“Rather than just reading and learning from theory, I want to practice it,” said Ahmed, 27, who will earn her master’s degree from the School of Professional and Continuing Studies this May. 

Enabling Telemedicine with Free Software for Developing Countries

Ahmed was born and raised in Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan. In 2014, she moved to the United Kingdom. She earned her bachelor’s degree in nutrition and health from the University of Roehampton. Initially, she wanted to pursue her master’s degree in dietetics and become a dietician. But when her son was born, it became difficult for her to pursue her original goal.

Instead, she entered the inaugural cohort of Fordham’s master’s program in applied health informatics. The program, which welcomed its first class in 2022, teaches students how to create cost-effective information systems for hospitals and health care providers. 

“What we teach in the program is how to make effectively free software for health records. Without these electronic health records, it’s very difficult to do telemedicine, which can significantly help to deliver health care in developing countries,” said the program’s director, John Chelsom, Ph.D.

Helping an African Orphanage with Electronic Records

For Ahmed’s capstone project, Chelsom connected her with international relief organization Humanity First, which put her in touch with an African orphanage that wanted to convert its health records from paper into electronic files. 

“An electronic health record is an online record of a patient’s personal information and medical history data that can be updated over their lifetime. Whenever a child enters the orphanage or is adopted, they need to fill out forms and submit them to the government. The orphanage wanted to make those forms electronic so they’re more safe, secure, and easily shareable, and all the data is in one place,” Ahmed said. “To actually install the program on their computers, we [Chelsom and I] will need to visit the orphanage … and I’m planning to continue working with them after graduation.” 

Balancing School with Motherhood, Thanks to an Online Program

At Fordham, Ahmed developed her information and technology, artificial intelligence, and programming skills. Although she never had a permanent physical campus, she participated in two Fordham-hosted residential workshops at St. Edmund Hall, the oldest residence at the University of Oxford, where she met some of her American classmates in person for the first time, as well as other professionals from around the world. And thanks to her online coursework, she was able to care for her family while pursuing her education. 

“I did my household chores in the morning, put my baby to sleep in the afternoon, and attended lectures from 2 to 5 p.m. Sometimes my son woke up in the middle, but it was possible for me to continue my studies because I was at home, where it’s easier for me to manage him,” said Ahmed, who lives in London with her husband, their 2-year-old son, and her mother-in-law. “For people like me who have children or dependents to look after, studying or working online is a great opportunity.” 

This spring, she will travel to Fordham’s main campus for the first time with her family for Commencement. She plans to use her new degree in a field related to data management, where she hopes to make a difference. 

“I want to create something that will help people in the real world,” Ahmed said. 

“My dream is to help ground justice movements through spirituality,” said Arellano, an online student in GRE’s master’s program in Christian spirituality and the daughter of immigrant blue-collar workers. “When organizers aren’t spiritually grounded, it can easily lead to burnout. The more that we can center [spirituality]… the more that people can see their work as an extension of their love for God, the Earth, and people.”

Reimagining the Catholic Church

Arellano is a first-generation Mexican American from Little Village or “La Villita,” a Mexican neighborhood in Chicago. Her mother, a former public school cafeteria worker, often took Arellano and her three sisters to labor union protests and marches, where Arellano learned how to advocate for social justice. 

“My mom modeled what it means to fight oppression with your community. That planted so many seeds about how I see the world,” Arellano said in a Zoom call from her home in Chicago, where she attends her Fordham classes remotely. 

Over the next decade, Arellano combined her Catholic spirituality with her passion for workers’ rights at several organizations, where she coordinated communication efforts and managed funding. Among them was the Archdiocese of Chicago. 

“Seeing both the light and the shadow of the church helped me form connections with like-minded people. We reimagined a church where we center the voices and experiences of Catholic people of color, launch campaigns to improve neighborhoods, hold people in power accountable, and talk openly about the systems of oppression that affect us,” Arellano said. 

She was inspired to co-found the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership, a nonprofit that teaches faith leaders how to engage in local social justice campaigns related to gender, class, racism, and the environment through the lens of Catholic spiritual and theological traditions. 

While developing CSPL’s curriculum, Arellano considered what she learned from Fordham. 

“In our CSPL training programs and workshops, we use a lot of Ignatian spirituality and contemplative imagination, including works that I’ve read about in class,” said Arellano. “I’m also going to lead a program that looks at mystical texts and see how we can apply and ground them through a racial, gender, and class analysis. I attribute and credit all of that to Fordham.”

Her Fordham studies have also helped her with her full-time job as a press strategist for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, where she assists affiliates with their strategic communication and teaches domestic workers how to share their stories with the media. Arellano said it was a Fordham pastoral counseling course that strengthened her skills in deeply listening to the domestic workers that the alliance serves. 

“When they share their stories and vulnerable moments, you really need to discern how you move that conversation along and also help people who feel like they’re stuck in a repetitive trauma story cycle. The skills that I learned [from Fordham]helped me deepen how intentionally I listen during my spokesperson prep sessions with leaders,” Arellano said. “My mom was one of the spokespeople for her union, and I knew how transformative it was for her to share her experience in the media, especially when it’s tied to a call to action and to demand change. I’ve seen the transformation of working with domestic workers who felt really shy about sharing their story, but then through building trust and working with them, I’ve heard members say, ‘You can put me in front of 10,000 people, and I still want to share my story.’” 

Dear Catholic Women of Color

Arellano enrolled in GRE in 2018 to strengthen her spiritual life and identity as a Catholic woman. Her thesis paper will examine how Mexican-American Catholic women can fuel their faith by drawing from indigenous practices. 

“I come from a Mexican family and a line of women who worked closely with herbs and had a great reverence for the Earth and the elements, and I want to honor the indigenous lineage that I carry. But we’re also Catholic,” Arellano said. “My thesis will focus on how we can deepen our relationship with our [faith]and our ascended ancestors while thinking about the gifts that Mother Earth offers us through plants and the elements.” 

Arellano, who is aiming to graduate in February 2022, says she’s grateful for her time at Fordham. 

“I never imagined I would be in a theology program that is so prestigious, warm, and welcoming, where it’s constantly challenged me to be better … where I feel like the dean is actively recruiting more women of color to be theologians, more professors who are people of color,” Arellano said. “I wish I had a megaphone and could say to any other Catholic woman of color, ‘If your heart desires theological training and formation, your first thought should be Fordham.’”

So when Fordham ceased face-to-face instruction at 1 p.m. on Monday, March 9, due to the threat posed by the COVID-19 outbreak, faculty were faced with the challenge of providing quality instruction that was true to their mission of supporting students and continuing to foster their potential. On March 13, the decision to suspend face-to-face classes was extended through the end of the semester.

As they begin to deliver instruction remotely, faculty have turned to online tools such as Zoom, WebEx, Blackboard, and Google Hangouts to continue students’ education. And they have turned to each other for support, guidance, and tips.

Planning for the transition began in earnest during the last week of February, when Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, and Dennis Jacobs, Ph.D., provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, briefed members of the Faculty Senate at its monthly meeting on February 28. Administration officials had been monitoring the spread of the virus in China, and once a case had been reported in Washington state in January, they thought it might spread throughout the United States.

Jacobs said that at that time the University was already making plans to offer online instruction to students who’d been recalled from study abroad programs and who would need instruction while self-quarantining.

“That was the call to action, to say, ‘Let’s begin preparations,’” he said.

“No one would have chosen this as a normal transition path, but these are extraordinary times, and our options were limited,” he said.

“Everyone was committed to serving our students and allowing them to progress towards their academic degrees. It was not just an option to shut down the campus, we had to come up with a continuity plan.”

Technology and Pedagogy

Making the transition required overcoming challenges both technical and pedagogical. Steven D’Agustino, Ph.D., Fordham’s director of online learning, is helping faculty figure out how to best use that technology to deliver their coursework. He’s offered videos and documentation on the University’s Official Online Learning Page and his blog, Learning at a Distance.

D’Agustino said he was impressed at how seriously faculty have put students’ well-being and peace of mind first and foremost. Many are using this week, which happens to be spring break, to explain to their students how they plan to move forward with the rest of the semester and taking steps like telling them exactly what times of the day they’ll be checking their emails. Faculty are establishing virtual office hours when they’ll be available for in-person consultation, and giving serious thought to whether future classes should be held synchronously, when everyone meets together, or asynchronously, which enables students to access material on their own schedules.

D’Agustino encouraged faculty to evaluate their methods as they go, and to draw on the experiences of peers across the country who face the same situation.

“I would say reflective practice is really valuable. This about what you’re doing, and reflect upon it after you’ve done it, and try to include your students and your colleagues in those reflective spaces. Because I think there are a lot of good ideas and support out there, and we’re not alone.”

A Quick Turnaround

Eve Keller, Ph.D., professor of English and president of the Faculty Senate, said she was astonished at how quickly faculty, who teach nearly 2,000 courses a semester, were able to work together to make the transition.

“Faculty had 36 hours to convert their classes online. Some people have done this, and some people had never heard of Zoom, but from what I’ve seen, it’s been an unequivocally congenial, collegial effort to make it happen,” she said.

The transition has not been without occasional hiccups. Anne Fernald, Ph.D., a professor of English and special adviser to the provost for faculty development, emailed fellow arts and science faculty for thoughts on pedagogy on March 11, and after receiving 20 replies, she felt prepared.

Still, when she attempted to teach her first class on Thursday with WebX, she didn’t realize the program’s default volume setting for the program is mute. She ended up recording a podcast for it with the information she planned to share, and is confident she’ll be able to make it work next week, when spring break ends and classes resume.

“I felt like the University did everything it could in this emergency to support us. And I think that the decision to be closed on Tuesday and give people time to prepare was huge. I had colleagues all around the country who didn’t have anything like that. Fordham did it in a way that was as compassionate as it could be,” she said.

Striking the Right Balance

On March 12, Mark Conrad, an associate professor of law and ethics at the Gabelli School of Business, taught three courses—Legal Framework of Business, Sports Law, and Law and the Arts—using the Zoom platform, and was happy with how it came together.

“I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how easy and accessible it has been. I had a number of questions from students. I wasn’t just talking to a computer,” he said, noting the ease in which he was able to share power point slides with students.

“We’re seeing future possibilities. It deals with something I’ve been thinking about which is, let’s say the professor is ill or has a sprained ankle. One could do classes like this, and it could actually minimize absences.”

Nicholas Tampio, Ph.D., a professor of political science, taught two classes on March 11 using WebX seminar after department chair Robert Hume, Ph.D., arranged practice sessions for the department. While they went off without a hitch, he said it was hard to read the mood of a room, as many nonverbal communication cues were lost in translation.

“When you teach online, you can’t see feet shifting, or if they have another browser open where they’re checking email. Their parents could be in the room, there could be a car going by. It’s not a controlled environment in which students are only there for the experience,” he said.

“I think I’m going to get better over time at being able to call on people, and I think I’m going to get better at organizing my slide show to make it more entertaining,” he said. But he acknowledged that face-to-face learning will always be preferable.

Edward Cahill, Ph.D., a professor of English, had never used Google Hangouts before and turned to it to teach Shakespeare’s sonnets and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. He found it to be similar to the normal classroom experience, although he said he plans to try different approaches to keep things interesting when the semester resumes, including splitting the class into both synchronous and asynchronous sessions.

Cahill’s new familiarity with online learning comes not only from his work as a professor, but also a student. His experience as a student in an entry-level Spanish class taught by Guillermo Severiche has given him hope that success is possible in the online realm, he said. Severiche, an instructor in the department of modern languages, moved their class to Zoom as well.

“We share documents, we used the e-textbooks. He managed the whole thing flawlessly. So that inspired me to think maybe I can do more.”

Cahill noted that he’s trying to be mindful of the challenges inherent in asking students to complete studies in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.

“There are so many balances to strike between rigor and flexibility, generosity and intensity. I don’t know that anyone has figured it out, and I guess as long as we can stay alert to all of those tensions, we’ll probably find our way through it,” he said.

Doing Lab Work Without the Lab

In some fields, resuming instruction is trickier than just establishing online connections. Stefanie Bubnis, interim managing director of the Fordham Theatre Program, said that while mainstage productions have halted, faculty have bolstered instruction on Google Hangouts and Zoom with old fashioned phone calls and FaceTime.

Professors such as Ann Hamilton, an adjunct professor of theater, are learning on the fly as well. For her first online Acting for the Camera class, she asked students to upload the scenes they recorded of themselves to Hightail and Google Drive. She watched the videos during the designated class time and wrote feedback in a group email to the 17 students in the class. Ultimately it proved to be too time-consuming.

“For my next class I intend to use Zoom, so we are all conferencing together, but they will have sent me the recorded auditions first, so I can have them up on my desktop and we can all watch them together at the same time and actively participate in the feedback. I think the students felt as if they learned a lot today, so that’s a win, given the circumstances,” she said.

Stephen Holler, Ph.D., an associate professor of physics, was able to move the lecture for his General Physics 2 class exclusively to Blackboard, but that wasn’t an option for Experimental Techniques for Physics, a course where teams of students had been working on a single project all semester.

“Some of the work, they’re in the machine shop, they’re doing 3D printing, they’re doing electronics,” he said, noting that this work will have to be completed in a different way than planned.

“Since they’ve done half the project, and they’ve already written up progress reports, I’ll have them turn those progress reports into a paper. Normally I’d also have them do a presentation on a research project they’re interested in; instead I’ll have them write a short paper on that and we’ll do Zoom presentations.

A Big Shift for Information Technology

For Fordham IT, the switch required an unusually speedy response.

Alan Cafferkey, director of faculty technology services, noted that his team—which includes experienced technicians, a fine arts and digital humanities professional, instructional designers, a former math teacher, a librarian, adjunct professors, a media and accessibility expert, and an Ed.D. candidate—normally prefers to work with six months lead time to develop an online course.

“This, however, was everyone already two months into the semester with only a couple of weeks of realizing that something might happen, prepping, and then a sudden shift, with hundreds of people making the change,” he said.

He was especially proud that his team was so on top of responding to the multitude of individual faculty requests. In addition, in collaboration with the provost’s office, they created a Course Continuity site before the University shifted to online learning—as preparation for what might happen.

When the switch was made, IT as a whole simultaneously shifted its entire operation to function remotely—including the IT Customer Care help desk—while helping other offices do the same.

IT also rolled out an entirely new enterprise-wide system in Zoom, reinforced numerous systems, and conducted a multitude of workshops on topics such as teaching synchronously and asynchronously, setting up remote offices, and best practices for many popular web tools. Additional workshops will continue through the spring and can be found on the department’s blog.

Going forward, Cafferkey said the department will continue to field faculty questions and requests, work closely with vendors such as Blackboard, and support other University initiatives as needed. He credited the efforts of colleagues across IT, the provost’s office, the IT departments in the Gabelli School of Business and Fordham Law, the online learning teams at the Graduate School of Social Service and the Graduate School of Education, and the staff at Fordham’s library.

“I’ve been really touched at how kind most of the faculty have been about the support provided. I’ve gotten so many thoughtful notes and comments, it’s been really heart-warming. It’s helped that there are so many offices working collaboratively,” he said.

Looking at the Big Picture

Lisa Holsberg, a Ph.D. candidate in theology, found herself transitioning Great Christian Hymns, which she is teaching for the School of Continuing and Professional Studies (PCS), entirely online. But she was in some ways already prepared to do so, as she is also currently teaching an online course, Christian Mystical Texts, for PCS. She was already accustomed to using Blackboard extensively, as well as Screencast-O-Matic and Voicethread, which lets students listen to each other talk, in their own words, about a specific problem. But ultimately, technology is just one little piece of the story, she said.

“It’s really, what is your commitment to students and to learning and going forward in the midst of change? How do you rethink what it means to teach, what it means to learn in conditions you’re not used to? You have to really dig deep into what your fundamental commitments are to your teaching, your students, to yourself, to your topic, and then just use whatever tools you have in order to meet those goals,” she said.

The Path Forward

Going forward, D’Agustino said he thinks faculty will settle into a hybrid approach for the rest of the semester, making tweaks as they get feedback from students.

“They may say, ‘We’re going to do a synchronous session, so here are the slides in advance, here is the reading material, here’s the study guide, there are some questions you should be able to answer during the session,’” he said.

“So even if a student can’t attend or log in, they still have the notes, the readings, the study guides, and they can say, ‘Professor I couldn’t log in; its 4 a.m. for me. But here are the answers to those questions. And the faculty member can, if it’s part of their protocol, share those answers with the class so that student is part of it.”

Jacobs said that he’s hopeful that faculty will rise to the challenge in what is an extraordinary time of upheaval. He noted that online instruction will always have a place in graduate level and professional-oriented instruction, especially for students who are working or have family obligations. As such, the University will continue to evaluate it on a case-by-case basis. But face-to-face teaching and learning is at the heart of Fordham’s mission, he said.

“Jesuit education is really one of formation in context of community. We treasure that at Fordham, and we always will. It’s the reason why during the academic year, we have not, by intention, moved our undergraduate academic offerings into an online format. We’ve offered them face-to-face, and will return to that when it safe to do, when the virus has passed,” he said.

“Being ranked as a 2019 Best Online Program is a testament to the caliber of teaching at Fordham, and underscores the enthusiasm of our professors to deliver top educational leadership and teaching courses through alternative pathways,” stated Virginia Roach, Ed.D., dean of the Graduate School of Education.

Read the full story on GSE News.

The Master of Science in Teaching (M.S.T.), which will commence on May 26, is geared toward educators who want to earn their initial teacher certification from the comfort of their own home. The application deadline for the first cohort is March 26.

The degree, which is delivered in partnership with 2U, Inc., features two tracks:

Childhood Education: For aspiring teachers who want to work with elementary-school-age children. Students complete a curriculum exploring child development, instructional practices for inclusive elementary classrooms, and professional studies. This track comprises 36 credit hours and can be completed in two years. Successful completion leads to initial teacher licensure in the state of New York.

Childhood Special Education: A dual-certificate degree that prepares educators to teach children with disabilities in grades 1-6. Classes and coursework blend instruction in child development, adaptive instructional practices for children in all settings, and professional studies. At 45 credit hours, it can be completed in just over two years. Successful completion of leads to an endorsement for the New York State teacher certification as a childhood teacher and teacher of children with disabilities in childhood education.

For both tracks, students will complete in-person field experiences in which they will apply classroom learning to their local communities, with the support of on-site mentor teachers and GSE faculty member.

The degree was created to address a shortage of teachers for childhood education in New York City public schools, and a shortage of special education teachers in 46 states and the District of Columbia that the U.S. Department of Education documented in June, 2017.

Virginia Roach, dean of GSE, said the degree shows the colleges’ dedication to providing more equity and access to students.

“We’re excited and ready to use our resources to deliver high-quality online education to respond to the state’s and country’s need to prepare more adept teachers,” she said.

“We want our graduates to be forces of positive change with their students, in their schools, and in their communities.”

Crafted through the lens of Catholic identity, mission, and culture, the program shapes globally-minded, technologically-sophisticated, empathetic leaders dedicated to social justice and equity for all learners.

The 30-credit program is designed for Catholic or faith-based educators seeking to advance into administrative and/or leadership roles. Applicants employed at religious schools may be eligible for a 40 percent scholarship.

“This is a golden opportunity for emerging Catholic school leaders to facilitate the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision shared by the school faith community
,  said Gerald Cattaro, Ed.D., executive director of GSE’s Center for Catholic School Leadership and Faith-Based Education.

“We are committed to exploring faith-based identity issues and to educating all students. We emphasize high standards of learning and continuous, mission-focused school improvement.”

Coursework covers a variety of areas, including management, strategic planning, ethics, and technology. Students will complete 440 fieldwork hours in education settings.

Center associate director Cristiana Ritchie-Carter, Ph.D., said that consulting with Catholic school superintendents from across the country revealed a need for Catholic dioceses to create a pipeline for school leadership.

“Our online program meets the needs of today’s learners and is a means to bring together diverse people, form community, and provide excellent academic content,” she said.

For more information, contact the center at [email protected].

On Friday, Feb. 5 at 11:30 a.m. Cindy Bonfini-Hotlosz will discuss digital education being offered at refugee camps by Jesuit Commons: Higher Education at the Margins. The event, “Social Work @ the Margins” will take place at Lincoln Center’s South Lounge and is sponsored by the Graduate School of Social Service’s Online Faculty Group.

Bonfini-Hotlosz is the chief information officer at Jesuit Commons and was instrumental in helping Fordham with several of its online courses in her capacity as executive director of JesuitNET Global.

“Jesuits have a 450 year pedagogical model, so from the beginning we had to ask ‘What does that look like online?’” said Bonfini-Hotlosz.

Bonfini-Hotlosz used the same design methodology for the degrees offered at the refugee camps as in the JesuitNET degrees. Both are based on the Ignatian spiritual exercises: context, experience, reflection, action, and evaluation. She said that no matter the medium, teaching the whole person remains a Jesuit priority.

“Imagine a faculty member trying to teach empathy online,” she said.

She said Fordham a social work professor taught empathy online by asking students to write down a family secret on a piece of paper and hide it somewhere in their homes. A week later, she asked the students how often they thought about the piece of paper or worried that someone might find it. Bonfini-Hotlosz said the professor told the students that when a social work client reveals their secrets to them its very much the same feeling.

“This transcended the medium,” she said. “It moved the lesson from the computer into their real lives.”

About eight years ago, the Jesuit Commons began seeking to provide the Jesuit model of education to refugees in much the same manner. But the challenges extended beyond simply the computer screen. Bonfini-Hotlosz said setting up equipment sometimes required armed guards. There were also heartbreaking moments as well, such as when the group had set up a refugee education center in Syria for Iraqi refugees.
“We watched the country fall apart, and the people who worked for us are now in Amman, Jordan as refugees themselves,” she said.

She also said that the courses had to be refashioned from western courses in an American setting to become more appropriate to the refugees.

“We had a lesson that told students to go to Starbucks and observe two people and then write about it,” she said. “Of course there isn’t a Starbucks in a refugee camp, so in 2013 we set about creating a truly global curriculum. Now the context is set by the students. They bring their culture into the classroom.”

But at the end of the day, students are students, she said.

“What shocked me the most was how similar student were whether they’re refugees or not,” she said. “You ask a Fordham student what that want and they’ll tell you, ‘I want to do something meaningful.’ And if you go to the camps and ask students there they’ll say the same.”

“They’re students; that’s who they are.”