Garcia has been playing piano and singing in cabaret performances for about 10 years now. Will Friedwald of The Wall Street Journal has called him “incredibly moving and very funny, often at the same time,” and Stephen Holden of The New York Times declared he has “genuine star quality.”

Garcia grew up playing the piano and singing standards by the likes of Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. These older songs “always made sense to me,” he says. But his Fordham theater training has also helped him hone his cabaret craft.

“It’s a little more of a dramatic thing,” Garcia says of his profession. “I find myself calling back on what a lot of my professors at Fordham insisted upon regarding a monologue or a scene. There is a narrative beginning, middle, and end to these songs.”

Hot on the heels of performances in London and Chicago, this jazz-leaning connoisseur of the Great American Songbook is thrilled to be performing in Pope Auditorium for the very first time since he attended Fordham.

As a student, Garcia would often play the piano while his fellow cast members would break down sets, or he would “go into Pope Auditorium very late at night and play until one of the security guards would come in and tell me to stop, that people were getting fed up,” he laughs.

Now he’s excited to share his repertoire with his fellow alumni. “Oddly, when you have to do something like this, it can be a little more nerve-racking than just doing a club gig or a show, because these might well be people you know,” Garcia says. “And it matters more because you have an association with it.

“But it’s a special kind of honor to be invited to offer what you do—however it’s evolved since you left. I’m excited to come back and celebrate.”

This complimentary cabaret performance is open to all Fordham alumni, faculty, and staff. So join us at 5:30 p.m. on June 8 in Pope Auditorium for a glass of bubbly and a bite to eat as you enjoy the artistry of this alumnus pianist and singer. Register online.

Watch Garcia perform the Vernon Duke and Ira Gershwin classic “I Can’t Get Started.”

In addition to commemorating each cohort, this year alumni from two of the graduate schools were celebrating a common milestone: 100 years since their founding.

As a nod to the occasion, Robert Grimes, SJ, dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center, opened the reunion with a special presentation about the history of Fordham’s presence in Manhattan.

Fordham—which began in 1841 as St. John’s College—had its start on the rural Rose Hill Manor property in the Village of Fordham, but plans for a city-based campus were in place from its earliest days, Father Grimes said. Shortly after the college opened, founder Archishop John Hughes invited a group of Kentucky-based Jesuits to run the school. The Jesuits agreed, provided that they could also open a downtown campus.

“We still have the original paperwork documenting the Jesuits’ discernment process about whether to stay in Kentucky or move to New York,” Father Grimes said. “The ‘pro’ for moving [to New York]was, ‘So vast and deeply populated, exercising immense and ever increasing influence over other cities and states in the union.’

“The best they could come up with staying in Kentucky was, ‘It is in the midst of a vast forest.’”

In the early 1950s, the school approached city planner Robert Moses about relocating to a structure he was building at Columbus Circle. Instead, Moses offered Fordham space a few blocks away as part of a new performing arts project.

Fordham broke ground in 1959 and was the first building completed on the property that would become Lincoln Center.

“It was pretty courageous for Fordham to move to the West Side of Manhattan at the time,” Father Grimes said. “I keep wondering what John Hughes would imagine today if he could think back to agreeing to let the Jesuits open a school in the city proper and see how much has changed over the years.”

A key part of Fordham’s Manhattan narrative was the establishment of its professional schools, two of which—the Graduate School of Social Service (GSS) and the Graduate School of Education (GSE)—celebrate their centennials this year.

GSS was founded in 1916 by Terence Shealy, SJ, a philosophy professor and faculty member at the Law School. Over the last 100 years, the school has grown to become one of the premier social work schools in the country.

“The school was started out of a recognized need for professional social workers at a very turbulent time in the city and the country,” said Debra M. McPhee, PhD, dean of GSS. “To be the school that is about building capacity in this city—that’s our legacy and it’s still our mission.”

GSE also began in 1916 on the seventh floor of the Woolworth Building. Known then as the Teachers College, its mission was to train future educators not only in the most current pedagogical methods, but also in Catholic and Jesuit educational philosophies.

“Because of the values we espouse and live through our school, we have been able to influence the field of education,” said Virginia Roach, EdD, dean of GSE. “What we bring is a deep respect for individual students, care for the whole child or adult whom we’re working with, and a deep humility about who we work with and how we work with them and for the innate value each student has.”

Overall, the legacy of Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus has been and continues to be the camaraderie among the students it brings together, several alumni said.

“I look back with a sense of fondness on my time at Fordham,” said Tanika Cumberbatch-Torres, FCLC ’05. “I met my husband here. And I hope our daughter will go here one day.”

Cumberbatch-Torres was representing an entire family of Fordham graduates—her mother-in-law Ana Torres graduated in 2010 and her husband Johnny Torres, an administrative staff member at GSS, is a current student. Their 8-month-old daughter Emely sported her own nametag with the designation FCLC ’??.

“Fordham was the best decision I made,” said former art history student Kit Byrne, FCLC ’07. “It lets you become who you are as an individual… I knew early on that I was in the right place.”\

But this year’s celebrations will have a once-in-a-century twist.

Three of the University’s graduate schools will kick off a yearlong celebration of their centennials during various reunion parties.

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), the Graduate School of Education (GSE), and the Graduate School of Social Service (GSS) are each marking their centennial year with their respective deans and a toast to the next 100 years.

Previously, the graduate schools had not been included in the alumni reunions, which for years had remained an undergraduate affair. But this year will be quite different from years past—not just for the centennial-celebrating schools, but for all of the graduate schools.

The Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education will also join GSAS, the Gabelli School of Business undergraduates, and Fordham College at Rose Hill to celebrate Jubilee on June 3, 4 and 5.

At the Lincoln Center campus, Fordham College at Lincoln Center will be joined with peers from the School of Professional and Continuing Studies, and GSS, GSE, and graduate school alumni from the Gabelli School of Business on June 9.

Lincoln Center’s reunion will begin 5:30 p.m. with Robert R. Grimes, SJ, dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center, giving a lecture on the oft-overlooked history of Fordham in Manhattan. From there all schools will break off into their respective reunions, only to meet back on the plaza at 8:30 p.m. to dance under the stars as one big Lincoln Center campus community.

The annual Jubilee reunion remains a multi-day event spread over the Rose Hill campus from June 3 through June 5. Fordham’s largest reunion weekend also celebrates some former schools that remain in spirit, including Marymount, Bensalem, Shrub Oak, the School of Pharmacy, Ignatius College, and Thomas More College.

It wouldn’t be Jubilee without celebrating the silver anniversary of the Class of 1991 and, the newest class of Golden Rams, hailing this year from the Class of 1966.

Nowadays, the Jubilee reunion is one of the University’s marquee events. But it wasn’t always that way. Back in 1980, when Bill Rothschild and his classmates got together for their 25th reunion, there was just a small tent, some cocktails, and a devoted group of Rams from the Class of 1955.

However, Rothschild, FCRH ’55, said it was that same spirit that brought several of the gang back to Edwards Parade this past weekend for their 60th.

“There were a lot of 80-year-old guys running around,” said Rothschild, who estimated that about 15 percent of his class had returned.

Rothschild credited the late Nick O’Neill, FCRH ’55, with organizing the 1980 reunion, which he said might have been the first of its kind. O’Neill passed away on April 19.

He said the esteemed Class of 1955 started the Fordham Club and can be credited with organizing the first Encaenia as well.

“We’ve had great events since the beginning,” said Rothschild. “It was a small school, and in many ways it’s still a small school even though we have Lincoln Center. But Rose Hill will always be a special place.”

On June 6, Joseph M. McShane, SJ, president of Fordham, welcomed alumni back to the Rose Hill campus for Jubilee weekend.

On hand were Michael Mitchell, PhD, FCRH ’65, and his wife Ina, to celebrate Michael’s becoming a Golden Ram.

After Father McShane’s welcoming address, Ina prompted Michael to tell the story of when he decided to come to Fordham. As he told his tale, Michael slowly unbuttoned a denim shirt to reveal a faded T-shirt emblazoned with the cover art from Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel, Brave New World.

Fifty years ago, Mitchell said, he sat on a bench gazing at the campus, contemplating whether he’d like to attend Fordham. He had yet to sign on the dotted line, when a Jesuit approached and asked him what he was reading.

“Brave New World,” Mitchell told him.

“What’s the message?” the Jesuit asked.

“Not, ‘What’s it about?’ he asked me, ‘What’s the message?’ No one had ever asked me that, not in high school, not ever,” recalled Mitchell.

He attempted an answer that he assumed would mollify the priest.

“It’s about the soul of man,” he said grandly.

The Jesuit continued, “What do you mean by that?”

“I said, ‘It’s about tradition and modernity,’ but that wasn’t enough. He kept probing me and pressing me for more answers until finally he said, ‘Keep reading.’ Then he left.”

“I thought, ‘What did I just walk into?’”

Mitchell did decide to attend Fordham. He was one of very few African Americans to do so in that year, 1965. He went on to get his doctorate in political science and now teaches at the University of Arizona.

He quoted Father McShane’s welcoming address to describe the way that he teaches his students today: “to think critically, read analytically, write persuasively, and speak eloquently.”

Hank Shotwell, PhD, FCRH ’65, another Golden Ram, recalled classes in logic, epistemology, philosophy, and psychology.

“My Fordham education gave me tools that I didn’t appreciate until long after I left,” he said. “They taught me how to think.”

On returning to the campus after so many years, Shotwell said he felt like a “deer in headlights” with all the new buildings and physical changes.

Liz Fitzgerald, FCRH ’85, said that the new Starbucks on Fordham Road took her by surprise more than anything else. She and fellow classmates said that positive changes just off campus were as welcome a sight as any improvements on the campus itself—a sign that the dangerous days of the Bronx are fading.

Still, Joe Moorhead, FCRH ’96, head coach of Fordham Football, told a crowd of alumni at the Gabelli School of Business that he constantly reminds his players that disparities in the Bronx remain.

“There are people two blocks from this campus who don’t know where they’re going to put their head at night, and we make sure our players know that,” said Moorhead, adding that last season the football team logged in more than 500 hours of community service.

Although Rosemary Carr, MC ’60, appreciated the beauty inside of University Church, she noted that the University Church and Rose Hill are not stored in Marymount alumnae’s memory banks. The Fordham Marymount campus, sold seven years ago, was in Tarrytown.

Instead, her memories included nuns in full habit that taught elocution, conservative dress, and modest behavior to her and her and classmates.

As Carr spoke, three stylish young women in skirts and jeans from the Class of 2010 slipped into the last pew, knelt, made the sign of the cross, and prayed.

One of the girls, Bridget Murphy, FCRH ’10, said returning to the campus five years after graduating made her feel like time stands still.

“You come back here and it’s exactly the same.”

The Lincoln Center campus was abuzz Friday evening as alumni from the three schools gathered in and around the Lowenstein Center Atrium, the Robert Moses Plaza, and, for the first time, in the Law School’s Skadden Conference Center, to reunite, reminisce, and network on a warm summer evening.

The events got started with a final lecture delivered by Michael Tueth, SJ, associate professor of communication and media studies. Titled “A Jesuit on Movies and Meaning,” Father Tueth used the occasion of his retirement to show clips from four movies, including On the Waterfront and Dead Man Walking, that highlight examples of faith, hope, and charity.

He cited the First Principle and Foundation of St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, which says that all the things in this world are gifts of God, given to us to know God better.

“I count movies as one of those gifts that God, Thomas Edison, and a few others have given us,” he said.

In the White Box Studio, actor/musician Van Hughes, FCLC ’05 celebrated his 10th reunion with an electrified acoustic guitar set of his own songs and songs from the Broadway play American Idiot, in which he played the lead role on the touring production.

His final number was a song he’d written with lyrics lifted directly from a love letter from a high-school acquaintance.

“In high school, I really got into writing music with other people’s words, because I knew mine weren’t really good,” he said. Today he’s “still not very good because I’m still doing the same thing,” he joked.

In his welcoming address, Robert Grimes, SJ, dean of FCLC, remarked how different the campus feels now that freshmen are living in McKeon Hall above the law school. The new living arrangements will enable the college to admit the largest class in its history next year—an estimated 570 students, compared to 450 just two years ago.

Outside on the plaza, alumni celebrated the memories. Suzanne Matthews Foye, FCLC ’81, GSE ’82, reminisced about how she met her husband Patrick Foye, FCRH ’77, LAW ’81, while she was on the debate team that he coached. They got married in 1984 and had three daughters—one of them, Heather Foye, FCLC ’14, was also there.

“If it wasn’t for Fordham, you wouldn’t have been born!” Suzanne told her daughter.

Rocco Adriola, FCLC ’79, looked on in amusement. Adriola, a former president of the debate team himself, knew Patrick Foye in high school and recruited him to join the team.

Across the plaza at the law school, Joseph M. McShane, SJ, president of Fordham, praised the GSS as a great mission-driven school.

“I hear about you in glowing terms from people in city and state government, from people in hospitals, for everything you do to make sure that the forgotten are not forgotten, that the poor are lifted up, and that the desperate have a word of hope given to them,” he said. “You are in many ways, all saints.”

Among those in attendance was Steven L. Herbst, GSS ’13, a psychiatric social worker who counsels clients who are sentenced to serve time in rehabilitation facilities rather than prisons. Herbst (who had a copy of a Hunter S. Thompson’s book on outlaw motorcycle gangs poking out of his vest pocket) said a few of his clients are former members of the Hell’s Angels.

“After helping people in an amateur fashion, I wanted to do it professionally,” said Herbst, who returned to school for a master’s degree to gain employment as a counselor.
“I like working with adults and I feel it’s [my]mission to support people in recovery from drugs, alcohol, and nicotine.”

Directly across the hall in the Costantino Room, Donna Rapaccioli, PhD, dean of the Gabelli School of Business, directed the alumni’s attention to 140 W. 62nd St., the former home of the law school. The building, currently under renovation, will be the future location of the business school, scheduled for occupancy in 2016.

The unification of the two schools of business under the Gabelli name has already helped graduates leverage their degrees, Rapaccioli said. She noted that there are now 35,000 business alumni who can further help each other, as well as current students, foster their careers.

“We really need your help with expanding our ability to use New York as our campus,” she said.

Susan Lucci, MC ’68, best known for playing the vixen Erica Kane on All My Children—and for receiving a record 19 Daytime Emmy nominations before finally winning the award for best actress in 1999—will soon stand at another awards podium.

On June 6 at Fordham, the Marymount College Alumnae Association will recognize Lucci with its Alumna of Achievement Award.

Lucci, in turn, is grateful for the lasting impact of her Marymount education, which she says, “I use every day in my work.”

“We were learning from people who were actually working in the business. It was a great department and a great opportunity.”

She let the whole world know her gratitude for her acting teachers during a heartfelt speech at the 1999 Daytime Emmy Awards. Lucci named several mentors “who were so good at teaching and helped me to grow,” including Ron Weyand. The Obie Award-winning actor, who died in 2003, taught at Marymount for 40 years.

“He was an amazing teacher. Tough love. Tough love. And that was good,” Lucci says. In her bestselling memoir, All My Life (HarperCollins, 2011), she wrote: “Mr. Weyand wasn’t just a great teacher—he was also sensitive to us as people.” He spoke of the challenges of building an acting career and advised the lucky ones who made it, ‘[D]on’t allow yourself to become so … removed from humanity that you can no longer experience and express humanity.’

His advice stuck with Lucci, who landed the role of the dynamic Erica Kane less than two years after graduating from Marymount.

“She was a very modern heroine,” Lucci says of her signature character. “She was the troublemaker, but there was so much humanity that I saw on the pages that [All My Children producer] Agnes Nixon wrote that, to me, it was a part that I could really sink my teeth into.”

All My Children went off the air in 2011, but in the long-running show’s final year, another member of the Fordham family joined the cast. Christina Bennett Lind, FCLC ’05, assumed the role of Erica Kane’s daughter, Bianca Montgomery, when actress Eden Riegel left after 10 years in the part.

“She had a very difficult thing to do, to step into that role,” Lucci says of Lind, “and she did it beautifully.”

Lucci soon found another close cast and crew when she joined Devious Maids in 2013.

“It’s a love fest, just like it was with All My Children,” she says of the Lifetime series.

Lucci plays the wealthy, naive Genevieve Delatour—a kind of “cousin of Erica Kane” is how the show’s creator, Marc Cherry, described the character to Lucci.

The show’s third season premieres several days before Lucci comes to Jubilee for the Marymount reunion, where she will be honored alongside two of her fellow alumnae. Mary Donohue, MC ’79, will receive the Gloria Gaines Memorial Award, and Kay Delaney Bring, MC ’60, will receive the Golden Dome Award.

The ceremony will take place in Butler Commons, the space on Fordham’s campus that honors Mother Marie Joseph Butler, RSHM, who founded the all-women’s Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York, in 1907. Since the college closed in 2007, Marymount alumnae and friends have gathered regularly at events and reunions hosted by Fordham.

Lucci dedicated a chapter of her memoir to her time at Marymount, calling it a “wonderful life experience” of meeting lifelong friends from all over the world and learning from accomplished teachers.

“Study with the best,” Lucci writes, recalling her father’s advice, “and it was reiterated during my studies at Marymount.”

– Rachel Buttner

“Mark Twain said that man’s noblest delight in life is discovery, to know that you are walking where none others have walked,” said Chu, president of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and the T.L.L. Temple Chair of Science at the University of Houston. “What better joy can there be for a scientist to discover a new theory, a new phenomenon or new material? It is discovery that changes the world.”

Chu spoke before an audience of 200 attendees on March 28 at Communitas ’08, the alumni reunion weekend of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS). He said that Fordham was his first exposure to America during a time when many young people in China wanted to prove that their nation was capable of great achievements, on par with western nations. “I wanted to be a scientist, but I was timid,” Chu recalled. “At Fordham, I could work at my own pace, and that developed my confidence.”

The award-winning physicist received the National Medal of Science, the top honor given to a U.S. scientist, for his work in achieving stable superconductivity at a temperature above 90 degrees Kelvin. Superconductors enable electricity to move with little or no resistance through certain materials at extremely low temperatures, requiring very little power to maintain flow.

Chu serves as executive director of the Texas Center for Superconductivity. He credited his Fordham professors, particularly Joseph Mulligan, Ph.D., and Joseph Budnick, Ph.D., with leading him into solid-state physics when he was leaning toward a different branch.

After presenting a slide show on his research, Chu shared his dream for a future where high temperature superconductors (HTS) power the world’s energy and transportation sources cleanly and efficiently. HTS, he said, can play a critical role in making the world’s environment cleaner now that emerging economic giant China is entering its “rich and dirty” phase of industrialization.

“We have to change our living habits now,” he said. “Can you imagine if every person in China had a car? The world would be ruined.”

Chu said he also hopes to move HKUST toward even greater prominence as a research institute, and to help develop a “room temperature” superconductor that would be more efficient than present materials, as it would require less energy for cooling.

“I tell students that if you can find that, you can book your ticket to Stockholm,” he said, referring to the city Swedish city where the Nobel Prize is given.

Earlier that day, Chu joined a panel discussion on “Emerging Science and Science Emergence in the 21st Century,” that included Praveen Chaudhari, Sc.D., former director of Brookhaven Laboratory; Ellis Rubenstein, Ph.D., president of the New York Academy of Sciences; and Camille Minichino, Ph.D., (GSAS ’65 & ’68) a retired physicist from the Laurence Livermore National Laboratory. The discussion, moderated by Frank Hsu, Ph.D., Clavius Professor of Science at Fordham, focused on how each rose to the tops of their respective fields.