The Lincoln Center Learning & Innovative Technology Environment, located on the fourth floor of Lowenstein in room 416, was operating at full tilt as of last Thursday. A miniature, plastic model of the Eiffel Tower was coming to life in the belly of a 3D printer. Students with virtual reality goggles practiced hurling imaginary objects across a giant flat-screen. And inside the brand-new video/podcasting studio, a pair of LITE’s work-study students demonstrated how to record a video while jotting notes on a screen, weatherman-style.

“People say when they walk into the space, they feel more creative—that LITE lets them think outside the box and be able to apply these technologies in their classes,” said Nicole Zeidan, Ed.D., assistant director of emerging educational technologies and learning space design. She helps connect LITE’s resources to students and faculty, such as Assistant Professor of Art History Nushelle de Silva, Ph.D.

Virtual Reality for Museum Studies

Earlier this fall, de Silva wanted her Museum Architecture students to see how a museum experience changes when you “visit” it virtually. Using VR headsets at Rose HIll’s LITE, students were able to view the “Mona Lisa” up close without the hordes of tourists in the Louvre. 

With this technology now available at Lincoln Center, said de Silva, “ I could turn this into homework. And then we would have the whole of the class time to talk about that experience.”

Printing Sturdy Replicas of Fragile Artifacts 

The tools at the LITE Center in Lowenstein and its counterpart at Rose Hill are designed to make classes experiential and creative work more accessible. Students can fashion theater costumes with LITE’s sewing machines or repair objects with its soldering equipment. A too-fragile-to-touch artifact can be 3D scanned, then 3D printed to create a durable facsimile, like the medieval seals the LITE Center recreated for Center for Medieval Studies Director Nicholas Paul. “The originals … are made out of wax and, obviously, extremely old, so having copies that we can pass around and look at closely is really useful in classes,” he said.

Fleur Eshghi, Ed.D., associate vice president of educational technology research computing, said she thinks many academic departments will make good use of the center. 

“We have been looking for space for Lincoln Center to build the same facilities [as Rose Hill],” she said. “And we have finally succeeded … I’m extremely excited.” 

Letting the Light in

Nicola Terzulli, learning space design lead for the Office of Technology, made the most of Lincoln Center’s light-filled space when designing the different stations.

“Lowenstein has those iconic windows for each floor,” said Terzulli, so he found a manufacturer who could soundproof a podcasting room but keep the glass walls. When the studio is not in use, you can see through it. But should you need privacy—or want to use the room to record a media-rich lesson for Panopto, Fordham’s platform for video classes—you just draw the room’s thick black curtains to enclose it.

Terzulli even used all-glass cabinets to make the tools at Lincoln Center’s LITE easy to see. 

“We wanted as much glass as possible … so people when they walk in, they see [these tools]and they’re like, ‘Hey, what’s that? Can I do that? Can I use that?’”

For details on the features and hours of the Lincoln Center and the Rose Hill LITE Centers, visit their site.

Cushy benches, niche hideaways, high stools, and comfy chairs now populate hallways that were once just drab byways to elevator banks or bathrooms. Natural light pours into the hall from classroom windows inserted where walls once stood.

Students seem to have taken to the new spaces, some chatting at cafe tables, a few quietly studying in nooks, and one comfortably catching a nap.

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When it opens in the fall of this year, the complex will include 430 beds in the upper level, along with kitchen facilities, a small movie theater, and a dance studio with views of Avery Fisher Hall just to the north. The 10 lower floors, meanwhile, will double the current academic and administrative space of the law school. With four wide-open spiral staircases connecting various floors and a bi-level library housing 100,000 volumes, the new building promises to be a vision of movement, interaction, and collaboration.

Spiritual and Religious: What Can Religious Traditions Learn from Spiritual Seekers?
Monday, Dec. 2
6 p.m.
Pope Auditorium, Lowenstein Center, Lincoln Center campus, 113 W. 60th St., N.Y., N.Y.

For more information, click here

As spiritual seekers are taking a lead in shaping the future of faith, the panel hopes to address questions such as: What accounts for this surge in spiritual seeking, especially among younger generations? Are institutionalized traditions to blame for these developments? What can traditional religious organizations learn from sustained engagement with spiritual seekers?

The panel will feature:

Nancy Tatom Ammerman, Ph.D., professor of sociology of religion at Boston University and author of Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life (Oxford University Press, 2013)

Peter Phan, Ph.D., Ignacio Ellacuria Professor of Catholic Social Thought, Georgetown University

Lauren Winner, Ph.D., assistant professor of Christian Spirituality at Duke Divinity School and author of Mudhouse Sabbath: An Invitation to a Life of Spiritual Discipline (Paraclete Press, 2007)

Serene Jones, Ph.D., President, Union Theological Seminary

The lecture is free and open to the public. RSVP at [email protected] or (212) 636-7347

At a conference exploring so-called “disruptive technologies,” Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, held a one-on-one conversation with former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein about technology in the classroom.

The talk took place on Oct. 15 as part of the Graduate School of Business Administration (GBA) Business and the City discussion series, titled “Growing and Leveraging Tech Disruption” for its focus on tech infrastructure.

Klein, who is now chief executive officer at Amplify, a subsidiary of News Corp that provides digital instruction products for classrooms, called digital learning the “most important innovation since the printing press.”

As the economics of higher education become more challenging, he said, digital learning is a “way to change the game.” He twice cited an online master’s degree in computer science offered by Georgia Tech, in which fees are much lower than those for the classroom version of the degree.

“The difference can be in cost, but it can also be in human experience,” he said. “The big question is how the market will react. Who will IBM hire? A student with online education or the one with the classroom education?”

Klein advocated a cost-effective financial model for degrees that could incorporate a variety of tech innovations, including Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). He said that a blended approach in which technology is folded into existing classroom curricula, is gaining traction.

“I can only see good things coming from MOOCs, but they’re only part of the solution,” Klein said. “Tech integration has to be more nuanced than [a]be-all and end-all solution.”

Klein noted that America’s educational institution has a powerful legacy system that resists change, and that educators are understandably anxious that the new technology is asking them to take a leap of faith.

“Many are concerned that we may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but they may be clinging too tenaciously to the baby,” he said.

In particular, Klein touted the tablet as a highly personalized tool that can benefit learning in grades K through 12, an area of education that Klein said “has been captured by pedagogy” and where the country’s learning problems are the most intense. Nevertheless, for the tablet to work, he said, the technology must be embraced by the teachers.

He pointed out that New York City classrooms have a very heterogeneous environment in which some students are very ahead and others are very behind. He described several tablet programs designed by Amplify that help teachers differentiate student needs by finding out whether an individual student understands a lesson. The lesson can then be customized, with some of the students moving to the next phase of the lesson, while others who are struggling can receive additional instruction.

Klein allowed that the tablet does have the potential to limit socialization. But, with proper training, teachers would be able to gauge when to use and when not to use the technology, as well as when to simply “shut it down.”

The ceremony, which was postponed from last year due to Hurricane Sandy, honored
E. Gerald Corrigan, Ph.D., GSAS ’65, ’71.

Corrigan, a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and a managing director of Goldman Sachs, was honored at a dinner attended by Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham; Stephen Freedman, Ph.D., provost; Msgr. Joseph G. Quinn, vice president for mission and ministry; David Gautschi, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration; and Nancy Busch, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Also in attendance were recipients of the endowed scholarship fund that Corrigan established in 1999 and which has provided financial support to undergraduate students for nearly a decade.

Corrigan has served on the Fordham University Board of Trustees and has been a mentor and educator to Fordham students. In 2007, he made a $5 million gift that funded the E. Gerald Corrigan Chair in International Business and Finance in the Schools of Business, and he continues to generously support university initiatives.

A panel discussion with some of the foremost economic leaders in New York.

Moderated by Dominick Salvatore, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor and Chair, Department of Economics, Fordham University

Anticipated Panelists:
Sherif T. Assef, Ph.D., FCRH ’81, GSAS ’82, GSAS ’94, Managing Director, Duff & Phelps

Mary Ann C. Bartels, GSB ’85, GSAS ’92, Managing Director, Head of U.S. Technical and Market Analysis Research, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith Inc.

Matthieu Royer, GSAS ’94, Managing Director, Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank

Alberto Sanchez, GSAS ’96, Head of Investment Strategy for the Americas,
Banco Santander S.A.

Event sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School of Business Administration.

Inclement weather date – February 6.

For more information, contact Charlene Dundie at 212-636-7209 or [email protected].

A limited number of free Ram Vans to the viewing and funeral will depart from the Lincoln Center campus at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, and at 7 a.m. on Thursday, and will return to campus after the services conclude. Members of the University community who wish to reserve a space should contact the Office of Student Affairs, Lowenstein 408, at (212) 636-6250 or [email protected].

For those who cannot attend the funeral, the service will be streamed live online beginning at 10 a.m. at: www.forever-care.com.

Contributions in Feldman’s name can be made to the Springfield High School Student Theater Workshop, 49 West Leamy Ave., Springfield, PA 19064.

All are invited to attend a Memorial Service to honor Zander, give thanks for his life and his wonderful spirit, and to show our support to Professor Toulouse and his wife.

The service will be held at 4 p.m. on Friday, November 21 on the 12th Floor of Lowenstein Center, at Fordham’s Lincoln Center Campus.

For further information, please contact Rev. Vincent DeCola, S.J., at (212) 636-8269, or at [email protected].

The fair, sponsored by the Office of the Dean at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, and the Department of Natural Sciences, will highlight the work of 18 students at a poster session, and five students presenting abstracts, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Lowenstein Plaza, followed by an award ceremony from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in the Cafeteria Atrium.

The event is free and open to the public.

The event will include readings, book signings, and a question-and-answer session.

DATE:       TUESDAY, APRIL 19
TIME:        6 P.M.
PLACE:     SOUTH LOUNGE, LOWENSTEIN CENTER
113 W. 60TH STREET, NEW YORK, N.Y.