“I’ve long felt that there needed to be a spiritual component when we’re working with clients,” said Gibbs, owner of a seniors-focused business who is graduating with a master’s degree in mental health counseling and spiritual integration. “In my individual work with clients … their spiritual life was very much a part of how they were raised.”

The program, offered at the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, provided a “fantastic” education in mental health and spirituality that Gibbs thinks will become more sought-after. “I think this field is only going to expand,” she said.

Church, a ‘Second Home’

A New York City native, Gibbs is a granddaughter of Southern sharecroppers who remembers the bigotry her family faced after settling in the Rosedale section of Queens decades ago. She recalled church as “a second home … where we found support.”

She graduated from Baruch College and earned an MBA from Baruch and a master’s in vocational rehabilitation counseling from NYU. Later in her career, about 12 years ago, it was through her church that she developed the idea for her company, Safe Circle Inc., which serves seniors and caregivers in the New York City area. She enrolled in her Fordham degree program after its spirituality aspect caught her eye during an internet search.

After graduating, she hopes to expand her company to help women of color dealing with multigenerational trauma and incorporate more spirituality into its services. In addition, she said, “I have a strong leaning towards bringing mental health to the forefront, particularly within the Black church.”

“I think that the church is a good place to begin having these educational forums about mental health and normalizing the discussion about [it],” she said.

Standing on Others’ Shoulders

Key to her professional growth at Fordham was an eight-month internship with the Faith Mission Alcohol Crisis Center in Queens, where she gained experience in integrating spirituality into daily care. She got “a full visual of what alcohol and drug addiction can do to the mind and body,” and worked with clients to help them see the impact of drug addiction in their lives and identify its triggers. “The change when they’re drug free is remarkable,” she said.

Like many of her classmates, Gibbs was pursuing the 20-hour-a-week internship while going to school full time—something that was made easier by supportive, understanding professors. Her path to the degree was also smoothed by her encouraging “church family” at Bethany Baptist Church in Jamaica, New York, as well as support from family members like her daughter and her mother.

“I would come in some evenings and she would’ve come by the house—‘I left a plate for you on your stove,’” Gibbs said.

She’ll be thinking of them all at commencement.

“When you walk across that stage, you are walking across on other people’s shoulders, really,” she said. “If you’re blessed to have that support, they’re graduating with you.”

Remember, on the evening of May 18, New York’s Empire State Building will be illuminated in Fordham maroon for our graduates.

This past May, Fordham took a big step toward embracing this new world, as 14 members of the faculty and administration traveled to Sophia University in Japan as part of the first Fordham Faculty Research Abroad program.

The delegation, which was led by Fordham’s provost, the late Stephen M. Freedman, Ph.D., hailed from fields as varied as political science, economics, biological sciences, education, social service, and art history. The theme of the trip was comparative urban studies.

George Hong, Ph.D., chief research officer and associate vice president for academic affairs, said the trip was the result of Fordham’s Continuous University Strategic Planning (CUSP) process, which the University began in 2015.

In the CUSP process, four areas were given high priority: Interdisciplinary research, sponsored research, global research, and faculty-student research collaborations. This trip fulfilled all of those priorities by bringing Fordham researchers into contact with peers in Japan who are pursuing research on many topics within that field. It also established an exchange program for faculty and students between the two schools.

Collaborating on Food Justice

One of those connections was between Garrett Broad, Ph.D., assistant professor of Communication and Media Studies and James Farrer, Ph.D., a professor of sociology and global studies at Sophia University. Farrer has been researching food entrepreneurship in Tokyo and the role that small vendors play in local economies, a topic of interest to Broad, who penned More Than Just Food: Food Justice and Community Change (University of California Press, 2016).

“We’re talking about setting up a workshop here in New York at some point next year where we bring together a group of scholars who are exploring issues related to food, society, globalization and local food economies,” Broad said.

“The hope for this enterprise is it’s not a one off, where we had this nice trip to Tokyo, made some friends and that’s that. We want to continue and build some partnerships, and since there’s only so much you can do in just a few days, a workshop is a way we can keep the momentum going.”

Broad also took the opportunity to visit and interview scientists at a Tokyo organization that is experimenting with “cellular agriculture.” The technology, which Broad had already been researching for an upcoming project, involves growing meat in a laboratory, negating the need to slaughter animals. To help him overcome language and cultural barriers, he recruited Sophia University undergraduate students to accompany him.

Making Personal Connections in the Field

Annika Hinze, Ph.D., assistant professor of political science and director of Fordham’s urban studies program, came away from the trip deeply affected by potential collaborations. While one group from Fordham was given a tour related to sustainability and environmental issues, she attended a tour centered on social issues that was led by Nanako Inaba, a professor in Sophia’s department of global studies.

Of particular interest to Hinze was a public park that had recently been partially sold to private interests, including Nike. A sizable homeless population still calls the park home, and Hinze interviewed one of them to get a sense of how his presence was actually a form of protest.

“I’m a field researcher first and foremost, and in order to understand places, it’s vital to actually visit them and get to know them a little bit. The initial connections you make with people can be the jumping point for creating meaningful research partnerships,” she said.

“The walking tours were amazing, because they were done by people who are academics who are researching social or sustainability issues and who really know the environment.”

Global Partnerships Critical to Funded Research

Connections such as these are crucial to solving challenges, Hong said. They’re also often a prerequisite for researchers who wants to get their projects funded by some external sources.

“More and more American foundations are requiring global partnership as precondition for applications. If you don’t have an international partner, you are out,” he said.

On that front, the trip was also a success, as Fordham faculty identified 27 researchers in Japan who are ready to collaborate on joint grant proposals, research projects, and research papers. Hong and his team also identified more than 40 funding opportunities to support these research projects. Several faculty members are working on joint proposals, he said, and one has already submitted one. He expects that there will be opportunities for Fordham students to assist in future studies as well.

Hong noted that a byproduct of Fordham faculty traveling together was also an increase in collaborations amongst themselves. Next summer, a group of them will travel to Europe, where the theme will be “digital scholarship.”

“They immediately picked up some ideas and learned from each other. It was the same subject, urban studies, but different disciplines, education, social service, the sciences, history, social sciences, humanities, natural science,” he said.

In addition to prearranged meetings, there were serendipitous meetings at Sophia University as well. Takehiro Watanabe, Ph.D., an associate professor of anthropology at Sophia whose research touches on participatory community environmental processes, led the Fordham contingent on a tour of a river revitalization project and chaired a panel discussion that Broad participated in.

“Afterward, he saw some things in my presentation that connected to some of the subjects that he’s interested in, such as participatory science and citizen science,” Broad said.

“The more time you’re able to spend, and the more people you’re able to meet, you realize you have more in common.”

Hirst noted that, far from being a dry collection of numbers, the budget is in fact a statement of Fordham’s true priorities.

“The budget allows Fordham to exist, thrive, grow, and endure as the University fulfills its essential commitment to transformative teaching, research, and service. It helps to ensure that our students leave Fordham with the restlessness of mind and soul that Father [Joseph M.] McShane calls ‘bothered excellence,’” she said.

“That’s a tall order, and it is expensive,” said Hirst.

Hirst conducted the forums at the Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses. She outlined how in many ways, the budget is a living document. Planning takes place in the summer, building on those plans takes place in the fall, adjustments come in the winter, and in the spring, a proposed budget is presented to the Board of Trustees for approval. In the 2018 fiscal year, tuition and fees collected from 8,410 undergraduate students and 6,600 graduate students account for $663 million, or 84 percent of the budget. The remaining $84 million comes from auxiliary revenues such as housing and food services, while another $44 million comes from sources such as grants and gifts.

A significant amount of that revenue is spent on financial aid, with $212 million going toward both undergraduate and graduate students, she said. Undergraduate students receive $175 million, an amount that has increased by $75 million since 2012. This results in a “discount rate” of 47 percent, compared to the national average of 49 percent. So, although the sticker price for undergraduate admission is currently $49,645 a year, only 10 percent of first-year students pay that full price; the discount averages $26,611 a year per student.

Hirst said salaries and wages account for another $260 million in expenditures, and fringe benefits such as health insurance account for another $43 million. Other costs include FICA, tuition remission and exchange, retirement expenses, security and maintenance, depreciation, interest on debt, and other contingencies.

As the presentation illustrated, Fordham invests in affordability for students and their families, excellence in students’ academic, residential and co-curricular experiences and in the first-rate University faculty and staff who work to shape those experiences.

Looking to the future, Hirst said the outlook is bright but challenging.  On the plus side, the University maintains a balanced budget and spends no more than it takes in. Of concern, however, is the fact that the $300,000 budgeted to be on hand at the end of Fiscal 2018 is not enough for weathering enrollment and other ups and downs and for investment in future initiatives. The ideal amount for colleges and universities to have on hand is 3% to 5% of their operating budgets, which for Fordham is $15-$20 million.

Academic institutions have at their disposal many options for increasing revenue and reducing costs, and Hirst reviewed 18 common strategies, grouped together as efficiencies, cost reduction, revenue growth or real estate. Some strategies, like selling buildings or outsourcing support services, might not be workable for Fordham at this time. But these and others, such as expanding online learning initiatives, re-evaluating poorly performing initiatives, and initiating voluntary separation and early retirement programs, should all be considered in the on-going conversation.

“An important thing to recall is that our story is a very long one—176 years so far. It has many chapters and we are really sort of passing through,” Hirst said. “We are stewards and, in all the ways we use our budget, the most important thing for us to think about is to manage today, but also plan for tomorrow.”

Watch the full presentation:

Download the Powerpoint here.

But this year’s speech was a bit different.

In an address to faculty and administrators at the Keating First auditorium, Father McShane spoke candidly about two painful issues: The tense negotiations over health insurance changes that the University will implement on January 1, and the fate of undocumented students and their families in light of the ending of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

“The State of our University, beloved as it is, is divided. Intellectually, we are strong and getting stronger, but I have to honestly say, our hearts are still shaken by what happened last year,” he said.

A Need For More Transparency

Reflecting on the failures that lead to bruised feelings between the faculty and the administration, he admitted that in retrospect, he could have communicated with the University community more regularly. As a result, Father McShane said he will hold listening sessions on both campuses, and continue to meet with the president of the Faculty Senate and the full Senate on a monthly basis.

In addition, Martha Hirst, senior vice president, chief financial officer, and treasurer will be holding budget forams and town halls on both campuses during both the fall and spring semesters, to better communicate the University’s budget plans.

Going forward, Father McShane asked that members of the Fordham community consider how cura personalis might apply to their interactions with each other.

“Our students know that they are loved, that they’re cared for, they know that they’re taken seriously, and therefore they thrive. We’re excellent at cura personalis with students,” he said.

“We’re not so good with one another all the time. Sometimes we’re great, but not always. Cura personalis is not just a gift we to be given to students. It’s the cement that holds us together. Care for one another, love for one another, respect and reverence for one another. I pledge that to you.”

Challenges Ahead

Stronger bonds will be needed, he said, because although Fordham is in a strong place, it faces challenges in a shrinking college age population in the Northeast, a push for tuition free college in New York State, and demands that higher education alter its approach to better resemble a business, and not a ministry.

On admissions and enrollment, Father McShane reported that the University had its 26th year of application growth, with a 0.7 percent increase over last years’ 44,776. The University met its enrollment goals for the three traditional-age undergraduate colleges, with 2,248 students.

Fordham can do a better job retaining current students and accommodating transfer students, he said, and therefore has created committees to explore possible solutions.

On the graduate level, interdisciplinary, market driven programs, such as the Graduate School of Arts and Science’s Masters in Cybersecurity, are being developed. The Graduate School of Education will this year become home to the International Center for Jesuit Education, enabling it to partner with Jesuit primary and secondary schools around the world.

Growing Stronger

Buoyed by the best fundraising year in the University’s history ($75.9 million in gifts and pledges), the University has raised $110 million toward a $175 million goal in its Faith and Hope Campaign for Financial Aid.

The University has hired Faustino M. Cruz, S.M., the new Dean of the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education and 49 new tenure-track faculty.

As a result of the Task Force on Diversity that he created last spring, Father McShane noted that the university will soon announce its choice for the newly created position of Chief Diversity Officer. This week, Kay Turner, Esq. former vice president for human resources at the Jersey Institute of Technology, will also join the administration as vice president for human resources.

With regards to DACA, he reiterated the University’s position in support of it, and agreed with Catholic leaders descriptions of its repeal as an abomination, reprehensible, despicable, a betrayal, and downright cruel.

“I would kneel before you if that would help, and ask you to do all you can to protect our students. If any member of the student body approaches you with fears and concerns about their status, receive them with love, refer them to the Counseling Center or to Campus Ministry,” he said.

“As for the University, we will continue to work with the educational associations in Washington, with the Bishops’ Conference and with Congress to do all we can to protect our students.”

In “Pope Francis Goes to Washington… and Philadelphia… and New York,” theology professor Patrick Hornbeck, PhD, asked author James Martin, SJ, to weigh in on Pope Francis’ meeting with Kim Davis, the county clerk who refused to issue same sex marriage licenses.

“I was really upset,” said Father Martin, sitting in front of a split-screen image of the pope and Davis. “It made it difficult for people to reflect on the visit.”

Father Martin refused to join the growing chorus of blame aimed at Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States who is reported to have permitted the encounter in the Washington D.C. Vatican mission. However, he criticized Davis’ lawyer, Mat Staver, for turning a private meeting into a “publicity stunt.”

“That’s the thing I found very craven,” he said.

The Davis distraction shifted the focus from other issues and from the pope’s values, which Father Martin said were on display from the moment he got into his tiny Fiat at the airport and not a limousine.

A frequent guest commentator in the media, Father Martin was on hand to do commentary for TV during the pope’s speech to the U.S. Congress. He said he received an embargoed copy of the papal speech, and was moved by what he found.

“It was four words: Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton,” he said. “I started to cry when I saw their names.”

Catholic Church hierarchy, he said, had shabbily treated the two. He noted that Francis Joseph Cardinal Spellman once told Dorothy Day that she couldn’t use the word “Catholic” in her Catholic Worker organization. And the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had excised the writings of Thomas Merton from the Adult Catechism, he said.

“I was moved to see these two people raised up and rehabilitated in front of Congress and the whole country,” he said. “He reminded us of our heritage by saying, ‘Look at who you are and look at who you can be,’” said Father Martin.

Pope Francis showed up at Fordham tonight, wearing his Fordham gear. He told me to tell everyone, “Don’t forget to pray for me…And go Rams!” #Repost @mtrer @jamesmartinsj says hi, @jakebraith and Jonathan! #Fordham4Francis #jesuiteducated #blessed   A photo posted by James Martin SJ (@jamesmartinsj) on Oct 6, 2015 at 6:05pm PDT

He said that church leadership here in the United States generally fell in to three camps: the group that supported the pope from the beginning, a group that doesn’t understand him but is open minded, and a third group that does not care for his message.

“The buzzword among Catholic critics is that he’s ‘confusing’ people,” he said. “But whenever you have a new boss in any organization it takes a while to get used to them, so for the some of the [resistant]bishops you can’t blame them.”

Father Martin noted that Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict appointed many of the bishops. They were encouraged to administer in a certain way, so its not surprising that they would chafe at new directives, he said.

However, now that many had met the pope in person during his visit, a new trust might develop.

Even though there was a “shocking lack of women in his visit,” Father Martin said the pope went out of his way to praise women religious.

“Women may not have been present on the altar, but they were certainly present in his mind.”

Hornbeck also shared a series of projected images that prompted a variety of responses from Father Martin, including  an image of an inmate’s tattooed hand shaking the pope’s hand.

“Saints are real people,” he said. “I think we have a saint alive and among us. He has an unerring pastoral sense, because he’s been a pastor. You can’t fake that stuff.”

The event was sponsored by the Department of Theology. 

It turns out that when he counseled his disciples, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself,” Jesus was tapping into a concept that neuroscientists say could reduce stress for our hyperanxious society.

At Fordham, Kirk Bingaman, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, is taking his lead from these neuroscientists and arguing that those who find solace in the sermon would also benefit from what science has to say. In his latest book, The Power of Neuroplasticity for Pastoral and Spiritual Care (Lexington Books, 2014), Bingaman suggests ways pastoral and spiritual caregivers can draw on contemporary neuroscience to help their clients and congregants relieve undue anxiety.

“We hear it in the Sermon on the Mount and we hear it in our churches today—don’t worry about tomorrow, stay centered in today. We grasp it intellectually, but how, practically, do we not worry?” said Bingaman, who is also a pastoral counselor.

Neuroplasticity and the Negativity Bias

In the book, Bingaman explores the impact that an adaptive mechanism known as the negativity bias has on our well-being. An evolutionary cousin of the “fight or flight” phenomenon, this bias describes the brain’s propensity to experience negative events more intensely in order to alert us to potential danger.

A built-in negativity bias was vital when humans lived as hunter-gatherers ever at the ready to flee from a hungry lion. In the modern world, however, this bias tends to cause excessive negativity and anxiety.

“[This] anxiety spills over into our relationships with others and with ourselves,” Bingaman said. “It causes us to assume the worst, to overreact to situations in ways such as, ‘Why did you look at me this way? Why did you use that tone?’”

Fortunately, he says, we are not condemned to primal negativity, thanks to the human brain’s capacity to change across the lifespan. With every new experience—creating a memory, learning new information, or adapting to a new situation—the brain undergoes structural changes, generating new neural pathways and reshaping existing ones. This ability, known as neuroplasticity, forms the crux of Bingaman’s book.

He argues that the most effective way to harness the power of neuroplasticity is through mindfulness meditation and contemplative spiritual practice. Through these therapeutic and spiritual techniques, clients learn to become aware of their thoughts and feelings. Rather than reacting to or trying to eliminate them, clients learn to simply observe them as they come and go, without getting “hooked.”

“Thoughts and feelings have a 90-second shelf-life biochemically. So when we experience an anxious thought or feeling, [the reaction]will dissipate from the blood in 90 seconds—unless we feed the thought or judge ourselves for feeling that way,” he said. “The key to mindfulness-based therapy is to let thoughts and feelings come and go without fighting them. This then reduces the limbic activity in our brains and calms the amygdala.”

These practices—which are so well-regarded that they are central to the “third wave” of classical cognitive behavioral therapy—can take a variety of forms and be applied in both religious and nonreligious settings. For example, one might spend 15 minutes each day sitting quietly and focusing on the ebb and flow of his or her breath. Alternatively, one might practice something like the Christian centering prayer, in which the practitioner meditates on a “sacred word” (such as “Jesus,” “God,” or “love”) while learning to modulate the many other chaotic thoughts that crowd the mind.

A New Approach to Pastoral Counseling

Bingaman says that these practices, informed by the science of neuroplasticity, will “necessitate a paradigm shift” in the way pastoral and spiritual caregivers approach their work with clients, especially clients whose anxiety may have been exacerbated by their own religious beliefs.

“When a theology views the spiritual quest as a matter of warfare—as a battle within the person, or as a matter of good versus evil and flesh versus spirit—that activates neural circuitry that causes stress,” he said. “If we overdo that construct, the person in our care might see himself as flawed and defective, and that could end up reinforcing the negativity bias.

“Whether it’s therapy or theology, we need to look at the frames of reference we are using to help the person in our care to calm their anxious brain. Some of our approaches are going to fire up the limbic region, and others will do the reverse,” he said. “So we have to make more use of contemplative practices in religious and spiritual circles… They’re not just for the mystics off in the desert. They’re for you and me and everyone else.”

In his latest book, The Power of Neuroplasticity for Pastoral and Spiritual Care (Lexington Books, 2014), Dr. Kirk Bingaman, an associate professor of pastoral care and counseling, explores the impact that an adaptive mechanism known as “the negativity bias” has on our wellbeing. An evolutionary cousin of the “fight or flight” phenomenon, this bias describes the brain’s propensity to experience negative events more intensely in order to alert us to potential danger.

A built-in negativity bias was vital when humans lived as hunter-gatherers ever-at-the-ready to flee from a hungry lion. In today’s world, however, this bias tends to cause excessive negativity and anxiety.

“Today [this]anxiety spills over into our relationships with others and with ourselves,” said Bingaman, who teaches in Fordham’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. “It causes us to assume the worst, to overact to situations in ways such as, ‘Why did you look at me this way? Why did you use that tone?’”

Fortunately, Bingaman says, we are not condemned to primal negativity, thanks to the human brain’s capacity to change across the lifespan. With every new experience — learning new information, creating a memory, or adapting to a new situation — the brain undergoes structural changes, generating new neural pathways and reshaping existing ones. This ability, known as neuroplasticity, forms the crux of Bingaman’s book.

He argues that the most effective way to harness the power of neuroplasticity is through mindfulness meditation and contemplative spiritual practice. Through these therapeutic techniques and spiritual practices, clients learn to become aware of their thoughts and feelings. Rather than reacting to or trying to eliminate them, clients simply observe them as they come and go.

“Thoughts and feelings have a 90-second shelf-life biochemically. So when we experience an anxious thought or feeling, it will dissipate from the blood in 90 seconds — unless we feed the thought or judge ourselves for feeling that way,” he said. “The key to mindfulness-based therapy is to let thoughts and feelings come and go without fighting them. This then reduces the limbic activity in our brains and calms the amygdala.”

Himself a pastoral counselor, Bingaman says that the science of neuroplasticity will “necessitate a paradigm shift” in the way pastoral and spiritual caregivers approach their work with clients and congregants.

“Whether it’s therapy or theology, we need to really look at the frames of reference we are using to help the person in our care to calm their anxious brain. Some of our approaches are going to fire up the limbic region, and others will do the reverse.

“We have to make more use of it in religious and spiritual circles,” he continued. “Finding a regular contemplative practice is not something just for the mystics off in the desert. It’s for you and me and everyone else.”