The University Research Council and Office of Research presented the Outstanding Externally Funded Research Awards (OEFRA) to recognize the high quality and impact of the honorees’ sponsored research within the last three years and how their work has enhanced Fordham’s reputation—both nationally and globally.

Faculty were honored in five separate categories, and were presented awards by University Provost Stephen Freedman, Ph.D.:

Humanities: Nina Rowe, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Art History and Music in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Rowe, an expert in the art of northern Europe in the high and late Middle Ages, recently received a $4,000 grant from the American Philosophical Society and fellowships totaling $95,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. She used the awards to fund research for her current book project, From Adam to Achilles to Alexander: World Chronicles and the Anecdotal Past in the Late Medieval City.

Interdisciplinary Research: Chun Zhang, Ph.D., Professor of Curriculum and Teaching at the Graduate School of Education 

Zhang has worked with colleagues at Columbia University and New York University to investigate workforce development in universal preschool programs in New York City. At Fordham, she has collaborated with Yi Ding, Ph.D., associate professor of school psychology, and Tiedan Huang, Ed.D., assistant professor of educational leadership, administration, and policy, to secure research funding. Her efforts have netted awards and grants totaling more than $2.8 million for studies that will impact the lives of children with special needs and their families.

Junior Faculty Research: Jordan DeVylder, Ph.D., Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Social Service

DeVylder, who joined the Fordham faculty in 2017, has a keen interest in preventive mental health, with an emphasis on psychosis and suicide. He is currently conducting a randomized trial to test an intervention to improve detection of untreated psychosis by community social workers. The trial is being funded by a $680,000 National Institute of Mental Health grant. DeVylder also recently won an $85,000 grant from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Sciences: Jason Munshi-South, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Biological Sciences

An expert in the burgeoning field of urban ecology, Munshi-South was awarded a $600,000 research grant from the National Science Foundation in 2015 to study the evolutionary biology of wild rats. Since then, the NSF has granted multiple sub-awards , some of which have involved bringing undergraduates from other campuses to work with him during the summer. The NSF has continued to increase this award annually; its total is expected to reach over $672,000 this year. In total, Munshi-South has received more than $1 million in grants from the NSF, the National Institute of Health, and other foundations and organizations.

Social Sciences: Yilu Zhou, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Information Systems at the Gabelli School of Business

Zhou is the first faculty member from the Gabelli School of Business to be awarded a National Science Foundation grant, for her research project, “Can You Trust Apps Age Recommendations? Inconsistent and Unreliable Maturity Ratings on Mobile Platforms.” An expert on human-computer interactions and social media mining, she received two awards totaling $245,000 from the NSF for the project.

George Hong, Ph.D., chief research officer and associate vice president for academic affairs, touted the fact that from July 1, 2017, to March 31, 2018, Fordham faculty submitted 116 new grant proposals—an increase of 142 percent over the same period last year—and that faculty has received 82 awards in the past nine months.

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, commended the winners for the example they set for their students.

“I wanted to congratulate all of you for renewing the heart of the University, in a really significant way, and giving all of our students inspiration, hope, and great pride,” he said.

Organized by the Office of Research and the University Research Council and sponsored by the University Research Compliance Council and the Office of Sponsored Programs, the daylong event included a workshop devoted to compliance awareness, a forum of humanities researchers, and a keynote speech by Jennifer Saak, Ph.D., managing director of Traliance. 

WHO GAVE IT: The New York State Department of Health
WHO GOT IT: Edward Dubrovsky, PhD, professor of biology
HOW MUCH: $77,005
WHAT FOR: A grant to explore the role of mutations in a gene called ELAC2 in prostate cancer

Orthodox Christian Studies

WHO GAVE IT: The Carpenter Foundation combined with a Fordham Faculty Fellowship
WHO GOT IT: George Demacopoulos, PhD, the Fr. John Meyendorff & Patterson Family Chair of Orthodox Christian Studies
HOW MUCH: $30,000
WHAT FOR: A yearlong sabbatical for his project, “Colonizing Christianity: Prejudice and Sex in the Crusader East”

Art History

WHO GAVE IT: National Endowment for the Humanities
WHO GOT IT: Nina Rowe, PhD, associate professor of art history
HOW MUCH: $50,400
WHAT FOR: To complete a book on late medieval illuminated World Chronicle manuscripts

Arts and Sciences

WHO GAVE IT: Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities
WHO GOT IT: Eva Badowska, PhD, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and doctoral candidate in philosophy Joseph Vukov
HOW MUCH: $2,000
WHAT FOR: A grant to study how Fordham graduate students perceive their education in the context of the University’s mission

Graduate School of Education

WHO GAVE IT:  Marie Noelle Chynn, GSS ’60 and Kuo York Chynn, M.D
WHO GOT IT: Graduate School of Education
HOW MUCH: $104,000
WHAT FOR: Dr. J.T. Vincent Lou Memorial Endowed Fellowship

Irish Studies

WHO GAVE IT:  Mary Brautigam, TMC ’74, and Richard Brautigam, FCRH ’73
WHO GOT IT: Irish Studies
HOW MUCH: $6,000
WHAT FOR: Four Irish Cultural Events in the Spring of 2016

Engineers Without Borders

WHO GAVE IT:  Mary Jane McCartney, TMC’ 68 and George McCartney, FCRH ’68, LAW ’72
WHO GOT IT: Engineers Without Borders
HOW MUCH: $13,000 challenge grant
WHAT FOR: A challenge grant that raised $27,000 to support EWB’s trip to Uganda to build fish farms

Physics

WHO GAVE IT:  Christa and John Reddy, FCRH ’77
WHO GOT IT: Department of Physics and Engineering Physics
HOW MUCH: $10,000
WHAT FOR: Supplies for Experiments

Other major grant-winners last year included:

• Yilu Zhou, PhD, professor of information sciences, who received a National Science Foundation grant to research age recommendations on mobile apps;
• Winnie Kung, PhD, associate professor of social work, who received a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the impact among Asian survivors and rescuers exposed to the World Trade Center attack; and
• Lise Schreier, PhD, associate professor of French, who won a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for her research on the 18th-century practice of “child-gifting.”

But thanks to a fine art facsimile of the historic tome in Fordham’s Walsh Library, students can flip through the lush pages and absorb a visual representation of medieval art and religion.

The Très riches heures facsimile is one of 300 books and objects donated to Fordham by Dr. James Leach, a New York physician who’s been curious about medieval manuscripts and liturgical books since he was young.

“When I was growing up, I had an interest in Latin and in the church,” said Leach, who heads the dermatology department at Lincoln Medical Center in the Bronx. “The prayer books I was familiar with were a springboard to begin looking at the older manuscripts.”

He began amassing a collection of fine art facsimiles of medieval manuscripts, which have been produced since around 1990, typically in limited-edition runs of 300 to 900 copies. He thought that Fordham, as a Catholic university with an established medieval studies program, would be the perfect repository for these works. Leach also donated a sizable collection of original Catholic prayer missals from the late-19th to early-20th centuries.

Nina Rowe, PhD, chair and associate professor of art history at Fordham, said the University is lucky to have such high-quality reproductions available for students.

Rowe said the Très riches heures is one of the “greatest hits” of medieval art history. She also has a few other favorites among the collection.

“I’m delighted to be able to teach students from the facsimiles of the Lindisfarne Gospels, an English monastic manuscript made around the year 700 and renowned for its so-called Carpet Pages, full-page designs with intricate interlace, often in the form of the cross,” she said.

“Another favorite facsimile of mine reproduces a Moralized Bible (sometimes called the Saint Louis Bible) from Paris, 1226 to 1236. Every page features eight circles arranged in four pairs, each with little scenes linking a vignette from the Hebrew Bible to a Christian or contemporary commentary. The images are especially fun when they depict the perceived vices of early 13th-century Parisian life, evoking the real world of the street in a remote period.”

Linda LoSchiavo, TMC ’72, director of the University libraries, said Leach’s contributions are an important addition to Fordham’s Special Collections.

“The facsimiles are an extraordinary example of medieval artistry,” she said. “They’re done with highly specialized devices, and the bindings are reproductions as well.”

The cover of a facsimile of the Sacramentary of Henry II, a liturgical manuscript from the late-10th to early-11th century, includes an intricate copy of the original’s ivory relief. Other facsimiles Leach has donated include the Eton Choirbook and the Lorsch Gospels.

The recent establishment of Fordham’s Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies, and the collection of Judaica being assembled by Magda Teter, PhD, the chair’s inaugural holder, prompted LoSchiavo to ask Leach if he would consider donating a a Haggadah, a book used during Passover seders. He was happy to oblige, and earlier this year donated a facsimile of the Barcelona Haggadah. The original dates to the middle of the 14th century.

Leach hopes his gifts will help Fordham students learn that art and illuminated manuscripts flourished during the medieval period, even though the era sometimes gets a bad rap.

“Most important is that they realize that ‘medieval’ is not purely a derogatory term,” he said. “It was an age of faith and artistic productivity that contributed to Western civilization.”