Answering a call from Pope Francis, Fordham is indeed a place committed to taking “concrete actions in the care of our common home.”

Here are some updates from the first quarter of 2024, from student sustainability interns to “cool” foods to fun community events that make an impact.

Facilities

In January, 11 more undergraduate students joined Fordham’s Office of Facilities Management as sustainability interns to help the University in its efforts to reduce its carbon emissions. They’re working on projects connected to AI-enabled energy systems, non-tree-based substitutes for paper, and composting. The office is still looking for three more students to join; email Vincent Burke at [email protected] for more information.

Dining

Stroll into a dining facility at the Rose Hill or Lincoln Center campus, and you’ll find “Cool Food” dishes such as crispy chicken summer salad, California taco salad, and spicy shrimp and penne. 

The dishes, which are marked by a distinctive green icon at the serving station, have a higher percentage of vegetables, legumes, and grains, which generally have a lower carbon footprint than those with beef, lamb, and dairy. According to the World Resources Institute—which Fordham partnered with on the Cool Food project—more than one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse emissions come from food production.

In March, the University went one step further by signing onto the New York City Mayor’s Office Plant-Powered Carbon Challenge. The pledge commits Fordham and Aramark to reduce our food-supply carbon emissions by a minimum of 25% by the year 2030.

Academics

This semester, a new one-credit, university-wide experiential learning seminar titled Common Home: Introduction to Sustainability and Environmental Justice was taught by faculty and staff from the Gabelli School, the Center for Community Engaged Learning, the Department of Facilities, the Department of Biology, and the Department of Theology. 

Other sustainability-focused courses this semester include the City and Climate Change, the Physics of Climate Change, and You Are What You Eat: the Anthropology of Food (Arts and Sciences); Sustainable Reporting and Sustainable Fashion (Gabelli School of Business); and Energy Law and Climate Change Law and Policy (Law).

Students Take the Lead

At Fordham Law School, the student-run Environmental Law Review hosted a March 14 symposium that considered the impact of artificial intelligence on environmental law. Panels focused on how regulators and litigators can use AI and the challenge of addressing AI-generated climate misinformation.

In January, Fordham Law student Rachel Arone wrote The EPA Rejected Stricter Regulations for Factory Farm Water Pollution: What This Means, Where Things Stand, and What You Can Do for the Environmental Law Review. And the Law School’s student-faculty-staff collective Climate Law Equity Sustainability Initiative held a series of lunchtime discussions about climate change, law, and policy. 

Student groups LC Environmental Club and Fashion for Philanthropy teamed up on March 8 to create reusable tote bags on International Women’s Day. The bags were donated to Womankind, which works with survivors of domestic/sexual violence and trafficking.

The United Student Government Sustainability Committee continues to run the Fordham Flea, a student-run thrift shop that connects students interested in selling old clothes with those looking to buy sustainably. The next flea will take place on April 26 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. outside of the McShane Center.

Community Engagement

The Center for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL) held an Urban Agriculture and Food Security Roundtable on Feb. 2. The gathering brought together community organizations and leaders from the Bronx to discuss urban agriculture and food security. Attended by Bronx Congressman Ritchie Torres, the meeting was also an opportunity for groups to learn about resources available from the USDA and the New York City Mayor’s Office on Urban Agriculture.

CCEL Director of Campus and Community Engagement Surey Miranda-Alarcon served as a panelist at a March 9 climate justice workshop at SOMOS 2024 in Albany, along with Mirtha Colon, GSS ’98, and Murad Awawdeh, PCS ’19.

Faculty News

David Gibson, director of the Center on Religion and Culture, and Julie Gafney, Ph.D., director of the Center for Community Engaged Learning, attended “Laudato Si’: Protecting Our Common Home, Building Our Common Church” conference at the University of San Diego on Feb. 22 and 23.

Marc Conte, Ph.D., professor of economics, and Steve Holler, Ph.D., associate professor of physics, presented their research around air quality, STEM education, and education outcomes on March 11 at the first night of Bronx Appreciation Week, which the Fordham Diversity Action Coalition organized.

Alumni

On March 14, Tara Clerkin, GSAS ’13, director of climate research and innovation at the International Rescue Committee, delivered a lecture at the Rose Hill campus titled “The Epicenter of Crisis: Climate and Conflict Driving Humanitarian Need and Displacement.”

In Case You Missed It

Here are some sustainability-related stories that you may have missed: In January, economics professor Marc Conte published the findings of a study that examined whether people living in areas with more air pollution suffer more from the coronavirus. The Gabelli School of Business partnered with Net Impact, a nonprofit organization for students and professionals interested in using business skills in support of social and environmental causes.  A group of the Gabelli School Ignite Scholars traveled to the Carolina Textile District in Morgantown, North Carolina, to learn the benefits of sustainable and ethical manufacturing.

Upcoming Events

April 12 and 19
Poe Park Clean-up
In celebration of Earth Day on April 22, the Center for Community Engaged Learning is organizing visits to the park, where volunteers can help pull weeds and spread mulch. 10 a.m. – 2 p.m., 2640 Grand Concourse, the Bronx. Sign up here.

April 13
Bird Watching in Central Park
Law professor Howard Erichson will lead students on a birdwatching tour of Central Park, where they hope to spot and identify a few of the hundreds of species that pass through Fordham’s backyard on their annual migration routes. Meet at the Law School lobby at 9:30 a.m. Contact [email protected] to reserve a spot.

April 13
Ignatian Day of Service
Students and alumni will meet at the Lincoln Center campus and walk over to nearby Harborview Terrace, where they will build a community garden with residents. Lunch and a conversation about Ignatian leadership will follow. 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.
Click here to RSVP.

April 15
ASHRAE NY Climate Crisis Meeting
The theme of this meeting of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers is “Challenge Accepted: Tackling the Climate Crisis.” All are welcome.
7 a.m.- 1 p.m., Lincoln Center Campus. Contact Nelida LaBate at [email protected] for more information or register here using code FordhamStudent2024.

We’d Love to Hear From You!

Do you have a sustainability-related event, development, or news item you’d like to share? Contact Patrick Verel at [email protected].

It was around then that the New York Immigration Coalition, where he is executive director, started to receive notices in the mail for unknown people who were due to appear before court. 

“The notice would say, “Hey, your immigration court date is X day, at this time, at this location. But we never knew who these people were. So, we were receiving people’s notices to appear who we had never engaged with,” he said on Sept. 19 at an appearance at the Lincoln Center campus.

A few weeks later, he said, people started showing up at the coalition’s midtown office, bearing documents that listed their home address as the office. Federal officials, they said, had told them that the coalition would provide them with housing, health, care, and legal services for free. 

“We work to bring services to communities that need them—everything from legal services to adult literacy, education, classes on financial literacy, health care enrollment, whatever you can think of, we try to bring it into the community,” he said.

“But we don’t do housing, and we don’t do emergency shelter. We’ve never engaged with emergency shelter up until this point back in May and June. So, we quickly realized that this is bigger than we had thought.”

An Unexpected Influx of Arrivals

Awawdeh, a native of Brooklyn who had only just taken on the executive director role that month, didn’t know at the time that his group had been pulled into a crisis orchestrated by Texas governor Greg Abbott, who had begun busing immigrants from the border to cities such Washington D.C. and New York. An estimated 11,000 people have arrived in New York City since May, straining the city’s shelter system. 

Awawdeh spoke about that crisis as part of “Coalition Building in New York Communities: A Conversation with the New York Immigration Coalition,” a conversation hosted by Kujegi Camara, assistant director for community engagement and operations at Fordham’s Center for Community Engaged Learning.

In a wide-ranging conversation and follow-up Q&A with audience members, Awawdeh addressed everything from the ways his organization has adjusted to the influx of immigrants to the ways he learned to become a community organizer.

For starters, the group now distributes at its offices “dignity care packages” with toiletries, PPE, and snacks to new arrivals. Immigrants are also given service guides that can help them navigate the various agencies that can help with basic needs.

“The service guide breaks down everything, from where to get legal services to health care to DOE enrollment for kids, and everything you need to know,” he said, noting that everything is packaged in a sturdy backpack. 

“The reason why we give them book bags, and not just some plastic bag, is because people show up with nothing but their paperwork in their hand and their clothes on their back,” he said.

“So it allows them to put their paperwork somewhere safe. If they lose it, they’re going to have an incredibly hard time navigating the immigration system.”

The group also launched a Welcoming New York campaign, to ensure that every level of government is stepping up to support the recent arrivals.

An Evolving Focus in Helping Immigrants

When the coalition was founded 35 years ago, it was primarily focused on providing services, he said, but it gradually shifted to focus on coordinating with other service providers and then began advocating for immigrant-friendly policies. It currently has 200 member organizations in the state and serves between six and eight million people annually.

“A lot of our work in coalition buildings trying to bring together diverse voices, to be able to find the shared values that we all have, find an issue and a shared solution, and then fighting for that solution to become a reality,” he said. 

He cited as an example the 2019 passage of the Green Light Law, which made New York one of 13 states that allow unauthorized immigrants to obtain a driver’s license. 

The coalition has had to shift its priorities again in response to the convoys being sent from the border, becoming more involved in efforts to provide emergency housing. But Awawdeh cautioned that it is neither a new phenomenon nor is it one that will be resolved soon.

“There are an enormous number of issues that we’ve never had to deal with before that we’re trying to figure out now”, he said noting that when one also includes people who are not being bused by the Texas government, the true number of recent arrivals is probably closer to 15,000.

“It is an incredibly cruel and unjust system that just needs to be flipped on its head, and the solution isn’t going to just be a quick, rapid response campaign,” he said. 

“We need to change our immigration system. It is not built to support people, it is not built to be just, and we’re going to continue to see horrific stories.”

Grateful for a Fordham Education

Awawdeh also talked about his own experience at Fordham. He initially attended Long Island University with the goal of earning a B.S. in biochemistry, but when his mother got sick, he had to drop out to support her and his six siblings. In 2013, he enrolled at Fordham’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies (PCS); in 2019 he graduated with a B.A. in organizational leadership and psychology.

“This is going to sound so corny, but I didn’t think I needed to get my college degree.

But when I went through the courses, the professors at PCS are folks just like us just living their lives, but they gave so much to every single student that it made it so much easier for you as a student to advance in your educational learning experience,” he said.

“So, I have to give it up to Fordham. I was super skeptical, and then they made me a believer.”