The library lent the museum Collection of Drawings for Art and Industry, (Recueil des dessins pour l’art et l’industrie) a book published in France in 1859, for use in their exhibit “Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence,” which is at the museum until July 16. It will then move to Seattle.

Hokusai is perhaps best known for Under the Wave off Kanagawa, a woodblock print from 1831-1839 featuring a ship and Mount Fuji. Though Collection of Drawings for Art and Industry doesn’t include work by Hokusai, it features art that informed his work. In the book are a portfolio of plates that were created by the artists Adalbert Beaumont and Auguste Delâtre.

The two plates feature prints of birds and are cited in the exhibit as examples of Japonisme, a French term coined in the late nineteenth century to describe the craze for Japanese art and design in the West. The Japonisme phenomenon is important to understanding the environment in which Hokusai worked.

Linda Loschiavo, director of Fordham Libraries, said she fully supported loaning the book for the exhibit.

“I’m always thrilled to loan something from our collections,” she said.

Loschiavo noted that the library has loaned works to institutions in the past. Over the years, Yale University, St. Bonaventure University, and Versailles have all borrowed Revolutionary War artifacts, memorabilia, and Americana from Fordham Libraries’ Charles Allen Munn Collection.

“The wonderful aspect of loaning to another institution is the spotlight that it puts on Fordham’s collections. Participating in a show with a prestigious institution like the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston garners worldwide coverage,” she said.

“The exhibit will also be traveling to Seattle as well, so we’ll be allowing people across the country to view our treasures, and link the beauty and the importance of what they’re seeing to Fordham.”

The Museum of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Art will reopen in the Walsh Family Library after a renovation, once again displaying antiquities dating back to the 10th century B.C. On view in its new glass cases will be Greek ceramic jars from 400 B.C.E., Roman coins, amulets and jewelry from the 1st century B.C., and more.

The museum has offered the hands-on experience to Fordham classes over the years, with students curating exhibits on classical objects, including one last year dedicated to ancient glass.

Classes will once again be able to meet directly in the museum, a large conference table surrounded by exhibits.

“The important thing about teaching from the objects is that nothing makes students more excited about the ancient world than being able to handle something that is 2,500 years old,” said Jennifer Udell, Ph.D., the museum’s curator.

The renovation of the museum, which first opened in 2007, has improved its display cases, brightened the space significantly, and made possible the display of objects that had not previously been viewed by the public.

The original collection, which featured more than 260 antiquities dating from the 10th century B.C. through the 3rd century, was a gift from William D. Walsh, FCRH ’51, and his wife Jane. It grew over the years as the museum received several major gifts, including a 2014 gift of nine mosaics from the 5th century. In 2018, the museum received a collection of 118 objects comprised of small terracotta and bronze figurines and Roman glass.

Udell said that the items in the 2018 acquisition were an important addition to the museum’s holdings, but many were kept in storage because the museum lacked space to display them. But in 2021, Udell learned that she’d have a lot more space to spare.

Helping Resolve An Art Trafficking Case

In September 2021, Udell shared in a blog post that the museum had closed its doors on June 1. That day, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office seized 99 objects in the collection as evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation of a trafficker in ancient art.

Three months later, those objects and 61 more from other institutions, tied to Edoardo Almagià, a Rome-based antiquities dealer, were repatriated to the Italian Government.

Rethinking How to Show Objects

For Udell, the loss of the items was an opportunity for reinvention.

“Everybody said ‘Do you still have a museum? And I said, ‘Yes, we just have a different museum, with different types of material. The new install has given me a way to rethink how we show objects.”

Thanks to the generosity of Mark and Esther Villamar, she was able to purchase custom-made display cases that are brighter, more secure, and accessible from the back, for easier access. Carpeting has been replaced with polished concrete floors, and a large conference table has been installed in an alcove.

When it came to organizing the objects, Udell started with a description of Walsh’s original collection.

“Once you start putting objects in a case, then you have to see how things evolve. It’s difficult to plan from the get-go, and say ‘Ok, this is going to go here and that’s gonna go there.’ I kind of let it evolve organically,” she said.

That means pairing for the first time together the ram head drinking cup with an Askos (flask) with Nike figurines and Medusa heads in relief dating back to B.C.E. 300. An Etruscan Amphora (jar with two handles) from circa 650 B.C.E. is now the centerpiece of a case centering on Etruscan burial ceremonies.

In one of the cases, Udell grouped together never before displayed implements and tools, including spear blades, a cosmetic applicator, a neolithic spoon, and a flint hand axe dating back from 300,000 to 150,000 BCE.

Another new display features half a dozen pieces that are in fact forgeries.

“Were they specific forgeries or were they just tourist trinkets that then over time were viewed as deliberate fakes? Who knows?” she said.

“So this is fun to look at with students and to say, ‘Why aren’t they genuine?

This is the Real Thing

Linda LoSchiavo, director of Fordham Libraries, noted that the initial creation of the museum was the first major renovation to the Walsh Library, as the space was originally designed to be a periodical reading room. Many spaces in the building have been updated since then, so it made perfect sense to update this space now.

“This gave us entrée to rethink and reexamine everything that was in there, and go in the direction that it was inevitably destined to go—not just as a place to view beautiful things, but as an arm of teaching and learning,” she said.

“Whether you have a student who’s just inches away from an Etruscan vase as someone is turning it and showing it from every angle, or you have a medieval manuscript placed in front of them and you’re turning the pages, you’re allowing them to interact directly with history,” she said.

“This is the real thing.”

For Udell, the renovation is everything she wanted to create when she first arrived in 2007. The display cases have room for more objects, and Udell has secured loans for objects from the Metropolitan Museum of Art that will arrive in September. She anticipates working with other institutions in the future as well.

“There are lots of exciting collaborative things happening with other New York City institutions, so I’m excited about that,” she said.

“And I’m just excited about being able to unveil this collection in its best aesthetic possibility.”

It was hard to imagine that in 1994, this was just an empty patch of land, and not a five-story, 240,000 square-foot anchor of the Rose Hill campus’ southwest corner.

This year, the library is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the day it opened its doors to the Fordham community.

The Paradox of Libraries

For Linda LoSchiavo, TMC ’72, director of Fordham Libraries, the anniversary has been an occasion for reflections on the library’s ultimate mission. She noted that libraries have always been a bit of a paradox, and Fordham’s is no exception.

“On the one hand, it’s perceived as somewhat of a cloister. It’s a place of quiet study and meditation. It’s kind of a retreat from the clamor of the world,” she said. 

“But in fact, we’re also functional. Every day, the doors open, and the University enters. We’ve got students coming in. They might work alone, but they also form communities, they make connections, and all the learning is shared. So, we have to fulfill those two functions.”

‘Cathedral for the Curious’

The William D. Walsh Family Library opening ceremony took place on October 17, 1997, after just under three years of construction. It cost $54 million, $10.5 million of which came from William D. Walsh, FCRH ’51.

Joseph O’Hare, S.J., Fordham’s president at the time, presided over the ceremony. He was joined by John Cardinal O’Connor, who hailed the structure as “one of the most enriching facilities that at least I have seen since I have been Archbishop of New York.”

That fall, Fordham Magazine’s September issue was devoted to the new library, which it dubbed the “Cathedral for the Curious.”  O’Hare said it successfully integrated with the Neo-Gothic architecture of the campus’ signature buildings, yet was contemporary in its look.

“[It is] not a stone fortress, but rather a window of welcome of the University’s life of learnings,” he wrote in the magazine’s introduction.

The new building was high-tech for its time, housing 350 computers, video equipment, and study carrels quipped for laptop use. Resources were also shared beyond the Fordham community; with help from a New York state grant, a new technology center provided software training and teachers in the Bronx and lower Westchester.

An Operation Scattered Around Rose Hill

When Walsh Library opened, LoSchiavo did not work there, as she was director of Quinn Library at Lincoln Center at the time. But she had worked at the Rose Hill campus in the years before it was completed. When she joined Fordham in 1975, the University had long outgrown Duane Library, which opened in 1926 with just 31,500 square feet of space and seating for 504 patrons. As a result, library operations were scattered among five different buildings. Chemistry, biology, and physics books were stored in three separate locations before they were combined into one science library in 1968, when John Mulcahy Hall opened. And the library’s cataloguing and acquisitions departments shared space with the periodicals collection in the basement of Keating Hall, where LoSchiavo worked for a time. 

When Walsh opened its doors, it not only eliminated inefficiencies that came from being spread out, she said, it also showed how the right space makes it possible for a library to evolve to meet the needs of its patrons.

In fact, she noted that shortly after it opened, administrators realized that the first-floor periodicals reading room, where physical copies of journals and magazines sat neatly arrayed on shelves, had been rendered obsolete by electronic publishing. Less than a year later, the space was transformed into the Museum of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art.

Designed for Change

LoSchiavo called the changes, which have taken place in innumerable instances small and large throughout the building, are the result of “controlled flexibility” inherent in the blueprints drawn up by the building’s architect, Shepley Bulfinch.

Photocopier rooms? Those have become group study rooms. Offices for other divisions around the university? Three of them were combined into one unified space now occupied by a writing center. This summer, a section of the basement that was once storage for printed copies of dissertations was transformed into the Learning & Innovative Technology Environment (LITE) center. Last month, a fourth-floor reference desk that was a holdover from the separate science library was christened the Henry S. Miller Judaica Research Room.

It’s all part of the push and pull of simultaneously preserving the past while promoting the future.

“When you look at stacks, what you’re seeing is immortality. And then you get these students coming in—and they can be loud, but they’re vibrant. And there’s your future right there, coming through the door,” she said. 

“When we opened the lower level, we had an electronic information center, which at the time, oh my God, was that revolutionary. We had all these computers and computerized databases. But now, the term electronic information center is really dated. I mean, the whole building is an electronic information center.”

A Centerpiece for Sustainability

Not all the changes to the building have come from shifting research and studying habits. Given its size and its hours of operation, the library is also the biggest energy user on campus, and is thus a centerpiece of Fordham’s sustainability efforts. In 2010, it became the site of the University’s first solar panel array, and in 2019, clean energy servers installed there helped Fordham offset more than 300 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year.

As the University continues with efforts to reduce its carbon footprint by 40% by 2030, Walsh Library will stay in the spotlight; this year it will be the first building to undergo an energy audit to determine what can be done to further shrink its energy consumption.

For LoSchiavo, it’s all part of the job.

“It used to be that people felt that things changed very slowly in libraries, but as a matter of fact, they don’t. They actually change on the rapid side, and it’s actually hard for us sometimes to keep up with the new ways that things are being delivered,” said LoSchiavo, whose team celebrated the building’s silver anniversary by creating Walsh25, a campaign featuring a resource guide, giveaways, displays, and blog postings.

“But what we’ve found over 25 years is that students still need information. The faculty still need information. They still need a place to study. They still need a place to read. They need a place to do research. They need a place to collaborate with one another. They still need the librarians to guide them through the process.”

Those special items will be available on Tuesday, Nov. 8, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the O’Hare Room, in Special Collections at Walsh Library, where visitors can hold them and learn more about them. They’ll be presented by Jan Graffius, Ph.D., the curator of collections at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, who brought them to New York City as a complement to the exhibit on the Tudors at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She arrived at Fordham on Nov. 5 with 10 or so 15th- and 16th-century books and items owned by Stonyhurst, Campion Hall—the Jesuit hall at Oxford University, and the British Province of Jesuits.

Other objects currently in Walsh Library include Katherine Bray’s Book of Hours, St. Campion’s Decem Rationes, and the St. George reliquary of Sir Thomas More. All of the objects that will be shown at Fordham are featured in this short video.

Graffius spoke to a small group of library staff and administrators on the morning of Nov. 7.

“Perhaps the most powerful impact of Dr. Graffius’ visit to Walsh Library was her eagerness not simply to share the precious objects she had brought with her, but to give us an almost intimate connection with them,” said Linda LoSchiavo, director of Fordham Libraries.

“Without a piece of glass or a velvet rope separating us from the prayerbook of a Tudor monarch, or the adolescent scrawls in a text belonging to the young John and Charles Carroll, we were able to stand only inches away from items that, under any other circumstances, we would have to cross an entire ocean to get a glimpse of. Jan Graffius’ encyclopedic knowledge of her collection and the history surrounding it is matched only by her enthusiasm and warmth as a speaker.”

Graffius will be bringing the items to other locations in New York City and the U.S., including the Church of Ignatius Loyola in Manhattan. Though these items will not be on display at the Met, Graffius did contribute to the museum’s exhibit by installing a cope (vestment) belonging to Henry VII, which was contributed but the British Province of Jesuits. The Met exhibit, titled The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England, will be on display until Jan. 8.

From the Golden Rams Soiree to the family-friendly picnic on Martyrs’ Lawn to the Saturday night gala under the big tent on Edwards Parade, alumni relished the opportunity to be together and see how Rose Hill has both stayed the same and changed for the better.

The attendees spanned eight decades—from a 1944 graduate and World War II veteran who had just celebrated his 100th birthday to those marking their five-year Fordham reunion. Some brought their spouses and young children to campus for the first time. More than a few came to pay tribute to Joseph M. McShane, S.J., who is stepping down this month after 19 years as president of the University. And all were rewarded with idyllic early June weather in the Bronx.

‘A Place of Great Value’

On Saturday morning, alumni filled the Great Hall of the Joseph M. McShane, S.J. Campus Center to hear from the new building’s namesake.

Sheryl Dellapina, FCRH ’87, who traveled from the U.K. to attend her 35-year reunion, introduced Father McShane, calling him “Fordham’s most effective ambassador.” She said she first met him at an alumni gathering in London about four years ago, and “it just felt like family.”

“I came away from that thinking, ‘Wow, [Fordham] has so evolved since I had been here that I wanted to be part of this again.’” Her son is now a member of the Class of 2024, and Dellapina is one of the leaders of Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, the University’s $350 million fundraising campaign to reinvest in all aspects of the student experience.

“I had a choice between [attending] this Jubilee” and staying in London for the Platinum Jubilee celebrations honoring Queen Elizabeth II. “I came to this one,” she said to laughter and applause from the audience.

In his address, Father McShane described the new four-story campus center as a place where “the rich diversity of our student body is very evident—commuters, resident students, students from all over the country, all over the world, all ethnicities are [here], and everyone is interacting. It is spectacular.”

He detailed some of the strategic decisions that primed Fordham’s decades-long evolution from highly regarded regional institution to national and international university. And he emphasized how Fordham has met the fiscal, enrollment, and public safety challenges of the pandemic and emerged, in the opinion of a former editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, as one of the elite universities “that are really secure, really prestigious, and therefore desirable.”

“We are now, in a certain sense, a place of great value,” Father McShane said. “I’ve known this all my life. You’ve known it all your life. Now the world more broadly knows it.”

In closing, he urged alumni to “be proud of Fordham,” to “continue to be contributors to the life of the University,” and to “take the place by storm” this weekend.

Fun, Food, and Face Painting on the Lawn

Jubilarians did just that at the all-classes picnic on Martyrs’ Lawn. The family-friendly event featured food, drinks, a DJ, games, face painting, and a caricature artist—along with plenty of grads reminiscing and making new connections.

One of the liveliest sections belonged to the Golden Rams, those celebrating 50 or more years since their Fordham graduation. At one table, Richard Calabrese and Tom McDonald, who got paired as Fordham roommates in fall 1968 and have been friends ever since, reflected on what made them so compatible. “We were both not high-maintenance people,” McDonald said with a smile.

At a neighboring table, Maurice Harris—who was careful to clarify that he graduated in January 1973—talked about the way Fordham helped him turn his life around. After growing up in public housing in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood, he enrolled at Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1968 and, shortly afterward, started working as a nurse’s aide at the nearby Fordham Hospital.

Although he had trouble balancing classwork and the job at first, a doctor at the hospital convinced him that he should apply to medical school. Despite thinking that he didn’t stand a chance of getting in, he was accepted to SUNY Downstate Medical School in Brooklyn and, three years later, to the Emory School of Medicine in Atlanta, where he eventually became an assistant professor of medicine and practiced cardiology for more than four decades.

“I come up [to Jubilee] every five years. Fordham changed me,” Harris said, adding that for those like him who grew up in tough circumstances, “when you came and ran into the Jesuits, they set you straight.”

One 25th-reunion table featured a group of friends from the Class of 1997—several of whom drove down together from Boston.

“Being on this campus this time of year is second to none,” said Lisa Bell, FCRH ’97, who majored in communication and media studies and works as a public relations professional in the Boston area. “It’s gorgeous, and it’s so great to see all the new developments.”

Looking around at the group of friends sitting around her, she added, “Fordham has been so beneficial—not only the education but our network, the friendships.”

For Michelle and Regis Zamudio, Harlem residents who met during their senior year in 2010, got married in the University Church, and recently welcomed their third child together, getting the chance to bring their kids to campus and to see friends felt particularly special after missing out on the chance to celebrate their 10th reunion in 2020.

“We went to our five-year Jubilee in 2015, and we keep in touch with a lot of our classmates from freshman year,” said Regis, a Gabelli School of Business graduate who majored in finance and works as a vice president of operations for Elara Caring. “When our reunion was canceled two years ago, we were really bummed out that we wouldn’t have the experience to bring the kids to.”

Michelle, who majored in communication and media studies and is a writer and producer for A&E Networks, echoed her husband’s sentiments.

“We were really looking forward to seeing all our friends from Fordham,” she said. “So now, being able to come back, it just feels good to bring our kids and show them where we met, where we fell in love, where we got married. It’s really special to be here.”

Cherishing Lifelong Connections at the Golden Rams Soiree

Like the Zamudio family, Jack Walton, FCRH ’72, was eager to catch up with old friends. He did just that at Friday evening’s Golden Rams Dinner and Soiree. This year’s event officially welcomed the Classes of 1970, 1971, and 1972.

Although Walton has stayed in touch with many of his classmates by coming to past Jubilees and participating in a Facebook group dedicated to the Class of 1972, seeing folks in person as Golden Rams was different, he said.

“It’s fulfilling to have gotten this far and to see so many of the guys and gals that I grew up with in the late ‘60s and very early ‘70s,” he said.

For Gabe Vitalone, FCRH ’44, this year marked 28 years since he became a Golden Ram. On May 31, just three days before the dinner, he celebrated his 100th birthday. A World War II veteran and a longtime fixture at Jubilee, Vitalone has continued to accomplish extraordinary things well into his 90s, even singing the national anthem for the New York Yankees in 2020.

It was slightly bittersweet for him and his wife, Evelyn, to return to Jubilee after a two-year absence, he said, because for the past three decades, they were joined by his best friend, Matteo “Matty” Roselli, FCRH ’44, who died in 2020. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to be here. But I almost said, ‘Look, that’s enough, now’s the time [to stop coming], now that Matty passed away. And then I thought of Father McShane,” he said. “I wanted to say goodbye.”

Toni DiMarie Potenza, TMC ’72, GSE ’73, and Alice Dostal-Higgins, TMC ’72, GSAS ’84, became fast friends early on in their time at Thomas More College, Fordham’s undergraduate school for women from 1964 to 1974. They met by virtue of alphabetical seating that placed them next to each other and went on to become roommates and fellow psychology majors. They also each earned a master’s degree from Fordham and, upon graduation, entered the teaching field.

Potenza, who had flown in from Chicago, said she found herself surprised to be in the ranks of the Golden Rams.

“I think as you get older, the person that you are, even when you were in your 20s, is still there and you don’t really see that you have changed,” she said. “So, it’s very surprising to realize that 50 years have gone by.”

Higgins said it was tough to pin down a few memorable moments of their time as undergrads.

“You know, it was every moment together,” she said. “It was having coffee in the morning before going to classes and then having to run out the door to get to classes on time. It was talking about the classes that we took together and experiences that we laugh about that we won’t talk about now,” she added laughing.

The Brave Women of TMC 

More of Thomas More College’s trailblazing women reunited for a luncheon in the McShane Center on Saturday afternoon. Linda LoSchiavo, TMC ’72, director of the Fordham University Libraries, called TMC the University’s “great experiment” and described its earliest students as “the bravest of us all.”

“TMC was born on the cusp of societal changes and upheavals—the fight for women’s equality, civil rights, gay rights: They were all raging while we were studying for finals,” she said.

Introducing Maura Mast, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, LoSchiavo noted just how far Fordham women have come. Today, “four of the nine deans of schools are women and, in less than one month, Fordham will have its first layperson and first woman as president,” she said, referring to Tania Tetlow, J.D., whose tenure begins on July 1.

Mast, the first woman to serve as dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, thanked the TMC alumnae for paving the way, whether they meant to or not. “You may have come to Fordham saying, ‘I’m going to be a trailblazer.’ You may not have. But either way, you were.”

For Marie-Suzanne Niedzielska, Ph.D., TMC ’69, GSAS ’79, the prospect of reconnecting with women from other class years is what drew her to Jubilee this year.

A retired IT professional who splits her time between Central Florida and Glastonbury, Connecticut, Niedzielska remembers having a wonderful academic experience amid the tumult of the Vietnam War and social unrest. “It really colored the whole thing,” she said, before noting that each generation has its challenges, and perhaps attending college during tumultuous times is “not as unusual as it seems.”

Unusual or not, she said she is impressed by what Fordham students are accomplishing these days.

“I just went to the Student Managed Investment Fund presentation,” she said, referring to the Gabelli School of Business program that gives junior and senior finance students an opportunity to invest $2 million of the University’s endowment. “I’m just really impressed with the way that’s set up, with the lab, with what the students did, and what a leg up they get.

“In our time, an internship was just sort of a part-time job. It wasn’t a launchpad, and that’s a big difference.”

—Video shot by Taylor Ha and Tom Stoelker and edited by Lisa-Anna Maust.

Growing Up Fordham

Elsewhere in the McShane Center, about 50 graduates from the Class of 1972 met for an interactive chat titled “Growing Up Fordham: Risks and Challenges That Paid Off.” Psychologists John Clabby Jr., FCRH ’72, and Mary Byrne, TMC ’72, helped facilitate the discussion, and Bob Daleo, GABELLI ’72, chair of Fordham’s Board of Trustees, was also in attendance.

Daleo talked about the many changes that have taken place at Fordham over the years, from the additional buildings on campus and the much more diverse student body to the fact that all students are now “natives of a digital world.” He added that, while the University has seen much change in the past 50 years, “Fordham is still a place in which cura personalis is practiced every day by every member of the faculty and staff.”

Urging his classmates to remain engaged in both small and large ways, Daleo drew their attention to campus greenery of all things.

“The beautiful elms on this campus are hundreds of years old,” he said. “They were planted by people who knew they would never see the trees in their full grandeur. Fellow classmates, I believe that is our calling: to nurture an institution [that] will continue to flower long after we’re gone.”

Celebrating Alumni Achievement

One of the ways in which the University flourishes is through the lives and accomplishments of alumni. And on Saturday afternoon, three Marymount College graduates were recognized by their peers.

Maryann Barry, MC ’82, the CEO at Girls Scouts of Citrus in Florida, received the Alumna of Achievement Award, which recognizes a woman who has excelled in her profession and is a recognized leader in her field.

The Golden Dome Award went to Maryjo Lanzillotta, MC ’85, a biosafety officer at Yale University, in recognition of her commitment to advancing Marymount College, which was part of Fordham from 2002 to 2007, when it closed.

Lanzillotta spoke to her former classmates about the satisfaction of giving to the Marymount Legacy Fund (an endowed scholarship fund that supports Fordham students who carry on the Marymount tradition), and of witnessing the joy on a recipient’s face when they receive the award.

Lastly, Mary Anne Clark, MC ’77, accepted the Gloria Gaines Memorial Award, Marymount’s highest alumnae honor, which is given to a graduate for service to one’s church, community, and the college. Knowles said she was genuinely surprised to receive the award.

“It just shows that sometimes it’s enough to be kind to others and always give back whatever way you can,” she said. “You don’t have to build big libraries; you can go feed someone at the homeless shelter.”

At Hall of Honor Induction Ceremony, a Tribute to Seven Fordham Luminaries

Celebrating alumni achievement is par for the Jubilee course, but this year, for the first time since 2011, the festivities included a Hall of Honor induction ceremony.

Three Fordham graduates were inducted posthumously: Reginald T. Brewster, LAW ’50, a Tuskegee Airman who fought against racism and inequality; Jim Dwyer, FCRH ’79, a journalist and author who earned two Pulitzer Prizes; and Herb Granath, FCRH ’54, GSAS ’55, an Emmy Award-winning TV executive who was chairman emeritus of ESPN.

Also among the honorees were two beloved Fordham educators—Elizabeth A. Johnson, C.S.J., distinguished professor emerita of theology; and Peter B. Vaughan, former dean of the Graduate School of Social Service.

They were honored at the ceremony alongside Jack Keane, GABELLI ’66, a retired four-star general and former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army; and Joe Moglia, FCRH ’71, former CEO and chairman of TD Ameritrade, and former head football coach and current executive director for football at Coastal Carolina University.

“Here you have on display the greatness of Fordham,” Father McShane said at the Saturday evening ceremony, held outside Cunniffe House, the Rose Hill home of the Hall of Honor. “The thread, I think, that joins all of our recipients today is character—men and women of character—and this is something that Fordham rejoices in.” Turning to the inductees, he added: “We will point to you when we want to tell students who we want them to imitate, what we want them to become.”

Ringing in the Gala

After a full day of mini-reunions, luncheons, and fun on the lawn, Jubilarians of all ages united Saturday evening under a big tent on Eddies Parade for the Jubilee Gala.

Phil Cicione, FCRH ’87, PAR ’18, president of the Fordham Alumni Chapter of Long Island, had the honor of kicking off the evening’s celebration with something new: the ringing the Victory Bell. Typically rung by students to celebrate athletic victories and signal the start of the annual commencement ceremony, on Saturday night, it doubled as a dinner bell.

The gala also served as an opportunity to celebrate the generosity of the Fordham alumni community: This year’s reunion classes raised more than $11.2 million in the past year; an additional $1.8 million and $1.1 million were raised in 2021 and 2020, respectively, by the reunion classes who missed their in-person gatherings due to the pandemic. All of the money raised supports the University’s Cura Personalis campaign.

A Fitting Jubilee Mass

Shortly before the gala, Father McShane, who was presiding over his final Jubilee Mass as Fordham’s president, told the alumni gathered in the University Church that it was “fitting” for Jubilee to coincide with Pentecost.

“All weekend, we’ve been celebrating in quiet and also boisterous ways the many gifts that God has given to us, as a result of him sending his spirit to be among us and filling our hearts with deep love and great gratitude,” he said.

Alumni participated in the Mass in a variety of ways, including carrying banners representing their class year and serving as lectors, Eucharistic ministers, and gift bearers. For one alumnus, Dennis Baker, S.J., FCRH ’02, GSAS ’09, participating in Mass meant giving the homily.

Father Baker, who was celebrating his 20-year reunion, said that after Father McShane asked him to deliver the homily, he told his group of Fordham friends, and they provided a “flood of advice” on what he should say. “At least they considered it advice, I think,” he said with a laugh.

After gathering suggestions that included taking part of a homily from a friend’s wedding, sharing stories of trips up Fordham Road, or using an old sign from a local hangout as a prop, Father Baker said he began thinking about the celebration of Pentecost and how it relates to his time at Fordham with his friends.

“This weekend, the worldwide church celebrates Pentecost, the celebration of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles,” he said. “And I think it’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that the same dynamic happened to my friends and to me during our time at Fordham. I think the same is true of you and your classmates as well.”

Father Baker said that Fordham “helped him better understand the gifts of the Holy Spirit in my life. Maybe that’s true for you too.” Those gifts include wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and awe, he said.

“The love of God is so powerful, and so real. I think we got to see a glimpse of it when we were young men and women here.”

Thanks to a new grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the library will be able to keep adding to the COVID-19 archive that it began assembling in April 2020. The archive is currently made up of items that are reminiscent of the many stages of the pandemic, including “Do Not Sit Here” signage and floor arrow decals, Fordham’s COVID-19 “Five Things” e-mails, photos of testing tents, and press coverage from the Observer newspaper. LoSchiavo said there are currently roughly 400 items in the collection, and she’d like to get to 1,000 by the end of the year. 

It’s an ambitious goal, but LoSchiavo is optimistic it can be done. The federal grant of $30,299 will allow the library to purchase heavy-duty, high-end scanners to catalogue printed material and camera equipment to conduct interviews with as many members of the community as possible. From the shutdown in March 2020, to the transition to remote learning, to connecting with colleagues from home, to deep cleaning building interiors, LoSchiavo wants to hear from the people who lived it. 

“I really thought this was a way to show future historians how lives changed under the duress of a pandemic. If enough schools do this, it’ll be a way to compare and contrast how public institutions handled it, how private institutions handled it, and how as a large Catholic, Jesuit university in the middle of New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic, it affected our students’ lives,” she said.

The hope is to get everyone on record, from vice presidents and deans to administrators, faculty, and staff. LoSchiavo said the library is still working on a formal way to reach out to everyone in the University community and let them sign up for interviews; she plans to share updates via the library’s blog. Interviews will be conducted in person, over the phone, through Zoom, and via e-mail.

She’s especially interested in highlighting the can-do spirit that the community embraced during the pandemic.

“We shut the doors at the library on Friday, March 20, but we never stopped. On March 21, we were still at it, virtually. I had teams of people who just knew what they had to do, and they just kept getting it done,” she said, noting that this was a pattern that was repeated across the University.

“I look at what the facilities people had to do in the spring and summer to get us open for August 2020. The maintenance people were certainly in this building every day and night, cleaning. These are people we want to talk to.”

Above all, LoSchiavo is cognizant that as months and the years pass, people tend to forget how quickly things changed. But hopefully, everyone will be able to look back at that time with pride.

“When we got back, I can’t tell you how many people said, ‘Well, no one was laid off,’” she said.

“For the most part, I felt like it was a really a spirit of optimism, and hopefully that’s what will come through.”

Thanks to a recent renovation, the second floor of the Lowenstein Center is home to a brand new welcome center for undergraduate admission, where potential Rams can learn about all that Fordham has to offer.

For decades, the admission office at Lincoln Center served as the place where staff greeted visitors and staged tours. But the space was confined to a few small offices adjacent to the second-floor lounge, and in recent years it had become difficult to accommodate a growing number of guests.

In the 2017-2018 academic year, admission staff welcomed more than 14,000 visitors to the Lincoln Center campus. That included nearly 6,000 prospective students—a 68 percent increase in student visitors from 2010.

The new welcome center, which remains on the second floor of Lowenstein, is designed to comfortably accommodate many more people than before. Its offices have been reconfigured, and the space has expanded to include a large presentation room with a state-of-the-art display screen, a workspace for student employees, and a new seating/reception area. 

“The new space gives us an opportunity to greet prospective students and their families in a way that is far more gracious and inviting than we have been in the past,” said John Buckley, vice president for admission and student financial services.

The renovated center has replaced what used to be the second-floor lounge. But the University has taken several proactive steps to maintain the amount of study space available to students. A new lounge on the plaza level (PL-100) was recently opened and offers ample seating. And there are additional lounge options on campus, both in Lowenstein and in 140 West.

Three new seating areas are also currently being installed, said Frank Simio, vice president for Lincoln Center. In the west wing of Lowenstein’s third floor, there will be 24 new seats, along with electric outlets for laptops and phone chargers. In the Quinn Library, there will close to an additional 100 seats available in quiet study areas. And on the eighth floor of Lowenstein, there will be a smaller seating area, also with electrical outlets. The first two areas will be available to students before final exams begin.

The seats in the library will be in QuinnX (an abbreviation for Quinn Annex), an open stack area that holds more than 260,000 titles. It is located down the law corridor from the library entrance.

“Opening QuinnX answers the need for additional quiet study space for Lincoln Center students and provides for open browsing of the stacks, which is so valuable to faculty and researchers,” said Linda LoSchiavo, director of University Libraries.

The new admission welcome center will open for business this month. In celebration, the center will host a reception with refreshments for students and staff on a date to be determined. 

Hendrik Hameeuw of Katholieke Universiteit Deuven originally came to the U.S. to demo the Portable Light Dome Scanner for the curators and researchers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Through a connection that Lisa Lancia, director of international initiatives at the Fordham Libraries, had with a Belgian program, Hameeuw offered to give Fordham faculty and staff a demo of the device on campus.

Offering a state-of-the-art approach to looking at cultural heritage, the scanner helps others visualize the topography of medieval book illuminations, stamps, inks, seals, and bookbinding stamps in two-dimensional.

The demonstration included Hameeuw’s presentation on advanced imaging techniques followed by test scans of items selected from Fordham Library’s Special Collections.

Director of University Libraries Linda LoSchiavo called the technology “thrilling.”

“Digitization is an important issue for us, not only in terms of preserving Fordham’s past,” she said, “but in the that it allows us to present research in a truly unique way.”

–Lindsey Fritz

It was no wonder, then, that those same kids devoured popular comic books—even religious ones—the first chance they got.

Last month, a former faculty member donated two-dozen rare copies of old Catholic comic books to the library’s archives. The books were from the series Treasure Chest and Topics, and had been distributed and widely read in Catholic schools from the 1950s to the late 1960s.

Donor Bert Hansen, Ph.D., said he bought the comics to research how medical heroes were depicted in American comics and other popular culture mass media.

Popular culture and medicine

“Public libraries don’t collect comic books, so they don’t get saved,” said Hansen, author of Picturing Medical Progress from Pasteur to Polio: A History of Mass Media images and Popular Attitudes in America (Rutgers, 2009). “Since I was looking for popular images related to medicine and doctoring, the comic book was where it was at—that, and Hollywood movies.”

Hansen, who taught in the Department of Natural Sciences at the Lincoln Center campus in the 1970s, said he limited his purchase of hundreds of comics to those that featured medical stories. The Catholic comics often featured American heroes with medical accomplishments, such as Walter Reed, Jonas Salk, and Albert Sabin, as well as plenty of “medically relevant saints.”

“What made the Catholic books different is that they included a saint in almost every issue,” said Hansen, a professor emeritus of history at Baruch College. “There was the Mother Cabrini story; there was Marguerite d’Youville, (who ran the General Hospital of Montreal) who was recently canonized. And there’s a story about Father Lazzaro Spallanzani, an 18^th-century biologist and physiologist.”

Touchy topics

LoSchiavo said she was an “avid reader” of the comics as a child growing up on Long Island. She welcomed the collection for an additional reason: “Besides Treasure Chest’s puzzles, games, lives of the saints, and devotional prayers, it also attempted to deal with issues like juvenile delinquency and social unrest at a time when these topics weren’t easily discussed in Catholic grammar school,” she said.

For now, Hansen is glad the fragile bits of memorabilia are safely stored in a temperature-controlled environment. But he also hopes their presence will inspire more donations of Catholic popular culture.

“As a historian, I hope we might find alumni who have some of these comics in their attic and didn’t know the library would like them,” he said. “What people might perceive as some funny old things are actually of interest to librarians, archivists, and scholars.”

The $81,000 grant, part of the Humanities Open Book Program, will allow the press to make publicly accessible eBooks out of 21 previously published titles with an emphasis on American philosophy. Many of the titles chosen are books already out of print, said Kate O’Brien-Nicholson, associate director of the press.

Among those books being revitalized in ebook form are: Peirce and Contemporary Thought by Kenneth L. Ketner (1994);The Metaphysics of Experience: A Companion to Whitehead’s Process and Reality by Elizabeth Kraus (1997); and Charles S. Peirce: On Norms and Ideals by Vincent G. Potter (1996).

“Books on American philosophy became the natural choice, as our selection process revealed that the titles in the series have lasting and universal appeal,” said O’Brien-Nicholson. The books were selected based on both circulation records and sales records, she said.

The press has published more than 3,000 scholarly books since its founding in 1907 and has long been recognized as a leading American publisher of philosophy scholarship, she said.

Library Director Linda LoSchiavo said the grant will help grow and broaden the library’s digital collections.

“The out-of-print titles, which will become available freely through the library’s open access institutional repository, DigitalResearch@Fordham, represent some of the leading scholars and thinkers in the field of philosophy,” she said.

It was dark and dreary, but the old Quinn Library held fond memories for generations of Lincoln Center students—even if it wasn’t an ideal place to study.

Now, instead of one rambling open floor plan down on the lower level, lit entirely by florescent lights, a new Quinn Library staggers across three floors and opens to the sun.

“For years we were removed from weather and time,” said Linda LoSchiavo, director of Fordham Libraries. “The big joke became if someone came in with a wet umbrella we’d say, ‘Oh, it must be raining.’ Just the fact that there are now windows and sunlight pouring into this building is a sea change.”

The new library reflects the urbanity of a vertical campus in Manhattan, said LoSchiavo. Situated in the freshly renovated 140 West 62nd Street building, the new library is a funky mix of building materials, with curvaceous metallic grids and wood panels dropping from the ceiling, and multi-colored patterns popping up from the floor.

“The campuses have their own distinct feel: Rose Hill is more the ivy-covered halls of academe and the Walsh Library reflects that, whereas Lincoln Center has an edgier feel,” she said. “We wanted something that picked up the pulse of the campus and the neighborhood. I think we achieved that.”

The library’s main level can be accessed from Robert Moses Plaza, where one enters a two-story atrium-like space with a balcony and catwalk that hover above the library’s lower level. The lower level has a community-focused room with access to the stacks, coffee, and conversation. Called the “Learning Commons,” it’s open 24 hours a day, Sunday through Thursday.

Just beyond glass doors on the balcony level sits the circulation desk, a staff area, and computers and study tables. On the third level is the “Quiet Zone” with private booths, tables, and six study rooms, four of which are equipped with smart technology.

More than 80,000 books have been moved to the new library, while more than a quarter million books will stay behind in the old, lower level space , now called Quinn X. Any book published before the year 2000 will stay at Quinn X, while all books published since 2000 have been moved to the new Quinn. The staff will retrieve books requested from QuinnX.

“It was a considerable achievement to tag 260,000 books with Quinn X stickers,” said Robert Allen, assistant director of Fordham Libraries. “We started in the summer of 2015 with teams of students putting the stickers on.”

A Manhattan Library with Roots in the Bronx (and Kentucky)

The actual move was done over the summer. It revealed quite a bit about the history of the Lincoln Center library, which is inextricably linked to the history of Fordham’s libraries in the Bronx and other long-gone Fordham libraries housed in former Manhattan locations, said Patrice Kane, head of Archives and Special Collections.

Many Fordham students are aware that, in the 1840s, Edgar Allan Poe was given free rein to use the college’s library when he visited to play cards with the Jesuits, who had brought their books with them from Kentucky when they started the university.

Eventually Duane Library housed the growing collection, until 1997 when the Walsh Library was opened. But in the early part of the 20th century, the Law School, the Business School, and the School of Social Service grew their book collections in their various locations in downtown Manhattan. (The social service library shared its collection with students from Dorothy Day’s School for the Catholic Worker.)

When the downtown collections were moved to Lowenstein in 1968, they barely filled the miles of empty shelves. So a request was made to Duane Library to send books.

Now nearly 50 years later, the renovation has rustled books from their sleepy shelves, revealing a few treasures here and there, like an 1896 edition of Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain.

The Mark Twain edition speaks to a 175-year legacy that makes up an extremely comprehensive liberal arts collection, said LoSchiavo, to say nothing of philosophy and theology.

“It is a testament to the faculty and the staff of the library, for the last 175 years, that we have the magnificent collection that we do,” she said. “I am often stunned when I see a book cited as a source, I’ll think, ‘I wonder if we have that?’ I’ll check and find that we do.

“That’s because of the combined knowledge, over 175 years, that has gone into putting the collection together.”