In the Ignatian Public Speaking workshop led by Robert Parmach, Ph.D., director of Ignatian mission and ministry, students learned about the finer points of “SPATE”—stance, projection, articulation, tone, and eye contact.

“We want to help graduate students develop skill sets that link to their Jesuit education,” said Parmach. In his introductory remarks, he invoked a lesson from St. Ignatius, founder of the Society of Jesus, reminding students that “developing the interior life … animates our spirit and connects us deeper to God and others.”

“Think about it,” he said. “The way you hold yourself in front of an audience demonstrates the kind of person you are and your character … The techniques we teach you provide ways to use your body and voice to motivate, lead, and transform others. It joins the mind, body, and soul to empower others and yourself along the way.”

In the workshop, the students practiced speaking in front of each other. Each was handed a written prompt, then given three minutes to digest it and a minute to summarize it for the group.

Lisa Cummings, a student at the Graduate School of Education currently teaching at the Orchard Collegiate Academy, said she felt “uplifted” by the workshop.

“I’ve been able to gather some useful tips, and it’s motivated me to try to create a workshop for my own students,” she said.

Asked to identify the one area of SPATE she felt she needed the most improvement, Cummings picked articulation. She recalled a mistake she made as an undergraduate at SUNY Morrisville.

“I had the opportunity to speak at my graduation, and I turned that opportunity down because of my fear of not being able to articulate myself well enough,” she said.

“That was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me, and having passed up that opportunity, I really have made it a point to push myself to overcome that fear.”

Jay Vaghani, a Gabelli School of Business graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in quantitative finance, likewise found the workshop pushed him beyond his comfort zone. For his speech, he was given a prompt describing how the artist Sting reacted to a negative review of his music.

Vaghani, a native of Surat, Gujarat, India, who moved to the United States with the goal of transitioning from engineering to finance, has been hesitant to speak in public since he was a child.

He found it useful to focus on his tone and articulation. Although he was unfamiliar with Sting before reading the prompt, he said the short time he was given to prepare was paradoxically helpful because it forced him to focus on the content he’d be delivering and not the anxiety he felt.

“It was a great experience,” he said. “I look forward to doing another one.”

Devin Rocks is still at least a year away from earning his Ph.D. in biology. But the Rockaway Park, Queens, native is already making a splash in the academic world, thanks to his work examining the role that fluctuating sex hormones can have on mental disorders such as anxiety and depression.

This spring, the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences honored Rocks with the Elizabeth Young New Investigator Award, and the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology awarded him its Welcome Initiative Award. In January, the Society for Neuroscience bestowed upon him the Trainee Professional Development Award.

The awards recognize both the promise that Rocks has as a scientist and the work he’s conducted at Fordham under the guidance of Marija Kundakovic, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology. Kundakovic’s lab has been focused on an acute problem: Women are twice as likely to have anxiety and depression than men, but little research has been done on the molecular level to figure out why—until now. In January, Kundakovic was awarded nearly $1.9 million in grant funding from the National Institute of Mental Health for her research.

Rocks, who graduated from Fordham College Rose Hill in 2017 with a B.S. in integrative neuroscience and is on track to earn a Ph.D. in biological sciences in 2022, has been a part of the research from the beginning. He was one of five co-authors of a 2019 paper published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications that showed how a microscopic cell component called chromatin changes its shape during the mouse ovarian cycle—especially when females experience a change in estrogen. Because the changes occur inside the brain area implicated in anxiety and depression, it may affect women’s vulnerability to an increased risk for these disorders.

“The chromatin is basically the packaging material of the DNA. The chromatin can either be open, which allows the genes to be turned on, or it can be closed, in which case the genes are turned off,” he said.

“The studies showed that, over the rodent estrous cycle, which is the rodent equivalent of the menstrual cycle, the fluctuating sex hormones are affecting whether this chromatin is open or closed and affecting certain genes.”

It’s not known exactly how the opening or closing of chromatin causes depression or anxiety, but connecting the two events together is an important step in the research.

Since that 2019 paper was published, Rocks has been conducting follow-up research that involves introducing a gene known as Egr1 into the brains of laboratory mice to mimic the changes that normally only happen during the estrous cycle. The results will be published as part of his dissertation.

“We can give mice extra copies of this gene in the brain region that we study, the ventral hippocampus, and this can mimic the effect you’d see from the fluctuating hormones. This gene seems to be playing an important master regulatory role,” he said.

Kundakovic, who joined Fordham in 2015 and began working with Rocks when he was in his junior undergraduate year, said “functional” studies that rely on live animals are vital to verifying studies that use computational analysis to predict whether one change (a change in estrogen) is connected to something happening in the brain (a change in chromatin structure) and behavior.

“You can do a big data-computational type analysis, and say, ‘Give me the predicted regulator of these chromatin changes that we are seeing.’ [In 2019], we did that, and we found a really good candidate in Egr1,” she said.

“What Devin did was he took the candidate that we have, and he was able to do a manipulation of the animals in which he could functionally relate the changes and say, ‘This is the regulator of the behavior.’”

Rocks still has more research to do. Now that he knows that introducing Egr1 into mouse brains can change their behavior, he’s planning to conduct experiments that show exactly how Egr1 affects chromatin.

“We want to see which changes in chromatin and gene expression that we see happening in normal animals over their estrous cycle are being regulated directly by Egr1,” said Rocks, who also teaches techniques in molecular biology to first-year graduate students.

The awards he received are gratifying, he said, given that he’s still completing his education.

“It’s an indication that the community is welcoming me as someone who will contribute to the field in the future and will continue to grow as a scientist, and so I’m really grateful for all of them,” he said.

The most challenging aspect of the research has been utilizing the full spectrum of research techniques required.

“A lot of labs will just do one of the techniques we do, like the genome-wide experiments. Learning how to do them and analyze all that data that comes out of it using bioinformatics analysis, and then also learning how to do animal surgeries—we combine so many different disciplines and techniques,” he said.

“It’s definitely been a challenge to keep up with all of that. It’s also really exciting though. Learning new things is one of my favorite parts of the job.”

Kundakovic was quick to note that when it was announced that Rocks had won the Elizabeth Young New Investigator Award, he was introduced as a “future leader in the field.”

“As someone who’s been working with him for the past five years, since he was an undergraduate, it’s really been my privilege to watch him grow as a person and a scientist,” she said.

“His dedication to his work, his passion; it’s just paid off really well. I think he’s on a really good path.”

At that videocast ceremony, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, officially conferred nearly 5,500 degrees upon graduates from nine Fordham schools. He acknowledged that it was not the commencement anyone had expected for them. Fordham’s traditional celebration on Edwards Parade was replaced by smaller diploma ceremonies and online broadcasts, with some graduates celebrating only virtually. It was one of many aspects of college life curtailed by the global pandemic “at a time when the whole world has been haunted by fear and overshadowed by loss.”

But, Father McShane said, Commencement was a day to celebrate. While some might have given in to despair, he said, the Class of 2021 persevered.

“You never surrendered,” he said. “Rather, you rose to every challenge that the world threw at you. You gave yourselves to a more than usually intense search for answers and for meaning.”

Small Acts of Courage Matter

In her keynote address broadcast during Saturday’s ceremony, retired Navy Admiral Michelle Howard, the first woman to become a four-star admiral, harkened back to Martin Luther King Jr.’s observation that the ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of convenience and comfort, but where they stand in moments of challenge and controversy.

She cited the experience that Lieutenant Commander Wesley Brown, the first African American to graduate from her alma mater, Annapolis, relayed to her in conversations.

When Brown enrolled in the mid-1940s, segregation isolated him in every capacity—in the classroom, the cafeteria, and in his room. His classmates actively tried to sabotage his progress. Keeping one’s quarters spotless was of utmost importance in the naval academy, so when he returned to find them trashed, he braced for the worst when the white officer arrived for inspection.

“This officer is just looking around, and there’s silence. Finally, he says, ‘Midshipman Brown, I suspect this room did not look like this this morning.’ And Wesley Brown said, ‘No sir.’ So, the officer said, ‘Carry on,’ and he left,” she said.

That officer’s actions inspired Brown to continue his studies, she said, and showed that even small acts of courage can make a difference in other’s lives.

“Whether in times of comfort or convenience, times of challenge and controversy, you know you have it within you. You can do these small acts of courage,” she said.

A Week Like No Other

While many of the themes of the 176th Commencement felt familiar, events also reflected the fact that the pandemic is beginning to ease, but not entirely over. Pairs of seats dotted Edwards Parade in socially distanced configurations. Masks were required at Rose Hill on Monday and Tuesday, but by Wednesday the mandate was lifted for outdoor use in accordance with evolving state health guidelines.

The victory bell that marks the beginning of a University-wide ceremony that in normal times draws thousands to the Rose Hill Campus was put into service several times for smaller diploma ceremonies. More than 1,500 seniors from Fordham College at Rose Hill, Fordham College at Lincoln Center, and the Gabelli School of Business arrived with two guests for ceremonies that ran from May 17 to May 20.

A Moment of Shared Victory

In his speech during the main videocast on Saturday, Father McShane acknowledged the unusual times, and shouted out to the parents and families for their role in a day of “shared victory, shared triumph, and shared accomplishment.”

He noted that the class of 2021 is finishing its studies in spite of living through a year that featured a global pandemic, an economic downturn, a reckoning with racism, a bruising presidential election campaign, and an assault on the U.S. Capitol and the democratic principles upon which our nation has been built and sustained.

“The toll that these cascading plagues has taken on all of us, and on you in a special way, has been enormous,” he said.

“With ease and grace, you became one another’s keepers, and in the process, you became ministers of cura personalis to one another,” he said.

A Return to Campus Brings Flood of Emotions

The return to the Rose Hill campus brought forth a range of feelings, some bittersweet.

After a fall of remote learning from her parent’s house in Rochester, New York, Beatriz Barraclough-Tan, an anthropology major at Fordham College at Rose Hill, was grateful to return to campus in January, where she was able to share on-campus housing with her friend, Grace Mulligan Tuck, who she was walking with on Monday.

She was also thankful that she was able to continue to sing with the Scola Cantorum choir. When the pandemic hit, they recorded themselves singing alone for an online project, but eventually, they were allowed to sing in the University Church, behind plexiglass, in limited numbers.

“At the Baccalaureate Mass, we had nine seniors who were able to sing,” she said. “I almost cried yesterday when we were coming out.”

Nearby, Marla Louissaint, a Founder’s Scholar who earned a degree in computer science from Fordham College at Rose Hill, was sporting a custom-made mask with “Claim Our Space Now” and “BLM” on it; the former being the name of a nonprofit she started in May that aims to dismantle white supremacy and save Black lives.

Having come to the United States from Haiti as an undocumented immigrant—she became a U.S. citizen when she was 6—Louissaint said she felt proud, but also felt the weight of her ancestors who were denied education.

She credited her father for pushing her to finish her degree even as she pursued opportunities such as a role in the Broadway show Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, which she toured with in 2018.

“He was like, ‘Yes, you’re an artist, but we came to the States to give you this life. Please finish your degree no matter what.’ It took six years, but we’re here today!” she said.

A Celebration for Parents

On Tuesday, Lori and Tim Considine were soaking in the atmosphere on Edwards Parade and reflecting on the past four years. To make it to a 9 a.m. diploma ceremony, the Highland, New York residents caught a 5:15 a.m. train from Poughkeepsie. They were there for their son Samuel, who was graduating from the Gabelli School of Business with a bachelor’s degree in finance.

“We were just looking at pictures of when we dropped him off, and I am just so proud of him. This is the happiest I’ve been in a long time,” Lori said.

Both Samuel and his sister Celeste, a junior at SUNY Plattsburgh, opted for remote learning for this year, and to mark the occasion of his return to campus, Samuel wore a pair of hiking shoes that he’d purchased the day that Fordham suspended in-person instruction in March 2020.

For Anthony Quartell, FCRH ’64, Wednesday was the best day of his life, because his daughter, Olivia was also graduating from Fordham College at Rose Hill.

“I dreamed of this. We have five children,” he said, and finally one was graduating from his alma mater. “It’s a day I wasn’t sure I was going to get to have.”

Olivia, a double major in political science and communications and culture, said Fordham has had a special place in her heart since her first trip to campus.

“Getting to come here after hearing about it from him—he grew up around here—made that very special for me,” she said.

Savoring One Last Swing Through Campus

The person inside the Ramses mascot isn’t often known, but on Thursday, Sophia Zehler decided to reveal her identity, with a cap decorated with a photo of her and the mascot head, and a line that reads “It was me.”

When she transferred to Fordham her sophomore year, Zehler heard about an opening for the mascot position and decided to give it a shot. Her favorite Fordham memory was appearing as The Ram on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon that year.

“It’s exciting to be here. It’s not how I wanted it to end, but I’m happy I got a lot of experiences like this,” she said.

For Nel Patel, a Rockaway, New Jersey, native who majored in applied accounting and finance at the Gabelli School of Business, just being on Edwards Parade on a warm spring day on Wednesday was reliving his fondest memory.

“After four years, I can say this place is probably one of my favorite places in the world,” he said.

“I’m glad I could share this moment with my classmates and friends. It will definitely be special to reminisce about this down the line.”

The Celebration Continues

Virtual diploma ceremonies for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, and the School of Professional and Continuing Studies were held immediately after the ceremony. The School of Professional and Continuing Studies will also confer diplomas in a ceremony at the Rose Hill campus on Sunday, May 23.

The Graduate School of Education will hold an in-person diploma ceremony on Sunday, May 23, and will hold a virtual ceremony on Monday, May 24.

The School of Law will confer diplomas in a virtual ceremony on Sunday, May 23, that will feature an address by former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. An in-person ceremony will be held at the Rose Hill campus on Monday, May 24.

The Gabelli School of Business will confer diplomas to its masters and Ph.D. students in a virtual ceremony on the morning of Tuesday, May 25, followed by an in-person ceremony in the afternoon at the Rose Hill campus. The Graduate School of Social Service will confer diplomas in a virtual ceremony on Tuesday, May 25.

In addition, the University will hold in-person ceremonies for members of the Class of 2020 the weekend of June 5.

Additional reporting by Adam Kaufman and Kelly Kultys

And yet in spite of all of the uncertainty, entrepreneurs are still founding new companies. The Fordham Foundry, a business incubator based at the Gabelli School of Business, has continued to stage contests for burgeoning ideas. Its most recent one, the Ram’s Den, took place on February 6, and a second one, a pitch challenge geared toward less developed business plans, will take place March 27.

So what is life like for a small business owner these days? We sat down with Brandon Adamson, a Gabelli MBA graduate whose company BeautiMaps won the 2019 pitch challenge, and Ozzy Usman, a current EMBA student who won second place in this year’s Ram’s Den with his small business lending company Equeduct.

Listen below

Full transcription:
Ozzie Usman: A lot of startup building company building is a social thing and what I mean by that is you have to be able to plug into all these different things that you need to do, but you need to find the best people you can in those areas to really help you because there’s no one person sitting in some basement or even in a garage coding the future.

Patrick Verel: To say these are challenging economic times is an understatement. As COVID-19 vaccines are rapidly being distributed, the promise of a revived economy seems closer than ever. Not so fast though. As experts warn that life in the United States will probably not fully return to normal until the fall and yet, in spite of all the uncertainty, entrepreneurs are still founding new companies. The Fordham Foundry, a business incubator based at the Gabelli School of Business has continued to stage contests for burgeoning ideas. Its most recent one, the Ram’s Den took place on February 6th and a second one, a pitch challenge geared towards less developed business plans will take place March 27th.

So what is life like for a small business owner these days? We sat down with Brandon Adamson, a Gabelli MBA graduate whose company BeautiMaps won the 2019 pitch challenge, and Ozzie Usman, a current EMBA student who won second place in this year’s Ram’s Den with his small business lending company, Equeduct. I’m Patrick Verel and this is Fordham news.

Hi, guys. Welcome to the first-ever Zoom-enabled Fordham news conversation. So this is about business. So I’d love to hear the elevator pitches for your companies. Brandon, you’re up first. Ready? Go.

Brandon Adamson: Sure. Thank you. So my name is Brandon Adamson, as you mentioned. A recent Fordham MBA grad from the Gabelli School of Business and I am the founder and CEO of BeautiMaps Technologies LLC. So BeautiMaps is the prime and global freelancing platform specifically tailored to the beauty and makeup industry. We empower independent professionals and clients to receive and provide beauty and wellness services. Essentially my goal is to connect makeup artists who are certified or not certified with new clients and right now that’s scattered use between YouTube, Style Seat, Instagram. We’re looking to have that on one platform.

PV: Okay. Ozzie, go.

OU: Patrick thanks for having us on. So Equeduct is a company that we started about two years ago. It was started by myself and three other founders. We specialize in providing small business loans specifically to high-risk and startup businesses. What we did was we took a look at that specific segment and determined what are some of their key pain points and build a solution around how do we get funds directly to them as quickly as possible by using automation for risk management, as well as making sure that we can also ACH and wire funds to them immediately versus them being in a holding pattern for an extended period of times. So overall, what we’re trying to do is essentially provide funding for businesses that are struggling.

PV: So now, Brandon, you won the pitch challenge in 2019 for your idea and obviously, so you’ve been working with BeautiMaps since then. How has that been going?

BA: So I would say it’s been going great by way of how much I’m able to learn throughout this process. Obviously the pandemic has put a strain on the industry I’m targeting by way of makeup. Right now, people are not outside as much. Events, such as weddings and these huge events that require people to get dressed up or dolled up aren’t really happening. So there has been a slow down per se. However, what that has allowed is me somewhat extra time to be able to build the infrastructure for our company a little bit better. So what that looks like for me is making sure my MVP or my minimum viable product for an app is as sound as possible, even as a version zero iteration. That means making sure that marketing and advertisement I’m building up that anticipation to the idea that once people are able to go outside, there is this platform that can rely on it to connect them with makeup artists or institutions to provide those services.

PV: So did you make major adjustments about a year ago when all this started to fall apart?

BA: Absolutely. So BeautiMaps’s main target or main goal is to provide a mobile platform to connect makeup artists with their current clients and new clients. So it’s a way of discovery as well as continuing your book of business.

One of the long-term visions or long-term goals for the company was to also have a multi-vendor marketplace. Think of Etsy, but for makeup. So instead of doing that three to five years down the line, we somewhat fast track that and now on the Beauty Maps website, we actually do have a multi-vendor marketplace where I’ve partnered with a lot of other small businesses that sell cosmetic products, such as makeup or eyelashes or eyeliner that are now currently being featured on my website. So the app itself isn’t there yet. I’m not actually connecting to makeup artist just yet, but we’re still able to generate some revenue and at least some traction around the word or the name BeautiMapsv so that once we’re able to roll it out, people have somewhat of a familiarity with it.

PV: Ozzie, you were further along obviously with your business when you entered the Ram’s Den this year, because that’s just the nature of the Ram’s Den competition. Talk to me a little bit about what you’ve been doing.

OU: I think I’ll echo what Brandon said. It’s been very challenging. We started the business, we built out our MVP, we secured funding. So we did some basic blocking and tackling things. By the time we had entered into the new year 2019, there was word on the street for lack of a better phrase of COVID starting and then obviously it hit. The second it hit, things just slowed down initially. We ourselves were trying to figure out what our next position will be, things of that nature but very soon after we started getting in a ton of requests. As far as the way that we’ve structured it, we were actually doing Google advertising, Facebook advertising, things like that, predating COVID. Now what ended up happening with just spending just a few dollars, we’d get like hundreds, and in certain cases, thousands of users requesting loans.

So we had an overwhelming demand that started and what that meant was there was a lot of technology that was underlying our MVP that we didn’t build. So for instance, our automated risk management wasn’t built out. So we had to manually go in and do all the background checks, do all of the looking at their cash flow, things of that nature.

So what I’ll say is I think it made it very clear to us very quickly when the pandemic started and as it followed that we’re going to be critical in helping people survive. So we weren’t just a business that was helping them stay afloat. It turned into if we’re not providing loans and we can’t act fast enough, people will lose jobs. People will have to have hard conversations with their families. So then it went from being just a startup to being almost a bit of a calling for us.

So we’ve been focused heavily on being able to just get the requests, do the analysis of if it’s a risk we’re willing to take and getting them the funds as quickly as possible. So, that’s been sort of our key focus and the challenge now is its sort of flipped over where we’ve gone through the funding that we had originally acquired and as founders we’ve started putting our own funding in and so we have essentially self-funding so we can still continue providing these loans. Obviously we have a lot more skin in the game. At the same time, we’re actually going out, working with other institutions, showing them where we are, our progress so we can get additional funding for more institutional investors.

PV: Is there anything else that the pandemic has made you re-evaluate things?

BA: The pandemic has positioned to me to try to make this company as recession proof as possible. So in my position, fast tracking the timeline on that marketplace where even if people aren’t putting on makeup or women or whoever may not be putting on makeup, they still might put on lashes. They’re still doing their makeup, maybe not professionally, but just to go to dinner or brunch with their mask, if they still want to look somewhat presentable or cute.

OU: I’m sure Brandon’s going through it. We’re going through it as well. It’s how do we stay resilient in a time where we have to work a lot more than we’d anticipated. We all have our day jobs, but we’re now trying to build this company. So it’s been challenging but I think overall I say to all my partners, it’s kind of like our first fight as a couple and we just have to get through it and how we get through it will speak more to us than when we’re just being a happy go lucky couples.

PV: One of the things that you guys have in common is you both worked with the Fordham Foundry. Are there any lessons that you learned from working there that you’re able to use now?

BA: One thing specifically I learned that was important was in this realm, especially as it relates to me building out an app, certain developers have told me the app, for the features I’m looking for, it’s going to run me at least 170K and I’m not sure about you guys, but I don’t have 170K laying around and a lot of people don’t have 170K laying around, but how do I get my vision out without the capital? I can always raise the capital. We can do some rounds with some funding, etc. However, in this realm in today’s day and age, you can fake it until you make it, like literally. So take advantage of prototypes, pay for what it would actually look like and how it would actually operate so that when you show it to investors and show it to even possible clients, they can see it, also get excited about it and realize this is something they want to be a part of.

OU: I’ve been a serial entrepreneur for about eight years now and one of the things that you learn really quickly that they don’t show you in the movies is a lot of startup building, company building is a social thing and what I mean by that is you have to be able to plug into all these different things that you need to do, but you need to find the best people you can in those areas to really help you because there’s no one person sitting in some basement or even in a garage coding the future that person may have built something that can sort of give them direction but ultimately what it boils down to is being able to plug into the right people and that is the key between succeeding or not. It’s one of the main keys I believe. So the Foundry from that perspective has been phenomenal.

You, one, get to touch base with a lot of people who are subject matter experts in that particular field. In addition, if they’re not, they know where to send you or they know who to talk to. So the Foundry, I think in that respect has been instrumental, especially for first time startups. I mean, Brandan, I’m not sure how many companies you’ve built out, but my first one, I flushed $500,000 of my own money down the toilet and I had nothing to show for except a really great app. It could probably land a Rover on Mars, but what it couldn’t do was get the client in there to buy the product.

PV: What’s the biggest challenge you face right now. Brandon, you want to go for that first again? I feel like we have a thing here where it’s a counter-clockwise thing in live view here.

BA: Sure, sure. No problem. So the biggest challenge I face right now, I would say is building out a solid team. You can always find someone who loves it just as much as you and maybe they’ll get some equity in the company and they’ll do the coding or there’ll be your CTO, things of that nature. However, just so I’m clear. I’m not someone who thinks one person should be doing all the work. There’s some CEOs out here and founders, they want to be in the books. Good to great. They want to be known as the guy who took the company from zero to 100. I’m perfectly fine with delegating but part of that is either you need to find somebody who, or people who are just as interested and invested or you need to pay them.

So I think when you don’t have the funds or the capital to necessarily hire people, you’re really focusing on trying to build out a team of people who can see the vision and agree with the vision and will grind through it with you. So I think right now my biggest challenge and I actually just reached out to Al and notated from the Foundry about an intern because the Foundry also provides interns. So I’m definitely going take advantage of that for the next round. Just because having someone who can perhaps maybe strictly focused on business development or strictly focused on marketing versus me trying to have eight legs doing it or eight different arms doing it is just a better approach.

PV: And what about on a personal level? You have a day job too, and you have a life outside of work, I assume.

BA: I do have a day job as well that’s fairly demanding. I work in finance and I also have a two year old as of last Sunday. His name is Bryson. So yeah, full on employee, full on daddy mode, full on entrepreneur. But it’s one of those things where it’s the making of a good story regardless of how it turns out. So my son can also see that I can go to work and still chase my own vision and my own dreams, et cetera. So challenges, yes, but also learning moments by way of a lot of characters being built at this time, which I can imagine Ozzie, in your past entrepreneurship ventures, whether they worked or didn’t work, I’m sure a lot has molded you or changed you to a point where you’re able to attack things differently now. So that’s the one thing I’ve also learned. If this were to never work out, I know how to start a company lightning speed now. I know how to get things going super fast. I know how to do these particular things that for a lot of people is the biggest obstacle.

PV: What about you, Ozzie? Obviously we’ve heard about some of the challenges on the business front. What would you say is the biggest that you face both there and also on a personal front?

OU: I would say on a personal front, an ongoing challenge of mine has been time management, priority management and what I mean by that is I currently run about five different companies that are spread across providing microloans like Equeduct to others that do credit card processing and so on and so forth. So the challenge that I have is where am I going to spend my time is probably the hardest thing and every morning I have a little ritual I go through to determine what’s the highest priority thing that I need to solve for the day. What’s the most pernicious problem that we’re having, that I need to put my brainpower into as a founder and as a CEO of a company. If my attention goes into something that is not relevant and that does not push the company vision forward, then we’re just spinning wheels and dirt.

Beyond that, I think at a company level, our biggest challenge right now is we just need to go faster. I don’t know how else to say it, but I’ve partnered with folks who come from corporate America and there is a bit of a shackle that you wear when you come from corporate America, which is fast is not necessarily good and what I mean by that is they’re used to being very risk averse and taking very measured steps in determining what the return is and a startup is very much not like that. It’s not about taking measures step. This is about running as quickly as you can before either your juice, which is your funds run out, or you find something that works.

Brandon, I’d be curious. Obviously, I’m guessing this is your first company that you’re building up. So if you could change one thing about yourself, forget about the company. It is what it is. One weakness that you think is slowing you down, stopping you from actually building this thing out. What do you think it would be?

BA: Oh, easy answer. It would be my inclination or lack thereof to attack the social media route. So in the beauty industry, seeing is a big part of it. Being active on social media, et cetera. So for my Beauty Maps page, I have a marketing company that’s ran by a friend who’s handling the posting, et cetera, but a lot of that and a lot of things around businesses today, they want to see you, the personal person behind the business. In this case, it’s a little bit different because I’m a 6’2 African-American man and I don’t know much about makeup but knowing that’s a key, especially in this day and age to be noticed is you have to push out content, right? You have to be seen, you have to be known and I particularly don’t enjoy that. I live a private lifestyle. I enjoy that. So if there’s one thing I could change, it would be my ability to be okay with that.

OU: I shy away from publicity also as much as I possibly can, but you’re the main cheerleader for your company. Like now, I was on a flight down to Miami. I talk about my companies to anyone and everyone that’s willing to listen. I was literally trying to sell loans to people on the flight who were sitting next to me. They’re like, just put your mask on and shut up. I’m like, are you sure your business doesn’t need to tell, let’s talk about how your cash flow is and so on support. The trick really becomes is your weaknesses are your company’s weaknesses, quite frankly and it’s true when they say from being in a business perspective, as an MBA student, they always say, find people that offset your weaknesses. It is especially true in a startup because nothing happens in that area unless you have that weakness accounted for.

PV: Brandon, did you want to ask Ozzie anything?

BA: Sure, absolutely. So you mentioned that you ran through half a ticket on your first business. You can feel free to divulge the details if you want but I was just curious, what did you approach differently? I know you mentioned the prototyping, but in this case, you can’t really prototype. You’re either servicing alone or you’re not. So I’m just curious in this case, how did you approach this business idea differently than you did your first one to try to avoid those pitfalls?

OU: So I’ll give you a great example. I think prototyping is shorthand for get it out there as quickly as possible, right? And we can call it whatever we want to, but prototyping really means get it out as quickly as possible, start getting feedback. So with respect to my first business, it was in exotic car peer-to-peer car rental company. So essentially if you owned a Ferrari or Lamborghini, you can put it on a platform and someone will rent it from you and you monetize it. It’s a depreciating asset and we take a certain percentage of the profit, right? We built out the entire, we built out all the partnerships. We built out everything supply side. We had like over a hundred cars on our platform in five different states and we did all these things. What we didn’t do was we didn’t bring customers to the platform. So we spent all this money building up this supply base and this ability to connect the demand side with the supply side but we never focused in on the demand side. Ultimately, what ended up happening was when it was time to shift gears and start focusing on the demand side, which we thought was going to be not the hardest part, turned out to be very hard and on top of that, we ran out of money.

PV: Imagine in your mind now that we can kind of see our way out of this pandemic and we’re going to enter into back to normal, whatever that new normal is. But if you go to a bar and somebody you talk to asks you, why do you like starting companies? What do you tell them?

BA: I would have to say the freedom of knowing that this idea or this business is a representation of my perseverance and execution. At work, you work 40 hours a week. Maybe you’re actually productive for 25 of those 40 hours, but you’ll still get paid for the 40. At a startup, you’ll get paid for what you do. So if you’re only productive 25, you’re only getting paid for 25.

OU: I’m a child of a small business owner and my dad is great at so many things, but I witnessed firsthand discussions at the dinner table about tightening our belt or not having enough money for vacation, or at times, if I only had some more money, I could have grown the business differently or things of that nature. So for me, building Equeduct was in direct response to those conversations that I had with my dad and my family had. It’s to say to people that, listen, it is tough being a business owner and for me specifically, it’s a number of people. So for every one business that goes under, 10 people directly are impacted and by the transitive property, it’s a total of about 40 to 50 people are impacted by one business going down. So that’s a lot of people that are hurt. That’s a lot of people that don’t have money. That’s a lot of people that may not even have the ability to send their kids to school and so on and so forth. So, for me, it’s really straightforward. It’s how do I build something that can provide or contribute to their lives at that level?

For Joshua Schrier, Ph.D., chemistry research is the next frontier.

“An emerging area of chemistry is finding ways to create a machine-readable representation of the things in the world, like the structures of molecules or chemical processes, and then using those digital representations for computer simulations and machine learning,” he said.

“Once we have the results of chemical experiments in a digital form, we can unleash the tools of data science to make smarter predictions. By combining this with robots that can conduct new experiments, we create the possibility for a virtuous cycle: Every new data point gives our model a better picture of the world, and algorithms can select new data points that improve that picture and dispatch experimental instructions to a robot to collect new data.”

Schrier joined the faculty in 2018 as the first Bepler Chair in Chemistry, and has devoted much of his time to his study “Discovering reactions and uncovering mechanisms of perovskite formation,” a $7.4 million project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Perovskites are a class of minerals that can be used in low-cost, high-performance solar cells, x-ray detectors, and lighting. The goal of the project is to develop software and hardware to automate scientific research, using perovskites as a test case.

Robot-Created Minerals

He and fellow researchers at Haverford College, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and MIT have developed a system dubbed RAPID (Robot-Accelerated Perovskite Investigation and Discovery) to create perovskite minerals. Perovskites are minerals composed of both inorganic and organic materials, which makes them are particularly attractive.

“You can replace the organic building unit with hundreds of thousands of different possible molecules. Every time you do that, you get a different crystal structure. It’s kind of like molecular Legos,” said Schrier.

“Our efforts are aimed at the early stage of materials development; we’re not making new solar cells themselves, but we are discovering the materials that will enable better solar cells. It’s like we’re not building a house, but we’re inventing new kinds of bricks you could use to build a house,” he said.

Exploring new structures is important, he said, because by changing the structure of the perovskites, you change the way they interact with light, their electrical properties, and their stability. This is important, he said, because one of the key limitations of existing perovskite solar cells is a lack of long-term stability.

In the three years since the project got underway, Schrier said they’ve synthesized roughly 70 perovskites and performed over 10,000 experiments. While that’s useful, he said, what’s equally important is that RAPID is learning how to do the experiments itself.

2020 Findings

In “Robot-Accelerated Perovskite Investigation and Discovery,” an article published in June 2020 by Chemistry of Materials, he and his colleagues detail how they adapted perovskite syntheses for the RAPID system. Given a set of starting ingredients, researchers were able to conduct 96 randomly chosen experiments in four hours. That created a data set that the computer was able to then use to predict the success of future experiments.

Although he’s based in New York City and RAPID is housed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Schrier is able to work with colleagues in California remotely and his students are likewise able to analyze data safely from their homes. This paper was one of the top-20 most-downloaded papers in 2020, according to the journal.

This initial set of experiments is sufficient to predict the results of any subsequent experiments for that chemical system with 80-90% accuracy. In subsequent work published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C, Schrier and co-authors Mary Kate Caucci, FCRH ’20; Michael Tynes, FCRH ’17, GSAS ’20; and Aaron Dharna, FCRH ’16, GSAS ’20, were able to show that researchers can also extrapolate to entirely new sets of chemical ingredients that have never been seen before, with about 40% accuracy.

“With no knowledge about this new chemical system, just the things that we’ve learned about in the past about other chemical systems, being right 40% of the time is good enough,” Schrier said. “This gives us a higher probability of success on our first batch of 96 experiments. We don’t need to be perfect, we only need to find one success. To use an analogy, machine learning lets us pick better lottery tickets, and the robot lets us buy more lottery tickets. Putting them together gives us the best chance of winning.”

Randomness and Removing Bias

What’s surprised Schrier the most about recent findings is the effectiveness of randomness. Simply selecting the initial experiments randomly often yields better machine learning models than data chosen by human experts, he said.

This focus on randomness has important implications for artificial intelligence, because if human-generated data is used to create machine learning models, he said, we run the risk of creating machines that repeat our own biases. He explored the importance of removing human “fingerprints” in “Anthropogenic biases in chemical reaction data hinder exploratory inorganic synthesis,” which he published in 2019 in the journal Nature.

“This is at odds with the hypothesis-driven experiment design we teach students from grade school through university. What we’ve found is that humans tend to get stuck in a rut, and so instead of exploring all of the possibilities, they just focus on a few,” he said.

“The advantage of using robots is that they do what we tell them, even if it is just random. In this way, we remove our conceptual fingerprints from the data collection process and take a more unbiased look at the world.”

In the Classroom with Non-Science Majors

Although creating minerals from scratch is exciting, work with students is just as rewarding, Schrier said. In addition to mentoring six Fordham undergraduate research students, this fall, he taught a new course called Drug Discovery from Laboratory to the Clinic, which was especially fortuitous given the intense interest in the development of COVID-19 vaccines. The course is part of Fordham’s Manresa Scholars program and combines science with the Eloquentia Perfecta core.

Reading material for the class, which was for non-science majors, included analyses of Remdesivir, articles on clinical trials for hydroxychloroquine in the New England Journal of Medicine, analysis of the ethics of Moderna’s vaccine distribution plan, and information about the regulatory process of drug approval.

Outside speakers included a research scientist from the National Institute of Health and a pet-pharmaceutical startup entrepreneur who provided insights into the long path from basic research to sustainable business.

“The class just sort of wrote itself given the unfolding of world events that were occurring in the fall. The intersection of science, policy, business, and ethics is a fertile ground for engaging students,” he said.

“Fordham students have a rich intellectual toolbox for these types of discussions. In their core requirements, they’re taking philosophy, theology, economics, political science, and can apply this to the problem at hand. They’re quick to start a debate with, ‘No, no, no. Kant says you shouldn’t objectivize humans. We can’t do this.’”

Meanwhile, RAPID continues to churn out perovskites. Schrier is collaborating with Clavius Distinguished Professor of Computer Science“Mary Kate Caucci” “Michael Tynes” “Aaron Dharna” “Frank Hsu” “Yuanqing Tang”, to look at new ways of performing automated quality control for scientific experiments. He is also working with Rodolfo Keesey, FCRH ’20, in conducting data analysis geared toward using RAPID for other types of perovskite growth methods.

And in a collaboration with Fordham College at Rose Hill senior Lillian Cain and Michael Tynes that was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Chemical Education, Schrier described how algorithms for planning chemical experiments can be incorporated into a first-year general chemistry lab.

“We’re developing tools for doing science in a new way—not just perovskites—and it’s exciting to see Fordham students at the forefront of this new approach,” he said.

“To my esteemed colleague and good friend Father McShane, Mr. Robert Daleo, Chair of the Fordham Board of Trustees, Fordham trustees, faculty, staff, students and members of the administration, my thanks for the honor of speaking at the 171st commencement of Fordham University.

“I also offer my heartfelt congratulations to the faculty and staff of Fordham University. It takes all of the creative and talented individuals who make up the community of a university to convey the information, support and spirit of academic pursuits and you at Fordham do it exceedingly well.

“I also now ask the graduates to join me in recognizing and thanking your family and friends. I know you will agree that we would not be here, celebrating today, if not for them.

“Look back on what you’ve accomplished and savor the present moment of recognition and joy. Look forward to your future and please be determined to make it a better future for us all. You are now among the best educated and informed generation ever, thanks to your dedication and hard work at this great university and to the longstanding emphasis on high quality higher education in the United States.

“Please recognize that earning a college degree is still a privilege—only 40 percent of Americans between 25 and 64 have graduated from a two- or four-year college. You have been particularly privileged to attend Fordham, a school where the curriculum is cutting edge and incredibly broad and, importantly, based in part on faith and service to others.

“At the same time, you are entering an increasingly uncertain and unpredictable world, a world still in the stubborn grip of economic turmoil and a world where our core values are being debated on college campuses, on the streets of our cities, and around the globe, as traditional democratic and humanistic ideals seem to be under siege.

“Every day we watch and listen as the conversations on the great issues of the day – from climate change, to income inequality, to race– are marked not by civility, cooperation, and consensus, but by vitriol, suspicion, and fear.

Despite the urgency to address these problems, concrete progress seems elusive and, at times, purposely frustrated. As a result, we begin to doubt the commitment of our leaders and the very institutions – of government, education, business, and community —on which our fortunes as a nation were built and now rest.

“The American success story is based on trust and on the notion that free speech and a free press will ensure the broadest possible public involvement in the direction our country takes. The effectiveness of our mechanisms for public input in charting the nation’s course is constantly debated. And the trust that our institutions will do the right thing is weakening. Noted Yale economist, Robert Shiller, was recently quoted as observing, “We’re just not in a trusting mood now.”

“Indeed. According to a 2015 Gallup Poll, seven in 10 Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track and eight in 10 are dissatisfied with the way the nation is being governed. This is not a partisan issue. Only one-third of Americans, 33 percent, have “a great deal” or a “lot of” confidence in the institution of the presidency. Thirty-two percent feel the same about the Supreme Court and just eight percent have confidence in the Congress as an institution. As the world’s greatest democracy, that more than two-thirds of the people do not trust our government should be a clarion call to us all.

“This crisis in trust affects every aspect of our society. Just last week, Time Magazine’s cover story cited a recent Harvard Institute of Politics survey concluding that “a majority of citizens [are]uncomfortable with the country’s economic foundation—a system that over hundreds of years turned a fledgling society of farmers and prospectors into the most prosperous nation in human history.” Gallup results underscored that finding– only 23 percent of Americans trust banks, and just 19 percent have confidence in big business. And newspapers and television news, a foundation for an informed electorate, average even less.

“Very profoundly, only 42 percent of the American public has confidence in organized religion.

“Unfortunately, we should not be too surprised that our trust in these institutions is falling. Public institutions thrive in part by promoting the common good. Over the past two decades, the public has had ample reason to question whether that is still the case. Perhaps this is a matter of perception. Whether it is or not, public perception is of great consequence and great concern.

“Endless wars, deep partisanship, and gridlock in Washington shake our confidence in government. We trust less our financial institutions following the events that led to the Great Recession of 2008. Instances of bias and fabrications in reporting lead us to question the media’s objectivity. And the recent problems surrounding the Church no doubt contribute to American’s declining confidence in organized religion.

“Despite the seemingly pessimistic picture I have just painted, I remain an optimist and hope that you share my optimism. Ways to increase our trust in our institutions and, frankly, in each other are well-known. Communication and education; laws and the enforcement of those laws in a way that strengthens community; intolerance of inequality, and promotion of shared understanding. A study on trust and inequality by three British economists concluded that good policy initiates a virtuous circle: policies that raise trust efficiently, improve living standards, raise civil liberties, enhance institutions, and reduce corruption, further raising trust. Trust, democracy, and the rule of law are the foundation of abiding prosperity.

“When our institutions are under siege, we turn to individuals, working together, to make the difference in this world. As Pope Francis advised us in his address before Congress last fall,

“Our response [to the issues of today]must be one of hope and healing, of peace and justice. We are asked to summon the courage and the intelligence to resolve today’s many geopolitical and economic crises. Even in the developed world, the effects of unjust structures and actions are all too apparent. Our efforts must aim at restoring hope, righting wrongs, maintaining commitments and thus promoting the well-being of individuals and of peoples, We must move forward together, as one, in a renewed spirit of fraternity and solidarity, cooperating generously for the common good.

“I am convinced that your education, your hard work, and your commitment to the values and traditions of this great and venerable university give you a special opportunity and obligation to answer Pope Francis’s call, whatever your religion or background.

“As a spiritual person, I recognize the value of the spiritual foundation Fordham has provided you. As a great Jesuit university, Fordham is a place where all religious traditions interact to strengthen one’s understanding of faith and the conviction of his or her beliefs.

“As Father McShane has said—or perhaps the word is “exhorted”—“if you have been at Fordham for any time at all, you know that I am tireless—some would say relentless—in advocating for the University’s mission, in urging our students, and indeed all of you, to be men and women for others. I have said, many times, that I hope our graduates leave the campus bothered. Bothered by injustice. Bothered by poverty. Bothered by suffering.”

“Fordham has taught you that education is not only a path to a more satisfying and secure future but as well a tool for the common good. And there is plenty for you to help fix. The lack of trust in our institutions is an easy invitation to withdraw from our communities and look inward. As Fordham graduates, I’m confident that this is an invitation you will not accept.

“As you enter the next phase of your lives and careers, please think beyond your own employment prospects and think about how you can lead in the rebuilding of our trust—in our governments, in our schools, in our business, in our churches, mosques and synagogues and in each other. Be part of the virtuous circle.

“And always be guided by the values your Fordham diploma represents. Honor them. Share them. And renew them by staying in touch with your mentors, your professors, your friends, your school.

“We are counting on you. Congratulations.”

Two of this year’s graduates—Andrew Santis, who is receiving a bachelor’s of science in marketing with a concentration in global business, and Stephanie Ballantyne, who graduates with a dual master’s degree in public accounting and taxation—have worked, lived, and studied in more than a dozen countries between the two of them.

To Ballantyne, the global bent at the Gabelli School felt like home. Born in Germany and raised in Switzerland, she completed her undergraduate degree in accounting finance at the University of Stirling in Scotland, and then worked for Deloitte Zurich before coming to Fordham.

The move was challenging, she said; but then, having attended an international high school and traveled as a student to the likes of Egypt, Russia, and Greece, the challenge was a familiar one.

“I’ve always had culture shock happening at some point or another, but I grew up knowing I’d have an international lifestyle,” said Ballantyne, whose credits include president of the Gabelli School’s Accounting and Tax Society and chief operating officer of the Finance Society.

“I like New York,” she said. “Switzerland is a bit more laid back—they start work earlier, but also leave earlier, and on the weekends their phones are turned off. For someone starting their career, it can seem a bit slow.”

The New York pace has suited Ballantyne. She interned at Deloitte in Manhattan last summer, and by August she had secured a full-time offer.

“It was a big change, coming here—especially because I started at Fordham in 2014 during the polar vortex. There were about two snow days per week, which made it hard to meet people,” she said. “But overall, Fordham was definitely the right choice.”

For Santis, a native New Yorker, it was a study tour to Spain during his junior year that sparked his passion for global business—but his real adventure began when he returned home to his internship at Cardwell Beach, a digital marketing agency.

“My boss knew how much I enjoyed Madrid, and in March he called and said they wanted to offer me compensation for my work, which would be to send me abroad to work for the summer,” he said. “It didn’t even have to be Spain—I could choose any country I wanted.”

His options boundless, Santis chose a multi-city tour of Europe. He began with a week in Paris, and then joined up with fellow Gabelli School students for a summer semester program at Fordham’s London Centre. After London, he continued on to Germany, where he spent a week each in Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, and Munich.

In the mornings Santis explored the city, and in the afternoons, once his New York colleagues were at the office, he worked on creating buyer personas for Cardwell Beach.

“It was definitely a test of strength and character,” Santis said. “I learned a lot about myself by venturing out to another part of the world on my own.”

Both Santis and Ballantyne have jobs lined up following graduation. Ballantyne will continue with Deloitte in Manhattan, and Santis will take a full-time position at Cardwell Beach (a position for which he will craft his own title and job description).

“Fordham prepared me well,” Ballantyne said. “All the opportunities are here—you just have to take the initiative to go get them.”

Zoom out to see the journey as a whole, however, and you’ll find that the two paths dovetail. The army captain-turned-religious-educator is graduating with a master’s degree in religious education from the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education.

“It’s wasn’t too much of a switch,” Van Heusen said in a Skype interview from Koneitra, Lebanon. “I felt called to serve people, which is true for both.”

Van Heusen is a member of the Maronite church, an Eastern Catholic church that dates back to fourth-century Syria. Since October, she has been living and volunteering at a monastery in Koneitra to gain a deeper understanding of Maronite origins and witness how the tradition is lived out in the Middle East today.

Her focus in religious education is on youth and young adult ministries. It was from the monastery that she finished her master’s thesis, in which she develops a catechesis program for American Maronite youth.

“I love working with kids,” Van Heusen said. “The younger children understand so much. They still have that awe and wonder. And teenagers have such a thirst to learn, once you can get them talking and asking questions. Even young adults—in the parish [in Worcester, Massachusetts]where I was working, we would just sit sometimes for hours. They would tell me that it’s rare they can find someone who will just sit and talk with them like that.”

Before transitioning to parish work, Van Heusen was serving as an officer in the Army. She graduated from West Point with a bachelor’s of science in chemistry and life sciences, with a concentration in nuclear engineering. She toured widely as a military police officer, participating in force protection and peace and security operations in places such as Iraq, Guantánamo Bay, Kosovo, Israel, and Germany.

However, she couldn’t ignore a growing desire to work more closely with the Maronites, whose Syriac liturgy Van Heusen finds beautiful and “poetic.” Contemplating religious life, Van Heusen left the army and entered a Maronite convent.

She ultimately did not find her vocation with this community, and eventually relocated to Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Cathedral in Brooklyn. It was there that she first heard of Catholic Extension, a national organization dedicated to supporting underserved mission dioceses across the country.

She was accepted to the partnership program between Catholic Extension and Fordham, which allows candidates to receive a master’s degree at no cost in exchange for two and a half years working in one of the mission dioceses.

Van Heusen will return from Lebanon in June and relocate to Darlington, Pennsylvania, where she’ll be assisting the pastor at Blessed Teresa of Calcutta Maronite Mission.

“One thing that I’ve loved about Lebanon is the hospitality of the Lebanese people, which is something they’re known for,” Van Heusen said. “I remember one of the sisters trying to teach me the word for ‘hungry’ in Arabic, and I said to her, ‘But Sister, I’m never hungry—I’m always being fed!

“The more I’ve learned, the more I’ve fallen in love with the liturgy and the spirituality.”

The Oxford Outremer Map project is a collaboration among the center’s faculty, students, and fellows to restore a 13th-century map that depicts the coastline of the Crusader states, now modern-day Israel and Palestine. The map was likely made or copied by an English monk named Matthew Paris, said Laura K. Morreale, PhD, associate director of the center, and offers a glimpse into various—sometimes abstract—functions of medieval maps.

“It’s very different than how we understand maps today,” Morreale said. “Some of the locales are biblical, so they’re not recognizable in modern terms. A couple places even depict what the mapmakers thought would happen in the future. So, not only is it a practical map, it’s also a kind of visualization of what they hope will happen one day.

“That’s part of the larger conversation,” she said. “Maps should be approached the way you would approach a piece of literature. You don’t just look at the text, but you think about its context and the material reality that surrounded it.”

When Nicholas Paul, PhD, an associate professor of history, encountered the map reproduction as part of the center’s French of Outremer digital humanities initiative, he found the document in poor condition. Besides suffering the expected wear-and-tear over eight centuries, the map had been drawn on the back of a used sheet of parchment. Over time, the colors on the front bled through and obscured Matthew’s drawings and notes.

For years the map was overlooked by medieval scholars, despite its depiction of an important region. Hoping to make it legible again, Paul and Tobias Hrynick, a doctoral student in history, brought the map to the Medieval studies center, where then-graduate student Rachel Butcher, GSAS ’15, worked to spruce it up in Photoshop.

The result is a full, colorized digital version of the map, complete with interactive features and annotations written by the graduate students and fellows.

“It’s not just digitally presented—it’s digitally enabled scholarship,” Morreale said. “It’s user-guided, so users can interact with the map on their own terms. There’s also a discussion section, where users can write in with their input, and there’s a ‘mysteries of the map’ section, where we list the parts of the map we haven’t yet been able to identify. We’re encouraging people to write in if they have some knowledge about these.”

At a colloquium on April 9, scholars discussed the significance of both the map itself—including its relevance to medieval cartography and whether Matthew Paris was indeed its author—and how scholars can use the digital restoration to maximize teaching and research.

“We’re in the process of creating a module for people who want to use this map in classrooms,” Morreale said. “That, in my mind, has been one of the greatest aspects of this project. We were able to take a discussion in our office and project it out into the larger, scholarly world. It’s now accessible to anyone who is interested, with just a few clicks.”

A gift from BNY Mellon is helping to provide scholarship support and mentoring opportunities to 60 students enrolled in the nonprofit leadership MS program for the 2015-16 academic year.