“The goal was actually to start using Spanish and nail it down—I learned it, but I never had the chance to use it and get better, so that was a major thing,” she said. “And then also, Granada, was the kind of place that I was looking for, with all the history and a very different culture.”

Tesoriero, who just completed her fall semester in the program, chose to also participate in a homestay in Granada, where she lived with a Spanish family and “really immersed myself in a different culture.”

Tesoriero is part of a growing number of students who are choosing to participate in the Granada program, which is expecting its largest ever cohort of students, at least 44, in spring 2023, according to Joseph Rienti, director of the Office of Study Abroad.

But it’s not just the Granada program that’s seeing a growing interest from students, Rienti said. New changes in how study abroad is paid for are helping students access even more programs in different locations. And study abroad participation is returning to pre-COVID-19 numbers, according to Rienti, with about half of the undergraduate population choosing to study in one of 100+ programs across six continents.

“It’s a very significant development for Fordham that we can now offer 100+ programs for fall or spring semester at Fordham tuition,” he said. “[Students] can now use Fordham funding for the programs, so the vast majority can fully apply their financial aid packages.”

Previously only about 25 programs were able to accept Fordham tuition rates and financial aid packages, Rienti said. He said the expansion helps offer a “more equitable approach to study abroad.”

“It’s really refreshing to be able to have a conversation with a student and have the whole world being open to them,” he said.

Studying in Granada

Fordham in Granada is one of two Fordham-run study abroad programs, the other being Fordham London. Granada differs from the London program in that students are not at a Fordham campus. Rather, they take courses through the University of Granada and through a new partner, Cultural Experiences Abroad (CEA). However, the University still has more input than a traditional study abroad exchange program, Rienti said. For example, departments such as the history department, are working closely with their partners in Granada to develop “very Fordham-specific type courses” that the students can take while abroad.

The Granada program was recently restructured and enhanced, thanks to Fordham’s new partnership with the Cultural Experiences Abroad organization, which runs study abroad programs across the world. The University began working with CEA during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide virtual options from across the world to students, and the new partnership in Granada allows them to add even more offerings for Fordham students, both in and out of the classroom, he said.

“Through that collaboration, we can now offer the opportunity to do more internships in many more fields,” he said. “We’ve expanded housing options—students used to all have to live in homestays, but we’ve now expanded to include student residences, so students are living with international and Spanish students in Granada. And we’ve expanded the course options.”

Finley Peay, Fordham’s assistant director for London and Granada programs, said that many of the additional offerings have been in the STEM fields, particularly public health, as well as additional historical and cultural options.

“There is a public health and ecology course, as well as some culturally-oriented courses, so thinking about the history of Spain and the history of art in Spain, as well as key types of dance and music that are important for Spanish culture,” she said.

Tesoriero’s favorite course was a media studies and current events class, which she said she’s recommending to her classmates studying in Granada next semester.

“Everything we learned about in the class—from how the family is structured and family works in Spain to the political system—everything that we’ve learned in class I’ve been able to see out on the streets, which is really cool,” she said. “We had a whole unit talking about holidays in Spain and the different Christmas traditions, so it’s cool getting to see that now.”

The collaboration with CEA also expands the out-of-the-classroom experiences for students, such as weekend trips to Morocco or other parts of Spain.

“There’s a wide variety of cultural experiences and benefits, not only Granada, but Seville and visits to less-known, compelling places” Peay said. “We find students are very excited by that.”

Tesoriero said she thought “all of the trips that CEA put on were fantastic.”

“I think my favorite was Morocco, because it was so different. I had never been anywhere like that before.”

She also said that while student housing was now available to Fordham students, she’s glad she chose to live with a family.

“In Granada, my favorite thing is to sit in the plaza near my homestay and just watch people,” she said. “Living with my host family, I feel really lucky. I really wanted that immersive experience and I definitely have that local connection.”

Broadening their Horizon

In addition to the growth of the Granada program, Rienti and Peay said that they’ve begun to see students looking for opportunities outside of the historically popular programs in Western Europe and parts of Asia.

Grace Dailey, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill majoring in environmental studies and communications, was one of those students; she spent the fall semester in New Zealand, which she said has fascinated her.

“It’s just such a naturally beautiful place and I’m an outdoorsy type of person, and they really have it all,” she said. “I thought, ‘what a good place to explore.’”

Dailey said that while she took mostly communications courses in New Zealand, such as photography and advertising, her favorite course was a sustainability course.

“I loved taking that while I was abroad, and it was such an exciting and very hands-on type [of course],” she said, adding that the professor was also an “outdoorsy person” who helped connect what they were learning to the natural environment.

Rienti said that he’s excited for the study abroad office to shift from the “emergency response” of the pandemic years into continuing to rebuild and grow the offerings for students.

One of the ways they’re encouraging more students to study abroad is shifting the application cycle, so students interested in studying abroad in fall 2023 or spring 2024 have to apply by March 1. This allows Rienti and his team to avoid turning students away because a program was full. For example, if the spring program has too many students, a student can then be shifted to the fall. He said that he hopes this change, combined with the financial aid shift and the expansion of offerings, will help more students study abroad.

“I encourage students to think about study abroad as a bridge to something,” he said. “What can this be a bridge to—internships, work abroad, scholarships—what could this lead to beyond being an end in itself?”

Four years ago, the University committed to Generation Study Abroad, an initiative spearheaded by the Institute of International Education, to double the number of students studying abroad. At the time, 36% of Fordham undergraduates studied abroad. This month, the institute officially recognized Fordham for passing the 50% threshold.

Joseph Rienti, Ph.D., director of Fordham’s International & Study Abroad Programs, said hitting that number was key to fulfilling Fordham’s goal of educating students to be leaders in a global society.

“It’s one of the best ways we find students can broaden their knowledge of themselves, of their academic discipline, and the world around them,” he said.

“It gives them an opportunity to experience a different culture, a different academic context, and it really just brings that global dimension to their undergraduate education.”

The increase didn’t happen by accident. Rienti said the department underwent a reorganization as part of the push to increase participation. Specific areas of study, such as short term-programs, exchanges, and the London Centre now have individual staff members dedicated specifically to managing them. Outreach has been overhauled as well, and the department now recruits students to be “global ambassadors” and gives them Canon Rebel cameras to document their study abroad trips.

“We think it helped. It’s really given us an opportunity to capture what the students are seeing and doing, and to share with students here in New York, to get them excited about going,” he said.

The new London Centre campus has had a palpable effect, Rienti said, as it enabled his department to offer additional programs, including one connected to internships. The University’s study abroad program in Granada has also expanded in the last three years. Rienti said his department has also worked with faculty to both develop summer courses abroad and add international components to courses that take place in New York.

Exchange programs are also a key area of expansion; most recently Fordham has established two with Institut d’études politiques de Paris and the University of Helsinki in Finland. And just as importantly, Rienti said all of the

26 exchange programs have been designed so that students can tap into the financial aid packages they use in New York City, making cost less of a barrier.

“What we’ve done is very strategically look to expand those opportunities, aware of the fact that we could make studying abroad sometimes even less expensive than studying in New York,” he said.

The department has also distributed an additional $50,000 in aid to students last year, thanks to a fund maintained by donations from parents, alumni, and even current students who want to help their peers.

“Sometimes students still have airfare to pay for, there’s still visas to pay for, and we’re able to give some additional funding to students,” he said.

Participating in Generation Study Abroad was helpful, he said, as it added another level of accountability to the department’s goals.

“We had to report back to the institute, and we were able to participate in conversations with other colleges and universities how to come up with innovative ideas and different strategies to get participation up,” he said.

But Ubuntu, a joint program between Fordham, the University of Pretoria, and the Jesuit Institute of South Africa has shrunk that divide over the last six years. Recently, the program has been reimagined and restructured.

“Like all programs, it’s evolved. I have worked closely with our partners in South Africa and with others at Fordham to make sure the experience is an authentic and powerful one for our students,” said Maura Mast, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill.

“I also want to ensure that the communities with whom we engage have a positive experience.”

Learning By Being With Others

Last spring, the 10 students who lived in South Africa from January to June had their experience shaped by the renewed emphasis on the Ignatian principles that shape Fordham’s mission.

“We want to educate our students for social justice, for well-educated solidarity, for understanding how to be men and women for and with others. You get that by being with others, being in their homes, walking down the dirt roads with them, talking to them, and accompanying them,” Mast said.

“That’s how you develop solidarity, and begin to see God in all people, by first seeing them as humans, in their suffering and their joys.”

In addition to taking classes at the University of Pretoria, Ubuntu students participate in community projects. The emphasis on learning with and from the community is part of the program retooling, as are guided reflections with staff from the Jesuit Institute of South Africa.

Ubuntu director Booi Themeli, Ph.D., a lecturer in economics, said the program changes are meant to help students better understand that they’re not just tourists.

“They understand that the program is about them growing up as students at a Jesuit school, and seeing themselves as partners with communities,” he said.

Themeli interviewed each student before their departure, and he said this year’s cohort was phenomenal, in no small measure because two members were humanitarian studies majors, a degree offered in tandem with the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs.

An Intense Focus on Community Projects

Emma Wilhoit, a rising junior at Fordham College at Rose Hill and a native of Shawnee, Kansas, was one of them. She worked with the social and training services organization Kamcare. Her initial goal was to introduce and distribute reusable sanitary pads to women living in an informal settlement (similar to a shantytown) on the outskirts of Pretoria. That evolved into something much better. Soon, instead of buying the sanitary pads, Wilhoit collaborated with the women so that they could design, sew, and sell the pads themselves.

“The women were ready, willing, and able to respond to my project. All I had to bring were the ideas and the resources, and from there they completely took it into their own hands,” she said.

“Now women in the community have employment and are paid a living wage to produce pads, which are given out through the program.”

Joergen Ostensen, a native of Hope, Maine, and fellow rising junior who is majoring in communications, said he considered Ubuntu key to his career.

“In order to be a journalist and someone who’s able to participate in meaningful discourse in the world, I feel like you need to understand the realities that people face in other parts of the world,” he said.

Ostensen tutored a class of third-grade students in reading for his service project. At the end of the year, he gave each of the 25 students a book he’d written that was inspired by the wildlife safari the Ubuntu class had gone on. He said he hoped the book would encourage reading and expand the students’ worlds a little.

“One of the tragedies of Apartheid was that it was illegal for black people to leave the area they were assigned to, so they couldn’t even go on a safari in the country they live in,” he said.

“It’s not illegal anymore, but if you live in a township and make minimum wage, which is like $1.50 an hour, or you’re unemployed, which is 40 percent of the population, it doesn’t really matter. They’re not really allowed to move around, because they don’t have the financial resources.”

Pausing to Reflect

Wilhoit and Ostensen both felt they benefited enormously from the guided reflections in the program, which is offered in association with the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation.

“Poverty in Africa is very different from anything a student might experience in America. We saw it first hand in ways that could be hard to handle and hard to process. Reflection was useful because we were able to unload it and unpack it and realize how to handle it in the future,” Wilhoit said.

“The village where we lived was really nice, so it was quite a jarring sight to go from our service sites back to the village. It really brought up questions, like, ‘Why am I here and they’re there?’”

Ostensen recalled a few instances that he said were difficult. During a workshop, a fellow student was asked in earnest by a local woman what she should do in a situation where she needed to use her body to get a promotion.

“That was a real conversation she had with someone. I mean, what would you do? Together we could figure out what to say, or just cope with the fact that people are living in a world like that,” he said.

Equally as profound, said Wilhoit, was the intense bond the students formed with each other.

“When we were there, we were all living in the same place, going to the same classes, going on the same trips,” she said, noting that the spirit of Ubuntu can be expressed as “I am because we are.”

“Each one of us is who we are because of the way that the group is. I think I’m going to miss them and being constantly surrounded by these people and experiencing the bond in that way.”

Applications for the spring program are due by October 1.

But one Fordham student has beaten the odds.

Callan O’Shea, a graduating Fordham College at Lincoln Center senior, studied in Paris for six months last spring. For O’Shea, an integrative neuroscience student on the pre-med track, the trip was not only a “transformational experience to get a bigger scope of the world,” but also a unique step in his path toward becoming a neurosurgeon.

The Value of Human Relationships

Before O’Shea became a college student, he knew he wanted to become a doctor. Outside of his schoolwork during his first two years at Fordham, he volunteered at Mount Sinai West Hospital (formerly known as Roosevelt Hospital), located just a block away from the Lincoln Center campus. In the rehabilitation unit, he worked with elderly patients who had physical injuries, people recovering from stroke and spinal cord injuries, and patients with Parkinson’s disease. In the emergency room, he recorded patient needs and relayed their requests to medical staff.

It was there, he said, that he learned about the importance of connecting with patients—not just as clients, but as people.

“Speaking with patients in these often vulnerable conditions … they place a lot of trust in you, and it really touched me,” O’Shea said. “Then moving to emergency medicine, seeing the pace of that, and having the ability to do so much good so quickly—having that responsibility reinforced that.”

Nurturing a Passion for Neuroscience Abroad

Through online research, O’Shea began to look for research topics that connected his hospital volunteer service with his surgical interests. That’s when he learned about neural engraftment in Parkinson’s patients: taking skin cells from patients, turning them into new neurons, and implanting them into the same patients to rehabilitate motor skills.

“Being able to grow healthy neurons and insert them surgically into patients to restore function is something that really sparked my interest,” O’Shea said.

At the beginning of 2018, he studied abroad in Paris, where he conducted hands-on neuroscience research. At the Université Paris Descartes Centre de Psychiatrie et Neurosciences, he examined social memory in the brains of mice. He also traveled a few days a week to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, where he analyzed how information is recorded and communicated within a hospital unit.

In those six months, O’Shea also got to take in Parisian culture. He lived with a host family, improved his fluency in French, and took a tap and jazz dance class at the Paris Marais Dance School.

It was his first time traveling abroad, thanks to the Center for University Programs Abroad—an independent organization introduced to him by Fordham’s study abroad office. This month, O’Shea returned to France for the annual Cannes Film Festival.

“[Studying abroad] was really important for me, as someone who didn’t really travel at all growing up and as a science student who doesn’t usually have the opportunity to incorporate language classes and things like that,” O’Shea said.  

When he returned from France, he wanted to extend that same potential to his classmates in the integrative neuroscience department, many of whom haven’t yet studied abroad.

“He set up a meeting with me and the chair of his department so the three of us could talk through how we could make [studying abroad]easier for his classmates,” said Joseph Rienti, Ph.D., the director of international and study abroad programs at Fordham. “One of the most remarkable things about Callan is that he does things not just for himself—there’s a real altruistic and broader vision that he has.”

Combining Neuroscience and Medicine

When he returned to New York, he began working as a research volunteer at the Icahn Medical Institute at Mount Sinai. O’Shea’s experiments spanned different strains of science: genetics, genomics, and neuroscience. In one research study, he and his colleagues took skin cells from schizophrenia patients and converted them into stem cells, then analyzed their potential.

“We essentially had cultures of patient neurons in a dish that we could test for certain drugs and analyze for genetic effects,” O’Shea explained.

After he graduates from Fordham this May, he will return to the Icahn Medical Institute at Mount Sinai; this time, though, he’ll be working as a full-time research technician. Once he gains enough out-of-classroom experience, he plans on applying to dual M.D./Ph.D. programs in neuroscience and neurosurgery next year.

But for O’Shea, the most rewarding part of being in the medical field is more than translating research into real-life applications. It’s the relationships—the intimacy of patient-doctor interactions and the special camaraderie shared among doctors, nurses, and technicians in difficult situations.

“The relationships that the medical field builds are really, really special,” O’Shea said.

“My first exposure to the Middle East was through seeing war-torn images in the newspapers,” says Sikorski, FCRH ‘16. “These images have stuck with me.”

The images, in fact, inspired her to explore the language and culture herself rather than “being swayed by stereotypes.”

Sikorski, who majored in Middle East studies is spending the year abroad on a Fulbright research grant in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where she is interviewing Emirati artists, working to preserve local artistic traditions, and fostering a greater understanding of local art histories within the community.

“Emiratis make up about only 10 percent of the nation’s population,” says Sikorski. “So it is important for us to consider their culture, and the UAE’s history, as it relates to the exponential growth of the country.“

To those ends, Sikorski is hoping to revitalize Emirati art in an area that is becoming more and more influenced by Western culture. She says that much of the history of Emirati art is readily available in museums and art schools; it is the lack of mentorship that is the bigger issue.

“I want to give the younger artists reassurance that there is a community of older local artists who are waiting to tell their stories and offer their guidance,” she says.

She has been traveling the country interviewing older and younger Emirati artists, and publishing her interviews on her personal website, mideastart.com and in international and local art journals. She is co-curating an annual exhibition for the Emirates Fine Art Society, the first art society established in the UAE in 1980, which served as one of the only centers for creatives to learn about art and exhibit during that time.

“Just a few months ago, I was writing my senior thesis on these older Emirati artists,” says Sikorski. “Now I have the time to interview them. It’s inspiring to record these artists’ stories.”

Sikorski hopes her work “gives the art a voice to express the Middle Eastern perspective through personal stories,” especially for her family and friends. The Polish-Italian-American daughter of two Fordham graduates (Leonard Sikorski, FCRH ’80 and Bonnie Bilotti-Sikorski, FCRH ’82), Sikorski says her family has been very supportive of her research.

“The most important moments are when my parents share my photos and interviews, as they connect with people back home who are eager to learn more about the region.”

While a Fordham student, Sikorski studied abroad in the American University of Sharjah in the UAE and then in Paris. Through those opportunities she met a wide range of artists, gallery owners, and collectors.

She hopes her interviews nurture the UAE’s art industry and help Emiratis make sense of their own historical narratives. “An awareness of local culture is important for young artists who may be influenced by the internationalization of Dubai. The [artists]need to cherish their identity,” she says.

When her Fulbright is completed, Sikorski hopes to continue interviewing artists and to investigate the rising young talent in the region. Ultimately, she hopes to curate UAE-based and international art exhibitions, so that collectors, students, and other artists realize that “the artwork isn’t only a canvas with a price tag, but also reflects an expression of the people in the community.”

“It’s something I’m truly passionate about—opening doors for Emiratis who are starting to voice their stories to a public eager to learn about them. “

Sikorski is recording her artistic adventures on her Instagram page @mideastart.

—Mary Awad

Or maybe it was all of these.

“I was disappointed that I had to leave. I really want to go back,” said Jacqueline Gill, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill who spent a semester in Turkey last spring.

The number of Fordham students seeking such out-of-country experiences spiked over the past decade—to an estimated 37 percent of undergraduates, compared to a 9 percent national average—and is set to climb even higher as the University adds more foreign-study options to meet strong student interest.

“Time and time again, we hear students saying, ‘I chose Fordham because I knew I could study abroad,’” or because the University has a program in a particular country, said International and Study Abroad Programs Director Joseph Rienti, PhD.

The University just added programs in Argentina, Colombia, and Australia, bringing its total study-abroad options to 128, said Rienti; also, his staff is working with faculty members and reaching out to parents to smooth the students’ path to an experience that is important to the Jesuit mission of Fordham.

“Broadening your knowledge is what we are here for, and there’s no better way that I can think of to do that than to get the student abroad,” he said.

Students go abroad for any number of reasons. Clifford Mars, a senior majoring in history, went to Fordham’s program at Sophia University in Tokyo because “there couldn’t be a better place to learn about Asian history than in Asia,” he said. Mayarita Castillo, a senior at Fordham College at Lincoln Center double-majoring in math and Spanish, did back-to-back study tours in Ireland and Spain because such opportunities might not be there after graduation.

“When you’re in the professional world and working, you can’t just take a few months or a year off to go travel the world and fully immerse yourself in another culture,” she said.

Fordham is shooting for 50 percent of undergraduates studying abroad in the next four years, said Rienti. The University is following the lead of Generation Study Abroad, a campaign by the Institute of International Education (IIE) to double the number of U.S. students studying abroad by 2019.

Fordham’s numbers grew from 156 students in 2000-2001 to 768 this year. The University has long been among IIE’s top 40 doctoral-level universities ranked by their study-abroad numbers, starting in 2009-2010. (Fordham is No. 30 in the latest ranking, issued last year.)

The IIE campaign is an effort to help more students gain the skills—cross-cultural and otherwise—that come from international study, according to the Generation Study Abroad website.

Castillo, for instance, took a course at the University of Granada in descriptive probability and statistics that had no real textbooks, just lectures—in Spanish, of course. The midterm took four hours to complete, and approximately 40 percent of the class failed the course.

“It was one of the most challenging things I’ve done,” she said, adding that the Spanish courses and intensive practice “really opened things up for me in terms of what professional areas I can pursue.”

Such career-related aspects of foreign study are growing more important, said Rienti.

“What we tell students is, ‘Don’t just put it on your resume, [use]study abroad as a bridge to something.”

He noted the new internship program at Fordham’s London Centre, the first University-run internship program for Fordham undergraduates studying abroad.

Fordham offers both full-semester and shorter-term programs through its academic centers abroad—as in London, Granada, and Pretoria, for instance—and at other universities through exchanges that let students pay their usual Fordham tuition and take their financial aid with them. Some students enroll directly at universities abroad or join other U.S. universities’ foreign study programs.

That’s what Jacqueline Gill did, going to Istanbul through a Syracuse University program at Bahçeşehir University. A student of political science and Middle East studies, she found that seeing the refugee crisis up close “really solidified” her interest in a career in immigration law.

As for the challenges of living in Istanbul, she said, “I’m happy that I got out of my comfort zone.”