In the Ignatian Public Speaking workshop led by Robert Parmach, Ph.D., director of Ignatian mission and ministry, students learned about the finer points of “SPATE”—stance, projection, articulation, tone, and eye contact.

“We want to help graduate students develop skill sets that link to their Jesuit education,” said Parmach. In his introductory remarks, he invoked a lesson from St. Ignatius, founder of the Society of Jesus, reminding students that “developing the interior life … animates our spirit and connects us deeper to God and others.”

“Think about it,” he said. “The way you hold yourself in front of an audience demonstrates the kind of person you are and your character … The techniques we teach you provide ways to use your body and voice to motivate, lead, and transform others. It joins the mind, body, and soul to empower others and yourself along the way.”

In the workshop, the students practiced speaking in front of each other. Each was handed a written prompt, then given three minutes to digest it and a minute to summarize it for the group.

Lisa Cummings, a student at the Graduate School of Education currently teaching at the Orchard Collegiate Academy, said she felt “uplifted” by the workshop.

“I’ve been able to gather some useful tips, and it’s motivated me to try to create a workshop for my own students,” she said.

Asked to identify the one area of SPATE she felt she needed the most improvement, Cummings picked articulation. She recalled a mistake she made as an undergraduate at SUNY Morrisville.

“I had the opportunity to speak at my graduation, and I turned that opportunity down because of my fear of not being able to articulate myself well enough,” she said.

“That was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me, and having passed up that opportunity, I really have made it a point to push myself to overcome that fear.”

Jay Vaghani, a Gabelli School of Business graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in quantitative finance, likewise found the workshop pushed him beyond his comfort zone. For his speech, he was given a prompt describing how the artist Sting reacted to a negative review of his music.

Vaghani, a native of Surat, Gujarat, India, who moved to the United States with the goal of transitioning from engineering to finance, has been hesitant to speak in public since he was a child.

He found it useful to focus on his tone and articulation. Although he was unfamiliar with Sting before reading the prompt, he said the short time he was given to prepare was paradoxically helpful because it forced him to focus on the content he’d be delivering and not the anxiety he felt.

“It was a great experience,” he said. “I look forward to doing another one.”

By hosting events with partner organizations and adding opportunities to reflect and connect, the Office of Mission Integration and Ministry is working to help students, faculty, and staff find community on and off campus. The office’s expanding programs draw people who come from many faith backgrounds as well as those who come to their values from outside of religious faith.

“We do these events not only to amplify the mission but to also get different people across the University together—faculty, staff, students, alumni. We hope that it’s a very intergenerational thing,” said Robert Parmach, director of Ignatian mission and ministry at Fordham.

All of these programs are rooted in a tradition of balancing reflection and action developed by St. Ignatius Loyola, the 16th-century founder of the Society of Jesus, Parmach said. For example, on Nov. 16, about a dozen students and a few staff members gathered for a clothing sorting activity held at Xavier Mission, a Manhattan organization that provides services for those in need across New York City.

“We partnered with Xavier because there’s a real need for clothing for infants and toddlers, refugees, immigrants, and those who are experiencing homelessness right now,” Parmach said.

For Devany Kurtti, a sophomore at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, working with Xavier Mission was a chance to help members of the New York City community.

“It’s getting colder and so many people don’t have access to shelters,” Kurtti said. “I’ve always watched my parents and church help serve others. I know if I was having difficulties and didn’t have the resources I do, I would want someone to help.”

The event brought together a wide range of community members, including undergraduate and graduate students, and even alumni like Roxanne De La Torre, FCRH ’09, GRE ’11, who is the director of outreach at Xavier Mission.

More Creative and Expansive Offerings

Parmach said that Fordham has also expanded its retreat options to help more members of the community take time for reflection, especially if they can’t go away for a more “traditional” multi-day retreat.

“We’re having one-hour retreats for busy people, and we’re getting really good turnouts there,” he said.

One recent retreat was a “paint and reflect,” where more than 30 students came to have pizza, talk, and create paintings. In addition, Parmach noted that they’re also doing “10-second reflections” around campus to connect with students quickly and increase the office’s visibility.

“The student that’s running to class, they come, they have a quick cup of coffee or hot chocolate or candy. They have a reflection prompt that they contribute to [by writing] on a poster,” he said. “And we’ve [reached] hundreds of students at these things.”

Erin Hoffman, director of campus ministry for Lincoln Center, said that the office is also planning to add to its interfaith programming, which includes an annual interfaith prayer ceremony and picnic, and Faith Fest, a new event last year. 

“Fordham’s a place where faith matters, and we want students of all backgrounds to have opportunities to grow in their faith and form community with others while they’re here,” she said.

Additional reporting by Franco Giacomarra.

In his new role as the inaugural director of Ignatian mission initiatives in the office of the vice president for mission integration and ministry, Parmach’s job is to help others across the University amplify the core principles of Jesuit education in their work.

“My good friend told me, ‘Rob, looking back on it, you always did a lot of, (what she would call) ‘Ignatian side hustles,’” he said with a smile. “All of those side hustles have now joined together to form your new main hustle.”

Parmach, who holds two graduate degrees from Fordham, also added that this reminded him of “what St. Ignatius poignantly shared—‘that which makes you feel the most alive in what you do is where God is.’”

“I’m trying to take theory, mission, and concepts and make [Ignatian spirituality] alive,” said Parmach, who started in his new role last fall. “One of my students said this and I think it’s quite to the point—‘basically, what we’re trying to do as a university is we’re trying to not just know the mission and talk about it, but feel it.’”

His work has been focused in three main areas: mission extension, which includes collaborating with other departments at Fordham; organizing programs, events, and activities such as Ignatian “Learn and Lunch” discussion series, “Mission in Action” food insecurity sandwich-making sessions for local food pantries, and Ignatian flourishing sessions on spirituality; and development/partnerships with groups and organizations outside the University, such as St. Ignatius School in the Bronx, that work with Fordham on community-engaged learning and youth mentoring.

Head, Heart, and Hands

One of the messages Parmach shares is how we should work every day to “instigate our head, our heart, and our hands.”

“I find that this position is a great encapsulation of that,” he said. “I’m involved with a variety of cool initiatives—[helping those]curious about meaningful ideas to connect to different groups of people, all furthering our shared Ignatian mission.”

As for the heart, he said that in this role he’s helping Fordham with “examining our beliefs and what our ethical structure is at the University, our mission—what we really have faith in and believe in.”

“And then your hands, you get out there and roll up your sleeves with other people putting our beliefs to action and fostering reciprocal learning,” he added.

Translating an Ignatian Mindset

One of the ways he’s trying to do that is by hosting events where participants, ranging from undergraduate students to staff members, from graduate students to alumni can learn about Ignatian values and mission and how to put them into practice. Through a partnership with the Career Center, Parmach has organized programs for students to help them “articulate and translate an Ignatian mindset to an employer.”

“We talk about care of the whole person and these Ignatian, Latin terms, but what does that mean to the secular employer? How does that translate on a cover letter, resume, interview skills?” he said.

Faustino Galante, FCRH ’20, a first-year student at Fordham Law School, has attended some of Parmach’s events. He went to one related to work-life balance that helped him learn about the Jesuit practices of self-reflection, which stuck with him.

“I think it’s really great to engage in reflection and contemplation with both alumni and younger students and law students,” he said. “Especially for undergrad students—it’s awesome to get out of the undergrad bubble,” and engage in “very natural” discussions with alumni, staff, and graduate students.

Parmach has also worked with the graduate and professional schools, partnering on a faculty and staff development series with Veronica Szczygiel, Ph.D., interim director of online learning in the Graduate School of Education, and hosting another series with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He’s also worked closely with the Gabelli School of Business and its Responsible Business Leadership Program. This semester, he ran mission-related workshops over two weekends for more than 200 graduate students as a part of their annual business retreat.

Parmach said that many of the students were really grateful to have been introduced to how our Jesuit educational mission applies to their professional and personal interior lives, lessons that they might not have learned elsewhere.

These workshops dove into the issues of ethics and helped attendees gain a deeper understanding of those they will encounter in their professional lives.

“For graduate business students, they want to make sure that they are in fact ethical, responsible business leaders that make a difference, that know people, that understand the different psychologies that make up their future employees, employers, associates,” he said.

Parmach has also partnered quite closely with the Center for Community Engaged Learning, specifically Vanessa Rotondo, who works as the associate director of campus engagement and senior advisor for Ignatian leadership.

“A third of my role is Ignatian student programming,” she said, noting that with Parmach in his new role, “we’re able to really amplify and intensify the kind of work that we’re doing,” she said.

That includes everything from hosting academic conversations on relevant social justice issues that intersect with Ignatian spirituality to public speaking events that help students work on inner struggles, such as fear of speaking to a crowd.

“There are students we work with very closely who are learning these Ignatian ideas with us,” Rotondo said. “And then there are students who might not have any interest in going to an event to hear the didactic story of who St. Ignatius was and how that relates to them.”

To make Ignatian history more appealing to all students, she said, they came up with an idea inspired by the Battle of Pamplona—the infamous battle where St. Ignatius was wounded by a cannonball, inspiring his spiritual journey. They hosted a dodgeball game that attracted more than 120 students.

“It’s things like that, where you’re kind of thinking outside the box and can meet different populations of students where they are, and then kind of infusing the Ignatian identity through that in a way that’s consumable,” she said.

Elevating Diverse Voices

One of the things Parmach is striving to do with the programmatic component is bring diverse and varied voices to the center, particularly those who aren’t often heard from.

“You talk to people who are so committed to this place, but maybe over the years no one has really asked them to speak at the table,” he said. “Maybe their position is not one in which they’re often giving talks, or they’re not teaching in front of a class. So one of my ambitions is to make sure that those people feel like they’re part of the conversation.”

Parmach emphasized the importance of this role in facilitating connections between groups that might not otherwise encounter each other.

“When I’m looking around, when we’re actually doing it and having the event and conversation, there are 25 people that otherwise perhaps wouldn’t know each other,” he said. “There’s a clerical secretary, talking to a law student, who was just talking to a tenured professor, who was speaking to a freshman who just started last week and saw the flier and just wants to meet people.”

An Ignatian Mission Council

Another way he’s facilitating these connections is through a Mission Council, which is a group of about 20 undergraduate and graduate students, staff, faculty, and alumni that meet to discuss ideas for Ignatian programming and events.

Maria Terzulli, an administrator for the Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies, who has participated in the council and many of the other activities, said that she’s grateful for Parmach’s work.

“Rob has taken this new role in bringing the Fordham community together in many different ways—in intellectual ways, in wellness, in helping reach out to the community in tangible ways, gathering people young and old,” she said.

“From my point of view, you follow in Ignatius’s footsteps in doing deeds and works, more than preaching about them.”

Terzulli said that Parmach has done that, serving as an inspiration for her personally by helping her and others put Jesuit values into action.

“He is building community, he is making people aware that there are ways to follow the Ignatian tradition and the mission.”

Continuing Connections

Parmach said students seem to want to participate in events and activities to make connections, more so than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“A thing that struck me is the real deep desire students have to connect to one another,” he said. “I think in the last couple of years because of COVID and the Zoom world, we’ve been doing a lot of reflection by ourselves but don’t have the opportunity to live that out with other people.”

Parmach hopes to continue to build on this desire to connect with more programs, partnerships, and activities next semester. He wants to expand the Ignatian mission workshops he’s offered to a variety of departments including, academic records, financial services, and admission. He also said he wants to continue to grow his partnership with Carol Gibney, L.M.S.W. in campus ministry, working with graduate students on thier spiritual-life development.

Parmach said he hopes his work is “not seen as an outside force, but rather something that’s central to the way teachers operate in and out of the classroom, the way guidance counselors and mentors work with graduate programs, and how we learn from and treat one another in mission as members of Fordham—so that over time the mission simply and naturally becomes who we are and how we operate as the Jesuit University of New York, nourishing one soul at a time with a shared sense of gratitude and grit.”

“When I heard the news [that I’d made the list], I couldn’t believe it,” said D’Amato, whose parents were on hand to see her receive the award. “I was so happy.”

D’Amato was at the top of her class in high school and expected to do extremely well in college. However, an intensive Italian class during her freshman year proved a challenge. D’Amato, who is deaf in one ear, said she was “struggling to stay afloat in all the semester’s classes.”

“I didn’t realize how difficult learning a new language would be,” she said, “I couldn’t hear what was being said, and I struggled to keep up.”

The exhaustion from exerting herself in Italian affected her other classes, said D’Amato. At the end of her first semester, her GPA was nothing like it was in high school. Her parents threatened to stop paying tuition if she continued to “slide by.”

But after a conversation with Robert Parmach, Ph.D., assistant dean for freshmen, her perspective on college changed dramatically.

“He told me not to treat school as a job, but to treat it as something I wanted to do,” said D’Amato. “He wanted me to be engaged in my own education. It gave me a new mindset and helped me choose my major in philosophy. I learned to love what I did.”

D’Amato continued to work hard throughout the next three years. When she found out that she had made the Dean’s List, D’Amato said words couldn’t describe how motivating it was to see her own success. Now that she is applying to law schools, she said it is the boost she needed to keep working hard on her applications.

“I think my struggles in my freshman year are what made me love Fordham so much,” she said. “I learned how to work hard in difficult circumstances. I’m better off now than I would be if I hadn’t struggled.”

D’Amato and 255 of her Rose Hill senior classmates received their honors at a ceremony in the University Church during Family Weekend. Sophomores and juniors also received their awards at separate venues, and similar awards were presented to students at the Lincoln Center campus. Students who earned GPAs of 3.6 or above were given the honor.

“These students are here because they use their intellectual gifts wisely,” said Parmach, presider of the seniors’ ceremony. “This honor reflects the love, guidance, and support of friends and family, of everyone gathered here today.”

Before the ceremonies, Dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill Maura Mast, Ph.D., took the opportunity to tell the honors recipients of their responsibility to use their intelligence for the greater good.

“When I look out across the church at all of you, I feel hope for the world,” she said. “We live in a difficult time, but you have been educated to bring hope and light to the world. I look forward to seeing you do so.”

The Dean’s List ceremonies were only one of the many festivities that comprised Fordham’s Family Weekend celebration, celebrated on both campuses.

–Mary Awad

Visit our Facebook slideshow of Family Weekend.