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.”

Eric C. Chen, Ph.D., a professor of counseling psychology at the Graduate School of Education (GSE) who oversees the Clinical Mental Health Services in the Bronx Community (CCMH) program, said the key to succeeding will be the individual’s ability to stay flexible and adaptable. The pandemic touched everyone’s lives, he said, but in different and unique ways. How people move forward will depend on many factors.

“It depends on what kind of children you are talking about—their race, ethnicity, where they live, whether they are in public schools or private, whether their parents have the option or privilege to work remotely,” he said, “or things like their housing arrangement—such as whether they have space, multiple rooms, whether they have a caretaker who could help them, or whether they live in multigenerational households.”

Dealing with Trauma

Laura Guy, a psychotherapist in private practice who is the clinic’s outreach/program coordinator, said the clinic’s program staff is acutely aware that even before the pandemic hit, many students in the Bronx were dealing with trauma stemming from racism, poverty, and violence. The clinic offers remote sessions to adolescents in the borough, so it was well-suited to offering help during the lockdowns of 2020.

“These students have had a lot of trauma to begin with, and for the most part, schools were very organizing, safe places to go. When they shut down, that was very hard for many students to deal with,” said Guy.

“They are very resilient families, but everything was thrown into chaos. COVID rates were much higher, in part because their parents are essential workers.”

Robert Garvey, a clinic program assistant and a master’s student in the psychology department, taught high school biology last year and witnessed the challenges students faced.

“The kids who are 14 and 15 became the primary caregivers for their younger siblings. They had to sit with them on Zoom calls for school while also completing their virtual work for themselves,” he said.

“A lot of them took on those family roles even more than they usually would.”

Readjusting to Classrooms

With this history in mind, Garvey suggested that teachers keep their expectations in check for the first few weeks, as students readjust to sitting still at a desk for extended amounts of time.

He knows sometimes teachers feel the pressure to have “30 students who are looking at the board and doing the work.”

“But they might not be ready, right?” he said. “It’s a muscle. They have to build that.”

Another issue that will come up is the fact that for some students, remote learning was a positive experience. Garvey noted that some of his students with special needs got more one-on-one attention than they might have before the pandemic, and Guy said she had students who had been dealing with bullying in school, which was no longer an issue when they were learning at home.

Chen said a good analogy is that every student is like a storybook, and the teacher begins each year with 20 to 30 of them.

“Until I start the first page, I won’t know what the story is about. I want to have time to read all 20 or 30 books, but if I’m too tired, I won’t likely read the book.,” he said.

“So it requires me to have the mental capacity to start that process of getting to know each of the students.”

Chen’s biggest worry is that teachers will get burned out. Self-care, he said, can help prevent what he called “compassion fatigue.”

“Our resilience is like a muscle that we need to exercise on a regular basis, so we need to identify strategies that help us stretch this muscle of resilience, such as doing yoga, riding a bike around the city, or taking the dog for a walk,” he said.

“Teachers need to find a way to monitor their own well-being and know when they seem to reach that tipping point.”

A Role for Parents

Tamique Ridgard, Ph.D., an assistant professor in GSE’s Division of Psychological and Educational Services, said when it comes to advice for parents, communication is key.

“This is definitely a year of major transition for everyone, and we’re all going to have to leave our comfort zones,” she said.

She said she’s optimistic that the tools that enabled students to learn remotely, such as Google classroom, will make it easier for parents to communicate with teachers, and she suggests parents take advantage of the technology if they can.

Ridgard, who works with school psychology interns currently in the system, said the unpredictable nature of the pandemic worries her most. But it’s tempered with an optimism born out of last year’s successes.

“What gives me hope is looking back on the last year and seeing how successfully schools were able to move forward given all the challenges, and from working with my school psychology interns who were in the schools. They still had rewarding experiences during their internships. They worked with a lot of students who were able to make progress,” she said.

Her favorite analogy is that of building an airplane while it’s flying through the air.

“I’ve said that so much over the last year and a half, and I think that’s what we’re going to have to continue to do,” she said.

Chen suggested that parents can help teachers by prioritizing the needs of their children.

“From my perspective, physical health should remain the top priority, followed by mental health and intellectual health,” he said. “Without physical and mental health, the child will not succeed in school.”

The grants—totaling $600,000— have been awarded by the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation. They will fund University efforts to provide mental health services to young people, help women asylum seekers, and teach English language learners.

Fordham Provost Dennis Jacobs, Ph.D., said he’s grateful to the foundation for supporting the University’s work in the community.

“Fordham is deeply committed to applying its academic and programming expertise in partnership with organizations in the surrounding neighborhood to help address the most pressing needs within the Bronx community,” said Jacobs. “Through the generous support of the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, Fordham is particularly focused on how it can assist those who have been most devastated by the interconnected crises of 2020.”

The Mother Cabrini Health Foundation provides grants to improve the health and well-being of vulnerable New Yorkers, aiming to eliminate barriers to care. The foundation’s values reflect Fordham’s mission and those of the organization’s namesake, Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, who was known during her lifetime as a staunch advocate for immigrants, children, and the poor. The foundation originated from the 2018 sale of Fidelis Care, a nonprofit health insurer run by the bishops of the Catholic dioceses of New York.

Virtual Mental Health Services

The first grant of $300,000 will support a virtual mental health program to be run by the Graduate School of Education called Clinical Mental Health Services in the Bronx Community. It will use telemental health services to reach at-risk students between the ages of 8 and 16. The program responds to the pandemic-related suspension of existing programs that Fordham delivered at schools and community organizations before the crisis began. Four cohorts of 25 students in need of help—whether from stress related to gun violence, racism, the pandemic, or other factors—will be assessed and receive therapy. The program will offer two 45-minute intensive sessions per week for the students. Anita Vazquez Batisti, Ph.D., associate dean for educational partnerships at GSE, helped facilitate the grant and GSE psychology professor Eric Chen, Ph.D., will direct the program.

Helping Women Asylum Seekers

A second grant of $150,000 will be used to help women asylum seekers in New York City gain access to much-needed mental health care. According to a 2020 report from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, more than 79 million people are displaced worldwide, more than half are under the age of 18, and more than 50% are women. In 2019, there were 46,000 asylum seekers in New York City alone, said Associate Professor Marciana Popescu, Ph.D., of Graduate School of Social Services (GSS). Popescu has extensively researched the problem and will be directing the program with GSS Professor Dana Alonzo, Ph.D., a specialist in mental health treatment. With increasingly restrictive policies pushing asylum seekers to go underground, few attempt to access mental health care services, said Popescu. The pandemic has only made the situation worse—for asylum seekers in general, and for women in particular. The project aims to identify the challenges of these women and connect them to services that are within their rights.

English as a Second Language

An additional $150,000 will go toward expanding the Institute of American Language and Culture’s Community English as a Second Language Program (CESL). That grant follows a $116,000 grant awarded by the foundation in 2019. The program provides free ESL instruction primarily to adults in the Bronx in partnership with churches and other community organizations. The CESL program began in 2018 with financial support from the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development, which has annually renewed funding, scoring the program’s attendance, educational gains, and program management as “above standard.” The Cabrini grant will help the initiative continue to grow. CESL serves more than 300 students and hopes to serve at least 500 a year by 2023.  Institute director James Stabler-Havener will continue to direct the program with Jesús Aceves-Loza, who serves as the institute’s advisor for Latin America.  In spite of the pandemic this year, students continued learning and instructors continued to teach virtually via apps and cell phones. In the coming year, the group plans to build on existing partnerships with community organizations and the city to offer citizenship courses as well. The growing initiative will also provide internship opportunities to underrepresented students at the University.

“We’re in this historic moment where a world pandemic; racial tensions and a momentum for racial equity and justice, action, and change; and the polarized political situation coalesce into a perfect storm of human stress,” said Joseph G. Ponterotto, Ph.D., a professor of counseling psychology at Fordham.

Ponterotto and his colleagues in the Graduate School of Education described in phone interviews the struggles that students and school counselors across New York City have experienced throughout the pandemic and how they can be better prepared when schools reopen this fall. 

Losing a ‘Safe Haven’

School was once a “safe haven”—a place where some students could escape their unstable family lives, said school counselors. But when schools closed across New York City in March, students faced their struggles all the time. Some lost loved ones to COVID-19. And school counselors said that if students confided in them by phone or Zoom, it was difficult to offer comfort.

“You can’t offer that hug. You can’t give them that in a virtual platform,” said Michelle Santana, FCRH ’10, GSE ’17, assistant director of the Science and Technology Entry Program (STEP) for middle and high schoolers at the Rose Hill campus and a school counselor by training. “That was definitely challenging—finding ways to help with those little things that mean so much.”

But there are creative ways to come together, said Santana. This past spring, she hosted a virtual lounge where students could stop by—the same way they used to in her office at Rose Hill—to maintain a sense of community. 

In a school south of the Bronx, middle school students struggled with similar issues, said another school counselor. Some experienced isolation, especially those who didn’t have many close friends before the pandemic. Others slipped into unhealthy habits—sleeping into the afternoon and staying up late at night. When COVID-19 cases steadily decreased, students who were trapped in their apartments for months were allowed more freedom. But many chose to stay inside. 

“Something new that we’ve seen are kids who don’t know how to re-enter [society],” said Seth Kritzman, GSE ’12, a school counselor at Lower Manhattan Community Middle School and an adjunct instructor at Fordham. “Parents say they just don’t want to. Students are kind of in this shell.” 

Virtual counseling sessions can be tough, too, because of a lack of privacy. After a video chat, some students type messages to Kritzman that their families can’t hear. Kritzman said he’s trying to support his students by listening and offering coping mechanisms. But he says he’s worried about how to meet the needs of all students—and their families. 

“The whole family could be in crisis. Middle school stuff can be traumatic, but this is a whole other realm and not necessarily something we’re trained for as school counselors,” said Kritzman. “Because of the pandemic, everything that’s happening can be tied to school. Where do you draw the line? What is the role of school counselor versus when do you get outside help?” 

Juggling Two Pandemics: COVID-19 and Racism

The pandemic is one layer of stress for students. The other, counselors and faculty said, is the death of George Floyd and the ensuing national protests against police brutality and racial injustice over the past few months. 

“Students of color, particularly Black and Latinx … are also having to cope with how to process what they see on their screens and things that they themselves have experienced,” said Kip Thompson, Ph.D., clinical coordinator and assistant professor of counseling psychology. 

To draw strength, Black adolescents and young adults should get in touch with “their higher power,” nurture family relationships, and pursue what brings them joy, said Thompson, whose research interests include Black American college student mental health.  

“It’s really important that in these challenging, uncertain times, the young Black person really taps into what brings them power, joy, and inspiration,” Thompson said. 

Meanwhile, school counselors should reflect on their own identities to better serve their students, said Ponterotto. 

“[We need to] understand stages of racial identity, of what power and privilege is, and how to develop a nonracist identity as a white teacher or counselor,” said Ponterotto. “It’s white men in power, the heterosexual population, and the Christian population taking responsibility for their own history of oppressing others that we all have been guilty of, given the environment we were raised in, and deconstructing our own identity to help us be effective teachers and counselors for others.”

Advice on Remote Counseling from GSE Faculty

After reflecting on personal experiences with clients throughout the pandemic, GSE faculty shared tips on how to improve remote counseling and support for students of all ages. 

Play therapy is possible if you think outside the box. Elementary school students and counselors can play a game of charades during each counseling session. On Zoom, they can use the whiteboard feature to play pictionary or hangman. They can even play a game of Battleship or bingo, as long as they both have the hard materials in front of them. Or they can conduct a scavenger hunt around a student’s room to help the student practice emotional self-expression and self-awareness, said Alea Holman, Ph.D., assistant professor of school psychology. 

Privacy is key. It’s important to utilize HIPAA-compliant platforms in a quiet, safe space to help ensure confidentiality with a client. If a student is living in a home where they can’t speak comfortably about certain topics—an LGBTQ student living in a non-affirmative environment, for example—they can communicate via email or chat, said Eric C. Chen, Ph.D., professor of counseling psychology. 

Counseling on an online platform can be surprisingly effective. “Some people told me that they feel more comfortable expressing themselves with a remote format because it removes a layer of self-consciousness and exposure in the interaction,” said Holman. A phone call can also strip away a layer of self-consciousness from students who don’t want to see their faces on screen, she said. 

Parents can play a crucial role. “One thing I suggest to my school counselors is to have Zoom meetings with parents to demonstrate to them … how the school counselor talks to the kids about uncertainty, confusion, and giving voice to feelings,” said Ponterotto. “We have to be able to process kids’ fears.” 

Self-care is critical for counselors. It seems like a selfish thought, said Margo A. Jackson, Ph.D., professor of counseling psychology. But consider this analogy: If you’re on a plane and the oxygen masks drop, you have to put yours on before you can help your child or whoever is next to you, she said. “When [counselors]are stretched to the limit … then we cannot be of help to others,” Jackson explained. “In fact, we could do harm.”

Be compassionate to yourself and others. Resilience is a “muscle” that requires daily exercise. “Count your blessings. Reward yourself with simple daily pleasures, such as reading a poem, having a bike ride, watching clouds float by, that you enjoy in life. Recognize your strengths and think about a few individuals who have made a difference in your life over the years or those who have nurtured and supported you in the past,” said Chen. “And imagine what your future will be like a year from now—picture how you will remember that you have survived and thrived during those moments of darkness and anguish.” 

In a new study, Fordham Graduate School of Education (GSE) doctoral student Hannah Sugarman and GSE professor Eric C. Chen, Ph.D., detail how much harder it can be when you’re a teenager.

In “Transgender Students’ Navigation of Gender Identity and Relationships in High School: A Phenomenological Analysis,” Sugarman interviewed three adults between 18 and 23, about how they navigated their transgender identity through the context of their relationships and high school experiences. The study, which took place in 2016 and 2017, involved two women who’d transitioned from being men and one man who’d transitioned from being a woman. All attended high schools in the New York City metro area and transitioned after they’d graduated.

Sugarman and Chen utilized a phenomenological qualitative method, which focuses on understanding a relatively small group of individuals’ own subjective experience, through the prism of the researchers’ professional and personal views. That is, both the participant and the researcher engage in the collaborative process of constructing layers of meanings underlying the phenomenon through in-depth personal interviews.

“The interviewer may have some ideas about what it means to be a transgender individual, but it’s through the process of having a dialogue with the participant that they eventually understand what it means to be transgender, and what it means to negotiate that hidden identity with others,” Chen said.

The study revealed that participants were dealing with five notable issues: early inclinations of transgender identity; denial of gender identity; school-related barriers to self-acceptance; emotional support impacting resilience; and taking on a queer identity.

Chen, whose research focuses on marginalized members of society, said that for him, the last theme was the most intriguing. Participants first identified as either gay, lesbian, or bisexual before realizing that these new labels are not sufficient.

“Transgender individuals, at least based on these participants’ experiences, seem to have a three-stage process,” Chen said. “They seem to pick up different labels to describe their own gender identity, experiment with it, and then realize, again consciously or unconsciously, that it doesn’t fit with their own transgender identity.”

Other findings that emerged from the interviews point to changes that can be made at the high school level. For instance, all three said they understood when they were very young that their psychological identity did not match their biological one. Like many in the LGTBQ community, they initially responded to this revelation with avoidance and hostility.

School administrators and teachers were sources of further tension, through policies, such as single gender bathrooms, or through the language they used.

“One [participant]indicated that she would cut school, because her teacher kept referring to her as a man. It was a source of constant stress for her,” said Chen.

On a positive side, all three participants said they were able to find adults or peers during their high school years who they could reach out to for emotional support. Those people may not have been aware of the students’ transgender identity, but because they were encouraging and empathetic, students felt OK with reaching out for comfort and found it beneficial.

The paper will form the basis of Sugarman’s doctoral dissertation. She and Chen will present their findings at the American Educational Research Association’s annual meeting, which takes place April 13 to 17 in New York.

“I have seen the impact that educated, compassionate, and empathetic adults can make on a student’s life, and my goal is to raise and showcase the voices of transgender individuals so that school personnel will be further suited to be that source of support,” Sugarman said.

“My sincere hope is that my research will contribute to the existing literature on transgender adolescents, and that my presentation will perhaps spark some interest in future research and understanding of this vulnerable community.”

An estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States wake up to this reality every day. To Eric Chun Lung Chen, Ph.D., they represent the voiceless whom he wants to give a voice to.

Chen, an associate professor of counseling psychology at the Graduate School of Education (GSE), has spent the past several years researching the quality of resilience, as manifested in the educational and career pursuits of undocumented immigrant students. He has focused most intently on “DREAMers,” roughly 700,000 undocumented individuals who were brought into the United States at a very young age. They were given a temporary relief from deportation in 2012 under former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The act had been considered, but not passed, by Congress in 2010.

The DREAMers’ experience deeply resonates with Chen, who was born in Taiwan and came to the states as an international student to attend graduate school. In addition to the common adjustment challenges associated with being an immigrant, he found the bureaucracy and uncertainty he encountered in obtaining his employment-based immigration visas and green card to be stressful, taking almost a decade to complete.

“When one’s own identity seems to be stigmatized as a result of being a marginalized member of society, how does that stigmatized identity impact one’s mental health? I’m particularly interested in the sense of self, and how it changes over time as it relates to one’s resilience and interpersonal relationships,” he said.

“If I were one of them, I might have given up hope a long time ago.”

DACA and the Sense of Self

Two years ago, Chen and GSE students conducted a research study, where they spent more than a year recruiting and interviewing a dozen undocumented Latinos who benefited from DACA. Their study focused on DREAMers’ experiences of self, their interpersonal relationships, and their future pursuits in the wake of DACA.

What Chen found was that although the DREAMers were relieved that they didn’t have to worry about being deported for the time being, that relief was tempered by an increased sense of responsibility for their parents as well as their siblings who remained undocumented.

“So it’s a mixed blessing. On one hand, they perceive their future to be brighter for them to pursue more educational and work opportunities. On the other hand, they now experience pressure from their undocumented family members to seek better-paying jobs,” Chen said.

Parents seemed to be the greatest source of support and motivation for DREAMers’ college pursuits, especially when they experienced feelings of hopelessness. With regard to gender roles, some participants felt conflicted in their need to take on household responsibilities and to pursue a higher education.

A Need That Is Greater Than Ever

Such studies are difficult to conduct, in part because of the time and effort it takes to recruit undocumented immigrants and earn their trust, said Chen. But the recent presidential election has made the work more important than ever, and Chen sees a greater need to translate an abstract concept like immigration into a narrative about flesh-and-blood individuals with dignity.

As someone who teaches future school counselors, mental health counselors, and psychologists, Chen said there’s a practical purpose as well—to encourage a dialogue that builds a connection through diversity.

“I want my students to be prepared when they work with DREAMers after they graduate, to have an empathic understanding of their struggles, to offer support, and to advocate for them rather than say, ‘Your family broke the law, and you should go back to your country.’ I don’t think that’s consistent with Fordham’s mission of social justice and respect [for]human dignity,” he said.

“Regardless of our personal views, I hope my research helps bridge the political divide by sharing DREAMers’ voices, fears, and their audacious hopes for the uncertain future. Hopefully and realistically, they’re going to continue to live among us, so let’s find a way to support them so they can fulfill their dreams and become productive members of our society.”