On a recent day in early March, construction crews were kicking off the second phase of the campus center renewal by starting to demolish the former entrance to the McGinley Center, the student hub that opened in 1959. Meanwhile, nearby, in a new four-story addition to that same McGinley Center, students were congregating in the student lounge—catching up, shooting pool, typing on their computers—and soaking in the soothing ambience.

“It’s relaxing. I enjoy being here,” said Thomas Aiello, a junior who was getting some work done on his laptop. A student seated nearby, Kayla Bonitto, appreciated having the new gathering space after the physical isolation of taking virtual classes during the height of the pandemic. She and her friends had made plans to explore the new building together; on a recent night, students had gathered in the lounge for the State of the Union address and updates on the crisis in Ukraine. “It’s like a new sense of community,” she said.

That was the idea behind the campus center renewal, a keystone of the University’s $350 million fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, which seeks to enhance all aspects of the student experience.

The new building addition will be combined with the Rose Hill Gym, Lombardi Center, and a renovated McGinley Center to form a larger complex that provides the entire University community with vastly greater space for offices, events, dining, fitness, and forming personal connections.

For some who have given in support of the project, it represents not just bricks and mortar but rather the continuous work of serving students and advancing the University from one era to the next.

Forging Ahead, Past the Pandemic

Kim B. Bepler, a Fordham trustee fellow and longtime University benefactor, recalled coming to campus for a lunch meeting during the first year of the pandemic, when the pivot to virtual learning had left the common areas of campus empty and quiet—except for the noise made by the builders.

“It was rather poignant to be there when no one else was” and hear the project proceeding, she said. “At that moment, when we were all frightened, when we had no idea what was going on and when this was ever going to be over, that indicated to me that things would move on, life would continue somehow, some way,” she said.

She and her late husband, Steve Bepler, FCRH ’64, who passed away in 2016, have funded a wide array of needs at the University, including four endowed chairs in the STEM fields. It was appealing to support this project because the campus center will be named for Fordham’s president, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., and also because of its importance for fostering the informal exchange of ideas beyond the classroom, she said.

The project was important to Steve because of his own experience of student life at the University—“He loved his Fordham education,” she said.

“I just found that very encouraging and very heartwarming to be there during the pandemic and to listen to the sounds of construction and the sounds of the future,” she said.

‘Part of Being a Great University’

Trustee Emeritus Robert E. Campbell, GABELLI ’55, went to Fordham at a much different time, when the business school was housed in a surplus Army barracks building on the Rose Hill campus. “Many days, we would sit through class with our overcoats on,” he said. The McGinley Center wasn’t yet built, and because he was commuting from northern New Jersey, his mingling on campus was limited.

Even so, the social experience has stayed with him. “It put me in touch with so many new people,” he said. The Rose Hill campus “always was a place where wonderful people congregated.”

Now, they are giving in support of the campus center renovation and expansion.

“I don’t look at it as necessarily just a physical structure,” Campbell said. “It’s a home for people. People come to Fordham and leave their own homes [and]take up residence at a place. My feeling has always been that you would like to make that, physically, as supportive as possible.”

He noted that students’ experience of the new campus center could encourage them to give back to the University down the line.

“You always have to keep investing. It’s just part of being a great university, which Fordham is,” he said.

Communal Spaces

The new campus center offers state-of-the-art fitness equipment; glass walls and ceilings that allow for natural light; bigger and better spaces for the Career Center, Campus Ministry, and Center for Community Engaged Learning; new multipurpose rooms; and many other amenities.

And more is yet to come—the phase-two demolition of the current McGinley Center entrance is clearing the way for an enclosed glass arcade from which students can access the Rose Hill Gym, the McGinley Center, the Lombardi Center, and the new building. That’s expected to be done by September 2023, said John Spaccarelli, director of facilities and special projects, who is overseeing the construction.

Phase three, to be done by the end of 2024, involves renovating the McGinley Center and reconfiguring some of its existing spaces, Spaccarelli said. He estimated that the entire campus center renewal is 35% to 40% complete.

In the student lounge, first-year student Jocelyn De Fex appreciated having the kind of inviting communal space that commuters like herself would otherwise have a hard time finding on campus. “If this didn’t exist, I would only be able to go to the library,” she said. She was hanging out and eating breakfast in the lounge with Kayla Bonitto, who appreciated the layout that makes the Career Center easier to find.

“When you get off the [second floor]elevator, it’s immediately right there,” said Bonitto, a junior.

A Place for Focusing

Nearby, Nick Chao, also a junior, said the lounge seemed to invite studying. “You kind of feel like when you come here, you can get work done,” he said. “I come here maybe a few times a week, maybe late at night, just to get some studying in.”

Conversation formed a gentle background hum. The 17-foot-high ceilings were treated with an acoustical spray that not only protects against fire but also dampens the sounds that would normally be bouncing around between the walls and the ceiling, Spaccarelli said.

Aiello, an organizer with the Herd, a student group supporting Fordham athletics, said the aesthetic appeal of the center will surely help with recruiting prospective students as well as student-athletes. The project shows Fordham’s commitment to updating its infrastructure, and “I think that’s huge for [the University],” he said.

To inquire about giving in support of the campus center renewal or another area of the University, please contact Michael Boyd, senior associate vice president for development and university relations, at 212-636-6525 or [email protected]. Learn more about Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, our campaign to reinvest in every aspect of the Fordham student experience.

On March 16, Fordham received a helping hand from the State of New York, which awarded the University a $5 million matching capital grant from the Higher Education Capital Match Program (HECap).

The grant, which is administered by the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY), will pay for construction of the glass-covered arcade, or passageway, that will connect the new 71,000-square-foot, four-level addition to a renovated McGinley Center, the Rose Hill Gym, and the Lombardi Center. The addition is set to open this fall. 

A Partnership with State Government

For every dollar in state matching funds, private, not-for-profit colleges and universities in New York must provide $3 in support of their projects. The projected timeline of the campus center’s Phase II renovation is expected to be 14 months.

Fordham was one of 35 colleges and universities to receive the grant this year. Lesley Massiah-Arthur, associate vice president and special assistant to the president for government relations, whose office secured the grant, said she was thrilled that Fordham received the maximum amount possible. A major part of the application process centered around demonstrating that the project will generate jobs and benefit the community at large, she said.

“What this investment allows us to do is not only expand the University’s resources for our students but to expand community access to the University,” she said, noting that Fordham allows community nonprofits to hold meetings on campus, free of charge.

Contributing to the Economy

At $5 million, the grant is the largest in a series of grants totaling $14.75 million that Fordham has secured from the state over the last five years. Last year, a $2.5 million State and Municipal Facilities Grant was awarded for lab renovations at John Mulcahy Hall. In 2018, the University received a $3.75 million HECap grant for a steam boiler replacement in Thebaud Hall. And in 2019, Massiah-Arthur’s office secured a $1 million HECap grant for renovating the façade and creating an open green space at Lincoln Center.

Massiah-Arthur said the funds showed that leaders in Albany appreciate the value that private colleges and universities bring to the state’s economy. According to a 2017 report by the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities, Fordham’s total economic impact on the New York City region is $1.5 billion.

The project will also generate approximately 250 union jobs, ranging from laborers to engineers, over the course of the contract.

“The fact that independent universities have a capital program [HECap] that’s specific to us demonstrates that our capital construction is very important, especially when you consider that as a sector, our institutions contribute about $88 billion to the New York state economy,” she said.

“This just goes to show that a partnership between the state and our sector can be a benefit not just for the institution but the state, the regions, and communities we’re in.”

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, who recently served as chair of the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities, said he was gratified that New York’s leaders see institutions like Fordham as partners worthy of support.

“The new center will be at the heart of the campus experience and therefore at the heart of the University’s mission,” Father McShane said.

“It will bring together all students, faculty, and staff under one roof, in a space that maximizes opportunities for shared meals, shared learning, and shared recreation. We are grateful that the Dormitory Authority recognized both Fordham’s need and our contribution to the state’s intellectual, cultural, and financial health.”

A Unique, Light-Filled Space

The arcade and the new entrance to the center promise to be the most dramatic of all the elements of the new campus center. Marco Valera, vice president for administration, said that the only other building that currently features a large indoor space bathed in natural light from above is the Platt Court atrium at the Lincoln Center Campus.

In addition to joining the original McGinley Center with the addition, the new arcade will stretch to the east and north to envelop the space separating those two buildings from the Rose Hill Gym and the Lombardi Center.

It is also arguably the trickiest part of the construction, Valera said, as it requires demolition, rehabilitation, and construction in close proximity to spaces that will continue to be occupied.

“The uniqueness of this particular space is that it joins the new building with the old stonework of the gym, so you’ve got a little flavor of the kind of gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where they join old buildings to new buildings,” he said.

As Fordham celebrates the successful conclusion of Faith & Hope | The Campaign for Financial Aid, the University is transitioning to a new campaign dedicated to enhancing the overall student experience.

The centerpiece of the campaign will be a new campus center at Rose Hill that is scheduled to be completed in 2025. The campaign will also seek support for other student-focused issues like wellness, financial aid, athletics, and STEM facilities, which are being developed in the University’s strategic planning process.

“The new campus center will be bigger, both literally and in concept, than its current incarnation,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “It will be at the heart of the student experience campaign, and the student experience is at the heart of the University. In caring for the whole person, we want Fordham to be a place where students can live, learn, study, celebrate, dine, play, and perhaps most of all connect—with their peers and with the faculty and campus community.”

The campus center project, which the University began work on over the summer, will take place in two phases and cost an estimated $205.3 million.

A Dramatic Expansion

The first phase is scheduled for completion in August 2021 and will entail the construction of a roughly 75,000-square-foot addition in the area in front of the existing McGinley Center.

The sleek glass and stone addition will be connected to the existing structure via a two-story glass arcade, with elevated walkways between the two buildings. The glass canopy-topped main entrance will beckon visitors into an airy space between the Rose Hill Gym and the new addition. The center’s façade, once defined by the modernist arches of the McGinley building, will now be dominated by vertical, soaring windows and stonework that complement the neighboring Gym. In a nod to iconic Rose Hill structures such as Keating Hall and Duane Library, it will also feature a four-story illuminated tower immediately to the west of the entrance.

Once the addition is complete phase two will begin, and the existing structure, which was built in 1958, will be gutted and renovated. When it is finished, it will feature 22,000 square feet of dining facilities and 36,000 square feet of state-of-the-art sports and fitness facilities. Ultimately, the new campus center, which is being designed by the architecture firm HLW, will be much larger, encompassing more than double the space of the original building. It will also include efficient LED lighting, heat recovery systems, enhanced insulation, solar panels, and other features designed to lower its carbon footprint.

The expansion will allow for a dramatic increase in space for several areas. The 20,000 square-foot fitness center will encompass more than half of the basement level, while more than 16,000 additional square feet will be devoted to sports medicine and a varsity weights training center. A 9,500-square-foot student lounge will occupy the first floor of the addition, while Career Services, the Center for Community Engaged Learning, and Campus Ministry will be housed in larger offices on the second floor. The third floor of the addition, which will rise a floor above the existing McGinley Center, will feature space for meetings and special events.

Funding for the Center

Funding will come from a combination of fundraising, loans, and dining services provider Aramark, which has committed $13.3 million toward the renovation of the dining facilities. Fordham will borrow $150 million through a bond offering, and raise up to $85 million for the project through the next capital campaign.

Together, nine donors have already committed $10 million toward the Campus center. Maurice J. “Mo” Cunniffe, FCRH ’54 and Carolyn Dursi Cunniffe, Ph.D., UGE ’62, GSAS ’65, ’71, whose generosity in the previous campaign led to the creation of the Maurice and Carolyn Cunniffe Presidential Scholars Program, has given $3 million.

Other donors include Board of Trustees Chair Robert (Bob) Daleo, GABELLI ’72, and Linda Daleo; Trustee Fellow Emerita Kim Bepler; Trustee Emeritus Robert E. Campbell, GABELLI ’55, and Joan Campbell; former Trustee Stephen J. McGuinness, GABELLI ’82, ’91, and Anne McGuinness; Trustee Brian MacLean and Kathy MacLean, both FCRH ’75; Brian Kelly, LAW ’95; former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; and several anonymous donors.

The center will feature many spaces with naming opportunities. Among the high-profile spaces in the new building are the fitness center, arcade, career services space, and special events space. When refurbished, the original building’s main dining room, ballroom, and student affairs suite will be available as well.

A Positive Financial Picture

The bulk of the funding for the project will come from a loan that the University will take on through a bond offering via the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York.

Martha K. Hirst, senior vice president, CFO, and treasurer, noted that Fordham is able to do this in part thanks to the University’s solid financial footing. Last month, for instance, global rating agency Standard & Poor upgraded its outlook on Fordham from negative, which it issued in 2017, to stable, and affirmed its “A” long-term rating on outstanding bonds. The University previously borrowed $212 million in 2008 via bonds for the construction of the new Law School building; Hirst said it continues to be the best way to finance big projects.

A Focus on Students

Jeff Gray, senior vice president for student affairs, said the new campus center will dramatically increase the ability of the University to deliver the services and spaces that students need to thrive.

“We have clearly outgrown the current campus center over the years, and it’s going to bring online a lot of exciting new spaces that will improve the quality of life for all our students,” he said.

He noted that in recent surveys of students at Rose Hill, 60% indicated that current student club and programming spaces are inadequate for their needs, which is not surprising given that the center was built to accommodate just 2,500 undergraduates total, 850 of whom lived on campus at the time. Today, 3,500 students live on campus, another 1,000 live in off-campus housing and another 2,000 commute to campus. The new campus center will be a place where all of these students can come together to socialize and collaborate.

For a preview of the benefits to come, Gray pointed to the 2016 renovation of the garden level of the Lincoln Center campus’ 140 W. 62nd Street.

“There’s a retail dining facility there that’s very popular; there’s a large community lounge where students gather, study, and meet; there’s dedicated space for student clubs; and dedicated space for important student services, like the dean of students, student involvement, health services, counseling, and career services,” he said.

“They’re all located in that hub, and that’s had a very palpable, positive impact on the quality of life for our students at Lincoln Center. We hope to achieve some of the same benefits at Rose Hill on a larger scale.”

Studies have shown that the longer a student remains on campus and in an academic mindset, the greater their chances are for academic growth and success, Gray said, noting that student retention is a key priority for the University. The new campus center at Rose Hill, he said, will be designed to give students a better sense of place outside the classroom.

In addition to dining, fitness, student lounge, and career services spaces, Gray said he expects that students will benefit greatly from the improved office spaces for departments such as Campus Ministry, the Center for Community Engaged Learning, and the Office of Student Involvement, which supports student clubs and activities.

“Those services are certainly central to our mission and what we do, and I think all of those things have the net effect of improving the overall student experience for the students,” he said.

Aramark-employed supervisor at the Marketplace, a residential dining location at the Rose Hill campus

Time at Fordham

She joined Fordham in 2013.

What She Does

She manages more than 80 employees, from cooks to cashiers to dishwashers. You can find her everywhere—the kitchen, the scullery, the cash register—checking that day-to-day operations are running smoothly.

From Puerto Rico to the Bronx

Martinez’s own story begins in Puerto Rico, where she was born in 1958. When she turned 22, she moved to New York and enrolled in nursing school. But after two years of watching nurses clean wounds and puncture strangers’ skin with needles, she realized it wasn’t for her.

“You have to have [the]stomach and passion to do that,” she said.

She soon started a nearly 25-year career with Sodexo, a food services and facilities management company, where she worked as a bookkeeper and, later, as a supervisor. Her job with Sodexo took her to Hunter College and, in 2013, Fordham. When Fordham changed its food service provider to Aramark in 2016, she stayed on.

At Home

Her home—where she lives with her husband, Rafael, and her granddaughter, a second-grader who asks her grandparents for help with math homework—is only an eight-minute car ride from Fordham’s campus. Martinez said she loves cooking meals for her family, especially lasagna, cannolis, and chicken cordon bleu.

“Let me show you my family,” she said, pulling out her phone. “This is my son. This is my daughter. She’s gonna get married next year. This is my grandchild, my husband, and me. That was [taken at]my niece’s wedding last October,” she said, proudly pointing out each person on her phone screen.

Martinez met her husband Rafael in New York when she was 23. This September, the couple will celebrate 39 years of marriage.

“He played baseball with my big brother,” she said. “Sometimes when I walked to school, he saw me in the street and gave me a ride in his car. We started talking and talking—and look,” she said, throwing her hands up with a smile.  

Thank You, ‘Mami’

Growing up, Martinez was called Viggie. But at Fordham, students call her Mami.

“They say, ‘Mami! How are you?’” Martinez said. “Maybe they see me as too old!”

Over the past six years, Martinez and her staff have fed thousands of students. She remembers many of them, like the Costa Rican students who were excited to meet Martinez—another person who could speak their native language. “They see me and they come in happy, asking ‘What are you cooking today? What is that?’” she said. “And I explained in Spanish.”

And the students remember her as well.

Melanie, a student from Oregon, gave Martinez a handwritten thank-you card adorned with penciled flowers for all the times she saved food for her. “We close sometimes at 8 o’clock and when it’s summertime, people come in late because they’re doing internships or something,” Martinez explained. “And I save food on the side [for them].”

Then there was that Saturday in the spring of 2016—the day of Fordham’s annual commencement. Three seniors wearing graduation gowns tracked down Martinez in the crowd. One student introduced her to his mother, who had flown in from Japan. Clasped between his hands was a surprise for Martinez—a big bouquet of flowers.

“I said, ‘Oh, you looking for somebody?’” Martinez recalled. “And he said, ‘Yes, I’m looking for somebody. I’m looking for you!’”

The annual Thank-a-Thon, which was begun by the Office of Development and University Relations and is now in its third year, attracted students like Lexi McCauley, a sophomore at the Gabelli School of Business, who along with other students shared her thoughts on a note card that will be mailed to a contributor to the Fordham Fund.

The fund aims to raise $10 million of unrestricted support annually to provide students with scholarships, career services and improved facilities and technology.

“It’s really important because there are a lot of people that don’t have the opportunity financially to go to Fordham,” she said. “I’m grateful to be able to come here, and there are many others who are also grateful [and]need help financially.”

The Thank-a-Thon began as a way for students to express gratitude to those who helped make Fordham’s $540 million capital campaignExcelsior | Ever Upward | The Campaign for Fordham, a resounding success. This year’s event, which took place over four days at the Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses, garnered 661 cards from students.

Nick Monteleone, associate director of donor relations, who along with Kristina Dzwonczyk, director of donor relations, helped solicit the students, said the Thank-a-Thon was launched to highlight the importance of unrestricted annual support, and to give students a direct voice to the donors who have played such an important role in their educations.

“The response we’ve had from the student body over the past three years has been wonderful,” he said.

“They’re eager to stop, to say ‘thank you,’ to share their gratitude, and often, their personal stories through a note for our Fordham Fund donors.”

Martine De Matteo, a freshman at Fordham College at Rose Hill, echoed the sentiment.

“I really appreciate all the help we can get for the ‘Ramily,’” she said.

Reciting that small yet potent word in three languages, Fordham’s new Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society negotiated the similar understandings of faith among Jews, Christians and Muslims, and vowed to strengthen interreligious dialogue at Fordham University.

Patrick J. Ryan, S.J., Fordham’s former vice president for mission and ministry and a scholar of comparative religion and Islamic studies, was installed on Nov. 18 as the second McGinley Professor by Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. After the installation, Father Ryan delivered his inaugural lecture aimed at opening Fordham’s gates to more frequent and fervent interreligious exchange.

Father Ryan set the tone with “Amen: Faith and the Possibility of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Trialogue,” drawing upon the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Qur’an to examine the bilateral relationship between God and his people.

“Here in America I have learned from Jews, and during [my]many years in Africa I learned from Muslims,” said Father Ryan, a New York native who spent 26 years in Africa in faculty and administrative positions. “I have come to realize over the years that we use many of the same religious categories.”

Father Ryan examined similarities and differences among the three religions. Christians, he said, more often find expression through creeds or “organized statements” of faith than do Jews and Muslims, who are less centered on theology. But all three religions share a notion of the “bilateral, reciprocal nature of faith,” that consists of a bond between God and his people. This relationship, which he called the “ultimate context of faith,” appears in the Hebrew Bible as covenant, in the New Testament as new covenant and in the Qur’an as mithaq or ahd.

Differences do exist, however. In the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish people keep faith with a faithful and loving God, while in the New Testament the New Covenant with God is established through the fidelity of Jesus Christ.

The Qur’an, Father Ryan said, refers to a “primordial covenant,” where people bear witness to an all-powerful God before their birth. The word “Amin” does not appear in the Qur’an, Father Ryan said, but is uttered in communion at the end of the Surat al-Fatiha, the most frequently recited Muslim prayer, as a mutual pledge of faith between God and humanity.

“Is it too optimistic of me to suggest that what unites not only Jews, Christians and Muslims but all of humanity seeking the meaning of existence is that all of us, obscurely but somehow realistically, have entered into existence or continue to enter into existence responding to the Lordship of God with an enthusiastic, indeed a joyful, ‘Yes, we have born witness’?” said Father Ryan.

“Can we . . . acknowledge our common heritage of covenant with and fidelity to God, and God’s covenant with and fidelity to us, despite our radical differences?”

Father Ryan said he would devote his tenure as McGinley Chair to discovering common ground among the three religious traditions.

At the beginning of his lecture, Father Ryan paid homage to his predecessor, the late Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., who held the McGinley Chair for two decades, and to Father Ryan’s mentor at Harvard, Canadian theologian Wilfred Cantwell Smith.  It was Father Avery Dulles, Father Ryan said, who encouraged him in the 1960s to attend Harvard to study under Smith—an eminent theologian within the Calvinist tradition.

Two of Smith’s former students—one Jewish and one Muslim—offered responses to Father Ryan’s lecture.

Rabbi Daniel Polish, Ph.D., spiritual leader of Congregation of Shir Chadash in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., stressed the Jewish model of faith as “partnership” between God and humans. He also said global changes in the last few decades signal that “theology can no longer be done in isolation.”

Amir Hussain, Ph.D., professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, called faith “the appropriate category of comparison in all three of our religions.” He closed with a quote from the writer Salman Rushdie, to express his own hopes: “For God’s sake, open the universe a little more!”

The McGinley Chair, named for Fordham’s 28th president, was established in 1985 to encourage scholarship on the intersection of religion with the legal, political and cultural forces in American society.

Father McShane said Father Ryan’s appointment ushers in “a new phase in the history of the McGinley Chair.

“These dialogues and conversations are not happening anywhere else,” Father McShane said. “If not New York, where? If not Fordham, who?”

The week will include pledges for students to either quit smoking or to never begin using tobacco products. These pledges will double as raffle tickets for three prizes (gift cards to Ann & Tony’s, Applebees and iTunes). The Alcohol and Other Drug Education Program will also be giving out free cotton candy to any student who correctly answers a question on our “wheel” of alcohol and other drug questions.

Following the dedication ceremony, Rev. John O’Malley, S.J., Distinguished Professor of History at the Westin Jesuit School of Theology, will deliver the Inaugural Jubilee Lecture, “Ignatius Loyola,” in the McGinley Center Ballroom.

DATE:      TUESDAY, DEC. 6
TIME:        3:30 P.M.
PLACE:    ALPHA HOUSE LAWN
AND
THE MCGINLEY CENTER BALLROOM
ROSE HILL CAMPUS
441 EAST FORDHAM ROAD, BRONX, N.Y.

The dining room now features comfortable furniture, new lighting, plasma televisions and increased wireless connections. The space has been reconfigured to allow students to have privacy, conduct study groups, or just hang out with friends.

The first phase of the project was completed last September with the opening of a new servery with eight stations including a salad bar, a soup and sandwich station, a pizza station, a grill and a bakery.