“I thought it was very cool and current and wanted to be part of it,” said Skillin, a sophomore environmental studies student at Fordham College at Lincoln Center.

He and Dickantone are among eight Fordham students hoping to find answers to several questions about the bugs that no one seems to know yet: How often do they mate? Are squirrels making meals out of them? Why are they attracted to certain types of city buildings and not others?

These answers could help point to ways to control the invasive species, their professor said.

Ellen van Wilgenburg, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology in the Department of Natural Sciences at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, is spearheading the research and teaching the students scientific methods to collect data that can be used in larger studies of the lanternflies. So far, existing research has focused more on the agricultural impact than the behavior of the species. 

“It’s pest management and applied research, which is very important work,” she said. “But I think behavioral ecology is also important and can help with pest management, too.”

Dickantone, a senior neuroscience major, and Skillin have now begun dissecting the insects under the microscope to see how many spermatophores, or sperm packets, the female insects have in their abdomens to determine how many times they have mated. They also have recorded videos of the courtship process showing the males vibrating their wings rapidly and stroking the females in an effort to attract them. 

Each female lays 30 to 50 eggs in masses on trees. They are currently at that egg-laying phase of their life cycle; they will die off in November and December. 

“You would expect species that are introduced and encounter a novel environment would mate [more than once],“ to help the species survive, van Wilgenburg said, and the students are trying to determine if that is the case with the lanternflies.

Little Calorie Bombs

Another team of students has been collecting squirrel feces and looking for molecular markers that would indicate a developing taste for lanternflies. They have witnessed squirrels eating the insects in the park. This is significant because the species has few known predators, most likely helping its rapid population explosion.

“Actually they are not very tasty,” van Wilgenburg said. “Supposedly they are very bitter.” She said the trees the lanternflies prefer contain quassinoids, compounds that make them unpalatable to most insect-eating animals. “Squirrels eat acorns, which are also bitter, so maybe.”

Van Wilgenburg added, “Females, especially when full of eggs, must be little calorie bombs and full of nutrition.”

How High?

Another group of students in her Global Ecology Lab looked at what features on buildings attract lanternflies. There have not been any published studies looking into this, but several researchers have speculated that the lanternflies confuse tall buildings for trees. Van Wilgenburg said her students’ data showed height doesn’t matter. What they found does matter is if a building has a lot of glass on its lower floors.

She said she wants to look at it further, perhaps next year, and collect more data. “Could it be UV light wavelengths? Maybe we could find something that could work as traps.”

Spotted lanternflies are native to China, where they are kept in check by a parasitic wasp. In the U.S., they were first detected in Pennsylvania in September 2014 while they were mostly feasting on another invasive species, the Tree of Heaven. They have caused a great deal of alarm among state agriculture departments. 

But since then, as they have multiplied and migrated and developed a taste for other plants, scientists are realizing the bugs don’t do a terrible amount of harm other than being an annoyance, van Wilgenburg said, noting that fruit trees and vineyards are the only agricultural species of concern.

To Stomp or Not to Stomp?

So what about the trending effort to try stomping them out?

Thirty-five percent of them at relevant life stages—mainly egg masses—would need to be killed to start lowering the population growth, van Wilgenburg said, citing a study from 2021. 

“Stomping on them is not going to help.”

From examining how sports affect the behavior of young men to studying DNA replication and repair to exploring camp fashion at the Met Gala, student researchers tackled a diverse group of topics on the Rose Hill campus this summer. As participants in Fordham’s first annual Undergraduate Summer Research Program, the group of 40 Fordham College at Rose Hill scholars lived on campus from May 31 to Aug. 4 and formed a research community.

“We had STEM, humanities, and social science students in the mix. One of our goals was to get them to learn how to present their research to a wide audience—and to learn about what the others are doing,” said Maura Mast, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill.

There have been summer research programs in the past, she said, but none that brought together the various disciplines and provided on-campus housing as well as a stipend. As in the spring and fall research programs, students also get a supply budget. There were regular cross-disciplinary events, such as a weekly lunch where faculty discussed their research interests with students. The program was entirely funded by gifts from donors.

Succinct, Efficient Presentations

The program, which was organized by Psychology Professor Rachel Annunziato, Ph.D., associate dean for strategic initiatives, and Christopher Aubin, Ph.D., associate professor of physics, culminated on Aug. 2 and 4 with succinct presentations. Each student had only five minutes to present their findings, which was then followed by about three minutes to take questions from an audience of fellow presenters and faculty.

“You just have a few minutes to tell someone why what you do is really important and if you can’t do it in that amount of time then maybe you don’t understand it well enough,” said Aubin. “It’s harder to give a short talk than a long talk and five minutes is definitely very short, but I always like to tell students that they need to learn how to make their elevator pitch.”

Mentoring Younger Students Provides Teaching Experience

As in years past, local high school students from the STEP Program were invited to assist the undergraduates in science research.

“Obviously it’s a win for the high school students because they get to work very closely with a more experienced student in the lab and they’ll just learn faster that way,” said Elizabeth Thrall, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry. “But it’s also a win for the undergraduate who’s mentoring a high school student because they get a better understanding of their project by teaching it and explaining to someone else.”

Thrall mentored rising seniors Michael Foster and Madeline Drucker on a project focused on a process known as translesion synthesis, a mechanism that is used for copying DNA that has been damaged. The process has implications for the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria and the mutation of cancer cells. Drucker’s task was to make new bacterial strains that could be examined in the microscope, with Foster validating the work. It’s complex research that when undertaken by students during the school year often gets interrupted by other classes and activities.

A Full-Time Focus on Research

“The program is unique because they just make so much progress in their research because they can devote themselves to it full time,” said Thrall. “Things that we do in the lab are very hard to fit in around classes, but when they’re there for a whole day, they can just be there for every step of the process. And I think that really helps them to see how everything fits together and take more ownership.”

Foster, who is planning on pursuing a Ph.D. to become a professor, said the presence of a high school student in the lab gave him an opportunity to practice teaching. He was assigned to mentor high school senior Laura Maca Bella. Drucker took on a mentorship role as well.

“Laura was just fantastic at it. She took to it really quickly and it’s not easy stuff. It was a lot of information for her to get and not a lot of time. It was really gratifying to see her be able to run these experiments independently,” said Foster. “Madeline may not have worked as closely with Laura as I did, but she always tried and help explain things to Laura when maybe I had flubbed it.

Drucker said that flubs and mistakes are part of the nature of working in a lab.

“It’s a growing environment and you’re there to build off of each other and we learn from each other’s mistakes and move forward,” said Drucker. “If you notice somebody make a mistake, you’re there to help them. And that’s where it’s nice being here this summer; it feels like the pressure of school is kind of off and we can just do the science.”

The program was funded with gifts from several donors, including a significant gift from Boniface “Buzz” Zaino, FCRH ’65, a senior advisor at Royce Investment Partners. His gift helped forge the creation of the research community, providing for the on-campus housing and cross-disciplinary events.

Zaino, who worked his way through Fordham as a cater waiter, said he relished the time he spent on campus talking about philosophy with the Jesuits in the student center. In a phone interview, he said was pleased to hear that a similar atmosphere had evolved over the summer with students discussing their work with each other over coffee or lunch.

“Back then, we would philosophize over stuff that had nothing to do with the coursework, so hopefully the new program will grow to be the same thing so students can watch the reaction of their peers and expand on what they know.”

Zaino said that even in his own work he loves the part of his job that requires in-depth research.

“In my field when we talk about investment research for the stock market, you can always tell when someone does independent research because it’s the best kind of knowledge; it expands perspectives so they make better decisions,” he said. “Through research, you begin a process of inquiry that opens up worlds for students. It’s emboldening.”

“Remember you are men and women of Fordham, therefore you are sons and daughters of Ignatius. Magis is in your DNA,” said Father McShane at the Fordham College at Rose Hill Undergraduate Research Symposium on May 4. “You can never be satisfied, you will always be driven, you’ll always be lured into the future. And, you will never allow yourself to fool yourself into thinking you’ve achieved all you can.”

The research symposium was held throughout the campus over the course of the day, with a music presentation in Butler Commons, as well as oral presentations throughout Keating, and poster sessions with a reception beneath the vaulted ceilings in the halls of Keating.

As Father McShane had described, the student presenters were indeed influenced by the concept of magis. Though their presentations were thoroughly researched, several students said there was still much more to learn about their chosen subjects.

Neuroscience major senior Arnav Bhutada’s oral presentation examined brain injuries caused by “heading” the ball for young people who play soccer. The sport is by far the world’s most popular and is gaining traction in the U.S., where three million children play every year. By examining 10 peer-reviewed studies, synthesizing results, and assessing personality changes in the studies’ subjects, Bhutada concluded that while mild traumatic brain injuries caused by concussions will not affect the development of youth personalities, repeated high impacts may influence a child’s sense of balance and posture. As he heads off to get his master’s in biomedical science at Rutgers, he said he hopes to find a way to continue studying the subject there, as he said most studies on the subject are on adults.

“I played soccer basically my whole life up until high school I saw a lot of my friends get concussions; they usually play through them because if they go to the trainer because they’re dizzy, they’d have to sit out for about half the season,” he said. “Head collisions happen all the time and the coaches don’t always know anything is wrong if the kids don’t say they’re dizzy.”

Sophomore Carolyn Wiedenhoft said she definitely sees a future in her research on approaches to digital and material archives. Her poster presentation compared digitized oral histories to physical documentation, i.e.—primary sources such as photos and letters from the 1970s The materials came from the Fordham’s Bronx Italian American History Initiative (BIAHI), where she is an undergraduate student researcher. The purpose of her research was to find the most engaging way to present the material to the public.

By engaging and enlarging the initiative’s audience through social media and digitizing physical documents from the BIAHI, Wiedenhoft said she grew to appreciate a variety of approaches to working with primary sources.

“Overall, we want to get a more accurate and authentic historical narrative from people who actually lived through the history rather than relying on the media, or shows like The Sopranos or A Bronx Tale,” she said. “We want to provide a solid foundation to present an authentic perspective.”

Wiedenhoft added that in her work, she witnessed the development of interest from the ever-growing Albanian community in the Bronx, potentially paving the way for an Albanian oral history project alongside the BIAHI, which itself sprang from the Bronx African American History Project. For her part, she said she’s curious about Fordham alumni who come from the same area, primarily the Belmont neighborhood.

“I’d love to delve into Fordham’s history in the community,” she said. “I know that in the 1950s 80% of students were commuters, so I wonder what percentage of that was Italian-American and/or Albanian and from the area.”

Nearby, sophomore Danielle Pool presented her poster analyzing how women’s level of education impacted their family-making decisions. She said the controlled variable in her study was occupational prestige because of its direct connection to education, which in turn influenced women’s economic opportunities and the number of children they have. She used data from the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), a nonpartisan research organization affiliated with the University of Chicago.

“The more education you have the fewer child-bearing years you have, but the better the journey you have to get a more prestigious occupation,” she explained. “For every year of education, a woman has .05 less children.”

Pool said the main takeaway for her was that education doesn’t simply widen opportunities in the economic sphere, but also in empowerment in general.

“They will know more about contraception use and will be able to have a conversation with their husband and say, ‘No, this is it, I only want to have one child.’ They will likely not feel pressured into following norms. They’ll define their own journey.”

Lastly, several musicians also embodied magis through music. Listen below to “Intuition,” a project by senior Elizabeth Galbo. Professional performers were Sarah Goldfeather on violin and Paul Kerekes on piano.

At the award ceremony at the event, this year’s Faculty Mentors of the Year awards went to Christopher Aubin, Ph.D., associate professor of physics; Sarah Grey, Ph.D., assistant professor of Spanish and Linguistics; and Lindsay Till Hoyt, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology. The Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring went to the CSTEP program and was presented by last year’s Mentor of the Year, Mark Naison, Ph.D., professor of African and African American studies. The program’s associate director, Renaldo Alba, accepted the award on behalf of CSTEP. The Fordham College Alumni Association Award went to senior Max Luf and was presented by His mentor, Edward Dubrovsky, Ph.D., professor of biological science.

“It seems like 14 years since we last gathered to celebrate, in person, your amazingness,” Maura Mast, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, told students and faculty mentors in Keating Hall’s first floor auditorium on May 5. “I’m so grateful and happy that we’re here today.”

In his congratulatory remarks to students and faculty, Dennis Jacobs, Ph.D., provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, recalled when he was an undergraduate who landed his first research opportunity through a faculty mentor. 

“I really fell in love with the process of discovery and research because someone gave me a chance,” said Jacobs, who has a research background in chemistry and physics. “You’ll look at the world differently because of the experiences you have engaged through research.” 

This year, more than 200 students shared their projects through in-person presentations in Keating Hall classrooms, live Zoom sessions from their homes, and pre-recorded videos available online. Their research spanned many fields, including health sciences and technology, healing and well-being, COVID-19, and anti-racism and social justice. 

Asian Music and Jazz

The symposium kicked off with a live concert performed by Miguel Sutedjo, FCRH ’23, an Indonesian American jazz pianist, and two classmates in Butler Commons. Sutedjo’s project explored how Asian and Asian American musicians blend jazz with Asian sounds to create a unique style of music. 

“I wanted to investigate the music of other great Asian American and Asian jazz musicians in order to understand my positioning within this art form,” Sutedjo said, addressing more than 30 students and faculty members seated in chairs spaced six feet apart.

Transitioning to Adulthood in A Pandemic

In a Keating classroom, several students presented research on community and environmental health. Valeria Venturini, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill who studies anthropology and psychology, analyzed factors that shape the decisions of young American adults who are considering moving out of their childhood homes, especially during the pandemic. She interviewed six Fordham students and found that financial concerns in today’s economy were stronger factors in delaying a move than the pandemic. The young adults were motivated to move out because of independence and the ability to make their own decisions without parental consent, but some students, especially second-generation American males, felt pressured by their families to stay at home or close to home. 

“Not a lot of research is being done about this in the United States,” Venturini said. “The intersection of cultural values, economic status, and mental health in this population of emerging adults should be looked at further.” 

Learning How Rice Adapts

Colleen Cochran, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill who studies economics, environmental studies, and sustainable business, examined the genes of rice—one of the most important crops worldwide—to better understand how the plants might respond to the increasing threat of climate change. Cochran and her co-authors hypothesized that more diverse genes make rice more resilient to environmental change. After analyzing existing data on 230 types of rice that were subjected to drought, they found that the plant’s ability to adapt to different environments was not strong. 

“Rice probably feeds more people in the world than any other crop, so understanding how it [responds to climate change]… is extremely important in global food security,” said Cochran, who served as a 2019 Fordham-New York University research intern and a Udall scholar. 

Cochran was honored by the Fordham College Alumni Association for her dedication to undergraduate research, along with two faculty mentors: Edward Dubrovsky, a biological sciences professor, and Mark Naison, professor of history and African and African American studies. 

Pride: Not Always a Deadly Sin

At the end of the symposium, Rachel Annunziato, Ph.D., associate dean for strategic initiatives, played a video montage with photos of this year’s more than 60 faculty mentors and the ’90s classic “Simply the Best” by Tina Turner playing in the background, while students in Keating Hall’s first floor auditorium cheered and applauded. Finally, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, lauded the mentors and mentees for their tenacity during a difficult year. 

“I know that pride is one of the deadly sins, but in the case of Fordham pride, it’s actually a virtue. And on this day, you have every reason to be very proud,” Father McShane said, addressing his audience live from Zoom. “My heart is filled with gratitude to you for your courage, your desire for knowledge, and all that you have done this year.”  

Her latest research looks at what happens when we face discrimination in our daily lives and whether having a strong sense of racial and ethnic identity better protects us from the effects of discrimination—or makes us feel worse.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What inspired you to research the relationship between discrimination and racial and ethnic identity?

There was a growing literature that found really negative effects of discrimination on how kids feel about themselves: their physical health, their mental health, their academic well-being. In the adult literature, discrimination is connected with things like obesity, blood pressure, breast cancer, and mortality. That literature is quite robust—meaning there’s been a lot of studies that find these very consistent effects.

So then I started putting these three pieces together: discrimination, health outcomes, and identity. If discrimination is so bad for outcomes, how might identity play a role in this? My hunch was … it’s good for kids to feel good about their racial identity. But I wanted to see where the data fell. It was really important to find the evidence and the data to support it, rather than just conjuring up ideas that made sense in our heads.  

How did your new study compare to similar research conducted in the past?

There was very mixed literature [in the past]. Some studies found that having a strong sense of ethnic identity helped buffer the effects of discrimination. And then other research found if you have a really strong sense of identity, it actually makes you feel worse. It impacts you more because it’s an important part of who you are. We were finding mixed results in our own data, too. And so that’s why we set out to do this meta-analysis.

What my students and I did is we went through all of the published research, unpublished research, dissertations, raw data that people were willing to share with us. And we came up with this meta-analysis to see once and for all, is identity good or bad for discrimination?

You and your students pored through data from 18,000 teenagers and adults across the world. After completing your meta-analysis, what did you find?

The overall take-home is that having a strong sense of ethnic identity does mitigate the effects of discrimination.

One of the main dimensions of identity that we looked at was a sense of commitment—how strongly connected you feel to your group. You know you’re a member of this group, and it’s integral to who you are. The other dimension we looked at was how active you are in exploring the meaning of your identity. You’re still thinking about it, trying to figure out the role of race and ethnicity in your identity.

What we found was that people who are sure and committed and clear about their sense of identity … that’s where you see the benefits. If you’ve decided that’s an important part of who you are, you have a toolbox for how to deal with it. One, you’ve probably dealt with it before. Two, you probably have a community of people. You can say, hey, this happened to me today. And they can say, oh, that happened to me too. Or they can help you process it. And three, just having a sense of … I know who I am. When you have clarity around it, you can say, oh, the issue isn’t about me—that’s about you.

But for people who are still not sure, it has a worse impact on them. If you are, let’s say African-American, and you’re not quite sure what that means yet, and people discriminate against you for that, it has a much worse impact because you’re not even sure how you feel about being a member of a group, and still people are treating you unfairly because of it.

Did you find any differences among racial groups?

Yes. Having a strong sense of commitment to your identity was actually stronger for Latinx than for Asian American individuals. We can speculate, but we don’t really know why that is. These processes and dynamics are so different for various groups in the United States and even abroad just because their histories and social positioning are so different. Immigration histories, language, acculturation—all of that.

How can we encourage people, especially children and adolescents, to embrace their racial and ethnic identity?

Research on racial socialization with families—how parents talk to their kids about race—suggests that parents who instill feelings of pride in their racial and ethnic group can help kids develop a sense of identity, which would then help buffer discrimination. There’s also some research looking at peer socialization. So how do peers talk to kids about their race and identity? Having those messages, either from friend groups or parents or maybe even the media, can encourage students to embrace diversity, individuality, and differences across racial and ethnic groups.

So it seems like it really starts at home, with parents fostering a sense of pride in their children.

I also think community matters. For example, if your parents are telling you it’s great to be Latinx and you go to school with kids where there are no people like you, or you live in a neighborhood where there are no other Latinx families, that message only goes so far.

I think children are more impacted by their parents at a younger age. But once they move into middle and high school, I think peers have a much stronger socializing effect.

For the past year, Natalie Ward, a math major at Fordham College at Rose Hill and a George and Mary Jane McCartney Research Fellow, has been exploring the link between PM 2.5—an air pollutant smaller than the cross-section of a human hair—and pediatric asthma in the Bronx.

“Millions of New Yorkers are breathing in this harmful pollutant, but have no clue it might be really affecting their lungs,” said Ward, whose research was funded by a Fordham undergraduate grant.

Studies have shown that long-term exposure to PM 2.5, which originates from vehicle exhaust and fuel combustion, is linked to increased rates of pediatric asthma. And high particle concentrations are a bigger problem in the Bronx, where asthma death rates are three times higher than the rest of the United States.

Last summer, Ward examined air quality in the borough. Using a Temtop air quality detector, a TV remote-sized device that measures PM 2.5 levels, she collected air samples from different public parks located along major roadways in the Fordham and University Heights neighborhoods of the Bronx. Ward recorded PM 2.5 concentrations during three time periods—peak traffic hour from 7 to 10 a.m., 12 to 2 p.m., and rush hour from 5 to 7 p.m.—nearly every day for two months. Then she compared those numbers to their “green” equivalent at the New York Botanical Garden and Edwards Parade on the Rose Hill campus—spaces located more than 300 meters from a major roadway.

Her solo study provided a better picture of air conditions in the borough, said city health experts and environmentalists in a recent AM New York profile of Ward’s work.

“I found overwhelmingly that the farther I am away from the roadways, the smaller the PM 2.5 concentration, meaning healthier air quality,” Ward said, after using Python programming language and math modeling techniques to analyze her data. “But the closer I am to highways, large diesel trucks standing and idling—things of that nature—the PM 2.5 [levels are]consistently very toxic for vulnerable populations.”

Particle concentrations were in the “good” to “moderate” range in the green spaces, as classified by data from the Environmental Protection Agency. But the Bronx park locations near major roadways, including Noble Playground, had particle concentrations categorized as “unhealthy for sensitive groups” to “unhealthy,” Ward said.

“When I go to the public parks and see soccer teams, kids playing, moms and babies in strollers, and see the PM 2.5 [levels]as harmful,” said Ward, “it’s a staggering difference that tells a lot about environmental injustices taking place right in the borough.”  

An Alarming Discovery on the D Train

Her project was inspired by a program called Project True—a collaboration between Fordham and the Wildlife Conservation Society, where Ward worked on an urban ecology research project in 2017. It sparked her interest in how the natural landscape interacts with people and cities. It also made her think about a topic closer to home: the pediatric asthma crisis in the Bronx, her home for the past four years.

“It’s a disease that will be affecting cities as they grow in population, as more cars are added to the roads, and also as the EPA continues to deregulate air pollution,” Ward said.

She added that her preliminary subway data is “scary,” too.

Last September, she said she stood on the uptown subway platform at 59th Street and, on a whim, decided to measure the air quality. A “good” PM 2.5 concentration is 0 to 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air, according to the EPA. Ward’s measurement, however, was nearly 120—a number deemed “unhealthy for sensitive groups,” she said. And the further underground she ventured into the subway station, the higher the PM 2.5 concentration became.

“At every stop along the D train route, levels have been harmful to human health in general—not just for those who already have lung conditions or children,” Ward said, adding that other subway lines could have similar levels. “The levels are twice what I see typically at roadside locations … That ultimately could tell a lot about the health of subway workers and the millions of people who ride the MTA every day.”

Using Science to Push for Change

Ward will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics this May. She is currently enrolled in Fordham’s five-year master’s program in humanitarian studies, where she will continue conducting research that blends science and math with social justice. Right now, she is in the process of submitting her research article for publication. But over the next few years, Ward said she’s planning on collecting and comparing more quantitative data, particularly between the D and Q subway lines, with a better air quality detector.

She said her research is dedicated to the memory of Fordham first-year student Nicholas Booker, who died after a severe asthma attack last fall.

“Science can be used as a tool to enact change and advocate for justice,” Ward said. “Ultimately, it can be that tipping point to make lawmakers and policymakers see that there is a problem.”

The more crowded the neighborhood, the more social the bird. Such are the findings of an interspecies study by Fordham College at Rose Hill junior Lindsay Thomas.

Thomas, who is majoring in biology and minoring in sociology, unveiled her research at the Sixth Annual Bronx Science Consortium Poster Symposium on Wed., Oct. 3. Her work focused on observing birds, and how humans interact with them, in New York City parks. She hypothesized that birds live in different “avian communities” across the city, and, just like their human counterparts, their behavior often reflects the environment of their neighborhood.

In crowded parks, like Central Park, Thomas found that birds and humans interacted closely. People could get close to birds before the birds would take off and seek refuge in nearby woods—and not even that far into the woods. In less crowded parks, like Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx, birds flew away much sooner when people approached them, and they fled much deeper into the wooded areas.

“In Central Park the birds are competing for the same areas of the park as humans so they tend to hang out in areas such as footpaths and fountains,” said Thomas. “Unfortunately, birds also tend to use humans as easy food sources due to frequent hand feeding.”

Thomas wasn’t alone in tracking bird-human observations; she was supported by New York City high school students recruited for the study through Project TRUE (Teens Researching Urban Ecology), a program funded by the National Science Foundation that pairs teens with educators from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Fordham researchers.

One of the students, Angel Torres, riffed on Thomas’ work. Out in the field he noticed that birds were more vocal in crowded parks where they were competing with humans and city noise; they were less vocal in quieter parks. However, regardless of the park, when the same species of bird was observed in close proximity to others of the same species, vocalization rates increased.

Thomas’ groundwork for the research began after Tiffany House, her counselor from CSTEP (Fordham’s Collegiate Science, Engineering, and Technology Program), encouraged her to apply for a summer research internship with Project TRUE. As Thomas lives in Rockland County, CSTEP funded her housing for the internship.

Through the Wildlife Conservation Society, she was matched with Jocelyn Harrison, a conservation educator from Central Park who helped her iron out research methods and questions. She was also mentored by Fordham graduate student Emily Casper. By July, she was explaining research methods to three teens and working in the field gathering data with them.

Observing her own mentors opened up new possibilities for Thomas.

“It was great seeing people who were more along in their careers, like Jocelyn. I didn’t know that her job even existed,” she said of the conservation educator. “And I didn’t know we had such a diverse graduate program in biology until I met Emily. Her research is in marine biology! I thought you had to go somewhere else to study that.”

After college, Thomas hopes to pursue fellowship opportunities. Her interests lie at the intersection of policy, public health, and the sciences.

And as inspired as she was by her mentors, Thomas was also inspired by her mentees.

“One of the major takeaways,” she said, “was just working with the high school students and seeing how smart and driven they were.”

Thomas said she went to a low-income high school where budget cuts led to reduction of advanced placement classes.

“When I started this program, my main goal was to provide the students with guidance that I didn’t have at their age,” she said. “If I heard they were interested in college, I would be really on to it and encourage them.” Last month one of the students sent her a college essay to read.

“I tried to offer support beyond the program, support that I didn’t get,” she said.

“I’d go the place that I last remembered it was, but sometimes the bin was there, and other times it was moved,” said Goncharova, a recent graduate of Fordham College at Rose Hill.

That experience is one of the things that inspired Goncharova, who studied economics and environmental studies, to research consumer incentives for recycling unwanted clothing. Donating and repurposing textiles is a critical way that consumers can reduce landfill waste, she said. However, the process must be efficient to create impact.

“The final step of the supply chain is the disposal aspect, and that’s the thing that companies don’t usually think about,” she said. “Recycling bottles and paper comes easy. Everyone knows where to put them. But when it comes to clothes, particularly those from fast fashion brands, it becomes difficult to know what to do with them when you don’t want them anymore.”

According to Hitwise, a consumer insights firm, the fast fashion industry—which includes brands like H&M, Forever 21, and the web-based Boohoo.com—has grown 21 percent over the past three years. But this growth has presented a lot of challenges, particularly for the environment, Goncharova said. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Americans discard about 13 million tons of textiles annually, and only two million tons of those clothes were recycled.

Goncharova believes this can change if consumers and businesses work together to recycle textile materials instead of throwing them out.

“I love sustainability because it allows us to create a self-sustaining supply chain,” she said.

Identifying Motivations for Sustainable Fashion

Through a Fordham-funded research study, Goncharova hoped to identify ways to motivate consumers to recycle their unwanted clothing. She recruited a randomized group of 100 students from the University and conducted a preliminary questionnaire via email that was focused on demographic information, the participants’ shopping habits, and their knowledge of sustainability.

Next, the participants were given eco-friendly plastic bags that were manufactured from 25 percent recycled HD plastic, with three types of options for shipping. They could use shipping labels that were prepaid, and send them to the recycling companies Give Back Box and Schoola; schedule a donation pick-up with the Salvation Army for free; or pay their own shipping to send their clothes to denim recycling companies like Blue Jeans Go Green and Patagonia.

“One of the goals was to see if people would be more inclined to donate clothes if shipping was free or if they received a shipping label for donations in-store at the time of their purchase,” she said.

Along with the donation bags, participants of the study were given a follow-up questionnaire about their reactions to the mailable donation bags and the likelihood that they would use the bags again.

Through the study, Goncharova found that participants given the prepaid labels were most likely to recycle. Results from the questionnaire showed a significant correlation between a participant saying they would recycle clothes if it was as easy as online returns, and if brands themselves offered rewards for recycling. They also showed that prior knowledge of sustainability was not related to the participants’ desire to recycle once they were offered this option.

“A lot of people want to donate their clothes, they just don’t know what to do with them,” she said.

Goncharova stressed that creating opportunities for sustainable fashion should be just as important to companies as it is to consumers.

Some companies are already working to reduce landfill waste. In 2013, H&M launched an in-store recycling initiative, which allows customers to drop off unwanted clothing from any brand. And Madewell, a brand that generates most of its sales from denim, partnered with Blue Jeans Go Green, a denim recycling company. Other companies, like Patagonia, allow customers to trade and repair their brand’s used clothing.

“Businesses have a role in this,” she said. “They can’t just throw their hands up, and say, ‘I’m not a part of that.’  These materials are part of the supply chain and they can still add value to it by putting materials back in.”

A Graphic Novel Delves into A World Without Weapons

In senior Mary Cleary’s first year at Fordham, children of Sandy Hook Elementary School were shot and killed. In her senior year, high schoolers in Parkland, Florida, were gunned down. In the years in between, she said, she began to contemplate what a world without weapons would look like. As a new media and digital design major, she began to think about expressing her thoughts in a graphic novel titled Nath for its lead character.

In Cleary’s imagined world with no weapons, Nath is a college athlete in a street gang. But the author pointed out that just because there are no knives or guns, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was a world without violence.

“I was curious how people may adapt to something like that, so I settled on hand-to-hand combat,” she said. “In Nath’s world there’s a lot of emphasis on honor in fighting, and I thought about how in martial arts they focus on protection and not on harming others.”

Set in an urban landscape that combines the density of 20th-century New York with the sprawl of modern Tokyo, Cleary’s novel wrestles with many contemporary issues, such as the need for weapons in the first place. Nath’s cousin tells her that hand-to-hand combat isn’t always fair, that sometimes a stronger person will attack a weaker person.

“So, he proposes weapons do have a purpose and they can be used with an honorable purpose, which is protecting your own life,” she said. It’s a concept that Nash, however, resists.

Her novel, which she hopes to “shop around” after graduation, is part of an ongoing series with Nath continuing to wrestle with issues that are far more American than Japanese.

A Humanist Interpretation of the Conquest of Mexico

Junior Joshua Anthony examined the humanist interpretation of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. He noted that 16th-century scholars from Europe viewed the experiences of the Aztecs through the lens of ancient Greece and Rome.

“They used [their]Renaissance ideas about clashes and conflicts with different cultures as a way to read history,” he said.

He said today there are a variety of methods to examine a particular culture.

“I like to look at narratives and how people think of things,” he said. “My favorite historians of this period can read the Aztec language, look at their writings, and contextualize those.”

He noted that Aztecs were far from a homogeneous culture, but instead represented a variety of cultures and languages, not unlike Europeans.

“Studying the Aztecs showed me how many different sides of the story there are,” he said. “That’s crucial to understanding history and not getting bogged down by your preconceived beliefs.”

The Compatibility of Islam with French Values

As a native of Egypt, senior Mariam Moustafa brought an outsider’s perspective to the issue of Muslims living in France. Her research examined the compatibility of Islam with the values of the French Republic. She began by looking at Muslim-French relations starting with the seventh century and the establishment of the French state and continued on to 1962 and the Algerian War of Independence.

She noted that 18th-century agreements between the church and the French Republic led to modern-day values that separated the church from the state. She said that sometimes the ideals associated with secularization can be radicalized in much the same way the ideals of Islam can be.

“The state should be neutral and not represent any religion, but it gives the right to practice religion,” she said. “But some say, ‘No you can’t practice religion outside the house and once you go out onto the street, take off your [hijab]scarf.’”

Moustafa hopes to move to Paris after graduation and work as an interpreter of language and of culture.

“If we can get the French to understand that different cultures can become compatible, then I want to be a part of that,” she said.

Reimagining Shakespeare and the Dark Lady 

Junior Rachel Jarvis wrote a screenplay that turns notions of Shakespeare’s plays on their head. Riffing on a Virginia Woolf’s essay, “A Room of One’s Own,” which imagined that Shakespeare’s sister had his talent but not his male privilege, Jarvis imagines that Shakespeare’s “Dark Lady” wrote his plays instead.

The identity of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady has been a mystery for centuries. The subject of several Shakespeare sonnets, some say she ran a brothel in the Clerkenwell section of London, where Fordham’s new London Centre is undergoing renovations. She has alternately been referred to as Black Luce or Lucy Negro. Jarvis’s screenplay is called “Lady Lucy.”

“You could read Shakespeare at face value, you could read it contextually, or you can think about race relations and about female authorship at the time,” she said. “But since this is 2018, I want to project more of what race relations were back then, but also what race relations are now.”

Toxicity of Weed Killer on the Horseshoe Crabs in Jamaica Bay

Senior Karin Khoder grew up in Brooklyn near Jamaica Bay, an area that she drove by without paying much attention. But her research, which examines the toxicity of a weed killer on the area’s horseshoe crabs, has made her see her neighborhood in a different light.

Monsanto, the agriculture giant, manufactures the weedkiller Roundup. Khoder said the company touts the weed killer’s non-toxic qualities. Indeed, she tested reactions of horseshoe crab larva when in contact with Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, and found it to be relatively harmless. But the inactive ingredient, a detergent called decylamine, caused the larva to become an opaque white color, rather than the greenish-brown they should be. Unfortunately, Monsanto doesn’t make the exact formula available to public, so Khoder does not know the amount of decylamine used.

“I think that corporations should be more transparent in what they’re doing because the only way we can make things safe is to be able to do scientific research,” said. Khoder.

As a Brooklynite, her view of the area has been transformed through her work.

“I never had the opportunity to go to the beach and explore all the wildlife,” she said.

She said the there used to be a landfill nearby and the water came right up to the highway. After the beach was restored, nature returned. “Now, we see all these different horseshoe crabs, snails, and fish.”

Dancing to Your Own Tune

Junior Isabel Mallon’s video series “Talking Bodies” allows dancers to improvise. “As dancers, sometimes we get less of a say,” she said. “When you’re in the room with a choreographer, they have the power.”  Rather than direct their movements, Mallon allows her subjects the freedom express themselves. In voiceovers, the subjects discuss body image, self image, and “how they feel about themselves.”

When Fordham College at Rose Hill established its first Undergraduate Research Symposium 11 years ago, 36 students presented their work. 

Today, the annual event celebrates the research projects of more than 300 undergraduates across disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, natural science, and the arts.

This year’s symposium , held at the McGinley Center on April 11, featured about three dozen oral presentations and more than 100 poster presentations in anthropology, history, classics, chemistry, environmental studies, international political economy, physics, psychology, and more.

Below are some of the highlights of the daylong event.

Using Gene Therapy to Target Primary Brain Tumors

Glioblastoma, which affects 13,000 new patients each year, is one of the most common and progressive form of brain cancers.

“It’s very difficult to treat and not very responsive to traditional treatment because it is hidden in the brain and the cancerous cells become intertwined with normal cells,” said Thomas Christensen, FCRH ’18, a neuroscience major.

Christensen worked with Patricio Meneses, Ph.D., associate professor of biological science, to explore an alternative treatment strategy using gene therapy. Through genetic treatment, researchers would be able to replace abnormal cells with healthier ones. According to Christensen, the genetic material would be transported in target cells in the brain using a DNA molecule packaged within a human papillomavirus (HPV) pseudoviral shell. It then would make a protein that binds to the mutated protein that is present in up to a third of glioblastoma patients.

“We hope that in developing a treatment strategy like this we’ll be better able to treat patients and avoid a lot of the awful side effects that are associated with traditional treatment strategies such as chemotherapy,” said Christensen.

Documenting the Medical Experiences of Burmese Refugees in the U.S.

For her study of a group of refugees—the Karen ethnic community—who settled in the U.S. from Myanmar (Burma) after decades of civil war, senior Natalie Wodniak interviewed 39 members of the group now living in Fort Wayne, Indiana; Amarillo, Texas; and Buffalo, New York. She hoped to learn about their medical experiences in the U.S.

“There are a lot of refugees here and it’s important to be culturally aware and mindful of their experiences and how they’re adjusting to American society,” said Wodniak, who was recently invited to present her findings at the Council on Undergraduate Research’s Posters on the Hill in Washington D.C.

Through her research, Wodniak discovered that the refugees’ system of health care is based on traditional medicines from plants and herbs like betel leaves, which treat ailments like fever. When they arrive in the U.S., however, they are treated with western medicine, she said.

“It can be very confusing to them,” said Wodniak. “They also feel like it’s not a conducive environment to continue practicing their traditions because a lot of [American doctors] don’t understand the benefits [of traditional medicine]. The doctors don’t know that those things can be successful options for treatment.”

Creating A Stable Catalyst for Glucose Sensors

Glucose meters use biological enzymes to catalyze, or speed up, the reactions that are necessary to detect blood glucose levels.  Since they are made of pure platinum, which is expensive and tends to decrease in effectiveness over time and at higher temperatures, diabetic patients often spend thousands of dollars each year to monitor their glucose levels, said Nicole Smina, a sophomore studying chemistry.

Smina worked with Christopher Koenigsmann, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry, to replace biological enzymes with transition metals that included a mixture of platinum, gold, and palladium, which is more stable. She believes adjusting the composition of these catalyst wires can help to reduce costs while providing accurate and effective sensing.

“If we can create a more stable catalyst that performs over a wide temperature range,” said Smina, “then it would help diabetic patients to not have to constantly purchase new glucose sensors.”

Mapping Determinants of Food Security in Nigeria

Using data compiled by the World Bank and a theory inspired by a 2014 study of food security in Malawi, mathematics and economics major Santiago I. Sordo Palacios examined how supplemental, off-farm labor impacted food security for households in Nigeria.

According to the Malawi study, farming households who supplemented their income by working off the farm saw increases in their annual income, which helped them become more food secure. However, this also led to decreases in their own agricultural production in the long run.

“When a member of the household is going into town every day, he or she might be doing that on a longer-term basis in comparison to other supplemental work,” said Sordo Palacios.

Sordo Palacios found that when a family member worked on a household business, such as providing some type of good or service to their neighboring community, it had a positive impact on the household’s food security. These forms of casual labor tended to happen between the planting season and the harvesting seasons, which suggest they require a short-term commitment, he said.

“Being able to determine what causes food insecurity can inform what routes policy makers should take to help people become food secure,” said Sordo Palacios.

Examining Acts of Resistance Among Young Muslim Women

With the rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Leya Maloney, a senior majoring in political science and Middle East studies, was curious about how Muslim women protest as a form of resistance in a post-9/11 world.

She conducted in-depth interviews with 15 college students about faith, background, socioeconomic status, and political affiliation. The participants, who were between the ages of 18 and 21, were primarily living on the East Coast of the U.S. and were of Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Egyptian, Jordanian, Palestinian, Afghan, and Turkish descent.

She found that the lower the socioeconomic status of the participants, the more likely they were to engage in protest or rallies.

“If their parents come from a country of high-state oppression, these women tend not to engage in overt acts of protest but engage in more passive forms of resistance such as in the classroom or on an individual level in conversations, social media, and the clothing they choose to wear,” said Maloney.

Using French Cinema to Examine Social Exclusion

 For Margaret Fahey, who is studying International Political Economy and French Studies, film can be a reflection of issues facing society. Fahey examined three films, La Haine (1995), Tout ce qui brille (2010) and Dheepan (2015), which all focused on the struggles facing minorities who live within the banlieues, or suburbs of France.

 “The banlieues are similar to America’s inner-city areas. The neighborhoods are often stereotyped and this is reflected by French film,” said Fahey, who was awarded a Fulbright to Marseille, France, where she will be teaching English to high school students next year.

 She compared the issues facing the characters and contrasted them with the policies that existed surrounding immigration.

 “Immigrants are expected to integrate into French society,” said Fahey. “The model doesn’t necessarily embrace cultural differences. Rather, people are often expected to hide their differences in order to fit in. Together, the three films examined weave a cinematic representation of how these expectations affect individuals living in France.”

“The Paralympics and the Olympics celebrate the joy found in effort,” said Block, a 2017 graduate of Fordham College at Rose Hill.

A soccer player for 15 years, Block sees sports as a global language and bridge builder. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship last summer to work with the Para START (Sports Training and Research Team) Swim Training Program for 10 months in the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences at the University of Queensland in Australia.

“To be eligible for para sport, para athletes must have a physical, intellectual, or visual impairment that adversely affects sports performance,” she said. “Classification plays a huge part in promoting fairness in sports because there is such a large spectrum of moderate to severe impairments.”

The Para START program is led by Sean Tweedy, Ph.D., Emma Beckman, Ph.D., Mark Connick, Ph.D., and Leanne Johnston, Ph.D., of the University of Queensland. It focuses on athletes with high support needs. One of its aims is to evaluate the formation of athletic identity in this population. Specifically, four teenagers with cerebral palsy and no prior experience with organized sports will undertake a swimming training program which aims to help them swim as fast as they are physically able to, Block said.

For the past two months, Block has been conducting semi-structured interviews with participants with the aim to capture key moments during the program that influence a person’s constructions of themselves as an athlete. This narrative inquiry portion of the research is supervised by Eimear Enright, Ph.D., of the University of Queensland.

“A number of the participants in our swim training program describe it as the first context in which they have truly felt a sense of personal empowerment due to physical challenge” she said.

An Elite Level of Athleticism

The participants aspire to compete in the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics and, in order to do this, they must be able to swim a minimum of 50 meters, according to Tweedy, an international classifier in Paralympic sport. (The 2018 Paralympics are currently underway in PyeongChang through March 18)

“In addition to documenting the formation of athletic identity in our participants, we are looking at the therapeutic benefit of sport participation, so the term ‘performance-focused’ is the key,” Tweedy said in a February interview with the University of Queensland.

“We already know that aquatic therapy works. Treating people in water reduces the effects of gravity, making movement easier and allowing people to do exercises that will improve strength and range of motion. The unique aspect of our project is that it does not have specific therapeutic goals – we are simply aiming to help our participants to swim fast. They do the hard work and we will monitor how they change over time.”

Block provides insight as to why these athletes favor swimming compared to other competitive sports.

“Their love of swimming has a lot to do with the feelings of freedom and independence this sport provides,” she said. “On land, they are restricted to using a wheelchair, but the water acts as a safe space to explore movement that would otherwise not be possible.”

‘Subtle Displays of Exclusion’

 Having a deeper understanding of the influences that shape how individuals with disabilities recognize their athletic talent can provide further understanding of identity development.

“This construct has previously been explored in retrospective studies on already successful Paralympians with mild to moderate impairments, but little is known about athletic identity formation in novice athletes who have high support needs,” said Block. “The study will have potential implications for disability sports’ inclusion policies and for rehabilitation frameworks and practices.”

An advocate for accessible athletic programs in education and local communities, Block said programs like Para START challenge our concept of who can be an elite athlete.

“Inclusive sports are so important because, rather than defining disability by what one cannot do, they can provide the opportunity to focus on what one can do.”