“You have achieved great things, and in the heart of the pandemic, you have managed to keep this community alive,” Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, said to the CSTEP students and staff. “This is a program that is a community. You all watch out for one another—and you inspire us.”

Fordham CSTEP is a statewide program that supports minority and economically disadvantaged students through mentorship and academic and career-oriented resources. The program prepares students for professions in areas where they are underrepresented, including STEM, health, and other licensed fields, and provides a “transformational, educational experience to future professionals and leaders,” said Renaldo D. Alba, associate director of the CSTEP and STEP programs. 

This spring, 73 CSTEP students will receive their diplomas, said Alba. After graduation, they will pursue different opportunities across the country. Among them are four students heading to dental, medical, or law school; one student attending a Ph.D. psychology program; 12 students pursuing master’s degrees in various disciplines; and one student participating in the City Year program, he said. 

In addition to recognizing graduating seniors, the ceremony celebrated other CSTEP scholars, including more than 100 students who achieved a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or higher and about 50 students who served as tutors and peer counselors in the pre-college STEP Program for middle and high schoolers. 

Rafael Zapata, chief diversity officer, special assistant to the president for diversity, and associate vice president for academic affairs, was recognized with CSTEP’s Outstanding Service Award, which is presented to faculty, administrators, and partners who have provided exceptional service to CSTEP students. In his acceptance speech, Zapata lauded Michael A. Molina, director of the CSTEP and STEP programs, for leading the program over the past 35 years. (Molina was unable to physically attend the event because he is recovering from a medical procedure, but he joined via Zoom.) 

“No other office at Fordham better serves the needs of first-generation college students, low-income students, and students of color, with more dignity, understanding, love, support—and challenge—than CSTEP,” Zapata said. 

Zapata, a native New Yorker who grew up in public housing and became the first in his family to graduate from college, said he wished he had a community like CSTEP when he was younger. 

“I had a lot of loving and caring teachers. But I never had anyone who I could talk to about my life … I didn’t have this community. I wish I did,” Zapata said. “There’s so much pressure on you to sound differently, to act differently, to even walk differently. And for that, I’m grateful to remind you that I can be [myself], and you can be [yourself here].” 

In heartfelt speeches, students described their own experiences in the program. 

“CSTEP has been the best part of my undergrad experience and it has helped me grow socially, personally, and academically,” said Anusha Imran, FCLC ’22, a first-generation college student and aspiring physician who will receive CSTEP’s highest award at Fordham College at Lincoln Center’s award ceremony for graduating seniors. “I found a tight-knit community and met students who have similar stories, which only made me and them more resilient and fierce in the advocacy of our own education.”

In his keynote speech, CSTEP alumnus Braulio Carrero, FCRH ’04, senior counsel at Cityblock Health—a company that provides medical services to marginalized populations—congratulated the seniors and offered them advice for life after graduation.

“In my 20s, my purpose was trying to find my purpose,” Carrero said. “Some of you are very determined in the path that you want, and others aren’t. But at the end of the day … always remember what matters and why you’re doing what you’re doing.” 

(Vincent Harris, FCRH ’22, who was scheduled to receive CSTEP’s highest award at Encaenia—Fordham College at Rose Hill’s award ceremony for graduating seniors—died suddenly on May 10. The University published an obituary and held a memorial Mass for Harris at the University Church at Rose Hill on May 13.)

The $2.5 million gift by Fordham alumna and former trustee Christina Seix Dow, TMC ’72, and her husband, Robert Dow, adds to the $2 million they gave nine years ago to establish their scholarship fund for CSTEP students. The new gift, announced in January 2021, comes in the midst of a Fordham fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, that comprises four pillars including access and affordability. The gift is now producing an uptick in funding for students and, within a few years, could provide aid to nearly half of the students in the program, said its director, Michael A. Molina.

The fund has been a “godsend” for students, said Michael A. Molina, director of the CSTEP and STEP programs at Fordham. The additional gift is “really going to enable us to help a lot more students meet their financial need.”

In establishing the scholarship fund, the Dows were supporting students who remind them of themselves.

“My wife and I came from very little. For a long time, we’ve felt we’ve been fortunate, and it’s time to pay it forward or pay it back for students who may come from even more difficult situations than we had,” said Robert Dow, a former managing partner at Lord Abbett, an investment management company.

Support for the Underrepresented

CSTEP is a statewide program designed to support those who tend to be underrepresented in professions related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as well as the the licensed professions, including health care.

At Fordham, the students it serves tend to be Black, Latinx, first-generation, economically disadvantaged, and members of immigrant families living in the Bronx or its environs, Molina said. It has provided them with academic support, counseling, internships, scholarships, and research opportunities since 1987.

The original $2 million scholarship gift has helped 40 or 50 CSTEP students per year, providing sums ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars that can make all the difference for families that have pulled together every last resource—grants, loans, scholarships—to meet their students’ costs, but who still need financial help, Molina said.

“Anything that we can help them with that helps tof ill in those gaps, that’s important,” he said. “If you come from an immigrant working class family … and you’ve got a $1,500 or $2,000 or $2,500 balance from your previous semester that you’ve got to take care of? That’s a lot of money for working class families,” he said.

With the new $2.5 million gift, the Dows’ scholarship fund could help nearly half of the approximately 270 students in the CSTEP program within a few years, Molina said.

Paying It Forward

The Christina Seix Dow College Science and Technology Entry Program Endowed Scholarship Fund is a need-based fund, with a GPA requirement, established to help CSTEP students stay at Fordham and graduate with less debt. “We hope that whatever they do, [the recipients are]they’re successful in life,” Robert Dow said. “And if they become successful financially, hopefully they’ll think about what gave them a start and pay it forward as well.”

Seix Dow has much in common with the CSTEP students she supports. She’s Puerto Rican, from the Bronx, and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Fordham. She was raised in a small apartment with limited resources, but, she has said, was surrounded by a loving family that developed her core values.

She became a multimillionaire bond manager, eventually forming her own investment management firm. She later founded the Christina Seix Academy, an independent school in New Jersey for underserved children. Seix Dow was among the first class of pioneering women in philanthropy at the inaugural Fordham Women’s Summit in 2017.

Preparing Students to Serve

The scholarships are a significant gift for the CSTEP students, many of whom are thousands of dollars in debt, said Renaldo D. Alba, associate director of the CSTEP and STEP programs. They not only help graduates leave Fordham in good financial health, but also prepare them to give back to their own communities.

“Our students often require graduate or professional school training, and at that level, there’s little to no financial aid. But if they’re in good [financial]health after graduation, they can take on additional loans at the next level. And if they do well and manage their loan debt as graduate students, they’re more likely to consider working in fields that may not be as lucrative in compensation, in communities that often don’t have the resources or money, because they don’t have to pay off these loans,” Alba said.

“A scholarship of this magnitude is so significant for students like these that are naturally inclined to stay in their community.”

Among the Seix Dow scholarship recipients is Leslie Abreu, a Dominican student from the Bronx who realized that Fordham was her “dream school” while attending the adjacent Fordham High School for the Arts, where she became class valedictorian.

“At one point, I was considering not going to my dream school because of finances,” said Abreu, who is enrolled in a five-year program to earn both a bachelor’s degree from Fordham College at Rose Hill and a Master of Science in Teaching from the Graduate School of Education. “Receiving help like that gives you reassurance that you are on the right path.”

Life hasn’t been easy for Abreu. Her father passed away in her senior year of high school, but he had encouraged his daughter to apply to Fordham. In her time at the University, she has advised two seventh graders in the Mentoring Latinas program, served as a peer counselor for pre-college students, and tutored middle and high school students in math as a tutor in CSTEP’s sibling STEP program for junior high and high school students. Someday, Abreu plans on following Seix Dow’s and her husband’s footsteps and paying it forward.

“[Seix Dow’s story] reassured me that that path is possible,” Abreu said. “And the fact that she has been able to help people like us shows me that I can also do that in the future.”

Learn more about Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student and make a gift.

If you have a question about giving to Fordham, call 212-636-6550 or send an email to [email protected].

“I don’t have to be shy about what I want to ask. I don’t have to lie about my financial needs. Sometimes on campus I have to deal with cultural differences and I feel like I have to code switch, but at CSTEP, I can throw that all away and come as I am,” she said.  

Reynoso is a senior in Fordham’s Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program, known as CSTEP. The statewide program prepares minority and economically disadvantaged undergraduates for professions in areas where they are underrepresented; Fordham’s chapter, which currently serves about 250 students, is one of the largest in New York. Its counselors have helped many first-generation students find community and stay on track.

‘A Backbone Throughout My Years’

CSTEP was established at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus in the Bronx in 1987 and expanded to the Manhattan Lincoln Center campus about 15 years ago. Students benefit from multiple academic and career-oriented resources, including paid internships and research opportunities, career seminars, networking events, and support classes for pre-health courses. But one of the greatest resources, students say, is the relationship they build with their CSTEP counselors. 

Fiona Sampaney was struggling with the coursework in her natural sciences major, but she couldn’t devote enough time to studying. In her free time, she said she often babysat her three younger siblings and worked as a supermarket cashier. But thanks to her CSTEP counselors, she found a solution. 

“Changing majors was something I had already thought of, but I didn’t know how to go about it. They helped me draw out a two-year plan for the rest of my time at Fordham and see how a major switch would affect my GPA and academic standing for medical school,” said Sampaney, a Bronx-born first-generation student at Fordham College at Lincoln Center who plans to become a pediatrician. 

Rashain Adams Jr., another first-generation student and a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill, said CSTEP feels like a family. 

“Nobody is trying to compete with you when it comes to grades or success. Everyone truly just wants you to be OK, mentally and emotionally,” said Adams, who joined CSTEP in his second semester at Fordham. “The program has been a backbone throughout my years here.”

This past spring, Gerald “Geraldo” De La Cruz, a first-generation student and a senior at the Gabelli School of Business, became a residential assistant at the Rose Hill campus. He felt stressed and isolated, thanks to pandemic restrictions. But he was able to open up to his counselor, Renaldo Alba, who also serves as CSTEP’s associate director. 

“I was in a really bad place last year, mentally. I felt burnt out and drained,” De La Cruz said. “But when Renaldo starts his conversations with you, he’ll be like, ‘How are you?’ I was honest with him.” 

Sometimes students just want to be heard, Alba said. 

“They may just need to vent in a space that is judgement-free and confidential,” Alba said. “If you’re a first-generation student, you’re grappling with issues that parents and perhaps previous support systems cannot continue to help with.” 

To help students find community and perspective, he said, counselors work to connect students to colleagues in other offices, CSTEP alumni, and peers. “Finding others in moments of isolation helps a great deal,” he said.

A Parent’s Love and Pride

For many students, feelings of isolation begin even before they stepped foot on campus, as they navigate the application process largely on their own. Once they arrive, they feel the pressure to perform—both self-imposed and from family members who don’t fully understand college life. But at the end of the day, the students say they know their parents are proud. 

Adams, a history major raised by a single mother in the Bronx, said his mother loves talking about her three children: “She’s very excited that all of her kids have gone to college at this point. My brother graduated from John Jay, and he’s looking at his master’s degree. My sister just started her first year at New York University, and I’m about to graduate.” 

Others had similar things to say about their families.

“My mom is the cutest. She’s a home attendant, and she tells one of her patients about me all the time. When I finish a paper or get a good grade, she’ll be like, ‘Send it to me so he can read it!’” said Reynoso, an environmental studies major who wants to improve health outcomes for urban populations, especially people of color.  

De La Cruz, the son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, said he is thankful for his family, especially his mother, a small business owner who once wanted to study psychology. 

“I have an opportunity to do something that my parents couldn’t,” said De La Cruz, who wants to become a marketing executive for an entertainment company. “The sacrifices they made in life made it possible for me to do this.”

‘Lifting Myself and Those Around Me’

One of the most meaningful parts of being a first-generation college student is starting a legacy of education and generational wealth, said the students. 

“I can graduate and have a higher paying job,” said Sampaney. “That provides more knowledge for not just myself, but my future children and grandchildren.” 

For Reynoso, being a first-gen student also means representing others like her. Through Project TRUE, a youth development program between Fordham and the Wildlife Conservation Society, she has mentored local high schoolers who may become the first in their families to attend college, too. A good education also means personal freedom, she said. 

“I can think and make decisions for myself more freely. I’m given some sort of authority to validate my opinion more, but at the same time, I’m creating space for others who may not have had the same opportunities that I have, while saying that their experiences have equal authority,” Reynoso said. “I’m lifting myself and those around me.”

“It’s been a godsend,” Michael A. Molina, director of the CSTEP and STEP programs, said of the fund. “This money has enabled us to at least try and help students and their families.” 

CSTEP is a statewide program that has provided academic support, counseling, internships, scholarships, and research opportunities to minority and economically disadvantaged undergraduates at Fordham since 1987. The CSTEP program, along with its sibling STEP program for junior high and high school students, has been a source of community for many students, especially during the pandemic. 

Eight years ago, the Dow family established the Christina Seix Dow College Science and Technology Entry Program Endowed Scholarship Fund with a $2 million gift to help CSTEP students stay at Fordham and graduate from college with little to no debt. Now they are giving an additional $2.5 million to support students who remind them of themselves. 

“My wife and I came from very little. For a long time, we’ve felt we’ve been fortunate, and it’s time to pay it forward or pay it back for students who may come from even more difficult situations than we had,” said Robert Dow, a former managing partner at Lord Abbett, an investment management company. “We hope that whatever they do, they’re successful in life. And if they become successful financially, hopefully they’ll think about what gave them a start and pay it forward as well.”

Seix Dow has much in common with the CSTEP students she supports. She’s Puerto Rican, from the Bronx, and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Fordham. She was raised in a small apartment with limited resources, but, she has said, was surrounded by a loving family that developed her core values. She became a multimillionaire bond manager, eventually forming her own investment management firm. She later founded the Christina Seix Academy, an independent school for underserved children. Seix Dow was among the first class of pioneering women in philanthropy at the inaugural Fordham Women’s Summit in 2017. 

About 90 CSTEP students have benefited from the Seix Dow scholarship fund over the past seven years, including recent alumna Arnell Stewart, who delivered the student scholarship speech at the 2018 Women’s Philanthropy Summit. 

These students have received significant awards from the scholarship, depending on individual need, to help pay for the full cost of tuition. Molina estimates that over the next decade, approximately 300 to 400 more students will benefit from the additional $2.5 million added to the scholarship fund.

The scholarships are a significant gift for the CSTEP students, many of whom are thousands of dollars in debt, said Renaldo D. Alba, associate director of the CSTEP and STEP programs. They not only help graduates leave Fordham in good financial health, but also prepare them to give back to their own communities. 

“Our students often require graduate or professional school training, and at that level, there’s little to no financial aid. But if they’re in good [financial]health after graduation, they can take on additional loans at the next level. And if they do well and manage their loan debt as graduate students, they’re more likely to consider working in fields that may not be as lucrative in compensation, in communities that often don’t have the resources or money, because they don’t have to pay off these loans,” Alba said. “A scholarship of this magnitude is so significant for students like these that are naturally inclined to stay in their community.”  

Among the Seix Dow scholarship recipients is Leslie Abreu, a Dominican student from the Bronx who realized that Fordham was her “dream school” while attending the adjacent Fordham High School for the Arts, where she became class valedictorian. 

“At one point, I was considering not going to my dream school because of finances,” said Abreu, who is currently the only employed member of her immediate family. “Receiving help like that gives you reassurance that you are on the right path.”

Life hasn’t been easy for Abreu. Her father passed away in her senior year of high school, but he had encouraged his daughter to apply to Fordham. In her three years at the University, she has tutored middle and high school students in math as a STEP tutor and peer counselor for pre-college students and advised two seventh graders in the Mentoring Latinas program. Someday, Abreu plans on following Seix Dow and her husband’s footsteps and paying it forward. 

“[Seix Dow’s story] reassured me that that path is possible,” said Abreu, a psychology student on the five-year teaching track. “And the fact that she has been able to help people like us shows me that I can also do that in the future.”

CSTEP is a statewide program that prepares minority and economically disadvantaged undergraduates for professions in areas where they are underrepresented, including STEM, health, and other licensed fields. The STEP program, similar in design, focuses on junior high and high school students. Both programs at Fordham provide academic support and counseling, internships, scholarships, and research opportunities throughout the academic year and summer. Together, the Fordham CSTEP and STEP programs serve roughly 800 Fordham undergraduates and local high school students. 

Over the past nine months, CSTEP/STEP have remained a constant in the lives of students dealing with the tricky transition to remote learning, technology glitches, and a loss of normalcy. Through reimagined ways of learning—from a virtual student lounge where students have bonded over popular games like Kahoot! and Among Us, to shorter meeting times designed to decrease screen fatigue—their programs have continued to serve students. They’ve also recently expanded their reach with new partnerships in local schools. Their events haven’t been canceled, either. This December, around 30 Fordham CSTEP alumni spoke with STEP students about their careers on a virtual panel; next January, the CSTEP program will launch its third mentoring program that pairs alumni with current students who share similar career goals. 

“Our meeting space has changed, but what really has stayed the same is our impact,” said Renaldo D. Alba, associate director of the CSTEP and STEP programs and a 2002 graduate from Fordham College at Rose Hill and its CSTEP program. “That’s something that we’re really proud of.”

The two programs have also addressed traumatic national events with special activities for students in the wake of George Floyd’s murder this past spring.

“The issues that were raised by George Floyd’s murder and the Black Lives Matter movement that followed it are issues that our students and my staff have personal experience with. We’ve been subjected to it or we’ve had family and friends who have,” said Michael A. Molina, director of the CSTEP and STEP programs. “We were sensitive to these issues, and we knew that we wanted to do something.” 

This past July, Mark L. Chapman, Ph.D., associate professor of African and African American Studies, spoke with STEP students about the similarities between the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and today’s world. Ashlee W. Davis, Ph.D., a supervising psychologist and coordinator for diversity, inclusion, and social justice initiatives at the Rose Hill campus, also helped students understand racial trauma, find words for their emotions, and identify strategies for self-care. 

“We want our students to understand that you should always have strong feelings about these things that happen in life: the pandemic, George Floyd, and the Black Lives Matter movement. You should feel whatever you feel. But you should also have facts and some balance when you’re looking at what’s going on,” Molina said. 

Staying ‘INSTEP’ with High School Students in the Bronx

Through virtual learning, CSTEP counselors and students have also continued to extend their pre-pandemic “INSTEP” college access initiatives to outside schools and community-based organizations, including KAPPA International School, a public school located a few blocks south of the Rose Hill campus. 

“How do you select a college or university? Should you go away? Should you stay in New York City? Should you apply to a CUNY or a SUNY or an independent school? What does living on campus look like? These are the kinds of discussions that our college students, the CSTEP students, do in small groups with the INSTEP high school kids,” Molina explained. 

Over the past two years, KAPPA students have visited the Rose Hill campus and learned about the transition from high school to college—the thing they struggle with the most—from Fordham CSTEP students who can empathize with them, said their assistant principal, Casey Smith. 

“It really hits home,” Smith said. “The kids really find it beneficial to work with college students and to have what feels like a mentor to walk them through the process.” 

Help with College Applications

This fall, the INSTEP program focused on a more timely topic for high school seniors: college application season. 

“I’ve learned signing up for FAFSA and TAP as soon as possible will help you go to college with barely any debt,” Amado Reynoso, one of the 26 KAPPA students who participated in the INSTEP program this fall, wrote in an email. “My favorite part of the program is when we did fun activities like college-themed Family Feud. It taught us more about college and stuff and financial aid, and [the Fordham counselors and students]kept it fun while doing so.” 

The virtual workshops also helped Leslie Garcia Torres navigate the financial aid process—something unfamiliar to many potential first-generation college students like herself. 

“The college process is stressful, especially if you don’t have any family members that have gone to college. It was just me, alone. I had to do the CUNY application, the FAFSA, all of that, the TAP application, by myself, but with a little bit of help,” said Torres, a high school senior from the Bronx and a Fordham STEP student. 

Among the CSTEP students co-leading the sessions was Anita Adu Manu, a junior at Fordham College at Rose Hill. Manu said they also discussed how to manage being a person of color in a predominantly white institution.

“These are kids who want to go abroad, in a way—outside of the city. We had to talk about that and how to find your own community,” Manu said. “We definitely used CSTEP as an example of one of these communities that other schools might have.”

‘Hey, I’ve Been In Your Shoes’

Manu said she found her own home through CSTEP. Before she became a program scholar in her sophomore year, she tagged along with her CSTEP friends to their program-sponsored biology and chemistry review sessions. She said she was also welcomed to a CSTEP potluck in her first year, even though she wasn’t officially part of the program. 

“I was able to build a community that I didn’t know I needed,” said Manu, a pre-med biology major from Van Cortlandt Village in the Bronx. “All the people I met freshman year at CSTEP are basically all my friends now.” 

She said her CSTEP counselors also helped her believe in herself. 

“There were a lot of things I didn’t know about the pre-med track, but all the counselors steered me in the right direction. And when I felt like I wanted to switch my major because I just wasn’t good enough, they reassured me. They were like, hey, I’ve been in your shoes,” Manu said, adding that many counselors are Fordham alumni, including Anya Patterson, FCRH ’19, a past Coro Fellow. 

Manu said she’s now considering becoming a sports cardiologist who travels with a soccer or football team. But at first, she wasn’t sure it was possible. 

“I felt like I was lagging behind. But when I would sneak into the review sessions,” Manu said with a laugh, “I had a boost of confidence. The professors were there. My peers were there. We were all collaborating. It made me feel like, OK, yeah. I think I can do this.”  

Thirty-Four Years of Growth 

Collectively, the CSTEP and STEP programs have been thriving at Fordham for decades. The STEP program at Rose Hill was created in 1986, while the STEP program at Lincoln Center became official in 2011. CSTEP has existed at the Rose Hill campus since 1987 and expanded to the Lincoln Center campus about 15 years ago.

“What the University has done over these past 34 years with the Rose Hill STEP program and for the past 10, 11 years with the STEP program—if you look at those numbers, you probably have somewhere between 8 and 10 thousand students over the life of these programs that have been positively impacted and who have been introduced to the possibilities of going to college and pursuing a career in a STEM, health, or licensed field,” Molina said. 

The oldest Fordham STEP graduates are now in their 40s, said Alba. The oldest CSTEP graduates are in their mid-50s. 

“These are folks that are doctors, physicians, Ph.D.s, accountants, lawyers, scientists, social workers, teachers,” said Alba, adding that many of them are originally from the Bronx. “And they proudly carry the STEP flag wherever they go.” 

Molina said the most rewarding part about their work is seeing their students as young as 11 realize their options in life and become adults. “You see these kids come in. They’re looking around like tourists … They’re wide-eyed with a lot of ideas and ambition and they’re highly motivated,” said Molina, a graduate from a similar program, the Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP). “It’s really a joy to see them grow, develop, and become these really accomplished young people by the time they leave us.”