But she dreams of a much larger meditative rose garden, one where the youth in her care can go to reflect about life and about God. On returning to her country she will run a youth program at Mater Christi Youth Religious Formation and Counseling Center.

“We’ll call it a mystical rose garden,” said Sister Maria, who is receiving her master’s in youth ministry from the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. “I call myself a spiritual gardener. When [girls]come, I will teach them to understand the symbolic meaning of roses—to see that each rose grows uniquely, that each has a different scent, and each unfolds in its own way.”

Before coming to Fordham, Sister Maria said, she didn’t quite see things the way she sees now.

“Before Fordham, I was so absolute, black or white,” she said. “My Fordham education brought me awareness of critical reflection.”

Sister Maria said that she wants her students to understand that their development requires critical reflection, which is not unlike appreciating a rose garden.

“When you connect the rose to how each youth develops into a solid human personality, you appreciate their inner beauty, and you can help them discover who they are, in relation to their God,” she said.

“If you want to come into my garden you put your hands behind your back, and you don’t touch the roses,” she said. “Sexuality is not just about sex, sex is just an iota of sexuality. To understand your body is to understand it is a temple of the Holy Spirit.”

She said that in caring for a rose, one mulches, waters, and prunes—but the blossoms don’t need to be cut to be appreciated. She expressed concerns not just for the girls’ physical health, but for their spiritual health as well.

“Nigeria has moral and faith crisis, but after coming to Fordham I am able to see that there are many other ways to look at life,” she said. “Morally, you cannot focus myopically.”

At the Mater center, she said she plans to teach her girls to live holistically. This was the way that the Irish nuns trained her growing up, though she didn’t realize it at the time.

In fact, she confesses that, as a girl, she found the sisters of Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of Christ very strict. But now, as a member of their order, she appreciates how the Irish nuns trained them with a focus on the uplifting of women and girls through education, though now as an indigenous order, they do compassionate work “within their own cultural values.”

“When you educate a woman you educate a nation,” she said.

In fact, Uwadione’s sons, ages 1 and 9, have provided the most important motivation during his years at Fordham’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies, where he earned a degree in organizational leadership with a minor in economics.

“I know the importance of my degree not just for myself but also for my children,” he said. “I want to live a life of exemplary conduct. I want to be able to say, ‘Well, I could do this and you should be able to do it.’”

Originally from Nigeria, Uwadione has been living in New York for 12 years. He was drawn to study at Fordham not just by its academic reputation, he said, but also because of its Jesuit traditions.

“Fordham is unique in that there are elements of faith that are part of the academic community, and that is something that you don’t find everywhere,” he said.

For Uwadione, who is of the Bahá’í faith, the sharing of spiritual life is of central importance. Each month, he hosts up to 25 people in his home for a “tranquility zone,” an evening of meditation and conviviality.

“It is a devotional gathering, a place where people of different faiths, or of no faith, will come together once a month and we eat, we pray, and we play,” he said.

This concern for the creation of peaceful communities led Uwadione to a course in philosophical ethics taught by Gerard Farley, PhD, adjunct professor in the Department of Philosophy.

The course resonated deeply for Uwadione because it examined the role of ethics in daily life, a topic of particular concern for him, he said, “coming from a country where corruption has pretty much plagued the system.”

Uwadione works in supply chain management and is the director of operations at a small logistics company. He plans to use his degree to advance in his career, but just as important, he wants to continue the community service that plays a large role in his life.

He serves as president of the regional Ndokwa Association in America, a not-for-profit cultural organization dedicated to improving education and living conditions in a region in Nigeria. Uwadione also serves as the chairman of the association’s national scholarship board, which funds African students who excel academically but who cannot pay for their schooling.

In his own education, Uwadione’s steadfast pursuit of excellence has paid off. In 2015, he was inducted into Alpha Sigma Lambda, the national honor society for adult students, and in the 2015-2016 academic year he was the recipient of the Morton Levy Scholarship.

Though he leaves Fordham this spring, Uwadione says his ties to the school University will always be strong.

“Fordham is now family. Once you are a member of the family of academics you are there forever.”

–Nina Heidig

Chukwuneke, who is majoring in general science with a minor in chemistry and creative writing, has found a good match with her mentor. “He’s destroyed every stereotype [I’ve had] about doctors. He’s one of the funniest persons I know, and he has wonderful rapport with his patients,” she says. “I just watch [him]and think, this is how it’s supposed to be.”

“The fact that he’s allowed me in to see surgeries—it’s an opportunity you don’t [often]get [as an undergraduate],” says Chukwuneke, “it’s what medical students get.” She says Longobardi also quizzes her about what she sees on X-rays, explains anything that she finds confusing, and asks her about her Fordham science classes. “He just treats me like a student interested in medicine. ‘See what you like, see what you don’t like.’ I think that is great.”Throughout the year, she’s watched Longobardi, an orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist, perform several surgeries, and she’s shadowed him during his rounds in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center, where he is an assistant professor of clinical orthopaedic surgery.

Longobardi, who has been a mentor in the Fordham Mentoring Program for four years, says, “No one learns in a vacuum. We’ve all been taught by other people. I try to impart some of the things [my teachers]taught me about taking care of people.”

It was after he broke his wrist as a freshman at Fordham that led Longobardi to one of his mentors, Kenneth Kamler, M.D., a microsurgeon specializing in hand reconstruction and finger reattachment, and an eminent adventure physician who practices medicine in remote regions. “I met him right after he came back from an expedition to the Amazon,” says Longobardi. “I was taking general chemistry then and while he was putting the cast on my arm, we were talking about the chemical reactions happening. He always made it very easy to understand what’s going on in orthopedics. That’s something that I always admired and always tried to replicate.”

It was that experience with Kamler, whom Longobardi calls “a mentor, an inspiration then, and friend to this day,” that spurred his interest in orthopedics. The interest was enhanced by his construction work experience during high school and college. “I had some ideas about drills and saws, so orthopedics kind of came naturally. But it’s not for everyone,” he says.

After observing a knee replacement surgery, Chukwuneke knew she could stomach being a doctor, but her career aspirations lie in becoming a reconstructive plastic surgeon. In 2005, when Chukwuneke was a student at the Loyola Jesuit College in Nigeria, Sosoliso Airlines Flight 1145 crashed in Omagwa, killing 108 people, including 60 students from the school. One of the two survivors, a friend of Chukwuneke’s, was critically burned. “I watched how she struggled through one plastic surgery after another,” says Chukwuneke. “She’s so much better now than she was.”

Chukwuneke sees plastic surgery as an outlet for her creative side. “I believe science and art are inseparable and for this reason, I tend to incorporate both in nearly everything that I do,” says Chukwuneke, who sings with Fordham’s Gloria Dei Choir and attends performances at the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Ballet as often as she can. “Plastic surgery is the one place in medicine where I could explore both sides of me.”

She’s also sharing some of her varied interests by tutoring and counseling high school and Fordham students. Through a summer program in Fordham’s Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program, Chukwuneke has tutored local 10th and 11th graders in poetry and calculus, and counseled them on the college experience. Since her sophomore year she has been providing tutoring assistance in math, music history, and general chemistry to students in Fordham’s Higher Education Opportunity Program. “I love it,” she says. “It’s really rewarding for me.”

Longobardi finds fulfillment, too, in sharing his knowledge with students. A member of the admissions committee at the NYU School of Medicine, he’s conducted mock interviews with Fordham students preparing for medical school admission and given lectures to pre-health professions students.

“I really love the University. I always feel you need to give back and give back not just by giving monetary donations,” Longobardi says. “What’s really going to help students is guidance. And if there are areas that you can help in that way, that’s what’s going to make the programs at Fordham better, and give the students a better edge so that they can make better and more intelligent decisions.”

His “take-home message” to students is to “find what you really love,” says Longobardi, an avid baseball and football fan who has treated athletes from the New York Islanders, Florida Marlins, and University of Tennessee. “If you’re going to spend your life doing something, find something you love.”

– Rachel Buttner