More than 350 at-risk teens from two Bronx middle schools and four high schools take part annually in the program operated at Fordham through the Graduate School of Social Service (GSS) and managed under the leadership of Program Director Diane Ode, GSS ’11. Over 30 Fordham undergraduate and graduate volunteers work alongside the teens both at the Rose Hill campus and in their respective schools. In addition to their volunteers, the program recruits MSW candidates to provide individual and group counseling to the teens during the school day.

“For many of these students it’s their first time on a college campus,” said Ode. “We collaborate with different Fordham departments such as The Center for Community Engaged Learning, Career Services, and various student-led organizations. It’s amazing work when you start to see the students begin to understand the opportunities that they can have.”

Ode said that the program is one of the many areas where education and social services overlap. She said the reason she and other social workers are drawn to the program is that it tackles the challenges facing at-risk youth through “holistic service that  promotes student’s academic success, as well as their social and emotional well being.” In promoting academic success volunteers help students with homework, prepare for standardized exams, and fill out college applications. To promote social well-being the teens go on campus tours together, take enrichment trips to Broadway shows, and attend STEM conferences. For emotional well-being, the program also provides a series of interventions that include individual and group counseling.

“This program really shows how the Graduate School of Social Service can bring together all our Fordham communities to affect the change,” said faculty adviser Janna Heyman, Ph.D., professor of social work and the Henry C. Ravazzin Chair.

Ode started as a MSW intern in the program in 2010 and continued on as a summer program coordinator when she graduated in 2011. She steadily rose through the ranks to become an assistant director in 2012 and then program director in 2015. Bronx-born and raised in New Jersey, Ode still has family near campus. As a young 8-year-old girl, Fordham was the first college campus she ever saw during her frequent visits with her family to the Fordham Road shopping district. She said that she feels a strong kinship with the students and their families because of her own upbringing in the Tremont section of the Bronx.

“Resources at many New York City schools are overwhelmed; a guidance counselor can serve up to 100 students,” she said. “That’s where we come in with the extra support.”

The teens in the program face a variety of risk factors that often stem from problems at home, which can cause high absenteeism and deter motivation. She noted that many of the program’s volunteers are not from the Bronx and that their initial exposure to these young people, as well as the public schools themselves, can in itself be a learning experience.

“I think it opens up their eyes and they learn about the social and economic disadvantages that Bronx students are facing every day,” she said. “Many of the volunteers are shocked when they have to go through a metal detector or see that there are six schools in one building. It’s a huge culture shock.”

To prepare them, she said, the program provides an orientation and ongoing volunteer meetings to support volunteers’ work with at-risk youth, and the culture of service at the University advocates listening to the community.

“We do our best to have discussions to help them understand that, ‘Yes, you’re giving back to the community by teaching students how to better improve their grades and be motivated to pursue their education, but this is a mutual transaction and you’ll also get something back,’” she said.

Feeling Like a Part of the Bronx

Katrina Cullen is a junior at Rose Hill majoring in history. She started volunteering with the Liberty program more than a year ago. Though she said she was very involved with other student groups, she said she didn’t feel like she was part of the Bronx, even though the campus sits in the heart of the borough.

“It is completely transformative to have a purpose and have kids depend on you to help you with their school work or to know they have a test coming up and they’re counting on you,” she said.

Cullen, who grew up in Putnam County, New York said she was initially nervous about whether the kids would accept her into their community, but soon realized they had more in common than not. She said once she started building relationships, a few of the Latino students found out she was studying Spanish. From that point forward, they would speak to her in Spanish to help her prepare for her classes.

“When I started there were definitely a lot of cultural differences, but they’re so patient with me,” she said. “They’re just normal kids who are extremely accepting and a great time to be around. It makes you feel really good that you build relationships bigger than yourself.”

Add to these struggles severe academic problems, and some students may spend years in middle school before advancing to high school. Some may never advance at all.

That’s where Liberty Partnerships Programs (LPP) comes into play. For more than two decades, the statewide, grant-funded program has helped at-risk students stay in school and make it to the next grade. And since 1989, Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service (GSS) has been integral to helping Bronx students who are part of LPP.

“We link Fordham resources to schools with a high level of students who are at risk of not graduating from eighth grade and going on to high school, of not moving up to the next grade,” said Shelley Topping, director of Fordham’s LPP.

“We provide counseling, tutoring, and mentoring inside of the school building. We also offer high school readiness workshops, some college readiness workshops, and when we can, we provide opportunities for them to come on campus and get a sense of an actual university in the neighborhood—one that is alive and thriving.”

Just a few blocks from Fordham, at M.S. 254, a school with a large immigrant population situated in a low-income and working-class neighborhood, some 100 out of nearly 500 middle-schoolers have been labeled “at risk” by teachers, guidance counselors, and others with direct contact—even parents. These “at-risk” students are chronically truant, have failed more than one subject per year, and/or have social, emotional, or behavioral problems.

“Some of our students come into the sixth grade below where they’re supposed to be in English language arts, math, and science comprehension,” Topping said. “When you come in at a deficit and are expected to catch up to grade level, and when the standardized tests are administered in the second half of the year, it’s going to be a struggle.”

Their academic struggles are often compounded by problems at home, Topping added. Some students lack consistent support after school because their parents work multiple jobs to support the family. Other students are recent immigrants struggling to learn English. Still others are homeless.

“They have a lot of challenges to contend with,” Topping said.

LPP tackles each of these challenges with a Fordham team that provides students with academic and emotional support. Throughout the school year, two GSS interns spend 21 hours per week in the school managing both the students’ cases and the program’s implementation overall.

“We study client-centered management,” said LPP intern Alberta Conteh, GSS ’12. “We know how to work as administrators, but we also learn how to manage social programs through the eyes of what our clients’ needs are.”

The interns meet with each student to provide counseling on an array of issues, including anger management and behavioral problems, and they maintain a channel of dialogue with the students’ parents and teachers. At the same time, the interns train Fordham undergraduates who volunteer to tutor the students in academics.

Interns also coordinate an online mentoring program, ICouldBe.org, which pairs students with online mentors.

The multifaceted approach, Conteh said, helps to put students back on track.

“I had a student who was feeling very dejected about school; she didn’t want to come, she wasn’t completing her homework assignments, and she had also fallen into a clique,” Conteh said. “After we started working together, she began to realize she was an individual, and that she was important. She started thinking about going to medical school, and we were eventually able to get her into a high school with good science classes.”

Given the chance to reflect on what they want from their lives, many students reveal dreams and goals that were previously overshadowed by challenges at school and at home, said former LPP intern Diane Ode, GSS ‘11.

“A lot of middle-schoolers are already thinking about college,” Ode said. “And because Fordham is so close to the school and Fordham is so involved with them, they’re inquisitive. They ask how is the campus, how much is it to go to school—questions you wouldn’t expect. They’re interested in learning about it.”

And the LPP team takes these aspirations seriously. Earlier this month, LPP added to their roster two more schools—M.S. 45 and KAPPA International High School—both of which are close to Fordham’s Rose Hill campus.

“It is my intention to open up talks with admissions and financial aid officers to see if there can be an opportunity for students who have gone through LPP to be considered in a more thoughtful way for admission,” Topping said.

“It’s really easy for them to think about their lives as a sixth-, seventh- or eighth-grader without seeing how that connects to being a high schooler, and then a college student,” she said. “But we do see a change in the students’ behavior, and in their understanding of what life could offer after middle school.”