Vidal, a native of Caracas, Venezuela, who is majoring in economics and political science, first joined a Model U.N. club when he was just 11, and it’s been a part of his life ever since.

“You really find a community of very knowledgeable, nice, and warm people striving to find solutions in this world,” he said of the organization, which has chapters in middle schools, high schools, and colleges.

“You have people [in the world]who like to criticize, but you also have the problem-solving kind of people. We’re trying to be those kinds of people, actively participating in solving issues like climate change, human rights violations, wars or conflicts, things like that.”

Last month, the Model U.N. team at Rose Hill which Vidal is a member of scored a big victory, winning the equivalent of a third-place prize at HNMUN, the annual competition at Harvard University that is the field’s most prestigious.

Next week, eight members of the club, which first formed in 2015, will head to Paris, where they will compete in WorldMun, the World Model United Nations. They will be part of a mock delegation at that conference, “representing” the nation of Togo. This is the first year that the club has been able to attend a full slate of four conferences per semester, after the Covid-19 pandemic restricted travel.

Lara Petrunis, a sophomore from East Brunswick, New Jersey, who is majoring in political science and is also part of the club, said she joined Model U.N. in high school as a way to expand her horizons.

“I don’t know if a lot of other high schools were like this, but they were  focused a lot on American history where I was, and I wondered, ‘Where’s the other history?’ I wanted to learn more about the rest of the world and not just have an American-focused perspective,” she said.

At Model U.N., Petrunis has had to learn about issues such as the economy of Singapore, on whose behalf she once advocated at an economic and social commission for Asia and the Pacific. At another event at Boston University, she attended a committee representing the African National Assembly and made a case for how to reduce the national debt of Djibouti.

“It’s great to meet people from other schools because there are people from all around the world,” she said.

“I really like debating these various issues with people, gaining new ideas and perspectives, and coming up with solutions.”

The team’s Honorable Mention award—which is the equivalent of third place—in February was for the performance of Alex Yankovsky, a junior, and Jimena Perez, a sophomore, who represented Canada on a mock NATO committee.

Diplomacy, research, and rhetoric are key to success, said the group’s advisor, Melissa Labonte, Ph.D., an associate professor of political science.

“It’s all about how you work with others. It’s about the negotiations that you engage in, and it’s about the tone that you set,” she said.

“Just to go back to Ignatian principles. It’s all about being men and women for others and cura personalis. This is a great example of our students going out there and engaging in a realm where those Jesuit principles can really be an added advantage for them.”

Millions of Americans are now living with HIV with the aid of a multitude of antiretroviral drugs. Fordham student Elizabeth Breen is one of many researchers working to make sure they get the neurological attention they need.

This fall, the Fordham College at Lincoln Center senior learned that the paper “Medical Outcomes Study HIV Health Survey (MOS-HIV) Subscales and Neurocognition Among Latinx People with HIV” has been accepted for presentation at the International Neuropsychological Society’s annual meeting, which takes place in February virtually.

The paper details the results of an analysis that Breen and nine others conducted of surveys on medical outcomes that 105 people with HIV took in 2014.

The group was 74% Latinx and had an average age of 46. The goal was to get a better understanding of what aspects of their mental health had the greatest effect on their neurological health. As part of the survey, they were asked to perform tasks such as listening to a list of words and then repeating them back to an interviewer or thinking of as many words as they could that started with the letter T in 60 seconds.

“Everyone that we work with does well in some areas and struggles in others. That’s just how our brains work. But overall, once we collect that data, we get a pretty good estimate of how good people’s psychological capabilities are at the time of testing,” she said.

“We really haven’t had the opportunity to investigate how a chronic condition like HIV could affect people as they age. Maybe it’s not even the HIV. Maybe it’s the medication they’re taking.”

Findings

The survey found that the Latinx participants had better physical health than the non-Latinx white participants, and there was a direct correlation between their neurocognitive abilities and their mental health. More specifically, when mental health was broken down into different categories, the categories of energy and social functioning were found to correlate the most with healthy neurocognition.

“These are the specific areas in which if you’re doing really well in, then you’re probably going to be doing better in your neurocognition as well,” she said.

Knowing that these areas are important to this demographic is important because like Black patients, the Latinx population has historically received treatment inferior to their non-Latinx white peers. Findings such as these can help researchers better tailor future treatments that are conscious of those differences.

“Brain health specifically has huge disparities in the rate of diagnosis, so it’s an important factor to be aware of when you have dementia or cognitive decline among these culturally diverse populations,” she said.

The research is being conducted under the supervision of Monica Rivera-Mindt, Ph.D., professor of psychology.

Although the pandemic interrupted the study and halted the collection of in-person survey data, Breen, who is majoring in neuroscience and theology and is on track to earn a master’s in ethics, has been able to return to research.

Under Rivera-Mindt’s supervision, researchers such as Breen are collecting similar data connected to neurological health from a wider set of participants. Black, white, and Latinx participants are being interviewed, as are patients both with and without HIV. Breen conducts interviews over the phone; for in-person aspects of the survey, participants visit Mount Sinai Hospital. It’s that personal interaction that drew Breen to the research.

“I’m a huge proponent of equitable health care in general and given the disparities that we’re seeing in the recent diagnoses among people of color for Alzheimer’s and other dementias, it’s just starting,” she said, adding that her work in this area has been very rewarding.

“To be able to get involved in clinical neuropsychology research, and to be able to meet new people and build these relationships has been so fulfilling for me.”

“She’d always been strong-minded and determined in everything she did, but I saw a different side of her,” said her mother, Dawn Signorile.

“I saw a determination I’d never seen, almost like nothing was going to stop her, even though she was in pain so much. It was like she knew she had limited time, and she just wanted that to be her legacy, that she finished at a prestigious school.”

A native of Nutley, New Jersey, Signorile transferred to Fordham in the fall from the University of Maryland. She’d undergone intensive treatments in Chicago for fibrolamellar carcinoma, a cancer of the liver that affects teens and young adults with otherwise healthy livers. She was diagnosed with the disease in May 2020.

Signorile recovered and enrolled at the Gabelli School of Business, moving into an off-campus apartment in Belmont in fall 2021. She was only able to stay for a month and a half before the cancer returned, but Dawn said she made the most of her time in the Bronx.

“She loved the area around Arthur Avenue, loved the delis there. She went to the New York Botanical Garden, all while she had stage-four terminal cancer. She was living her life like she didn’t have cancer, and it was very difficult to do that,” she said.

When she first enrolled, Dawn said, she suggested that perhaps her daughter take only two courses, but Signorile insisted on taking a full course load lest she fall behind her peers. Academics were paramount to her; at Nutley High school she was a straight-A student and a member of the National Honors Society, and at the University of Maryland she was on the dean’s list.

At Fordham, Dawn said her daughter was inspired by professors such as Dennis Cappello, a clinical associate professor of law and ethics, and aspired to become a lawyer.

“She knew it was a great institution and she wanted to continue her studies. She didn’t want just any school; she wanted a school that had high standards, and when we visited Fordham, she just loved it.”

Cappello said that even in her short time in his class, she left an impression, and they shared laughs about growing up in Italian families. He learned about her illness after the midterm exam and last spoke to her via Zoom, just before Thanksgiving, from her parent’s home.

“Although tired, she was upbeat as we discussed a plan to complete the course. I e-mailed Gianna the first week of December, to which I did not receive a reply. That concerned me, but she later submitted her final exam, which gave me hope. When we last spoke, Gianna made me promise I would not show her any favoritism due to her illness. I kept my word,” he said.

“She was special, and we at Fordham were lucky to have her.”

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, expressed his condolences on the occasion of her passing.

“It is heartbreaking to lose someone so young, and especially to such a cruel disease. Everyone who knew Gianna described her as determined, multitalented, and a natural leader. We grieve her death and the loss of so much potential,” he said.

Donna Rapccioli, Ph.D., dean of the Gabelli School, also lamented her loss.

“Gianna was a beautiful, kind soul, and we were honored to learn from her while she was at our school,” she said.

Like the life she lived, Signorile’s last month was filled with fun and hard work. She visited Nashville with friends but returned early when her health faltered. At the same time, Dawn said, she scheduled a CT scan so that it wouldn’t conflict with an interview for an online job. Given that she had to relearn in 2020 how to walk after a 16-hour surgery left her in intensive care for 89 days, it wasn’t surprising that she continued to work through the pain up until the day she died, Dawn said.

In addition to her mother, Signorile is survived by her father, John Signorile; her brother, John Thomas Signorile; aunts and uncles Vincent Signorile and his wife Dana Bonham, Sandra Valanzola and Pam Valanzola, Mildred Marciniak and her wife Robin, and Debbie Roberts and her husband Jimi; and her cousin Jaimi and her husband Mark. She is also survived by her beloved dachshunds, Paulie and Luca.

A Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated on Dec. 27 at Holy Family Church in Nutley, followed by interment at Holy Cross Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations to a GoFundMe page to help cover funeral expenses.

“It was an honor to raise you into a beautiful young woman and I am grateful for every moment we shared through your childhood up until seeing you transform into an independent, smart, free-spirited beautiful adult,” Dawn wrote on the page when her daughter died.

“Rest well my Gigi.”

Rachel was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a type of pediatric bone cancer, as a teenager and spent a year in treatment before completing high school.

The Founder’s Scholarship enabled the Manorville, New York, native to enroll at Fordham in 2014, where she majored in applied acccounting and finance. She was named to the Dean’s List; was involved with Colleges Against Cancer; and raised funds for the Fordham Dance Marathon, which benefits the children’s cancer charity Be Positive.

Despite a reoccurrence of the cancer in 2016, Rachel continued her studies and joined her graduating class at Fordham’s 2018 Commencement on May 19. When the cancer returned a third time in July, three weeks after she’d begun an internship at JP Morgan Chase, Rachel had to set her studies aside. In December, shortly before she died, the University presented her diploma to her at Memorial Sloan Kettering Commack.

“Today we mourn with Rachel’s mother, Kim; her father, John; her brother, Andrew; and all of her friends, classmates, and faculty at Fordham,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J. president of the University.

“There is no consolation for such a loss, but let us all remember Rachel as she lived: loving, idealistic, and full of dreams for the future,” he said.

‘She Just Wanted to Be Normal’

Kim Ragone, Rachel’s mother, said Rachel made the most of her time at Rose Hill. When she arrived on campus in September 2014, she was still feeling the effects of chemotherapy and had to wear a wig. Kim said her daughter’s doctor strongly suggested she ask for housing with a private bathroom and an air conditioner, but Rachel insisted she live like every other first-year student.

“I was like, ‘Where are you going to put your wig when you’re taking a shower?” Kim said.

“She didn’t care, she just did it. She hung it up with the bathrobe.”

As someone who worked to help others facing cancer, Rachel donated her hair to Locks of Love in 2005, 2007, and 2011, Kim said, only to learn in 2013 that she would need a wig of her own.

“She just wanted to be normal, because everything was taken away from her, whether it was being able to go to school, driving, or working,” Kim said. “The time when she would have been doing normal things, she was in the hospital.”

Kim said that the semester Rachel spent studying at Fordham’s London Centre in the spring of her sophomore year was life-changing for her.

“[Fordham] gave her the best time of her life.”

Donna Rapaccioli, Ph.D., dean of the Gabelli School, said Rachel’s influence would live on at the college.

“Rachel was an inspiration, using her amazing intelligence and persistence to positively impact others, always with a smile,” she said.

Remembering a Kind and Determined Friend

Colleen Dineen, GABELLI ’18, befriended Rachel during their sophomore year when Rachel approached her on the plane shortly before it took off for London. Dineen was crying at the time, she said, because she feared being away from her family.

“She sat with me for a bit and talked to me, and luckily, she didn’t think I was crazy,” said Dineen, a fellow finance major.

They hung out on weekends and arranged to take classes together, and even when Rachel had to take the spring semester of her junior year and the fall semester of her senior year off for medical leave, Dineen said that she still visited campus on the weeks she didn’t need to undergo treatment.

“She didn’t want to miss out, which is pretty remarkable when I think about it. That’s the type of person she was; she wouldn’t let anything get in her way or limit the life she wanted for herself,” she said.

When Rachel recovered and returned to Rose Hill the spring semester of her senior year, she and Dineen lived together in an off-campus apartment.

“She was tough, she was strong. She could have graduated fully in May with all of us had she switched her major, but she said, ‘I did not spend three and a half years at this school just to take the easy way out. If I have to take an extra class, so be it,’” Dineen said.

“She wouldn’t want to focus on herself, or her illness, she just wanted to have a normal friendship. She was truly the most caring person I’ve ever met.”

Jack Trevor, GABELLI ’18, met Rachel in class their first year, and the two bonded over their mutual adoration of Beyoncé, whose concerts Rachel loved to attend. He, too, studied in London with Rachel. On May 12 of last year, they celebrated their birthdays, which are a week apart, with brunch in Chinatown.

“We’re so grateful for that last semester. She got to come to all the senior nights, do the senior events like the Senior Ball, and she got to walk with us at graduation. I’m so grateful that she was able to do that with us.”

Connor Murphy, FCRH ’18, another friend who studied in London with Rachel, said he only learned of her fight with cancer when it came back the second time.

“She was one of those people who you would never be intimidated to talk to. She was lighthearted but also caring. She would never half-ass a friendship. She was just the kind of person you loved. She also made a really good Oreo cookie birthday cake,” Murphy said.

The University’s announcement of Rachel’s death on Tuesday moved Maggie Senft, FCRH ’17, who was a resident assistant in Alumni Court South when Rachel first arrived on campus in 2014, to reach out to Rachel’s mother with condolences. She told Kim she considers herself fortunate to have watched Rachel mature into “an incredible young woman.”

“Rachel goes down as being one of my favorite residents, even though we were not supposed to have favorites,” Senft said.

“She was one of the kindest, most easy-going, smartest girls I knew.”

To honor Ragone’s “steady perseverance, spiritual fortitude, and deep compassion,” Fordham has established a scholarship in her name.

It’s a phrase that’s uttered often in Jesuit circles, and at Fordham, it’s been exemplified through programs such as the Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice and Global Outreach.

This year, as part of an effort to advance and expand that work, Fordham’s Office of Mission Integration and Planning launched the Center for Community Engaged Learning.

Arto Woodley, Ed.D., the center’s executive director, said the goal is to streamline operations, provide support for faculty who integrate community-engaged learning in their classes, and help students become civic leaders.

He also wants to instill what he calls a “philosophy of community.”

“When we say, ‘We’re working with the community,’ what does that really mean? Are we working with certain neighborhoods? Are we working with certain zip codes? What’s our emphasis? How do we engage with them?” he said.

“Part of developing this center helps us say, ‘Who are our neighbors? Who are we working with, and why are we working with them? What will be the impact of our work?’”

A Focus on Faculty

As part of the reorganization, the Dorothy Day Center and Global Outreach no longer operate as independent entities. Former Dorothy Day Center director Roxanne De La Torre has assumed the title of director of campus and community leadership in the larger center. Likewise, Paul Francis, who had been director of Global Outreach, has assumed the title of director of programs and operations.

Woodley said the level of community outreach, leadership development, and faculty support should increase significantly with the reorganization. This, he said, will honor the legacy of Day, for whom the University’s Community Service Program was renamed in 2009.

Faculty will be a key part of the center’s new focus. That’s because like the residents who live near Fordham’s campuses, they have long-lasting ties to the community. The goal is to develop deep and sustainable relationships between the two groups that will provide a context for students to learn.

“At many institutions, it’s activity-based. You know, we sent 50 students to a soup kitchen, they stacked 100 cans, and they gave those cans to five families. Our whole goal is to make sure we expand the boundaries of engaged scholarship beyond that,” he said.

Not every subject taught in the University naturally lends itself to engaged scholarship, but for some professors, it is a powerful tool. Karina Hogan, Ph.D., an associate professor of theology who was part of a faculty advisory committee on community outreach, plans next semester to have students in her Sacred Texts of the Mideast class examine the ways in which Judaism, Christianity, and Islam address themes of social justice in their texts. They will split into three groups and work out of a New York City synagogue, church, and mosque, where they will be able to observe how members of the respective congregations put words into action.

“The idea is to really get out and see how these ideas are actually put into action. I think it’ll be a good addition to the class,” she said.

“They Live In This Community”

For Carey Kasten, Ph.D., associate professor of modern languages, it would be inconceivable not to send students in her Spanish Language and Literature class off campus.

“They live in this community, and I want them to see that they’re capable of engaging civically with their community, ” she said.

“Speaking in a different language creates foreign travel opportunities in the city we live in, but ultimately, I would like to students to apply those skills to everything they do.”

In the past, Kasten has found partner organizations to work with both on her own and through the Dorothy Day Center. It can be a logistical challenge; since many only need three to four students, she works with several different groups to place all her students. She’s intrigued by possible connections the Center for Engaged Learning will create, and hopes they will add to those that happen organically.

A good example is the immigrant support group New Sanctuary Coalition, she said. Although many students have been referred there via faculty, several have found the group on their own and incorporated volunteering there into their own studies.

Ideally, Kasten said, she’d also like to connect volunteer opportunities to her research agenda, something that Woodley said the center will focus on as well.

“I’ve really struggled with how to bring some of this work out of the classroom and into my research. I hope to see examples from faculty members on how to do this,” she said.

Scholarship Intertwined With Civic Involvement

One of Kasten’s students, Colleen Kelly, a senior at Fordham College at Lincoln Center who’s majoring in social work and Spanish, used a Dean’s Summer Research Grant to intern last summer at the Northern Manhattan Immigration Corporation. She was interested in learning what it actually means for New York City to be a sanctuary city.

She learned that immigrants who are in the country legally are being discouraged from applying to become citizens because seemingly minor crimes—such as jumping a turnstile—on their record might trigger a visit from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“In this time, it’s very critical to have an open definition of sanctuary and realize, in terms of the immigrant community, it’s always changing because the current administration is instilling a lot of fear of anyone who’s not a citizen,” she said.

“So anyone that’s not a citizen is really in need of sanctuary, in the form of community.”

Both this internship and one she’s currently doing at a school in the Bronx, where she’s assisting a social worker, have been directly informed by her classwork.

“I also know if a client comes to me and they need help with their asylum connection, I now have connections,” she said.

“Growing my network is not only great for my own job prospects but also my clients I’m going to serve.”

Woodley said establishing successful partnerships will go a long way toward helping Fordham fulfill the tenets of its Jesuit heritage.

“When Jesus was asked by the Sadducees what the greatest commandment was, he said to love the Lord thy God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and to love thy neighbor as yourself,” he said.

“The center is the ‘love thy neighbor’ part of it, but with a system that’s tied to engaged scholarship.”

With a recent $1 million gift, Brent Martini, GABELLI ’86, has ensured that those efforts will grow exponentially.

“This will be, and can be, core to who Fordham is, in my humble opinion,” said Martini, a former president of the pharmaceutical firm AmerisourceBergen and current owner of vintage car dealer Martini Vintage LLC.

“I’m driven to make Fordham as great as it can be. I’m not sure why I take it so personally, I just believe there’s lots of good people doing good things, and I have the privilege of participating in it fully.”

Carey Weiss, director of the collaboratory, a university-wide initiative managed by the Gabelli School of Business, said Martini’s gift is the largest it has received to date, and is a bona fide game changer.

“It puts us in league with peer Changemaker Campus institutions around the world that have also been suitably resourced in ways that we have been emulating, and we can now express in our unique way.”

A Network of Changemakers

Weiss said the collaboratory was conceived by Fordham’s late provost Stephen Freedman in 2014 as part of the process for designation as an Ashoka U Changemaker Campus. In receiving that designation, Fordham joined a network of 25 other universities and colleges around the nation that are helping change the world through social innovation.

At the time, Ashoka’s review team expressed concern that Fordham had social impact projects happening everywhere, but lacked connectivity between initiatives. Weiss said the collaboratory takes all of that faculty and student thought leadership and turns it into practice, with measurable impact and outcomes for society.

The collaboratory’s programming, which was at the outset offered only to Gabelli School students, has in the last three years expanded to include students at Fordham College at Lincoln Center and Fordham College at Rose Hill students as well. And since 2015, faculty from five of the University’s colleges have participated.

Now, thanks to Martini’s generosity, the collaboratory is poised to expand to make an even greater impact.

Thinking about the Next Generation

Martini previously funded the chair in global sustainability occupied by Gabelli School of Business professor James M. Stoner, Ph.D., and has served as executive in residence at the Gabelli School since 2015. He became interested in environmentally sustainable and inclusive business practices in 2011, when he decided to reenter the job market with COVE Financial Group, a lease-to-buy real estate business that he ran for four years. He credited Stoner, with whom he’d stayed in touch over the years, with bending his ear to talk about sustainability and social innovation.

“That’s kind of the way Jim’s always been with me. Give me something to think about, and then wait for me to think about it. This time around, he also had a hook, which was, ‘You have a young daughter, right? So while you’re building a new business, it would be appropriate to really think about the world that you’re creating, the business you’re creating, and the environment you’re impacting,’” he said.

“So, he really planted the seed around me to learn more about these topics.”

An example of an initiative the collaboratory has spearheaded is Sustainable Business Foundations, a course at the Gabelli School where students could, for their midterm, work in teams to identify a real-life problem for either BMW’s new fleet of electric vehicles or the city of New Rochelle, and design a sustainable solution. Social innovation has also been embedded in the Ground Floor, an introductory course that every first-year undergraduate student at the Gabelli School takes. And a new course, Impact Investing, was recently unveiled for junior and senior finance majors.

Weiss said Martini’s gift will allow the collaboratory to build out its infrastructure so it can serve other colleges and centers in the University. That includes more physical space that can accommodate students who want to plan events such as its Our Story gatherings, the second of which will be held Nov. 12. It will also increase opportunities for research and new coursework.

“With a better understanding of our own university, who the players are, and what the needs are, we can build this out to serve a much broader section of community,” she said.

“What we’ve needed is more funding for professional staff, for faculty involvement—particularly research and curriculum development—and also for student leadership.”

Eliminating Barriers

Weiss said part of the beauty of focusing on social innovation is that it provides a common theme on which seemingly disparate disciplines around the University can find common ground, allowing faculty and students to break out of the “silos” that are common in many large organizations. One initiative that the University will be launching soon is a GiveCampus Campaign, which will be spearheaded by the Fordham Fund, and will be dedicated to raising awareness and funds across all units of the university, including the collaboratory, for social innovation activities.

Martini said he’s excited to not only be a part of building out the collaboratory, but also to have a front row seat to the action. Although he lives in Laguna Beach, California, he visits New York City every five to six weeks, and says spending time with the students is the richest experience he has these days. Helping to provide them with innovative spaces to work in is his way of thanking them.

“I believe spaces are critically important, not just as symbols, but as places where people come together and do work. At any given student leader meeting today, you would see 25 kids jammed into a room,” he said.

“But you’d see a couple hundred kids if you could actually ask everyone involved in the social innovation collaboratory, in one shape or form, to all come to one space at one time. That, to me, is incredibly exciting. It’s just begun.”

That’s the conundrum of Fordham Theatre’s 2018/2019 mainstage season, which opens on October 4 with a contemporary translation of Sophocles’ Antigone. Director Matthew Maguire said that since American politics and culture is in the same state of chaos as it was last year, this was the right time to ditch formal themes, such as last years’ questions of American identity, and Fordham’s outsider roots the year before.

“I got tired of season titles that felt like rhetoric; I couldn’t think of a better title for this year’s season that was substantially different from last year’s,” he said.

Given all that has happened in the last year, Maguire said he felt it was necessary to be smarter and savvier in how plays were selected. Each one is in some way a resistance to a vision of the United States as a country that is nationalist, xenophobic, and dominated exclusively by heterosexual white Christians, he said. The works do share a common thread though: What happens when radical change disrupts to heretofore stable systems?

Antigonick, which was chosen with the November elections in mind, asks what happens when a young woman defies rigid state power. Orlando, a dreamy adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel of the same name, asks what happens when a man is suddenly transformed into a woman. Satellites is set in a gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood and features a multi-racial couple struggling to answer the question, what happens when cultures clash?

The season ends with Mr. Burns, a musical set in the aftermath of an unspecified apocalyptic event. The survivors bond over a shared love of The Simpsons episode Cape Feare, and eventually build a tradition around staged reenactments of it. It is, Maguire said, an attempt to answer the question, ‘What happens if people have to rebuild their culture through the art they make?’

“It’s a wonderfully dual question because it says something to the theater makers about the importance of what that they do, but it also says something to audience about how story telling can bind a culture, and how the stories that are meaningful to them will protect them or divide them,” he said.

As is the Fordham Theatre program’s custom, students played a major role in choosing the plays. William Recce, a senior playwriting major at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, participate in the five forums, and made a strong case for Mr. Burns inclusion. He’d been a fan of it since it debuted in 2012, partly because of its realistic depiction of the power of pop culture. It also resonated on a deeply personal level, he said, because it’s ultimately about collaboration and making art in trying times.

“For a theater program that is all about collaboration and building something from the ground up and sifting through the ashes of our everyday world and trying to find something beautiful, I thought, it’s a perfect piece,” he said.

Ultimately, Maguire said he hopes the plays are a positive means of resistance. For those who embrace xenophobia, racism, and nationalism, they’re meant to show there’s another way. For those who already embrace an inclusive vision of the country, they’re meant to be nourishing. Either way, they should make people think, and ideally take action.

“Plays should change people’s lives. You should walk out of a theater, and something should make you decide, ‘I think I’m going to do this,’ he said.

“If it doesn’t change your life, we have not done our job.”

The plays include:

Antigonick by Ann Carson, directed by Rebecca Martínez

Oct. 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12

Orlando by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Ashley Brooke Monroe

Nov. 7, 8, 9, 15, 16, 17

Satellites by Diana Son, directed by Sonoko Kawahara

Feb. 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, March 1

Mr. Burns, by Anne Washburn, directed by Elizabeth Margid

April 10, 11, 12, 24, 25, 26, 27

The win moves Fordham (14-5-2) into the NCAA Sweet 16 for the first time in program history, and will face #6 seed Duke on Saturday, November 25th, at 6 PM.  The win also set a new program record for wins in a season with 14, breaking the mark of 13, set in 1985.

The lone goal of the game came on a Rams’ counterattack, where the ball found Jannik Loebe for a shot which was stopped by Virginia’s Jeff Caldwell.  Loebe got back the rebound and crossed the ball in front to Eric Ohlendorf for the header into the right side of goal for his first goal of the season.

The Rams played an excellent defensive game, limiting the Cavaliers to five shots on goal, which goalkeeper Rashid Nuhu handled all five for his 11th shutout of the season.

Fordham’s Homecoming celebration kicked off with the sixth annual 5K Ram Run around campus and continued on Edwards Parade, where a main tent, family tent, and a loyal donor tent were teeming with activity.

All told, more than 5,000 alumni, students, family, and friends joined the fun inside the tents and outside on the lawn in front of Keating Hall for face painting, tossing a football, and a turn inside the bouncy castles.

The shared Jesuit heritage of the College of the Holy Cross and Fordham meant there were good-natured rivalries, as many families counted among them alumni from both schools.

Edward Winkler, FCRH ’67, LAW, 72, was one of them. He attended last year’s historic matchup between the two schools at Yankee Stadium, and was back again this year with his daughter Alexandra Polefko, a 2003 Holy Cross graduate.

“I sent my daughter and some tuition money to Holy Cross, but most of my time, effort, and treasure goes to Fordham,” he said, laughing. “But you know, with Holy Cross being another Jesuit school, it’s like a sibling rivalry rather than a real fight.”

Megan Hughes, FCRH ’93, who was lounging on the Terrace of Presidents in front of Keating Hall, met her husband Chris, a 1990 Holy Cross graduate, in San Francisco, where they both worked for the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. For Chris, the dual connection had always been there, as one of his younger brothers also attended Holy Cross, and another attended Fordham. The couple had attended games before, but hadn’t been to homecoming in a while. They brought their eight-year-old daughter Bridget to the festivities.

“The rivalry’s fun. We can dig each other and make fun of each other,” said Megan, who fondly recalled traveling into Manhattan to attend Broadway plays during her time at Rose Hill.

The day also drew attendees from further afield. The oversized cardboard Instagram frame in front of Keating Hall beckoned to Yue Zhang and three of her fellow classmates in the master’s in accounting program at the Gabelli School. Hailing from China’s Hubei Province, Zhang, a first-year graduate student, had never attended a homecoming or even a football game before. She was enjoying the festive atmosphere.

“Most of the time we’re just down at Lincoln Center, so it’s a fresh new experience for me to see such a beautiful campus. I met a lot of new friends here,” she said.

Ayanna Jones, a junior in the School of Professional and Continuing Studies, drove to the Rose Hill campus from Cypress Hills, Brooklyn with her husband Chris and their 8-year-old daughter Saniya. Jones, who was watching approvingly as Saniya scaled a pyramid-shaped climbing wall, said she rarely sets foot at Rose Hill because her classes are on the Lincoln Center campus.

“I really love attending Fordham. I love the community, I love all my teachers, and I wanted to participate in some more of the school activities,” she said.

“I’ve wanted to come to homecoming for a few years now, but in previous years I was working. This was the first weekend I was off, and I said this would be great for Saniya to see. I want her to see what I’m doing, where I go to school, and what could possibly be in her future.”

 [doptg id=”97″] ]]> 79874 https://now.fordham.edu/science/calder-center-at-50-tracking-plant-evolution-at-warp-speed/ Tue, 05 Sep 2017 15:39:52 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=74149 If you want to study how plants evolve, you need a space that you can be sure will be left undisturbed by flora and fauna alike. The Louis Calder Center, which features a greenhouse and numerous outdoor plots on its 113 acre grounds, was the perfect environment for Mike Sekor, a recent Ph.D. graduate, to do his research.

“We used to think that evolution was such a slow process, but we really realize at this point that evolution really can be studied over experimental timescales, even less than ten generations,” he said.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Calder Center, we sat down with Sekor to learn more about his research there.

“People often ask me, why are you studying this salamander that doesn’t seem to be vulnerable to it, to study this fungus?” said Elle Barnes, a Ph.D. candidate working at the center.

“My answer is, ‘Why isn’t it vulnerable? What is it about this salamander that’s making it not die from the fungus that’s clearly in its general area?”

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Calder Center, we sat down with Barnes to learn more about her research there.