“It’s clear to see that there is very influential work being done right here at Fordham on COVID-19, from the beginning of the pandemic and following to its peak and now as we’re starting to enter the vaccination stage,” said Elizabeth Breen, a rising senior and integrative neuroscience student at Fordham College at Lincoln Center who moderated the research discussion.  

In an hour-long conversation, three Fordham faculty members—Monica Rivera-Mindt, Ph.D., professor of psychology and co-director of Fordham’s clinical neuropsychology program; Berish Y. Rubin, Ph.D., professor of biological sciences; and Troy Tassier, Ph.D., associate professor of economics—discussed their research over the past 14 months. 

Rivera-Mindt spoke about her research on brain health disparities in the U.S., especially during the pandemic. Rubin presented his ongoing research with colleague Sylvia Anderson, Ph.D., who co-leads their Laboratory for Familial Dysautonomia Research, on developing a biological method that reduces coronavirus infections in lung cells. Tassier spoke about his research featured in ABC News this past February on how geolocation data in our smartphones has revealed nationwide economic trends during the pandemic; his work was also featured in a Fordham News podcast from December 2020. 

“We need to keep this in our rearview mirror and know that we can learn from this experience to ensure that this doesn’t happen at the same scale to us again,” Rubin said. 

The full recording of the event can be seen here.

“As you lined up for the procession and saw one another maskless for the first time in months, you performed the sacred, boisterous rituals of college friendship. You high-fived, shook hands, and hugged one another without fear or guilt,” Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, told students and their loved ones on Saturday at the first of four diploma ceremonies for the Class of 2020. “Now, you sit in honor at the center of Edwards Parade … Savor the moment. Capture every rich detail of it: its sounds, its images, its emotions, so that you can store them away in your hearts. For my friends, I promise you that this is a day that you will tell your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren about.” 

More than 1,200 undergraduate students from Fordham College at Rose Hill, Fordham College at Lincoln Center, and the Gabelli School of Business returned to the Rose Hill campus for in-person diploma ceremonies. It was the fulfillment of a promise that Father McShane had made to the Class of 2020 when traditional in-person festivities were cancelled due to the pandemic last year—a promise to celebrate the “visionary dodransbicentennial Class of 2020” when the time was right. 

“You, my friends, receive your diplomas after the terrible ordeal of the past fifteen months,” said Father McShane, standing atop Keating Hall’s terrace, to the graduates seated on the lawn below. “You receive your degrees at a time when the city that never sleeps slept, a year that was for you a non-stop, non-credit-bearing internship in the meaning of life. Therefore, in the course of your capstone away from your campus in senior year, you have discovered what is really important in life: faith, family, virtue, love, truth, and character.” 

‘I’ve Waited Over a Year For This’

In four separate ceremonies, students streamed past Keating Hall to the familiar music of Pomp and Circumstance while waving and blowing kisses to their family and friends in the audience. Guests moved their lawn chairs beneath the trees surrounding Edwards Parade—the temperature sometimes soared past 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and shade was scant—but many people stood beside the metal guardrails in the middle of the lawn, hands shielding their faces from the sun, waving cardboard cutouts of their children and raising their smartphones to capture a moment that was one year late, but never to be forgotten.  

While waiting in line before the ceremonies, students reflected on what this day meant to them. 

“I graduated at my desk, I worked at my desk—everything happened at my desk. I’m still working at my desk,” said William Kann, GABELLI ’20, an information systems major from New Rochelle, New York, who has worked remotely as a data analyst for health care marketing company Veeva Systems since July. “But I’m really excited. I’ve waited over a year for this.” 

Erik Gonzalez, FCRH ’20, an economics major and aspiring CPA who is working at a New York City public accounting firm, said it was “meaningful” that his mother would be able to see him walk across the stage, since he’s a first-generation college student. He appreciated the University holding the in-person ceremony and being able to see friends in person after the “rough goodbye” in March 2020.

A ‘Full Circle’ Moment with a Roommate of Four Years

Gabrielle Pfeffer, FCRH ’20, said it was like coming “full circle” to be walking in the procession with her best friend and roommate for four years, Presley Mekeel, whom she met on her first day at Fordham at orientation. 

“We hadn’t been on campus for over a year, and I was excited to see all my friends and see the beautiful graduation ceremony,” said Pfeffer, a biological sciences major from Baltimore who is attending podiatry school this fall. “We left so abruptly, so it’s like an end to our journey here.”

Mercy Adoga, FCRH ’20, a political science major and a current student in Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service who is virtually interning with an immigration lobbyist in Washington, D.C., said she was “happy, relieved, and just really grateful to be here.” 

Kimberly Larios, FCLC ’20, a psychology major who will become a nursing student at New York University this fall, said she is most grateful to her parents, who flew from Los Angeles to New York to celebrate their daughter.

“They never told me no. I wanted to move to New York at 18, and they didn’t try to stop me,”  Larios said. “They said, ‘We’re happy if you’re happy.’” 

Francisco and Maria Menendez, parents to another Fordham College at Lincoln Center graduate—Bernadette Menendez—said their daughter commuted as early as 7 a.m. on a ferry and bus from New Jersey to Manhattan for four years. But Bernadette, a political science major who will be attending law school at Seton Hall University this fall, loved Fordham so much that she visited campus almost every day. 

“She’s going to be a Pirate soon,” said Maria of her river-crossing daughter. “But we have Fordham in our hearts.” 

‘Thank You for Being Fordham’ 

In speeches to their former classmates, graduating seniors reflected on their fondest memories at Fordham. Tina Thermadam, former president of United Student Government at Lincoln Center, recalled the day she first arrived at McKeon Hall with her parents, and spoke fondly of the Argo Tea employees who knew her order by heart. But the end of her speech looked toward the future.  

“Commencement does not mean farewell or goodbye—it means beginnings. So let’s begin to celebrate the victories of our undergrad career,” Thermadam said. “Let’s celebrate the precariousness of being a post-grad in today’s world. Let’s embrace new opportunities knocking at our door. Let’s celebrate our growth from this past year and the growth that’s yet to come.” 

In her congratulatory remarks, Maura Mast, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, thanked the new alumni for their resilience and ability to build community in one of the most challenging years in history. 

“There is something special about being here, even if the sun is super hot—hearing the birds singing, admiring the beautiful campus. Feeling it [is]not the same as watching it on Zoom. And so today is special not just because you’re graduating, but because you’re back home,” said Mast. “While you have spent a lot of time here at Fordham learning, I want you to know that we have learned from you. And I am grateful for everything that you have taught me. Thank you for teaching us about resilience, about how to learn, about how to build community even when we aren’t on Eddies Parade together. Thank you for bringing your Fordham and New York toughness to meeting the challenges. Thank you for being Fordham, and for sticking with it.” 

—Chris Gosier contributed reporting. 

“With the pandemic, the possibility of a physical conference collapsed, and so we decided that we would look for something more timely, something that would be useful, both intellectually but also pedagogically,” said W. David Myers, Ph.D., professor of history at Fordham and a member of the Board of Directors of the  Renaissance Society, which relocated to the Rose Hill campus last year.

As historians, they did what they are trained to do: They brought the past into the present.

The new symposium, titled “Plagues, Pandemics, and Outbreaks of Disease in History” will take place virtually on Friday, Nov. 13, beginning at 10 a.m. The symposium is free but participants need to register in advance.

Myers said the goal of the symposium is to show how history helps us see the current moment, as well as how the current moment can help us understand the past.

“What can we bring to the study of the modern pandemic, from our historical experience, but just as much, what can we bring to the study of past plagues?” he said. “ How will this experience–as human beings in this sad world at the moment–alter or affect the way we study?”

The morning session will feature a round table on the intellectual and scholarly significance of the present moment in historical terms. The participants–Hannah Marcus, Ph.D. (Harvard), Colin Rose, Ph.D. (Brock University, Ontario), and Lisa Sousa, Ph.D. (Occidental College)–are experts in the global consequences of plagues from the Black Death in Europe to smallpox in the conquest of the Americas.

Central to the planning of the symposium, Myers said, has been Christina Bruno, associate director of the Center for Medieval Studies and a Fordham Ph.D. in medieval history who has also published in Renaissance Quarterly.

Myers said the event, which is co-sponsored by the society as well as Fordham’s Center for Medieval Studies and the Departments of Art History and Music, Classics, and History, will also allow graduate students at Fordham to present and discuss their work in front of an international audience.

Rachel Podd, a Ph.D. student in history; Camila Marcone, an M.A. student in medieval studies; Mark Host, an M.A. student in medieval studies; and Katherina Fostana, the visual resources curator in art history will participate in the session called “Developing Pedagogy: Roundtable and Discussion.”

Some of these students will talk about how they’ve taught materials on the plague and other historic pandemics to their classrooms in the New York City area. A few of their examples will be presented at the symposium, including how Podd gave a lecture for high school students in the spring on the Black Death plague and Marcone put together a project on the plague for a high school in New Jersey.

“We’re showing that our students really are reaching out to the community and recognizing that education at the university and college level is only the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

“[Our scholars] are trying to incorporate a whole world of study, from archeology to medical study to our history, in order to help students today understand the historical experience and place themselves in history somehow,” Myers said. The partnership between Fordham and the Renaissance Society of America helps bring together scholars from across the world and helps to elevate the work of Fordham graduate students, he said.

“[Renaissance Society of America] gets to tap a population of scholars and the population of students and workers who are vibrant and energetic and interesting,” Myers said. “It brings an internationally important and significant organization in the humanities into the world of Fordham and allows us to tap that experience.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic has stretched the GSS community in unprecedented ways,” said Debra M. McPhee, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Social Service. “Very quickly, the school faced new and complex challenges in both logistics and communication. Yet the whole team, including faculty, pulled together to develop the means and opportunity for GSS students to continue remotely with both their studies and their fieldwork.”

Ensuring the health and safety of students has been the school’s and the University’s highest priority, McPhee said. Due to the requirements of New York on Pause, on March 12, GSS had to temporarily suspend all MSW field placements.  The school was able to quickly adjust their standing field guidelines to align with the COVID-19 revised standards issued by the accrediting body, the Council of Social Work Education (CSWE), and the New York State Department of Education. The temporary revisions were designed to help minimize disruption to student’s academic progress.

Some community agencies were able to adjust and switch to offering virtual services to their clients. Many were able to retain their MSW student interns and equip them to continue their placement work remotely; however, many were not. As a result, GSS immediately secured, and even developed, new remote field opportunities for those students who were unable to continue with their initial placement agency.

As GSS pivoted toward remote care, news began to reach them that alumni were falling ill and several alumni had died on the front lines, underscoring the gravity of the situation. Underserved communities that the school has served for generations were being disproportionately affected. Students worked hard to attend to the needs of the community while attending to their own families’ needs.

While not necessarily on the front lines, three students from GSS at Fordham’s Westchester campus were confronted with lessons they never expected to learn. They recently spoke with Fordham News about how COVID-19 upended their lives, but not their education. 

Caring for Older Adults in Westchester and Bangladesh

During the day, GSS student Sadia Huq is still working on the phone checking in on her older clients through Westchester Community Services. She is in her first year of the two-year master’s program. At night, she’s on the phone talking to doctors in Bangladesh, managing the care for her father who is sick with COVID-19.

“It’s hard for me to separate that from my work, put my emotions on the side, going through the whole emotional trauma of it all from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. on the phone with Bangladesh,” said Huq. “I’m at the placement and functional during the day, but it feels like I’m living two different lives.”

GSS students must complete two field practicums: a generalist placement, which exposes students to foundational social work practice, and an advanced placement in their second year. In the generalist placement, students develop core practice skills across a range of settings with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities. In the advanced year, students have an opportunity to develop practice competence in a preferred area of practice. Huq just completed her generalist placement. Like all field placements, Huq has two supervisors, one from Fordham and another at the assigned community agency. She said that they reviewed her client work every week and provided “exceptional support.”

The placement began in September of last year with her visiting six clients in their homes and at nursing homes. She was skeptical of working in geriatrics, but she came to appreciate the generalist placement because it helped her adapt to multiple clients and client needs.

“The clients were mostly isolated and while the phone not very personal, it was very helpful,” she said. “They were able to tell me what they were dealing with emotionally; it was important for them to just vent. None of them had smartphones and it was basically landline.”

She said that in addition to counseling, she was also able to gauge the needs of the clients. Some had lost home care aids during the crisis. She worked with the agency in replacing them.

She became inspired by the resilience of her older clients, two of whom were blind. Part of her effort over the phone was to get the patient to get up and walk around. She was familiar with their homes and she guided them as best she could to complete basic tasks that they could do before quarantine, like getting a glass of water in the kitchen. She said she will always remember such simple accomplishments for the rest of her life.

“I was the only point of contact for some of them,” she said. “Even a twenty-minute phone call helps lessen the isolation.”

Her classwork helped navigate a variety of issues, but a lot of things one learns in books don’t fully prepare you for practice, she said.

“Some are just waiting for you to walk in that door,” she said “I was able to apply the professional boundaries, but I had to struggle when they say things like ‘You’re like my family member’ and ‘I love you.’”

Huq said she was very happy working with Westchester Community Services, and her second placement will be to continue working with the agency, this time with children ages 4 to 16. Her father is still in the hospital.

Shifting from Group Dynamics to Individual Care … and Back Again

For Michele Kalt, GSS ’20, the last school year’s placement was very different from her first year at Saint Vincent’s Hospital in Westchester, where she worked with adult psychiatric patients. This year, she worked with the Larchmont Mamaroneck Community Counseling Center as a group facilitator and individual counselor for middle school students. The unique program seeks to provide students with tools to make good decisions. Kalt met her students in September. She worked with students from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds and delved deep into difficult subjects.

“One of the goals of the group is to bridge those gaps and expose the children to other experiences, and it happens in a very organic way; some groups can be goofier and others keep their feelings at the surface,” said Kalt. “I’m there to facilitate, but the group usually takes over; a lot of the real the good work was just starting to happen when the pandemic hit.”

Unfortunately, the group work had to be terminated immediately.

“It was disheartening not to be able to do a proper termination, which is something we learn the importance of in class,” she said.

Although Westchester was the initial “hot spot” of the crisis in the U.S.,  Kalt managed to continue working with her individual clients.

Since all her young clients were digital natives, the transition to remote care was surprisingly simple, she said. She added that moving from an adult psychiatric hospital to working with middle school students had already helped her learn how to quickly adapt.

“Social work careers are all very different, so that adaptability of moving from Saint Vincent’s gave me a takeaway that you’re not going to recreate the same experience at every place you work,” she said. “In this situation where the whole world had to adapt, that’s something I already learned to do.”

Still, she said she misses the camaraderie of being able to process a situation on the spot with team members on staff. She appreciates the weekly group clinical supervision meetings held on Zoom, as well as the one-on-one phone calls with her supervisor. She will finish the placement at the end of the school year this June.

“Some of these kids struggle with groups in the school environment, so the pause was somewhat of a relief for them,” she said. “That also means you need to check on your extroverted kids. For now, the [introverted]kids have a reprieve, but as it goes on longer we’ll still need to address why they like being at home.

Animals to the Rescue

Holly Moskow did her placement with Green Chimneys Residential Treatment Center. The school sits on acres of farmland and caters to children who might not otherwise thrive in a typical school environment. There are children on the autism spectrum as well as children who have trouble regulating their emotions. But in addition to schoolwork, students get individual therapy that includes plenty of interaction with farm animals living on campus.

“In the experiential model it was very different, I might go and get a dog for the student to interact with or we could just walk around the campus,” said Moskow, who graduated this past semester. “Animals helped lessen the pressure. For a student who may not feel a sense of confidence, I’d ask him to show me his expertise on how to handle a dog.”

Once the pandemic hit, Moskow could not return to the campus and she began remote care from her home. Some of Green Chimney’s staff remained on campus. Staff created Zoom meetings that included visits with some of the children’s favorite animals. Videos were made of the horses so that social workers could play them back for clients.

Indeed, there was a shift in care. As with most families dealing with the pandemic, parent involvement played a key role.

“A lot of what we do involves supporting parents.  At home that became a larger part, so every weekend I’d check in with the parents to provide them with as many tools as I could,” she said. “It became a lot for families to reset some expectations and goals, and reprioritize.”

Moskow said one of the reasons she wanted to be a social worker was for the one-on-one contact, but now she was tethered to her computer.

“That was really a void, not only missing the connection with the clients but with my colleagues; it definitely was a letdown in terms of the work I was doing, but at the same time I was very eager to continue the relationships,” she said. “I wanted to know how does this [technology]work and how can I make it so that it will help me after graduating.”

Moskow said the remote experience has played well in job interviews with social service agencies still coping with an uncertain future.

As usual, there’s always an end to field placements. Moskow had to say goodbye to her clients and introduce the student to their new social worker. Fortunately, both had assistance from their canines.

“I had my dog on the screen and she had hers,” she said.  “In the end, I was really interested in the remote experience, as well as the animal therapy. I thought it was great.”

Dean McPhee said she’s grateful to all the dedicated members of the GSS community who have stepped up and worked tirelessly over the past few months, and very proud of the care and commitment the GSS students have demonstrated during this time of crisis.

“Although they’re still students,” she said, “they have exhibited skill and a level of social work professionalism that is a tribute to GSS and that the world needs now more than ever.”