The school’s ranking in international business represents a gain of four spots from 2012, and reflects the ongoing effort of Donna Rapaccioli, Ph.D., the school’s dean, to intensify the global nature of the Gabelli School curriculum.

The results of that campaign include:

—Enhancements to the Gabelli School program in London to enable accounting, marketing and finance students to take advanced coursework in their fields, making it easier to study abroad for a full semester.

—Additional scholarship support for students who want to study overseas, including three John S. Wilcha travel grants for study anywhere in the world, and three London grants from KPMG.

—More study tours tied to full-semester courses, such as a spring 2013 class on finance in Brazil that featured a one-week tour to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

—Encouragement for all faculty to introduce new international content and examples into the courses they deliver at Rose Hill.

— Nicole Gesualdo

Master of Science in Business Enterprise: Reynolds Fernandez; Master of Science in Media Entrepreneurship: Andrew Hevia; Master of Science in Business Analytics: Neeraj Tiwari

Five second place winners will receive 50% tuition scholarships. More than 1600 students worldwide completed challenge entries.

It is the second year GBA has sponsored the innovative scholarship competition, in partnership with Student Competitions.

McPhee brings extensive professional experience to her new post, having served for more than a decade in various clinical, academic, and administrative roles. She worked for the last two years as chief operating officer for the Palo Alto-based Planet Hope/Liiv.com, a firm that specializes in online health education and technology.

From 2005 to 2010, McPhee was dean of the School of Social Work at Barry University in Miami Shores, Fla. Before becoming dean, McPhee served for three years as associate dean and had been a faculty member since 1997. An award-winning educator, she taught a variety of courses, from introductory social work practice at the undergraduate level to graduate courses on social policy issues in family and children’s services.

She earned her doctorate in 1998 from the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto, her master’s degree from the School of Social Work at Columbia University in 1989, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1986.

Her primary areas of research, in which she has published widely, include international health care policy, child abuse and neglect, women and welfare reform, public policy analysis, and professional practice and service delivery.

“In Debra, we have an outstanding new dean who is committed to working closely with the faculty, students, and staff of the Graduate School of Social Service. Together, they will sustain and advance the school’s long tradition of national preeminence in educating skilled, compassionate social workers to serve the human family,” said Stephen Freedman, Ph.D., provost of the University and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

Donna Rapaccioli, Ph.D., dean of Gabelli, said the ranking is a welcome recognition of the school’s strengths, which have long been known to its alumni, students, and faculty.

Backed by the dean’s strategic plan, the school has set and begun to meet goals in four areas: academic innovation, global education, personal and professional development, and teaching quality. The school’s integrated core curriculum, which focuses on hands-on learning and real-world experience, has been developed to extend throughout all four years. A more robust personal and professional development program is supplementing the work of Fordham’s career services office, offering guidance specific to business students.

The school is also expanding opportunities to study abroad and offering more scholarships to help students get there.

“This is an acknowledgement of the quality of our program and our people,” Rapaccioli said, adding that “no one number can capture all the ways we educate our students.”

— Nicole Gesualdo

After beating out 18 other university teams to get to the “final four,” students from the Graduate School of Business Administration (GBA) won the New York Regional Final of the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute Research Challenge. Ken Boswell, Paul Kearney, Jonathan LaSala, and Elaine Lou headed to London this month for the Global Final to compete against teams from the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, and North America.

The New York Society of Security Analysts hosted the regional competition at Bloomberg Headquarters on March 4. Competing against Montclair State, Pace, and Seton Hall universities, the GBA team boiled down complex data on Microsoft Corp. into a 10-page research brief and a buy/sell/hold recommendation.
Students put their GBA skills to the test in a forum where industry experts could evaluate their report and 10-minute slide presentation, and ask follow-up questions.

“It was a daunting process for our dedicated students; their social life has been pretty much nil,” said Robert J. Fuest, GBA ‘08, adjunct professor of finance in the Schools of Business and the team’s faculty adviser.

Team mentor Mike Kiernan, GBA ’93, joined Fuest in coaching the students, as did several other faculty and business professionals. The training began in earnest last August and the constant drilling was not unlike preparing for an athletic competition.

Students also read dozens of reports on Microsoft, banked 40 hours of interviews, and received more than 200 survey responses.
“A lot their understanding came from the surveys,” said Fuest. “I think their findings were valid.” 

Reilly joins a distinguished list of recipients that include His Eminence Edward Cardinal Egan, former Fordham University Law School Dean John Feerick, and Malcolm Wilson, former governor of New York.

Named after the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence, the annual Carroll award recognizes a Catholic lawyer who has earned distinction in public service. For the past four years, Reilly has helped develop the center, which educates law students and others in solving social justice problems, particularly homelessness, hunger and asset preservation for the poor.

He is also a regular volunteer on the city’s annual HOPE Count, where the Fordham community rallies to help count the homeless in the Bronx.

True to his Irish roots, Reilly has been the president of the Society of the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick and a contributing author to the Encyclopedia of the Irish in America (Notre Dame University Press, 2000). Reilly is also a volunteer guide at the American Museum of Natural History, in Manhattan.

The award is given annually by the Guild of Catholic Lawyers.

“If the Selection Committee for this Award had looked even a little bit further they would have found many [worthy]recipients,” said Reilly in accepting the award. “But let me assure you . . . they could not have found a recipient who was more grateful.”

Robert D. Hormats, under secretary for economic, energy and agricultural affairs at the United States Department of State, told a room full of dignitaries and business representatives on Oct. 18 that the State Department is actively working to promote U.S. exports as a way to jump-start the American economy.

“We understand that you just can’t leave it to companies. You need high-level advocacy,” Hormats said. “One of the things that we’re trying to do is to demonstrate that the federal government is engaged in that advocacy.
“When the president goes out, he has two or three or four companies on a list, and he raises them with the president of China, with a number of others, where he identifies particular projects.”

The event, a reception and dinner held at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus, honored the U.S. ambassadors from Libya, Tunisia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Oman, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It was sponsored by the Business Council for International Understanding, and was part of the U.S.-Middle East Business and Export Promotion Tour.

John Tognino, chairman of the Board of Trustees at Fordham, began the program by recognizing each ambassador in attendance individually.

“Fordham is proud to say we are the Jesuit university of New York, but I think we can safely say that for this evening, we’re the Jesuit university of the world,” Tognino said.

As the Protestant Reformation swept across Europe, those who rebelled against Catholicism cast their new forms of worship in opposition to the Catholic Mass—including its music.

How sacred music developed as part of the Reformation was explored in a presentation on Sept. 22 by Jane Dawson, Ph.D., the John Laing Professor of Reformation History at Edinburgh University’s School of Divinity.

By the late Middle Ages, Dawson said, the performance of sacred music was relegated mainly to professionals who could understand its polyphonic structure. Protestants, however, feared the power of music to influence and distract, so they stipulated that church music must serve the words—because the words were the word of God.

“They also stipulated that words should be audible and that the language must be comprehensible,” Dawson said. “The final maxim was that singing should ‘profit’ the church.” That meant church music was to be performed by the entire congregation.

This “triumph of the word,” as the Protestant Reformation has been traditionally regarded, marked a decisive shift from a visual and sensual culture to a logocentric and literary one. It was Protestantism that replaced polyphony with the voicings that are still used today—soprano, alto, tenor and bass.

In Scotland, which underwent its Reformation beginning in 1560, a metrical Psalter containing Old Testament psalms that had been transposed from their polyphonic versions helped grow a popular culture.

“More than 1 million copies of the Protestant psalm book were available in 1640 in England and Scotland,” Dawson said.

For the first time, Scots were singing together in church. This practice was vital in enabling the non-literate majority of Scots to cope with a religion of the word.

“In this non-literate society, you are able to create a popular culture through singing which, essentially, is learning by listening,” she said.

The psalms were also used as protest songs in the battle between Catholicism and Protestantism. For example, Scottish Protestants sang from the psalms—“Judge and revenge my cause, Oh Lord, from them that evil be”—at the downfall of the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots in 1567.

Singing in church led to the singing of religious songs in the house, which then gave rise to songs sung in private prayers, Dawson said.

“Singing helped Protestants to cope with what Peter Marshall has called the ‘displacement of Purgatory,’” she said. “It was a way to deal with the guilt and awareness of sin.”

Her presentation, “Singing the Reformation,” was held on the Lincoln Center campus and was part of the St. Robert Southwell, S.J., Lecture Series.

Fordham’s Hospitality Services invites you to prove it by entering its culinary competition this fall.

Open to students, parents, alumni, faculty and staff, the competition continues a tradition begun last year with the search for Fordham’s signature dessert.

The dessert title was given to the Maroon Velvet Cake recipe submitted by Rick Manista, then a senior at Fordham College at Lincoln Center. Since then, the cake has been a “very popular dessert at a lot of University events,” said Brian Poteat, general manager of Food Services.

This year, the search is on for the best non-dessert recipe, which opens the field to entrees, salads, sandwiches—anything that falls under the category of “family traditional food,” Poteat said.

“We started with the dessert competition, which was so successful and so much fun, we said, ‘Why don’t we try to build on it and try something new?’ So we took it a step farther,” he continued.

Six finalists with the best recipes will be selected to work with the Fordham team of culinary experts to prepare 200 tasting portions in The Marketplace on Nov. 6, when the final judging will take place.

As part of Family Weekend, the tasting event will bring together parents and other family members with students, staff, faculty and alumni to sample each dish and choose the winner.

While participants will be asked to provide detailed step-by-step instructions for their original recipes, the culinary team also wants to learn the history of the dish and why it’s a special recipe.

Some of last year’s entries included details about recipes in family histories, how they were related to Fordham and even how they were associated with the Jesuits, Poteat said.

“We received some very funny and fascinating stories,” he said. This year, Poteat is hoping for more of the same.

The winner of “So You Think You Can Cook?” will receive an assortment of Fordham merchandise. He or she also will be featured in Fordham online and print media, and will be photographed with Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, and Michael DeMartino, executive chef.

The winning recipe may even be added to the Food Services menu cycle and become part of Fordham’s culinary history, Poteat said.

Poteat hopes the culinary competition tradition at Fordham will continue to evolve, adding, “Next year might be a favorite party appetizer.”

All manner of minutia about the Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses are served up daily on websites, e-newsletters, student blogs, Twitter feeds and discussion boards.

But what was the Fordham experience like 30, 40, or even 70 years ago?

To answer that question, the University has launched “Fordham Voices,” an audio archive that stores the recollections of alumni from every generation.

The project began at Homecoming 2008, when staff members fanned out across the Rose Hill campus to solicit stories from graduates. A similar effort at Jubilee 2009 led to even more anecdotes.

For example, Gabriel Vitalone (FCRH ’44) chronicled a freshman banquet at the Hotel Roosevelt in Manhattan. The class president called a meeting in Father Duffy Square, where the students decided to storm the ballrooms around Times Square, chanting “Beat NYU.”

“We went into each of the hotels in Times Square, walked into the ballroom, boldly requested that the orchestra play The Ram, and we would sing,” Vitalone said.

What happened next—plus dozens of other alumni recollections—can be found at www.fordham.edu/voices. The archive will be updated periodically, as more stories and remembrances are collected at upcoming alumni events.

The death of Kitty Genovese in 1964 may not have been ignored by as many people as was initially reported, but it nonetheless had a profound effect on American society.

That was the conclusion of “Remembering Kitty Genovese: 45 Years Later,” a two-hour-long panel held March 12 in the Cafeteria Atrium of the Lowenstein Center at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus.

The event occurred on the eve of the 45th anniversary of Genovese’s stabbing outside a bar in Kew Gardens, Queens. When word got out at the time that 38 people had seen or heard her being attacked and chose not to intervene, it spurred citywide soul searching.

Marcia M. Gallo, Ph.D., professor of history at the University of Nevada, compared Genovese, who had chosen to stay in the city after her family moved to New Canaan, Conn., to a chalk outline on the pavement after a crime—a symbol of something horrible that had happened.

“Her name and her story resonate because they are useful to so many people. For some, she symbolizes deadly indifference; for others, vulnerability. For many people, she’s attained quasi-religious status, the embodiment of what can happen due to a failure of community, she said.”

Harold Takooshian, Ph.D., professor of psychology, said the lack of a response was an example of what has become known as “diffusion of responsibility.”

“It wasn’t that the 38 bystanders didn’t care about Ms. Genovese,” Takooshian said. “But there was a diffusion. Who would help? Or should she be helped? Or how should she be helped? It created such a confusion that she just wasn’t helped.”

Understanding this has made people more aware that they need to be vigilant, he said, noting that in experiments conducted in the 1970s, children who told strangers that they were lost were helped half the time. In recent years, similar experiments have yielded assistance rates of 80 percent.

Genovese’s younger brother, Vincent, who brought along a film crew to film his participation for a documentary he is making, reminisced about his sister, who was 12 when he was born.

“She’d come up to New Canaan and we’d spend till 3 o’clock in the morning talking about relativity,” he said. “A lot of people don’t know she was married for a couple of years to a person who turned out to be a fairly well-known nuclear engineer. I’d ask, ‘What’s that belt buckle made of?’ and he’d tell me: limestone, iron ore, charcoal. All that stuff would interest me.”

He also addressed some questions about the official account of his sister’s killing, as reported by New York Times editor A.M. Rosenthal in Thirty-Eight Witnesses (University of California Press, 1999).

“What we’ve discovered is that we think maybe there were five or six people who actually knew what was going on,” Genovese said. “Whereas 38 may have heard something, it was a city kind of thing—screams in the street at 3 o’clock in the morning with an active bar across the street.”