The new chair is in addition to four others in the sciences that she and the estate of her late husband, Steve Bepler, FCRH ’64, funded in 2017. To be titled the Kim B. and Stephen E. Bepler Chair in the Natural and Applied Sciences, the new position is expected to advance the University’s vision for excellence in science education by fueling new interdisciplinary research into today’s most pressing scientific challenges.

“I want to thank Kim Bepler on behalf of the generations of Fordham students who will benefit from her extraordinary generosity,” said Tania Tetlow, president of Fordham. “Kim understands the University’s needs as well as anyone, and has long been committed to high-impact philanthropy that furthers academic excellence and our Jesuit, Catholic mission. We are deeply grateful for her gift, and for her ongoing engagement with Fordham.”

The gift comes as Fordham is seeking to expand its STEM programs in response to students’ growing interest in the sciences. It will advance the University’s $350 million fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, and its goal of supporting student-faculty research, cross-disciplinary problem solving, and other facets of academic excellence.

The new Bepler chair will enable the University to recruit an intellectual leader and well-established scholar and teacher and provide this person with robust research support, said Dennis Jacobs, Ph.D., provost of the University and senior vice president for academic affairs. The right chair holder could help attract other talent to the University while providing leadership on important scientific questions that bring multiple fields together, he said.

“Many of the most promising scientific discoveries of our day emerge in the interstitial spaces between disciplines—between biology and physics or between chemistry and math or computer science. Addressing the most complex and consequential problems facing society really requires an interdisciplinary approach,” he said, giving the examples of mitigating climate change, combatting infectious diseases, and reducing the devastating impact of neurological disorders.

For instance, he said, “when we initially fill the endowed chair, our greatest priority may be to recruit somebody who works on next-generation renewable sources of energy. Well into the future, Fordham may choose to recruit a Bepler chair who applies artificial intelligence to identify novel therapeutics or addresses other important issues and problems.”

Philanthropic Impact

The Beplers were already among the University’s most generous donors at the time of Steve Bepler’s untimely passing in 2016. They funded endowed chairs in theology and poetics and gave in support of the Fordham Founder’s Undergraduate Scholarship, the restoration of the University Church, a new organ for the church, deans’ discretionary funds, and many other areas.

Kim Bepler also recently made a major gift in support of the Joseph M. McShane, S.J. Campus Center project, another critical piece of the Cura Personalis campaign, and created the Fordham Ukraine Crisis Student Support Fund to help the University’s Ukrainian and Russian students facing financial peril because of the Russian invasion.

“With this bold and generous investment, Kim helps set the pace for leadership support,” said Roger A. Milici, Jr., vice president for development and University relations at Fordham. “Our Trustees have strongly supported all of Fordham’s recent fundraising campaigns: their gifts have accounted for 35% or more of each effort. Fordham’s philanthropic culture is dynamic, and we are committed to helping our mission partners use their wealth and generosity to improve the human condition.”

The four other Bepler chairs in the sciences—established as part of a $10.5 million gift—include a chair in biology, held by Silvia Finnemann, Ph.D., who studies the neurobiology of the human retina, and one in chemistry, held by Joshua Schrier, Ph.D., who is pursuing possibilities for automated scientific research.

The University is seeking to fill the other two chairs—one previously held by the mathematician Hans-Joachim Hein, Ph.D., and one that will be directed towards biophysics, Jacobs said.

The gifts to establish these four chairs, as well as the new chair, reflect Steve Bepler’s desire to give back to the University by investing in world-class science programs that he felt any world-class university needs, Kim Bepler said.

“Steve deeply loved Fordham, and it’s a privilege to be able to help realize his vision for the University and cement his legacy like this,” she said. “I’m honored to be counted among those who are supporting our extraordinary science faculty, with their dedication that so clearly shows the Jesuit principle of magis at work, and I’m excited to see how this professorship will help our science programs grow in new directions.”

Building Connections

Schrier said he decided to come to Fordham as a Bepler chair because of the University’s Jesuit identity and because the position offered greater freedom to not only pursue research but also involve undergraduate students in it.

The endowed chair creates a few different benefits, he said—it expands the faculty and creates capacity for new types of classes that might not be offered otherwise. And by allowing for exploratory, proof-of-concept projects, “it really kind of serves as seed money for doing creative and exciting things and then taking those initial results and showing them to federal funders,” he said.

“There’s just tremendous value for interdisciplinary work” in the applied sciences, said Schrier, whose own research applies computer simulations and machine learning to the search for applications for perovskites, a crystalline mineral.

“I hope that the holder of this position will be able to build connections and ties with different departments here at Fordham and show students how all of this type of work is connected,” he said. “I know I have a lot of fun talking to colleagues in math, talking to and working with colleagues in computer science and physics. I think interdisciplinary [work]is great.”

He spoke of a number of such projects, including his work with chemistry and computer science professors to develop teaching labs that expose chemistry students to data science, a model they published last year in the Journal of Chemical Education.

“I’m really excited about [the new Bepler chair], and I look forward to meeting the holder of the chair,” Schrier said, “because it’s always great to add to and build our intellectual community here at Fordham.”

The Kim and Steve Bepler chairs have contributed to an increase of more than threefold in the number of endowed chairs at Fordham over the past two decades. The new chair in the natural and applied sciences will bring that number to 73.

Beginning with the fall 2020 application cycle, Fordham will meet up to the full cost of tuition for Cristo Rey Network students admitted to the University through either the traditional full-time admission process or the Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP-NY State).

“We’ve been working as partners with Cristo Rey for many, many years. This is an opportunity for us to take that commitment to a new level and help make a private education more affordable and possible for some of those students,” said Patricia Peek, Ph.D., dean of undergraduate admission at Fordham. 

The Cristo Rey Network is a group of 37 Catholic high schools across the U.S. that primarily serves students from low-income families. What makes the network unusual is its four-year corporate work-study program, featured on 60 Minutes in 2004. Students balance their classes with entry-level jobs at local businesses. They gain work experience and earn money that goes directly to the school to cover part of their tuition. 

Extending A Decade-Long Relationship 

For more than a decade, Fordham has shared strong ties with the network’s schools, many of which are Jesuit-affiliated. Cristo Rey students have read their poetry at Fordham’s Poets Out Loud series. Fordham Founders Stephen E. Bepler, FCRH ’64, and John Ryan Heller served as trustees at Cristo Rey schools in East Harlem and Chicago, respectively. And the founding president of Cristo Rey New York High School, Joseph P. Parkes, S.J., JES ’68, served as a Fordham trustee and received an honorary degree from the University in 2019. 

The University is especially close to Cristo Rey New York High School. Located in East Harlem, the school has sent more students to Fordham than any other school in the Cristo Rey network. Since the school graduated its first class in 2008, at least one student has come to Fordham each year, for a total of 69 enrollees in the last 11 years, said Peek.

“Every year, we always get a ton of students saying, ‘We’re applying to Fordham. We want to really get in, and what can we do to get there?’” said Martha V. Fermín, director of college guidance at Cristo Rey New York High School and a 2011 graduate of the school. “I really hope that this [partnership]  continues to flourish in many ways, and we can continue to collaborate in any way possible.”

The East Harlem school was profiled by The New York Times in 2007. A year later, the second Cristo Rey school in New York—Cristo Rey Brooklyn High School, formerly known as Lourdes Academy High School—opened. Fordham has had nine enrolled students from the Brooklyn school.

The University’s new financial pledge can also make a difference for Cristo Rey students outside of New York who aren’t candidates for the Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP-NY State), which provides eligible students with educational support services and additional financial assistance. 

“By expanding our funding opportunity, we’re hoping this will help make a Fordham education possible for Cristo Rey students at a distance,” Peek said. 

‘It Touches Me Deeply’

News of the agreement caught the attention of Jordi Giler: a Cristo Rey alumnus, junior at Fordham College at Rose Hill, and HEOP student. His younger sister is currently a senior at Cristo Rey New York High School who recently applied to Fordham, he said. 

“[The new pledge] eliminates one of the greatest burdens that a kid has, going into the college process, which is money,” said Giler, a political science major from the Bronx who wants to work in immigration policy reform. “A lot of kids from Cristo Rey—me and my sister included—we don’t come from rich homes. We come from traditionally lower-class or middle-class homes, where one of the main concerns about going to college is, are they giving me enough money? Do we have to take out loans?” 

For Emely Mojica—a Cristo Rey alumna, sophomore at Fordham College at Rose Hill, and HEOP student—the new pledge is a powerful one. 

“It touches me deeply. I’m the eldest of five children, and I’m the first in my family to go to college. I’m able to be at Fordham because I’m here on three scholarships,” said Mojica, an English major from the Dominican Republic who wants to work in corporate communications. “It’s going to be so much more helpful and accessible to receive higher education, especially for Cristo Rey students who I know deserve it and work so hard.” 

To apply to this new program, Cristo Rey students should apply to Fordham with the Common Application and complete the University’s standard financial aid process. 

Thanks to the generosity of two dedicated donors, Fordham has just significantly strengthened its commitment to science education.

On Sept. 26, the University installed three accomplished scholars as new faculty chairs in the STEM fields: Silvia C. Finnemann, Ph.D., a Fordham biology professor whose research focuses on eye-cell function; Hans-Joachim Hein, Ph.D., a Fordham math professor who has earned international recognition for his geometry research, and Joshua A. Schrier, Ph.D., a chemistry professor and researcher who recently joined Fordham’s faculty from Haverford College. The three assumed the Kim B. and Stephen E. Bepler Chairs in Biology, Mathematics, and Chemistry, respectively.

“This evening’s ceremony and installation of the new Bepler STEM faculty chairs redefines what it means to study the sciences at Fordham,” said Frederick J. Wertz, Ph.D., interim dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center.

The endowed professorships not only bolster Fordham’s commitment to the STEM fields—they also reshape the legacy of the donors who made them possible: the late Steve Bepler, FCRH ’64, and Kim Bepler.

“Kim and Steve’s dedication to advancing the sciences has and will continue to foster countless opportunities for future generations of talented Fordham students eager to transform the world in which we live,” said Wertz.

Maura Mast, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, said the couple were among “the most remarkably generous supporters the University has ever known.”

The chairs were funded using part of a $10.5 million gift made by Steve’s estate and Kim in July 2017. The gift also funded a chair in physics, which has yet to be filled.

A Salute to Kim and Steve Bepler

Fifty-four years ago, Steve Bepler graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill. He rose to become senior vice president of Capital Research Global Investors, received an honorary doctorate from Fordham, and served as a University trustee. His widow, Kim, serves as a Fordham honorary trustee fellow. 

“Kim Bepler has devoted much of her time to philanthropy since retiring in 2002 as director of business development at Cahners Travel Group,” said Mast. “The Beplers’ legacy and incredible impact on our students’ lives and education continues to thrive and live on through Kim.”

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, said Kim shared Steve’s enthusiasm and at times, he said, “I think she was the person who sparked his enthusiasm.” 

Together, the couple made many significant gifts that will benefit Fordham students for years to come. They established two other endowed chairs—one in theology, the other in poetics; created scholarships; helped restore the University Church; and supported several programs across the University. Next month marks two years since Steve’s untimely passing in 2016.

“I often teased Steve when he was alive that he was one of the few people who said a prayer for generosity, and God heard his prayer,” said Father McShane, to a round of laughter.

Kim said her husband was generous, but he shied away from the spotlight.

“He would have frankly taken great exception to naming the STEM chairs after him. So, Father, when you get to heaven, you have some explaining to do,” she said. The crowd chuckled.

Father McShane recounted a memory of Steve wandering through the Rose Hill bookstore. The clerk, wondering if he was the father of a student, asked if he needed help. Steve declined, but when he continued to meander, the clerk returned. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Steve, with his disarming honesty, said, ‘Look, there are so many books I didn’t read when I was in college, I’m trying to make up for it now,’” Father McShane recalled. “He was not only a person who lived to be generous. He lived to learn.”

“May your lives, personal and professional, be marked by similar passions: passion for family, passion for education and the openness to discoveries every day,” Father McShane said, looking directly at the three honorees. “Live to be generous—with your talents, with your wisdom, with your love of learning.”

The Three Faculty Chairs

From eye health to quantum gravity to energy technology, the work of the new Bepler chairs spans several scientific disciplines.

Finnemann’s research has shed light on what causes blindness and how it can be prevented. Specifically, it focuses on the cell biology and diseases of the eye, particularly age-related macular degeneration—the most common cause of adult blindness in the United States. Her work has led to more than 50 publications in widely acclaimed international journals. At Fordham, she has helped the biology department obtain critical grant support from the National Institutes of Health, and she received the 2013 Fordham Award for Excellence in Teaching. She serves on the editorial board of Nature’s Scientific Reports and consults for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/NIH.

Hein’s research on quantum theories of gravity was published in the most selective journal in mathematics. He is one of the world’s leading experts on gravitational instantons—a key concept in quantum theories of gravity—and has earned international recognition for his research in differential geometry. Hein has held appointments at Imperial College London, the University of Nantes, the University of Maryland, and as of 2016, Fordham.

Schrier’s expertise is in the computational design of new materials in information and energy technology. He has authored 44 peer-reviewed papers and secured more than $8.6 million in external funding. Schrier was a Fulbright scholar at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin and a Luis W. Alvarez postdoctoral fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. This is his first year at Fordham.

After accepting their engraved medals, the three new chairs explained their research under the 47-foot-high sloped ceiling and stained-glass window of Tognino Hall. They used layman’s lingo and pictures: a purple cross-section of a human eye, a crumpled piece of graph paper that illustrated warped space, the iconic black-and-white shot of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue, and robots with googly eyes.

Salma Youssef, FCRH ’20, the student speaker at the event, said that the new professorships enhanced math and science education at Fordham.

“Having access to such innovative, forward-thinking professors is a major reason why the STEM fields at Fordham are thriving and growing,” said Youssef, a George and Mary Jane McCartney Research Fellow. “Seeing faculty supported by Fordham donors like the Beplers is inspiring to all students like me who want to pursue academia and scientific research.”

Over the past 15 years, Fordham’s number of endowed chairs has more than tripled to reach 71, including the new Bepler chairs.

“Steve believed a world-class university should have a world-class science program,” Kim said. “We are on our way.”

Constantino “Tino” Martinez, two-time All-Star first baseman and key contributor to four New York Yankees World Series wins, will deliver the keynote address to the Class of 2014 and receive an honorary doctorate of humane letters at Fordham University’s 169th Commencement, to be held Saturday, May 17, at the Rose Hill campus.

At the ceremony Fordham will award honorary degrees to seven others who have made outstanding contributions in business, law, philanthropy, social service, and the sciences.

Fordham will award honorary doctorates of laws to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Denny Chin, LAW ’78, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Also receiving doctorates of humane letters will be Fordham Trustee Fellow Stephen E. Bepler, FCRH ’64, a longtime supporter of the University who recently retired as senior vice president with Capital Research Global Investors, where he had worked since 1972; Yvonne Cagle, M.D., a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and NASA senior astronaut physician and researcher; Mary Alice Hannan, O.P., former executive director of Part of the Solution, a social service agency in the Bronx; Nemir Kirdar, GBA ’72, the founder, executive chairman and CEO of the global investment group Investcorp; and Reynold Levy, former president of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

Chin will give the keynote address at the Fordham Law School diploma ceremony and Kirdar will give the address at the Graduate School of Business Administration diploma ceremony, both of which will be held Monday, May 19, at the Theater at Madison Square Garden. Cagle will give the keynote address at the diploma ceremony for the Graduate School of Social Service, to be held Thursday, May 22, at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.

Constantino “Tino” Martinez Constantino “Tino” Martinez was a four-time World Series champion with the New York Yankees from 1996 to 2001, the highlight of a distinguished Major League Baseball career. Martinez won the Silver Slugger Award in 1997, played on the gold-medal-winning U.S. baseball team at the Summer Olympics in 1988, and was inducted last year into the National College Baseball Hall of Fame. Since his retirement in 2005 he has been a special adviser and spring-training assistant for the Yankees, a hitting coach for the Miami Marlins, a sports broadcaster, and a volunteer assistant coach at the college level. In June, he will be honored with a plaque in Monument Park highlighting his career as a New York Yankee. Among the members of the Class of 2014 Martinez will be addressing is his daughter, Olivia, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill.
Martinez earned his own bachelor’s degree in 2011, from the University of Tampa, completing the educational journey he began in 1985, when he was drafted by the Boston Red Sox but chose to attend the university instead.

Stephen E. Bepler and his wife, Kim B. Bepler, are among the most generous supporters of Fordham in its history. They have created scholarships, supported science education and the Fordham Fund, and contributed to the restoration of the University Church and installation of the new Maior Dei Gloria church organ. In addition, their gifts established the Karl Rahner, S.J., Memorial Chair in Theology and the John D. Boyd, S.J., Chair in Poetic Imagination. In 2007, they were honored with the Fordham Founder’s Award, given to those whose lives reflect the highest aspirations of the University’s defining traditions.
Bepler has also served as a trustee at Cristo Rey New York High School, the Forman School in Litchfield, Conn., and other organizations and educational institutions.

Yvonne Cagle, M.D., has made many important contributions to research in the sciences, technology, and human health. Today she serves at NASA’s Ames Research Center as lead astronaut science liaison and strategic relationships manager for Google and other industry collaborations in Silicon Valley. According to NASA, she has performed “groundbreaking work” by “galvanizing NASA’s lead in global mapping, sustainable energies, green initiatives, and disaster preparedness.” She has also begun a partnership with Fordham—the Interdisciplinary Collaborative on Health, Environment, and Human Performance—to promote research involving NASA, Fordham’s faculty and students, and the University’s partner institutions.

Denny Chin has won numerous awards for judicial excellence and presided over many high-profile cases as a federal judge. Among them were the case of Bernard L. Madoff, to whom Chin gave a 150-year sentence, as well as cases involving the Million Youth March, the United Nations’ Oil-for-Food Program, and Google’s mass digitization of copyrighted books. He was a prosecutor, and later, a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York before President Barack Obama chose him for his current appellate post in 2009.
Chin is an advisory board member for Fordham’s Center on Law and Information Policy, and has been an adjunct professor in Fordham Law School’s Legal Writing Program for more than a quarter century.

Mary Alice Hannan, O.P., greatly expanded the services at Part of the Solution in the Bronx while working there from 1996 to 2011, when she retired as executive director. Under Sister Hannan’s leadership, Part of the Solution was transformed from a soup kitchen into an agency providing freshly prepared meals as well as legal counseling and other services. Today it is one of the largest emergency food programs in New York City and a place that affords the homeless a greater sense of dignity. Sister Hannan also founded Desda’s Grate, a shelter in New Rochelle, New York, for homeless women and their children.

Nemir Kirdar has earned a reputation as a brilliant and principled executive for his leadership of Investcorp, a firm that he founded in 1982 to link surplus funds in the Arabian Gulf and nontraditional investment opportunities in the United States and Western Europe. He is the recipient of numerous honorary degrees, a speaker at international forums, and the author of three books, including one focused on the restoration of his native Iraq. Kirdar is a member of the Council for Arab and International Relations, among his many affiliations.

Reynold Levy played a pivotal role in the transformation of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts during his 11 years as its president—not only leading the capital campaign in support of its $1.2 billion redevelopment, but also overseeing the revitalization of its programming, the expansion of its campus, and many other initiatives. He has also served as president of the International Rescue Committee, executive director of the 92nd Street Y, and staff director of the task force on the New York City Fiscal Crisis. He is a widely respected expert on philanthropy, fundraising, and management.

Sonia Sotomayor, the third woman and first Hispanic to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, grew up in the housing projects of the Bronx and attended Princeton University and Yale Law School. While serving as a prosecutor under former New York County district attorney Robert Morgenthau, she earned a reputation as being fair, ethical, and empathetic, and also willing to fight for the right conclusion in each case. She worked as a private litigator, a trial and appellate judge in the federal court system, and a law professor before President Barack Obama nominated her to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2009.