“That email dropped in my inbox, and my life changed,” said the first-year student.

She had learned that she was one of the six newest members of the Maurice and Carolyn Cunniffe Presidential Scholars Program, one of the most selective merit scholarships available to Fordham students. These scholars typically graduate in the top 1 to 2 percent of their high school class and excel in academics, leadership roles, and extracurricular activities. The scholarship program was funded through a $20 million gift from Maurice J. “Mo” Cunniffe, FCRH ’54, and Carolyn Dursi Cunniffe, Ph.D., GSAS ’71, two years ago. It not only covers tuition and living expenses, but also internship, research, and study abroad opportunities. The only thing she paid for, said Getman, were her textbooks.

“I could say some clever turn of phrase,” Getman said. “But the truth is that the opportunity the Cunniffes have given is once in a lifetime.”

Last Friday, Oct. 5, at the Rose Hill campus, the new cohort of scholars met Mo Cunniffe for the first time. (Carolyn had planned to be there, but was unable to attend.) Meanwhile, the inaugural cohort returned to reunite with their benefactor and greet the second generation. In total, six freshmen and six sophomores have been awarded the Cunniffe scholarship.

“This man and his wife chose to invest in you,” Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, told the students at the lunch meet-and-greet in Bepler Commons. “And in those who will come after you, because first, last, and always, Mo is someone who believes in people. But he expects great things. Is that a fair statement?” he asked, turning to Cunniffe.

“Yeah,” Cunniffe confirmed. The crowd chuckled.

The Cunniffes’ plan was simple: pinpoint the best and brightest students, give them the best possible education, and dispatch them into the real world.

“You’ll hire more people, you’ll think of more things to do, you’ll invent a mathematical equation that makes sense,” Cunniffe told the twelve students. “That was my purpose: get a gang of people, out of which someone will make the world better than I left it.”

After Cunniffe introduced himself to the scholars, it was their turn to tell him about themselves.

The students are pursuing studies in an eclectic mix of disciplines: art history, global business, information systems, and mathematics. One student is the treasurer of Stove’s Cabin Crew, a comedy club at the Lincoln Center campus; another is a researcher who, for six to eight hours a week in a neuroscience linguistics lab, studies people’s brain waves while they read different languages.

One of the new scholars is Bryce Tayengco, a global business major at the Gabelli School of Business, who loves everything about the Lincoln Center campus: exploring the city every morning on his bike, wandering through Washington Square Park, attending a class in which he helped design a business plan.

“I’d like to take your investment in my education and put it toward fintech—putting technology into finance,” Tayengco said, directly addressing Cunniffe. “I want to revamp that industry.”

The students’ hometowns span the United States: Ohio, California, Maine, Washington, New York, New Jersey, Louisiana, Long Island, Virginia, West Virginia, and Nebraska.

“How did you find us from Lincoln, Nebraska?” Father McShane asked first-year student Mabry Brank, a biology major on the pre-health track.

“I don’t fully remember, to be honest,” she replied. “I think it was kind of an act of God.”

“I’m a big believer in him,” Father McShane responded, earning a round of laughter.

More than 1,000 miles away from Nebraska is a small, rural town in Maine, half an hour away from the Atlantic Coast—the hometown of new Cunniffe scholar Sophie Cote, a math and economics major.

“If you’ve ever seen a Stephen King movie, that’s basically exactly what my town is,” Cote joked. “The first time I ever came to New York was for orientation. I was like, this is the place where I belong.”

It was the right choice for Getman, too.

In her short time at Fordham, Getman, an environmental studies major in Lincoln Center’s honors program, has had an opinion piece published in The Observer and attended a panel on sustainability and affordable housing at Lincoln Center. One day, she hopes to be a lawyer who specializes in environmental law. But for now, she’s still remembering the moment it all began.

“I yelled for my mother to come down and read this email because I thought I was hallucinating. I also had her pinch me. It’s really something to …,” Getman began, searching for the right words. “Not only appreciate, but to live up to, knowing that these two people have this amount of faith in me and what I can do.”

The gathering, held Oct. 19 at Cunniffe House, brought together six first year students from Fordham’s three undergraduate colleges, faculty and administrators, and Maurice J. (Mo) Cunniffe, FCRH ’54, and Carolyn Dursi Cunniffe, Ph.D., GSAS ’71, whose transformative $20 million gift last fall created the scholarship program.

In his remarks to the students, Cunniffe spoke of one’s personal history and of leverage. Students’ families had shaped their character thus far, he said, and college would do the same. Even if the end result is that they are simply kind people, Fordham will have succeeded.

Once you reach a certain level of success, however, and you’ve satisfied your obligations to your immediate and extended family, you start to think of other ways to leverage that success, Cunniffe said.

“We thought if we fund the best and brightest for 10 years, we’ll have 60 really bright people. We know that out of all those people, there will be people who make the world a better place,” he said.

“Your obligation—as the best and brightest of your generation—is to leave something that’s better.”

Carolyn Dursi Cunniffe said it was a joy to finally meet in person the students whose biographies she’d become so familiar with on paper.

“We are thrilled to be here, we wish you well, we know you will go out in the world and do good,” she said.

The six inaugural awardees were chosen for their excellence in academics and extracurricular activities, and demonstration of leadership in their personal and academic lives. They are Fordham College at Rose Hill freshmen Ashley Conde and Andrew Souther; Fordham College at Lincoln Center freshmen Natalie Grammer, Rose O’Neill, and Lucie Taylor; and Gabelli School of Business freshman Erin O’Rourk.

Taylor, a native of Virginia, grew emotional when she spoke about how the scholarship has made it possible to explore fields as varied as physics, psychology, and international relations before committing to one area.

“I love that Fordham has encouraged me to explore all of that, and is going to help me, no matter what I choose, [to]use my skills to help other people,” she said.

O’Rourk, a native of Spokane, Washington, echoed the sentiment.

“I have a lot of things that I really love, but none of them connect. I’m passionate about music, but I’ve always been really good at math. I feel like Fordham is the perfect place for me to discover my passion,” she said.

Thursday’s gathering was the first time O’Rourk and her mentor, Gayane Hovakimian, Ph.D., met in person. Hovakimian, an associate professor of finance and business economics in the Gabelli School, said she sees her role as making sure O’Rourk leaves Fordham with no regrets.

Frank Boyle, Ph.D., director of the honors program at the Lincoln Center campus, said the Cunniffes’ scholarship program stands out because of the additional resources it provides for a student who might want to study beyond the curriculum—say, learn a language that is not offered at Fordham.

“When the mentors, the students, and the deans decide there is something important for the students to do, we will have the resources to get [it]to the students directly,” said the professor of English. Boyle will mentor to the Lincoln Center Cunniffe scholars until they’re paired up with someone who matches their interest.

“Matching exceptional students with professors happens all the time in the honors program, and it’s really great. This scholarship is a genius way of building on what’s already a University strength.”

Dr. Skorton will be awarded an honorary doctorate during the commencement ceremonies, as will eight other people who have distinguished themselves in business, law, the arts, or public service. See here for full details on Fordham’s commencement ceremonies.

Honorary doctorates of humane letters will be awarded to Dr. Skorton and to Judith Altmann, vice president of the Holocaust Child Survivors of Connecticut; Gregory Boyle, SJ, head of the gang-intervention group Homeboy Industries; Maurice “Mo” Cunniffe, FCRH ’54, a successful businessman and key supporter of Fordham; Patricia David, GABELLI ’81, global head of diversity for JPMorgan Chase; and Sr. Carol Keehan, DC, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association of the United States.

An honorary doctorate of laws will be awarded to Loretta A. Preska, LAW ’73, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Honorary doctorates of fine arts will be awarded to Robert Battle, artistic director for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and to Henry Cobb, founding partner at the architecture firm Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners and co-designer of Fordham Law School’s new building.

Cobb and Preska will receive their honorary doctorates at the law school’s diploma ceremony, to be held Monday, May 23, at the Beacon Theatre in Manhattan. All other honorary doctorates will be awarded at the main University commencement on May 21.

Preska will speak at Fordham Law School’s diploma ceremony. David will speak at the Gabelli School of Business’ diploma ceremony for master’s degree candidates, to be held May 23 at the Beacon Theatre. Father Boyle will speak at the diploma ceremony for the Graduate School of Social Service, to be held May 23 at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall.

David Skorton became the first physician to lead the Smithsonian Institution when he began his tenure in July 2015. He oversees 19 museums and galleries, the National Zoo, and various research centers devoted to astrophysics, tropical research, the natural environment, and other areas.

During his tenure, Dr. Skorton has made arts programming a priority at the Smithsonian, and he continues to advocate for a greater national commitment to arts and humanities education. In an address at the National Press Club in December, he called for reversing what he called our nation’s “disinterest and disinvestment in the arts and humanities” while also preserving the nation’s commitment to science.

As he put it, “This commitment must be based on an understanding that the arts and humanities complement science and that together they us make better thinkers, better decision makers, and better citizens.”

Dr. Skorton earned both his bachelor’s degree in psychology and his medical degree from Northwestern University before completing his residency and fellowship in cardiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1979. He then joined the faculty of the University of Iowa, where he held professorships in internal medicine, biomedical engineering, and other fields before serving as the university’s president from 2003 to 2006.

In 2006 he was named president of Cornell University, where under his leadership the university joined with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to win a competition to develop a new campus, Cornell Tech, on New York City’s Roosevelt Island. He also won praise as a highly effective fundraising at both Cornell and the University of Iowa.

Dr. Skorton has also served as a professor in Cornell’s Department of Biomedical Engineering and in the departments of medicine and pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College. He is a pioneer in applying computer analysis and processing to improve cardiac imaging, and has published two major texts and numerous other writings on cardiac imaging and image processing.

He is also an amateur flute and saxophone player who once co-hosted a weekly Latin jazz program on the University of Iowa’s public radio station.

Other Honorary Degree Recipients:

Judith Altmann is a Holocaust survivor who shares her story widely in Connecticut and Westchester County schools as a way of encouraging young people to make a better world. Born in 1924 in Jasina, Czechoslovakia, she was confined in Nazi camps at Auschwitz, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, and Bergen Belsen in 1944 and 1945. She is a vice president of the Holocaust Child Survivors of Connecticut and recipient of the Anti-Defamation League’s Daniel R. Ginsberg Humanitarian Award for 2013.

Robert Battle is artistic director for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which offers a BFA in dance in conjunction with Fordham. Renowned for his challenging, athletic, and lyrical choreography, Battle was named one of the Masters of African American Choreography by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2005, among his other honors. He established the Ailey company’s New Directions Choreography Lab to nurture emerging talents, and continues to expand the company’s community outreach and education programs.

Gregory Boyle, SJ, is executive director of Homeboy Industries, one of the nation’s largest gang-intervention organizations. Hundreds of former gang members have changed their lives by taking advantage of the organization’s work program and its services including education, legal help, and substance abuse counseling. Father Boyle is an internationally recognized expert on gang intervention approaches and author of The New York Times bestseller Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (Free Press, 2011).

Henry N. Cobb is a founding partner at the award-winning architecture firm Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners. Along with his colleague Yvonne Szeto, he designed the new 22-story Fordham Law School and McKeon Residence Hall building at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus. His many other distinctive projects include the iconic John Hancock Tower over Boston’s historic Copley Square, which earned the prestigious Twenty-Five-Year Award from the American Institute of Architects.

Maurice “Mo” Cunniffe, FCRH ’54, chairman and CEO of Vista Capital, is a successful engineer, businessman, entrepreneur, and Fordham trustee emeritus who is one of the University community’s most vital and longstanding supporters. He played a pivotal role in the expansion of Fordham Prep as one of its trustees from 1983 to 1995, and his extraordinary financial support for Fordham was recognized in 2013 with the renaming of the Administration Building at the Rose Hill campus in his honor. He served on the Fordham University Board of Trustees from 1995 to 2003.

Patricia David, GABELLI ’81, managing director and global head of diversity for JP Morgan Chase, has been widely recognized for integrating diversity efforts throughout the company over the past 15 years. With her help, the company was named to Black Enterprise’s 2015 list of the most diverse companies, and she herself has received honors including the YMCA’s Black Achievers in Industry award. She serves on the advisory board for the Gabelli School of Business and was named the school’s Alumna of the Year for 2015.

Sr. Carol Keehan, DC, is a passionate advocate for expanding health care access. Sister Carol was recognized by President Obama for helping to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, and Pope Benedict XVI bestowed on her the Cross for the Church and Pontiff to honor her humanitarian efforts. Since 2005 she has been president and chief executive officer of the Catholic Health Association of the United States, a membership organization comprising more than 600 Catholic hospitals and 1,400 other health ministries.

Loretta A. Preska, LAW ’73, is chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In more than two decades as a judge she has ruled on many high-profile cases, such as those involving computer hacking, sentencing of a Somali pirate involved in hijacking a U.S.-flagged cargo ship, and the parody of an Annie Leibovitz photograph. She is a steadfast and generous supporter of Fordham who received Fordham Law School’s Louis J. Lefkowitz Public Service Award and the Fordham Law Alumni Association’s Medal of Achievement. A member of the Fordham University Board of Trustees from 2007 to 2013, she is now a trustee fellow.

The Administration Building, located in the heart of Fordham’s 85-acre Rose Hill campus, will be officially renamed Cunniffe House during a ceremony on Dec. 4. The building, which houses the office of Joseph M. McShane, S.J., Fordham’s president, among other offices, will be named for alumnus and trustee emeritus Maurice J. Cunniffe, FCRH ’54.

“I have had the great pleasure of knowing Mo Cunniffe for more than two decades,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “He is a man of both great accomplishments and great humility. In naming the administration building Cunniffe House, we not only acknowledge Mo’s and Carolyn’s great generosity and service to Fordham, but their integrity and steadfastness. It is very much Fordham’s honor to be associated with their name in this public way.”

In addition, the newly built fountain nestled between the Administration Building and Hughes and Dealy Halls will be christened the Carolyn Dursi Cunniffe Fountain, after Cunniffe’s wife Carolyn Dursi Cunniffe, Ph.D., GSAS ’71.

“If there is one couple that typifies the warmth, decency, and generosity of the Fordham Family, it is Mo and Carolyn,” said Roger A. Milici, Jr., vice president for development and University relations. “I have been the beneficiary of their wisdom and friendship from my first day here. They helped make Fordham a welcoming place for me, and by bestowing their name on Cunniffe House, they make the University a more welcoming place for all.”

Cunniffe was a 2010 recipient of the Fordham Founder’s Award, which recognizes members of the University community whose support has been extraordinary. Cunniffe, the chairman and chief executive officer at Vista Capital Corporation, served as a trustee for both the University and Fordham Preparatory School, of which he is a 1950 graduate. During his eight-year tenure as a trustee, the University saw such transformative events as the launch of its Excelsior | Ever Upward | The Campaign for Fordham, a $500 million capital campaign designed to bring Fordham into new era of preeminence.

Cunniffe said that his gift to Fordham not only pays tribute to his family’s legacy (his nephew is a 1993 graduate of Fordham Prep, and his grandson is a senior in the Gabelli School of Business), but also recognizes and supports the place that has been like a home for nearly his entire life.

“It’s in my bones,” Cunniffe said. “I had lived within walking distance of Fordham, and then I started the Prep in 1946. But I’d played on the campus even before that. So in some ways, I’ve been hanging around Fordham my whole life.”

Much about the campus has changed since his days of studying Latin, Greek, and physics at the University, Cunniffe said. For one thing, the bricks and mortar on campus today were largely nothing more than trees and turf.

“There were no buildings between the front gate and Duane Library. Residence halls such as Campbell, Salice, and Conley, and even the library weren’t there. It was just green,” he said.

Nevertheless, the building that will bear Cunniffe’s name was a centerpiece even on the campus Cunniffe knew, as it is one of the oldest buildings at Rose Hill. Built between 1836 and 1838, the building has stood throughout Fordham’s evolution into the institution that it is today. The Greek revival manor house sprang up right before Rose Hill transitioned from Fordham manor—the property granted to John Archer in 1671 by the British royal governor of New York—to St. John’s College. New York’s Archbishop John Hughes purchased the property in 1841 to establish what would become today’s Fordham University.

Now, Cunniffe hopes that the newly dubbed Cunniffe House will continue to see transformations for the better.

“Fordham is aspiring to not just do a competent job, but to become a first-class institution,” Cunniffe said. “Fordham will continue to get better, but that doesn’t change overnight—it changes over time.”