He worked for over 30 years in network engineering, spending his early career at AT&T and MetLife before joining Fordham seven years ago.

Longtime colleague Cesar Nau, Fordham’s director of infrastructure services, remembers him as a calming presence in stressful moments. Network engineers at Fordham need to be able to fix all manner of outages, he said, including ones that pose safety threats, such as when the fire alarm system stops communicating with the fire department. Even in scenarios that required an immediate resolution, he remained cool-headed.

“Tony just knew how to bring everybody back down to earth,” said Nau. “While everybody is running around like headless chickens, he was always that even-keeled individual that took down his notes, got his thoughts together, and executed. He helped me tons in those types of scenarios in the sense that I would see him being so calm and he calmed me down all the time. And he just had this respectfulness about him and politeness that I personally admired. You don’t see that often anymore, unfortunately.”

Anand Padmanabhan, vice president and chief information officer at Fordham, said, “Tony was a dedicated and valued employee and great team member. His positive attitude inspired and elevated everyone around him. He will be sorely missed.”

He was also a valued player on the Fordham Bombers, the University’s interdepartmental softball team. Its former captain, Cloud Systems Analyst Ariel Cofresi, called him “a great team player, willing to play any position. Tony was very youthful at heart and didn’t let his age affect him on the field.”

Chief Troubleshooter at Home

His wife, Barbara, grew up in the same Morris Park area of the Bronx as her husband. After they were married in 1988, they moved to Westchester and raised their two girls, Dana and Aimee. Caring, thoughtful, kind, patient, and loving are the words the family used to describe Tony, who Barbara said was actively involved in all phases of their children’s lives. Their daughters played many sports, and he helped to coach their soccer, basketball, softball, and swim teams.

He also had a creative side and enjoyed working with his hands. Calligraphy was a favorite pastime of his, as was building models and computers. He passed along his love of art to his daughters, taught them how to draw, and encouraged his eldest, Dana, to pursue a career in design. He was also passionate about history, space, military aircraft, and science. He bonded with his youngest, Aimee, over her biology courses and passion for public health. A true New Yorker, he also loved the New York Yankees, and food. “He absolutely loved sharing a big dinner with family and enjoyed home-cooked meals,” said Barbara.

She also fondly recalled how he applied his problem-solving skills at home.

“He loved troubleshooting. It was one of his favorite words. If he had to fix a light bulb, he would say let me troubleshoot that!” she laughed. 

In addition to his wife, daughters, and his daughters’ partners, Tony is survived by his sister, Anna. His family welcomes everyone whose lives he touched to join them in honoring his memory. A celebration of his life will be held on Sunday, Dec. 15  from 12 to 4 p.m. at the Edwards-Dowdle Funeral Home in Dobbs Ferry, New York. The funeral will take place on Monday, Dec. 16 at 1 p.m. at the Sharon Gardens Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations to be made to the American Diabetes Association or to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Graham had a long and distinguished career in information technology dating back to 1984 when he joined the software company Ashton-Tate as a manager of technical support.

By the time he joined Fordham in August 2011 as an IT risk analyst, Graham had amassed experience in the technology, publishing, and pharmaceutical industries, and brought with him expertise in project implementation and management, systems infrastructure development, and data center operations.

Shannon Ortiz, senior director of IT Security and Assurance, said that all of this was critically important for Graham’s job, which was ensuring that the University continues to function even in the event of a natural disaster or a cyber attack.

But what he said he’d remember most about Graham was his laugh.

“Because of his infectious laugh and his smile, and this general charisma that he had, he really just made people feel comfortable,” he said.

Ortiz said that because he had nearly 40 years of experience in the field, Graham had become a mentor for younger staff members. His demeanor also made him the perfect point person for the “lessons learned” conversations that are critical to the IT field.

“Whenever an incident or disaster would happen, he would be the point person because he was very non-judgmental, very unbiased, and he was able to listen,” he said.

“He was able to get to the facts without making anybody feel put upon if they made a mistake.”

Graham brought an upbeat approach to personal life as well. M. Renee Graham, his wife of 37 years, said her husband was a Dallas Cowboys fan and an avid jazz fan (the couple had tickets to the upcoming Hampton jazz festival in Hampton, Virginia. She said he always lightened the mood of those around him.

“If he entered a room, whether he knew people or didn’t know them, he would always come in with something like, ‘Okay, the party can start now I’m here,’” she said.

“Sometimes, I have to be honest with you, I didn’t always appreciate it, because sometimes it was the wrong time for that,” she said laughing.

Graham was born to the late Calvin and Juanita Graham in Lumberton, North Carolina, in 1959. His family moved from North Carolina to Connecticut in the 1950s, and from age 6 on, Calvin grew up in Stamford, Connecticut. He graduated from West Hill High School in 1976 and eventually found work in the accounting department of the Greenwich-based company Control Data. In 1980, Renee, a native of Greenwich, landed a secretary position there as well.

“My first day of work, I was being taken around by my boss to meet everyone. Later on, he said to me, ‘Oh my gosh, when you came into my cubicle, I thought ‘There’s that cheerleader!’ I had been a Greenwich High School cheerleader, so obviously he had seen me cheering at either West Hill or Stamford High and remembered me,” she said.

The couple were married in 1987 and had two sons, Sam and Calvin Graham. And although Calvin never earned a college degree, he found success in information technology, in part because of his natural ability to form human connections.

“One of our friends, who was a former colleague of his, spoke at his funeral and said that he was always able to meet people, make friends, and then keep those connections,” she said.

“He did have some really good relationships with his workmates.”

Although the couple lived in Trumbull, Calvin maintained a connection to Stamford. Since 2016, he was a member of the Freemasons in Stamford, where he was preparing to be installed as the Worshipful Grand Master.

“He once said to me he felt that it was making him a better person. Doing service, giving back, doing fundraising for things—that’s the part of it that he liked. It was helping him to feel that he had a purpose,” she said.

In addition to being a wonderful husband and father, he was, she said the ultimate caretaker.

“Caring for me. Caring for the kids. Caring for the house,” she said.“He enjoyed being needed.”

In addition to his wife and sons, Graham is survived by his son Calvin’s spouse Maig Smith, his sisters Sandra Kittrell and Acquanetta Grant, Acquanetta’s husband Emanuel, and many nieces and nephews.

Funeral services were held on May 18 at Mount Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport. Memorial contributions may be made to the American Heart Association or to St. John’s Lodge #14, 273 Greenwich Ave., Stamford, CT 06902.

“Historically, we had hundreds of new hires every year, and all of those were handled manually,” said Damarie Cardona-Reilly, senior director of human resources information systems. “This new system takes away all of the tedious manual effort involved in both the front and back ends. Now applicants have a much more streamlined way of getting access to open positions and being able to apply for them.” 

The move to modernize the University’s hiring system began in 2019, said Cardona-Reilly.

“IT has always been in the forefront of finding new technology and better ways of integrating different systems. A few years ago, their strategy for system integrations transitioned from flat file to Ethos, and the Office of Human Resources decided to leverage the Ethos integration for our applicant tracking system implementation,” she said.

Throughout the pandemic, IT and the Office of Human Resources worked together to integrate data from two platforms, Ellucian Ethos and PeopleAdmin, in order to create an online platform where prospective talent could easily apply to jobs and new hires could “seamlessly” enter the University system, said Cardona-Reilly. 

“In the past, applicants used to apply for positions by completing a paper application. When hired, they would complete paper onboarding forms that included personal information. We also had a team that manually input information for personal, employee, and job records. Now all of that is seamless. Instead of filling out paperwork and applying for a position manually, it’s all automated. This increases transparency, streamlines the process, and helps us to better secure personal and confidential information,” said Cardona-Reilly.

Thanks to the new online system, Fordham has been able to expand its reach to prospective hires, said Cardona-Reilly. From 2020 to 2021, nearly 1,000 applications were received for 60 open positions. In addition, 50% of recent hires are coming through this new award-winning system, while the other half are still coming through the older system, which is transitioning to the updated version.

The $25,000 grant was awarded to Fordham in April, in recognition of the University’s ability to use technology to operate more efficiently and to offer a better employee experience. The grant will be used to further enhance technology and streamlining processes at Fordham, said Cardona-Reilly.

“This integration was a huge effort by many members within HR and IT, and this could not have been achieved without the support of Fordham’s leadership. This is also the first time that HR has received an award in technology,” Cardona-Reilly said. “To see that our colleagues at Ellucian and other schools understand and appreciate the effort that was involved in that—that’s important to us.”

So when Fordham ceased face-to-face instruction at 1 p.m. on Monday, March 9, due to the threat posed by the COVID-19 outbreak, faculty were faced with the challenge of providing quality instruction that was true to their mission of supporting students and continuing to foster their potential. On March 13, the decision to suspend face-to-face classes was extended through the end of the semester.

As they begin to deliver instruction remotely, faculty have turned to online tools such as Zoom, WebEx, Blackboard, and Google Hangouts to continue students’ education. And they have turned to each other for support, guidance, and tips.

Planning for the transition began in earnest during the last week of February, when Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, and Dennis Jacobs, Ph.D., provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, briefed members of the Faculty Senate at its monthly meeting on February 28. Administration officials had been monitoring the spread of the virus in China, and once a case had been reported in Washington state in January, they thought it might spread throughout the United States.

Jacobs said that at that time the University was already making plans to offer online instruction to students who’d been recalled from study abroad programs and who would need instruction while self-quarantining.

“That was the call to action, to say, ‘Let’s begin preparations,’” he said.

“No one would have chosen this as a normal transition path, but these are extraordinary times, and our options were limited,” he said.

“Everyone was committed to serving our students and allowing them to progress towards their academic degrees. It was not just an option to shut down the campus, we had to come up with a continuity plan.”

Technology and Pedagogy

Making the transition required overcoming challenges both technical and pedagogical. Steven D’Agustino, Ph.D., Fordham’s director of online learning, is helping faculty figure out how to best use that technology to deliver their coursework. He’s offered videos and documentation on the University’s Official Online Learning Page and his blog, Learning at a Distance.

D’Agustino said he was impressed at how seriously faculty have put students’ well-being and peace of mind first and foremost. Many are using this week, which happens to be spring break, to explain to their students how they plan to move forward with the rest of the semester and taking steps like telling them exactly what times of the day they’ll be checking their emails. Faculty are establishing virtual office hours when they’ll be available for in-person consultation, and giving serious thought to whether future classes should be held synchronously, when everyone meets together, or asynchronously, which enables students to access material on their own schedules.

D’Agustino encouraged faculty to evaluate their methods as they go, and to draw on the experiences of peers across the country who face the same situation.

“I would say reflective practice is really valuable. This about what you’re doing, and reflect upon it after you’ve done it, and try to include your students and your colleagues in those reflective spaces. Because I think there are a lot of good ideas and support out there, and we’re not alone.”

A Quick Turnaround

Eve Keller, Ph.D., professor of English and president of the Faculty Senate, said she was astonished at how quickly faculty, who teach nearly 2,000 courses a semester, were able to work together to make the transition.

“Faculty had 36 hours to convert their classes online. Some people have done this, and some people had never heard of Zoom, but from what I’ve seen, it’s been an unequivocally congenial, collegial effort to make it happen,” she said.

The transition has not been without occasional hiccups. Anne Fernald, Ph.D., a professor of English and special adviser to the provost for faculty development, emailed fellow arts and science faculty for thoughts on pedagogy on March 11, and after receiving 20 replies, she felt prepared.

Still, when she attempted to teach her first class on Thursday with WebX, she didn’t realize the program’s default volume setting for the program is mute. She ended up recording a podcast for it with the information she planned to share, and is confident she’ll be able to make it work next week, when spring break ends and classes resume.

“I felt like the University did everything it could in this emergency to support us. And I think that the decision to be closed on Tuesday and give people time to prepare was huge. I had colleagues all around the country who didn’t have anything like that. Fordham did it in a way that was as compassionate as it could be,” she said.

Striking the Right Balance

On March 12, Mark Conrad, an associate professor of law and ethics at the Gabelli School of Business, taught three courses—Legal Framework of Business, Sports Law, and Law and the Arts—using the Zoom platform, and was happy with how it came together.

“I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how easy and accessible it has been. I had a number of questions from students. I wasn’t just talking to a computer,” he said, noting the ease in which he was able to share power point slides with students.

“We’re seeing future possibilities. It deals with something I’ve been thinking about which is, let’s say the professor is ill or has a sprained ankle. One could do classes like this, and it could actually minimize absences.”

Nicholas Tampio, Ph.D., a professor of political science, taught two classes on March 11 using WebX seminar after department chair Robert Hume, Ph.D., arranged practice sessions for the department. While they went off without a hitch, he said it was hard to read the mood of a room, as many nonverbal communication cues were lost in translation.

“When you teach online, you can’t see feet shifting, or if they have another browser open where they’re checking email. Their parents could be in the room, there could be a car going by. It’s not a controlled environment in which students are only there for the experience,” he said.

“I think I’m going to get better over time at being able to call on people, and I think I’m going to get better at organizing my slide show to make it more entertaining,” he said. But he acknowledged that face-to-face learning will always be preferable.

Edward Cahill, Ph.D., a professor of English, had never used Google Hangouts before and turned to it to teach Shakespeare’s sonnets and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. He found it to be similar to the normal classroom experience, although he said he plans to try different approaches to keep things interesting when the semester resumes, including splitting the class into both synchronous and asynchronous sessions.

Cahill’s new familiarity with online learning comes not only from his work as a professor, but also a student. His experience as a student in an entry-level Spanish class taught by Guillermo Severiche has given him hope that success is possible in the online realm, he said. Severiche, an instructor in the department of modern languages, moved their class to Zoom as well.

“We share documents, we used the e-textbooks. He managed the whole thing flawlessly. So that inspired me to think maybe I can do more.”

Cahill noted that he’s trying to be mindful of the challenges inherent in asking students to complete studies in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.

“There are so many balances to strike between rigor and flexibility, generosity and intensity. I don’t know that anyone has figured it out, and I guess as long as we can stay alert to all of those tensions, we’ll probably find our way through it,” he said.

Doing Lab Work Without the Lab

In some fields, resuming instruction is trickier than just establishing online connections. Stefanie Bubnis, interim managing director of the Fordham Theatre Program, said that while mainstage productions have halted, faculty have bolstered instruction on Google Hangouts and Zoom with old fashioned phone calls and FaceTime.

Professors such as Ann Hamilton, an adjunct professor of theater, are learning on the fly as well. For her first online Acting for the Camera class, she asked students to upload the scenes they recorded of themselves to Hightail and Google Drive. She watched the videos during the designated class time and wrote feedback in a group email to the 17 students in the class. Ultimately it proved to be too time-consuming.

“For my next class I intend to use Zoom, so we are all conferencing together, but they will have sent me the recorded auditions first, so I can have them up on my desktop and we can all watch them together at the same time and actively participate in the feedback. I think the students felt as if they learned a lot today, so that’s a win, given the circumstances,” she said.

Stephen Holler, Ph.D., an associate professor of physics, was able to move the lecture for his General Physics 2 class exclusively to Blackboard, but that wasn’t an option for Experimental Techniques for Physics, a course where teams of students had been working on a single project all semester.

“Some of the work, they’re in the machine shop, they’re doing 3D printing, they’re doing electronics,” he said, noting that this work will have to be completed in a different way than planned.

“Since they’ve done half the project, and they’ve already written up progress reports, I’ll have them turn those progress reports into a paper. Normally I’d also have them do a presentation on a research project they’re interested in; instead I’ll have them write a short paper on that and we’ll do Zoom presentations.

A Big Shift for Information Technology

For Fordham IT, the switch required an unusually speedy response.

Alan Cafferkey, director of faculty technology services, noted that his team—which includes experienced technicians, a fine arts and digital humanities professional, instructional designers, a former math teacher, a librarian, adjunct professors, a media and accessibility expert, and an Ed.D. candidate—normally prefers to work with six months lead time to develop an online course.

“This, however, was everyone already two months into the semester with only a couple of weeks of realizing that something might happen, prepping, and then a sudden shift, with hundreds of people making the change,” he said.

He was especially proud that his team was so on top of responding to the multitude of individual faculty requests. In addition, in collaboration with the provost’s office, they created a Course Continuity site before the University shifted to online learning—as preparation for what might happen.

When the switch was made, IT as a whole simultaneously shifted its entire operation to function remotely—including the IT Customer Care help desk—while helping other offices do the same.

IT also rolled out an entirely new enterprise-wide system in Zoom, reinforced numerous systems, and conducted a multitude of workshops on topics such as teaching synchronously and asynchronously, setting up remote offices, and best practices for many popular web tools. Additional workshops will continue through the spring and can be found on the department’s blog.

Going forward, Cafferkey said the department will continue to field faculty questions and requests, work closely with vendors such as Blackboard, and support other University initiatives as needed. He credited the efforts of colleagues across IT, the provost’s office, the IT departments in the Gabelli School of Business and Fordham Law, the online learning teams at the Graduate School of Social Service and the Graduate School of Education, and the staff at Fordham’s library.

“I’ve been really touched at how kind most of the faculty have been about the support provided. I’ve gotten so many thoughtful notes and comments, it’s been really heart-warming. It’s helped that there are so many offices working collaboratively,” he said.

Looking at the Big Picture

Lisa Holsberg, a Ph.D. candidate in theology, found herself transitioning Great Christian Hymns, which she is teaching for the School of Continuing and Professional Studies (PCS), entirely online. But she was in some ways already prepared to do so, as she is also currently teaching an online course, Christian Mystical Texts, for PCS. She was already accustomed to using Blackboard extensively, as well as Screencast-O-Matic and Voicethread, which lets students listen to each other talk, in their own words, about a specific problem. But ultimately, technology is just one little piece of the story, she said.

“It’s really, what is your commitment to students and to learning and going forward in the midst of change? How do you rethink what it means to teach, what it means to learn in conditions you’re not used to? You have to really dig deep into what your fundamental commitments are to your teaching, your students, to yourself, to your topic, and then just use whatever tools you have in order to meet those goals,” she said.

The Path Forward

Going forward, D’Agustino said he thinks faculty will settle into a hybrid approach for the rest of the semester, making tweaks as they get feedback from students.

“They may say, ‘We’re going to do a synchronous session, so here are the slides in advance, here is the reading material, here’s the study guide, there are some questions you should be able to answer during the session,’” he said.

“So even if a student can’t attend or log in, they still have the notes, the readings, the study guides, and they can say, ‘Professor I couldn’t log in; its 4 a.m. for me. But here are the answers to those questions. And the faculty member can, if it’s part of their protocol, share those answers with the class so that student is part of it.”

Jacobs said that he’s hopeful that faculty will rise to the challenge in what is an extraordinary time of upheaval. He noted that online instruction will always have a place in graduate level and professional-oriented instruction, especially for students who are working or have family obligations. As such, the University will continue to evaluate it on a case-by-case basis. But face-to-face teaching and learning is at the heart of Fordham’s mission, he said.

“Jesuit education is really one of formation in context of community. We treasure that at Fordham, and we always will. It’s the reason why during the academic year, we have not, by intention, moved our undergraduate academic offerings into an online format. We’ve offered them face-to-face, and will return to that when it safe to do, when the virus has passed,” he said.

Elizabeth Cornell, Ph.D., director of IT Communications, said the upgrade, which is the first significant one since campus-wide WiFi was installed around 2002, will improve both accessibility and usability.

The most obvious change will be a splitting of access to the network, into “Fordham-P,” which is short for Fordham Public and “Fordham-S,” which is short for Fordham Secure. Members of the Fordham community are free to log onto either network, while guests will have access to the Fordham-P network. All access to these networks is initiated through Connect-Fordham-WiFi.

In September, users who log onto the Fordham S network will notice an improvement in speed as well, as they will have a dedicated 3Gbps (Gigabits per second) connection, a 40 percent percent improvement over the previous network. Guests who log onto the Fordham P network will have a 2Gbps connection.

To log onto Fordham-S, Cornell said that participants must agree to a one-time download and installation of an agent (policy key) that scans their device to ensure the operating system and antivirus are up to date. She noted that Bitdefender antivirus is available at no cost to all Fordham faculty, staff, and students, and the agent does not collect any personal information stored on the device.

Another new feature of the network is that users will also be able stay connected even if they leave a building or travel to a different campus. Guests will likewise be able to stay connected, provided they agree to an Acceptable Use Policy daily, as needed.

“People are getting a choice, whereas before you really didn’t have a choice,” Cornell said. “We think this kind of choice will really make the network much more useful for the Fordham community.”

For more information, visit fordham.edu/wireless.

The award, which was bestowed by the technology media, data and marketing services company IDG, was given to organizations engaged in “highly significant projects, impressive business results, and superior collaboration among stakeholders.”

Frank Sirianni, Ph.D., vice president and chief information officer at Fordham, said the cloud strategy involved the forging of a partnership with the firm Ellucian to move the University’s enterprise administrative systems (including enrollment, financial aid, human resources, finance, alumni development, and advancement) from 160 internally managed servers to Amazon Web Services.

“When we did this, we became a fully hosted and managed client. This pioneering effort was the first of its kind for Ellucian and Fordham IT, and resulted in an innovative model for enterprise system implementation and management to be used by other higher education institutions,” he said.

The move made it possible for IT staff to expand their expertise and transition from back-end roles in programming and infrastructure to front-facing, community-oriented ones. Instead of devoting resources to caring for equipment, they were free to place greater emphasis on providing service to the University community.

“Our move to the cloud made our organization more responsive to our community and the University’s broader, Jesuit-based mission, which is transforming education through caring for the whole person. We take that mission seriously,” Sirianni said.

“Moving our systems to managed cloud servers means we no longer need staff to attend to building servers, writing reports, doing backups, recovery and business continuity, and so on. Twelve staff members now have completely new roles in areas such as analytics, business analysts, vendor and cloud vendor management, solution integration, and contract negotiation. Staff also spends more time collaborating with faculty and students to further the university’s teaching and research mission.”

The partnership with Ellucian is unique for academic institutions, and Sirianni said he’s especially proud of the fact that the cloud computing strategy has lead to a software-as-a- service (SaaS) development partner group that includes four other institutions. The goal of the new group is to help other institutions of higher learning replicate this new customer-oriented model.

“Such a model will bring higher education institutions in alignment with the technology demands of students, faculty and staff, now and in the future,” he said.

The center, which until recently was housed in Dealy Hall, has been augmented with several new features that will safeguard the University’s most sensitive information. The upgrade, which began in January 2009, greatly improves both redundancy and efficiency, resulting in an environmentally-friendly system with enhanced risk management capability.

“We were fortunate to take on this project at an advantageous point in time for a much needed facilities upgrade,” said Frank Sirianni, Ph.D., Vice President and Chief Information Officer. “As a result, we now have first-rate data centers on both campuses that will ensure business continuity in our records, not to mention the day to day University operations. Additionally, it provides us with complete certitude in the unfortunate event of a catastrophe.”

For increased efficiency, the Rose Hill data center contains a hot aisle containment system that regulates temperature in each server row within the facility. This is a 30% more efficient cooling scenario than the industry in-row cooling technology standard, and replaces an outdated system that relied on computer room air conditioner cooling units to control the air temperature throughout the room.

The center, whose exact location is being withheld by request of the Fordham Information Technology Department, also features 2N redundancy, which means there is a backup for every critical piece of power and cooling control within the structure.

In the event that there is a loss of public utility power in the surrounding area that results in an outage on campus, an on site generator will ensures that the data center continues to operate at full capacity. The redundancy extends to the data stored there and at a counterpart at the Lincoln Center campus as well.

All data and related systems will be transferred from Dealy Hall to the new location in advance of the Spring 2010 semester.