“We had a record-breaking Giving Tuesday,” said Elaine Ezrapour, director of the Fordham Fund. “It’s very exciting to see the outpouring of ‘phil-‘Ram’-thropy.’”
Held this year on Dec. 3, Giving Tuesday, the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, has become an international day of charitable giving. Since 2015, Fordham has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars each year on this day. But 2019 marked the first year that the University raised more than a million.
Supporting Athletics
The majority of the 1,589 gifts made this year were for Fordham athletics. More than $300,000 in gifts will help support the Frank McLaughlin Family Basketball Court and University sports teams. That includes the Fordham men’s rugby football team, which is raising money to fly to Ireland for the club’s first international tour in more than 50 years.
“Working with the Fordham Fund, we’ve created a Give Campus page for each of the varsity and club teams,” said Edward Kull, senior director of development and senior associate athletic director, adding that the student-athletes and coaches create videos for their teams letting everyone know what their needs are. “So it’s a real collaborative effort.” Squash, crew, football, water polo, and sailing were among the top raisers, he said.
Scholarships for Urban Plunge
More than $6,000 was raised for scholarships for Urban Plunge, a pre-orientation program where first-year undergraduate students participate in community service activities throughout the Bronx and Manhattan. The program, run by the Center for Community Engaged Learning, requires a $250 fee for each student that pays for their meals, transportation, and supplies.
A Double Giving Challenge
This year’s Giving Tuesday offered Rams a double challenge. If 350 donors made a gift by 11:59 a.m. EST, then Susan Conley Salice, FCRH ’82, and Thomas P. Salice, GABELLI ’82, would contribute $20,000. After the goal was achieved, the Salices presented the second half of the challenge: If 200 more donors made a gift by 11:59 p.m. EST, the couple would give another $20,000 to Fordham. Thanks to 550 donors, both challenges were met and the Salices donated $40,000.
Student Support
Students across the University helped spearhead donation efforts, too. In O’Hare Hall, student callers reached out to dozens of alumni, parents, and friends of Fordham. Usually, they work three hours a day, Ezrapour said. But on Giving Tuesday, they worked from roughly 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and secured 150 gifts over the phone.
Further downtown, the Student Philanthropy Committee at Lincoln Center set up a tabling session in the Lowenstein Center. For the first time, they created a “giving tree” fashioned out of chicken wire and multicolored leaf cut-outs. Committee members asked passing students to write on a leaf the things they are grateful for at Fordham—including causes they want to support in the future.
“They wrote wonderful notes about the different areas on campus that they feel connected to and care about,” Ezrapour said. “It was a great effort on their part, not only in raising awareness about Giving Tuesday, but also demonstrating to the campus community just how many potential areas there are to support.”
Now Susan Conley Salice, FCRH ’82, and Thomas P. Salice, GABELLI ’82, have made another investment in Fordham and its students. Their latest gift—$2 million—will support several important initiatives, leading with student scholarship as a part of Fordham’s Faith & Hope | The Campaign for Financial Aid.
The Salices are among the University’s most generous alumni. In addition to other gifts, they donated to Fordham’s last capital campaign, Excelsior | Ever Upward | The Campaign for Fordham, to build the Salice and Conley residence hall on the Rose Hill campus, named in honor of their parents. The residence has housed hundreds of Fordham students since 2010.
Susan says there’s a good reason why they give.
“We both required scholarship dollars in order to be able to attend Fordham,” she said. She was one of the first members of her family to earn a bachelor’s degree, as was Tom the first to attend college in his family.
“If Fordham hadn’t come through, our lives would likely be quite different. We felt that the Jesuit education and values we received and embraced at Fordham made a significant difference in our lives individually—and, of course, together. That’s very powerful when you think about it.”
She has fond memories from her four years at Fordham—tutoring middle school students in the Bronx, working the grill at the McDonald’s on Fordham Road, studying for what seemed like endless hours in the library, sitting at Sunday night Mass at the University Church with her future husband. She also recalled a more recent special moment from last May—the day she and her husband saw their daughter graduate from Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service. But perhaps most importantly, she feels the weight of her Fordham education at work in the skills she developed as an undergrad: leadership, curiosity, and awareness of the world around her.
“I graduated from Fordham being much more community-aware, world-aware. You question everything, interested in understanding the why,” she said, “and understanding that you have an opportunity and a responsibility to become engaged difference makers in the community and the world at large, for the greater good.”
Tom, a Fordham trustee fellow, went on to become co-founder and managing member of a private equity firm SFW Capital Partners, and the chairman of its investment committee; Susan became a vice president at Diversified Investment Advisors, a retirement investment firm.
Today, Susan devotes much of her time and resources to the causes that are important to her and her family. She is co-chair of Fordham’s Faith & Hope | The Campaign for Financial Aid and a University trustee. She also serves on other nonprofit boards. In 2017, she was also a keynote speaker at Fordham’s first annual Women’s Philanthropy Summit.
“Giving [to scholarships] is an opportunity to change a life—to make an impact in whatever capacity you are able to do so,” she said in her keynote speech.
“Many people can usually afford more than they think they can—and I mean that in a very simple way,” she added. “Perhaps one can give up Starbucks for a week and donate that money. Over the course of a year, that amount can add up and have an important impact.”
She encourages potential donors to reconnect with their alma mater and recall how it felt to be a young, 20-something college kid with all the possibilities in the world.
“When you first graduate, you’re busy. You’re working. You may be raising a family,” she said. “But if you are able to make time to go back to campus, listen to a lecture, attend an event, actually talk to students and professors, you’re going to reconnect with Fordham. You will see the promise students hold in their faces and the potential each has to live as women and men for others.”
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“I love it. It just smells so new,” she said.
Katherine’s mom, Cheri McNabola, said she was thrilled that her daughter will live in the dormitory, which—along with Salice and Conley Halls—officially opened its doors to students on Aug. 30.
Cheri’s joy was apparent, even though she had to ride the train from Connecticut to Rose Hill by herself that morning while the rest of the family traveled by SUV. With the vehicle full of Katherine’s stuff, there was simply no room for her.
“It’s OK; I’m allowed to embarrass her. I’m her mother,” Cheri McNabola joked on her way into her daughter’s four-person apartment, while dad Jack McNabola wheeled in a tall stack of plastic containers—all belonging to Katherine.
“At least she’s got the room for it,” added Cheri, as she surveyed the sunny environs. “This apartment is wonderful. It’s got such great light and even a living room.”
Katherine McNabola and her three roommates were among 460 students to inaugurate CSC, as the new buildings are called.
Campbell Hall was built thanks to Robert E. Campbell (CBA ’55) and his wife, Joan M. Campbell. Thomas P. Salice (CBA ’82) and his wife, Susan Conley Salice (FCRH ’82), are the benefactors of Salice and Conley Halls. They are the first dormitories to open at Rose Hill since O’Hare Hall in 2000.
The new halls consist of four towers in two buildings on the southwest side of the campus near Fordham Road. Only upperclassmen get the honor of living there; approximately 70 percent of residents are seniors, while the rest are a mix of juniors and sophomores.
Unlike typical university dormitories, CSC offers “urban lifestyle” housing with modern amenities and technologies.
Fordham’s first LEED-certified Gold buildings, the new halls offer several living arrangements. Apartments are designed to house four students in four single rooms or two double rooms; five students in five single rooms; or six students in three double rooms. More than half of the rooms offer single occupancy.
The apartments are fully furnished and boast air conditioning, climate control within apartments and kitchens equipped with dishwashers and microwaves. It is the kitchen that most excites Matt Tracey, a senior in Fordham College at Rose Hill.
“I cannot wait to cook!” he said. Matt’s mother, Jolene Tracey, promptly chimed in that she will miss her son’s cooking.
“He sure has some lucky roommates,” she said.
Matt said that the first dinner at his apartment would be a lamb dish with a special reduction. “All you need is a skillet,” he said.
“I can’t tell you enough how happy I am that I no longer have to buy a meal plan,” he added.
The new residence halls are a step up from the drab dorm rooms of yesteryear. They feature brightly colored accent walls in the living rooms and bedrooms, and sleek lighting fixtures throughout. The first-floor laundry room is another bonus. Student athlete Kim Capicotto, a senior in the College of Business Administration, said she likes the open design of the “laundry lounge.”
“It’s much better than having to go the basement—and the appliances are brand new, which means everything dries faster,” she said.
Amenities and interior design are not the only perks for CSC residents. The new halls will offer a variety of programming, said resident assistant Alex Slavtchev, a senior in Fordham College at Rose Hill.
“We want to foster community,” Slavtchev said. “A lot of programming will focus on transitioning from college to real life. It’s not just for seniors; it’s something that sophomores and juniors should start thinking about, too.”
Career Services at Fordham will be on hand every Wednesday to help students polish their resumes and plan their careers. The Office of Academic Affairs also will be an integral part of programming, as will the Office of University Mission and Ministry.
In fact, the leader of University mission and ministry was CSC’s first resident, having moved in two weeks ago.
“I was the only guest at a 460-room hotel,” said Monsignor Joseph G. Quinn, vice president for University mission and ministry. His residence continues Fordham’s tradition of an “integrated living community” style of housing.
“These are truly 21st century facilities; our students are so blessed to have such extraordinary residences,” Monsignor Quinn said. “I can’t get over how quiet the buildings are. I can’t hear the Metro North trains. It’s amazing.”
Monsignor Quinn has arranged for motivational speaker and New York Times bestselling author Matthew Kelly to speak to CSC students on Wednesday, Sept. 8.
“It is one of the many activities we will have to help our students leave here with a more discerned feeling about what they are supposed to do in life,” he said.
Contact: Gina Vergel
(212) 636-7175
[email protected]