister Marino entered the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary in 1957, and since then, she’s taught in schools owned and staffed by the R.S.H.M. in New York and in Colombia, Spain, and Italy.

Anne Williams-Isom, FCLC ’86

Anne Williams-Isom is the James R. Dumpson Chair in Child Welfare Studies at the Graduate School of Social Service and a 2018 recipient of an honorary degree from the University. In January 2022, New York City Mayor Eric Adams appointed her to serve as deputy mayor for health and human services. A native of Queens and an alumna of Fordham College at Lincoln Center, she earned a J.D. from Columbia Law School. Prior to serving as a deputy mayor, Williams-Isom was chief operating officer and then chief executive officer of the Harlem Children’s Zone. She began her career in child welfare as the deputy commissioner of community and government affairs at the New York City Administration for Children’s Services.

She has been a loyal supporter of the Fordham Founder’s Undergraduate Scholarship Fund, Fordham’s Higher Education Opportunity Program, and a member of the President’s Council, a group of successful professionals and philanthropists committed to mentoring Fordham’s future leaders.

A total of 33 women have been honored as Pioneering Women in Philanthropy since 2017, helping to provide Fordham and its students with resources, mentorship, and support.

If you missed the 2022 Women’s Summit, check out our full coverage of the day.

The new chair is in addition to four others in the sciences that she and the estate of her late husband, Steve Bepler, FCRH ’64, funded in 2017. To be titled the Kim B. and Stephen E. Bepler Chair in the Natural and Applied Sciences, the new position is expected to advance the University’s vision for excellence in science education by fueling new interdisciplinary research into today’s most pressing scientific challenges.

“I want to thank Kim Bepler on behalf of the generations of Fordham students who will benefit from her extraordinary generosity,” said Tania Tetlow, president of Fordham. “Kim understands the University’s needs as well as anyone, and has long been committed to high-impact philanthropy that furthers academic excellence and our Jesuit, Catholic mission. We are deeply grateful for her gift, and for her ongoing engagement with Fordham.”

The gift comes as Fordham is seeking to expand its STEM programs in response to students’ growing interest in the sciences. It will advance the University’s $350 million fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, and its goal of supporting student-faculty research, cross-disciplinary problem solving, and other facets of academic excellence.

The new Bepler chair will enable the University to recruit an intellectual leader and well-established scholar and teacher and provide this person with robust research support, said Dennis Jacobs, Ph.D., provost of the University and senior vice president for academic affairs. The right chair holder could help attract other talent to the University while providing leadership on important scientific questions that bring multiple fields together, he said.

“Many of the most promising scientific discoveries of our day emerge in the interstitial spaces between disciplines—between biology and physics or between chemistry and math or computer science. Addressing the most complex and consequential problems facing society really requires an interdisciplinary approach,” he said, giving the examples of mitigating climate change, combatting infectious diseases, and reducing the devastating impact of neurological disorders.

For instance, he said, “when we initially fill the endowed chair, our greatest priority may be to recruit somebody who works on next-generation renewable sources of energy. Well into the future, Fordham may choose to recruit a Bepler chair who applies artificial intelligence to identify novel therapeutics or addresses other important issues and problems.”

Philanthropic Impact

The Beplers were already among the University’s most generous donors at the time of Steve Bepler’s untimely passing in 2016. They funded endowed chairs in theology and poetics and gave in support of the Fordham Founder’s Undergraduate Scholarship, the restoration of the University Church, a new organ for the church, deans’ discretionary funds, and many other areas.

Kim Bepler also recently made a major gift in support of the Joseph M. McShane, S.J. Campus Center project, another critical piece of the Cura Personalis campaign, and created the Fordham Ukraine Crisis Student Support Fund to help the University’s Ukrainian and Russian students facing financial peril because of the Russian invasion.

“With this bold and generous investment, Kim helps set the pace for leadership support,” said Roger A. Milici, Jr., vice president for development and University relations at Fordham. “Our Trustees have strongly supported all of Fordham’s recent fundraising campaigns: their gifts have accounted for 35% or more of each effort. Fordham’s philanthropic culture is dynamic, and we are committed to helping our mission partners use their wealth and generosity to improve the human condition.”

The four other Bepler chairs in the sciences—established as part of a $10.5 million gift—include a chair in biology, held by Silvia Finnemann, Ph.D., who studies the neurobiology of the human retina, and one in chemistry, held by Joshua Schrier, Ph.D., who is pursuing possibilities for automated scientific research.

The University is seeking to fill the other two chairs—one previously held by the mathematician Hans-Joachim Hein, Ph.D., and one that will be directed towards biophysics, Jacobs said.

The gifts to establish these four chairs, as well as the new chair, reflect Steve Bepler’s desire to give back to the University by investing in world-class science programs that he felt any world-class university needs, Kim Bepler said.

“Steve deeply loved Fordham, and it’s a privilege to be able to help realize his vision for the University and cement his legacy like this,” she said. “I’m honored to be counted among those who are supporting our extraordinary science faculty, with their dedication that so clearly shows the Jesuit principle of magis at work, and I’m excited to see how this professorship will help our science programs grow in new directions.”

Building Connections

Schrier said he decided to come to Fordham as a Bepler chair because of the University’s Jesuit identity and because the position offered greater freedom to not only pursue research but also involve undergraduate students in it.

The endowed chair creates a few different benefits, he said—it expands the faculty and creates capacity for new types of classes that might not be offered otherwise. And by allowing for exploratory, proof-of-concept projects, “it really kind of serves as seed money for doing creative and exciting things and then taking those initial results and showing them to federal funders,” he said.

“There’s just tremendous value for interdisciplinary work” in the applied sciences, said Schrier, whose own research applies computer simulations and machine learning to the search for applications for perovskites, a crystalline mineral.

“I hope that the holder of this position will be able to build connections and ties with different departments here at Fordham and show students how all of this type of work is connected,” he said. “I know I have a lot of fun talking to colleagues in math, talking to and working with colleagues in computer science and physics. I think interdisciplinary [work]is great.”

He spoke of a number of such projects, including his work with chemistry and computer science professors to develop teaching labs that expose chemistry students to data science, a model they published last year in the Journal of Chemical Education.

“I’m really excited about [the new Bepler chair], and I look forward to meeting the holder of the chair,” Schrier said, “because it’s always great to add to and build our intellectual community here at Fordham.”

The Kim and Steve Bepler chairs have contributed to an increase of more than threefold in the number of endowed chairs at Fordham over the past two decades. The new chair in the natural and applied sciences will bring that number to 73.

Lien recently spoke to Fordham News in Pope Auditorium—the same space where she designed a set for a Fordham production more than a decade ago—where she reflected on her career and the semester ahead.  

How did you get into set design? 

I studied architecture as an undergrad. At that time, I didn’t know much about theater, but I was interested in thinking about space in a more conceptual and sculptural way, and then applying that framework to an architectural context that exists in real space with real people. While exploring how architecture can tell a story, I stumbled into set design. 

What is it about set design that you’re passionate about?

Set design is really central to a theater production because it establishes a physical world. You can have this world that is like a laboratory for life. It can be completely surreal or fictional. It’s a way to create really complete worlds that might be something that you haven’t encountered before, something that’s a little strange—something that moves you. 

What’s something about set design that most people don’t know about? 

One of my favorite things about being a set designer is searching for materials that suit a performance’s design objective and intention. What kind of material can create this image or illusion within the needs and confines of a theatrical stage and performance? Most of the time, those materials are not designed for how I’m going to use them, so I get endlessly amused while looking for industrial materials that were made for a different purpose. For example, I might be looking for something that’s shiny but also lightweight, or something that looks like falling ash. One time, I created a huge pile of red sweeping compound for a production of Macbeth, which represented internal organs of the body. I wanted it to be red because, obviously, there are a lot of references to blood in Macbeth! 

What brought you to Fordham? 

I’ve actually worked here before. Sixteen years ago, I designed the set for a production of Top Girls, which was directed by Erica Schmidt. But it was May Adrales, the new head of the Fordham Theatre program, who brought me in as the Denzel Washington Chair. May and I have collaborated together on a number of projects in the past. One day, she emailed me and asked if I would do it, and I thought it sounded amazing. 

What are you most excited about doing here?

Fordham has really well-rounded and solid training in theater. I’ve met alumni who studied directing, design, and production, and everyone is really well-trained and grounded with a solid foundation in theater. I’m excited to challenge the notions of what theater and performance can be and really put design forward in that conversation. It’s something that I think a lot about in my own work, and I’m excited to share that with the Fordham community. 

I just had my first class today, and my students all seem amazing. Most of them are fourth-year students, so they have already been through foundational design training, and I have a good mix of students from different disciplines. I’m excited to have people with a range of experience because what I want to focus on in my class is not so much the nuts and bolts of set design, but the conceptual ideas behind design and how we can push the envelope. I have structured my course to focus on designing for performances through a more architectural lens because that’s my background and how I have approached design. I feel like the key components of thinking about space architecturally, like scale, volume, materials, light, and sequencing of spaces, are all things that you might learn in architecture school, but they’re also totally applicable to theater design. 

For their first project, my students need to find a site on campus and then conceive of a performance that might take place in that site. So I’m also training designers to think about being conceivers of an event, too, and not necessarily responding to a script. I want to treat design as more of a holistic theater-making discipline, as opposed to, here’s where I fit into it.

What professional projects are you working on? 

I just returned yesterday from opening an opera at the San Francisco Opera, which will run for the next few weeks. It’s a new John Adams opera, Antony and Cleopatra, using the Shakespeare play as the libretto, along with a few other sources. Now I’m in the midst of finalizing the design for a new revival of Sweeney Todd on Broadway, which has just been announced. 

How do you feel when you reflect on your life’s work? 

I feel incredibly blessed, lucky, and privileged to have been able to create projects on some of the scales that I have. Every project has a whole different set of circumstances, and therefore a whole new set of things to learn about and research. I’m excited to continue working in the avenues that I have worked in, as well as revisit my architectural roots and branch out into public art projects outside the theater. But mostly, I feel like this chair is such a gift and an opportunity to give back a little bit and to share some of what I’ve learned and encountered on my journey, even though there’s still a lot to learn. 

What advice do you have for the next generation of theater makers? 

What constitutes a performance? Space, event, and spectators, but that can happen anywhere … inside a theater, but also a street. As long as you have some action that’s happening and somebody who’s watching it, it could be defined as a form of theater. But what’s amazing about theater is that anything is possible. The reason that I transitioned from architecture to theater is that in the latter world, you have the magic of illusion. You can do things like figure out how to rig a piece of concrete so that it appears to be floating. So my advice to students is to be tenacious. Pursue the impossible, because in theater, anything is possible. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.