As a snow squall blasted through New York City on January 30, 200 Fordham alumni and friends gathered at New York City’s iconic Tavern on the Green for the inaugural Alumni Recognition Reception.

The Fordham University Alumni Association—which was created in 2017 to help connect alumni from all of Fordham’s schools to the University and to each other—organized the event to celebrate all alumni volunteers and honor two, in particular: Morgan Vazquez, FCRH ’13, received the first Trailblazer Award, and Dennis Kenny, FCRH ’57, LAW ’61, was named Ram of the Year. It was the group’s second annual reception, but the first time these biennial awards have been presented.

When Vazquez accepted her award, she joked about her deep love for Fordham. “If I have a plan over the weekend, 90 percent of the time it has to do with Fordham,” she laughed. “If I tell someone a story, 95 percent of the time it has to do with Fordham.”

She thanked her fellow alumni volunteers for helping her create a Fordham community she and others could be a part of even after graduation, and she became emotional as she shared her gratitude for Stephen Freedman, Ph.D., Fordham’s late provost, who she said was a huge part of her Fordham experience and a source of inspiration to her.

Kenny thanked his wife of 62 years, fellow Ram Judy Kenny, GSE ’86, and spoke about the great joy his role as a mentor has brought him. “There’s no better way to give back to the University that has bestowed an education on you,” he said.

As the Ram of the Year, Kenny also shared some of the mascot’s history with attendees—from its birth as part of a cheer during an 1893 football game through the years a real ram lived on campus until the version we know today. “The Ram is a proud symbol of all things Fordham,” he said. “Thank you, all Rams and friends of Rams, for this award.”

When Vazquez found out she’d be receiving the inaugural Trailblazer Award, presented to a graduate from the past 10 years who has demonstrated outstanding dedication to Fordham and whose leadership has inspired fellow alumni, she said she was “totally shocked.” In fact, she’s involved in so many Fordham activities that she initially thought she was getting a phone call about her work on the commencement committee.

“Fordham is a huge part of my life, as anyone who talks to me knows,” she said, “so I’m excited, humbled, and honored.”

Kenny, a 1957 Fordham College at Rose Hill grad and 1961 Fordham Law alumnus who has been named Ram of the Year, joked that he was originally worried he’d have to dress as Ramses the Ram at the reception. When he was told that the award honors a graduate who has enhanced the reputation of the University through their professional achievements, personal accomplishments, and loyal service to Fordham, he simply said: “I feel truly unworthy.”

A Pipeline to Success

Both grads have a long history of supporting Fordham.

Vazquez, a vice president of campus strategy and pipeline development at BNY Mellon, has been an active member of the Staten Island Alumni Chapter and the Young Alumni Committee since graduation. She’s also a member of the Fordham Mentoring Program, which she says dovetails with her work in recruitment and retention for BNY Mellon.

“It’s a question of how you can help people keep developing in the right way,” she said. “It sounds cliché, but Fordham helped shape the person that I am today. So it’s exciting to see how I can support current students both in and beyond the program.”

Vazquez, who received a full scholarship to Fordham from JPMorgan Chase and interned at the company throughout her college career as part of their Smart Start program, says she wants to help others have the same great experience she did in college and beyond.

“One of my main goals is to be a leader and show people what’s possible,” she said. “I have been lucky enough to have some fantastic people and opportunities in my life that have helped me figure things out, pushed me, and challenged me. I want to be that for other people and help them find success. So it’s amazing to be recognized for that and be able to continue spreading the message of Fordham.”  

An Alumni Advocate

Kenny, a dayhop from White Plains who had to pay his own way, said he feels similarly.

“I’m so glad I did what I did, and I owe so much to Fordham because it was through them that I got to where I am,” he said. “So I always felt I had to pay it back.”

And he certainly has. He’s been a member of the Law School Alumni Association for 40 years, he helped plan his 50th Jubilee in 2007, and he currently supports Fordham’s Fashion Law Institute and mentors students at the Law School—particularly international and L.M. students, helping place them in jobs and on the alumni association board. He’s received several honors from the Law School for his professional and volunteer work, including the Richard J. Bennett Memorial Award in 1999, The Fordham International Law Journal’s Amicus Fidelis Award in 2006, and the Fordham Law Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.

He’s also been actively involved with the Feerick Center for Social Justice since its founding in 2006 by his friend John Feerick, FCRH ’58, LAW ’61, longtime Fordham Law professor and former dean of the school.

“When I was at the Fordham Law Review, in my final year of law school, John was the editor in chief. I tell everybody that John was the editor and I was his gopher,” he laughed. “We’ve been friends ever since.”

Motivated by the Mission

Kenny, who retired after more than 30 years at Transamerica Leasing, said his Jesuit education played a big part in his professional success. “They really train you how to think,” he said. “And if you can do that, you can succeed in just about anything.”

He feels the Feerick Center is a particularly good example of the Jesuit mission that motivates him.

“The most important thing the Catholic Church can do in this day and age is support social justice,” Kenny said. “That’s why I do so much of what I do in my life.”

Fordham’s Jesuit values made a huge impact on Vazquez too, particularly the tenet of cura personalis, or care for the whole person.

“Fordham encourages you to grow your own faith, your own individuality, regardless of what that is. Fordham embraces differences and diversity, and that helped shape me as an individual,” she said.

This year marks the first time the FUAA is hosting the Alumni Recognition Reception, which will be held biennially from now on. The reception celebrates all alumni volunteers. This year’s two honorees were nominated by their alumni peers and selected by the FUAA Advisory Board members. Vazquez will be the first to receive the Trailblazer Award. Kenny will be the latest to receive the Ram of the Year Award. Past recipients include Bob Campbell, Bill Burke, Vin Scully, and Mary Higgins Clark.

Hanna Tadevich, FCLC ’15, is completely invested in the therapeutic power of the arts.

A graduate of the Ailey/Fordham BFA program in dance who double majored in English, Tadevich says that the arts have long informed who she is “as a person and as a humanitarian.”

But her experience in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps is what truly solidified her decision to “commit my life to fostering community and justice by using music, dance, creative writing, and the visual arts.”

As a Jesuit Volunteer for the past eight months, Tadevich has been working at the McClendon Center in Washington, D.C., a day program for adults with severe mental illnesses or who are recovering from addiction. Tadevich facilitates creative arts-based therapy groups there every day.

She is one of 15 Fordham graduates working locally in urban and rural areas across the U.S. as well as in Belize and Peru, through the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC) and JVC Northwest. Both organizations place volunteers for one- or two-year stints in communities that are tackling some of the world’s greatest challenges: homelessness, hunger, mental illness, crime, and poverty.

A common thread among the Fordham volunteers is their participation in the University’s Global Outreach program, which brings students on cultural and service trips that focus on economic, environmental, political, and social injustices around the world.

The program’s director, Paul Francis, GSAS ’03, GABELLI ’10, explains that, much like JVC placements, Global Outreach’s one- to two-week service-learning trips “focus more on solidarity than charity.”

And they inspire many students to make a commitment to the Jesuit Volunteer Corps upon graduation. At least eight and often as many as 20 Fordham graduates volunteer for JVC each year, not including those who volunteer for JVC Northwest.

That was certainly the case for Tadevich, whose experience on four Global Outreach trips—two to Ecuador, one to the Dominican Republic, and one to Camden, New Jersey—prepared her for JVC.

“I was always interested in service work, but I didn’t have a social analysis framework to understand the systems, the issues, or even the marginalized populations I would encounter,” Tadevich says. She got that through Global Outreach. “It was an overwhelming experience to understand that charity only goes so far, and also to see that it was feasible to commit your life to something beyond yourself.”

She’s doing just that as a Jesuit Volunteer at the McClendon Center. “It’s been an incredible blend of my arts background and my love for human relationships,” she says.

Tadevich, a Chicago native, hopes to stay with the center for a second year, something she believes will be beneficial for her patients while also giving her more practical experience before she pursues a master’s degree in social work.

Patrick “PJ” Brogan, FCRH ’15, who double majored in American studies and economics at Fordham, also got interested in JVC through Global Outreach.

“Global Outreach lets you learn about a place in a particular sort of way that you don’t get to in a classroom or as a student,” says Brogan, who is originally from Philadelphia. His service-learning trips to Kentucky, Alaska, Detroit, and San Diego sparked his interest in working with people experiencing homelessness. Through JVC Northwest, he’s working at the Poverello Center, a homeless shelter in Missoula, Montana.

“It’s a population that doesn’t get enough attention, people who live without a safety net and receive a lot of repression and stigma,” he says. Since volunteering with JVC Northwest, Brogan has decided that he is “definitely interested in pursuing this kind of work professionally.”

Working with the mentally ill and homeless can be challenging. But all Jesuit Volunteers have a built-in support network of fellow volunteers—roommates and those placed nearby—who are doing similar work and share their values and their experiences.

“Having people I can talk to about work and process what my day has been like, it’s been a great resource,” Brogan says.

For Tadevich, “it’s an invitation to deepen your reflective life, no matter your faith and to engage with other people constantly. That intimate bonding and support is part of what makes it such a transformative experience.

“I feel that the people I live with and work with will be influential characters in my life for years to come,” she says, ”because we have the ability to bond so intensely.”

The students and graduates who participate in both Global Outreach and JVC “aren’t out to fix the world,” says Francis. But by forming these deep connecting with people and communities, “they learn firsthand about what’s happening in the world, hopefully transform their own lives, and make a real impact locally.”

Now we’ve got a chance to show the rest of New York City just how charitable they are.

According to Sandra Lobo Jost, director of Fordham’s Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice, the University has joined the Mayor’s College Challenge Initiative, which is a competition between New York City universities and colleges to see who can rack up the most service hours.

“Anyone who is volunteering for a non-profit 501(c)(3) within New York City can log into the mayor’s website, create and account and register their hours, which is then recorded on the website instantly,” she said.

“I believe Fordham could easily rise to the top of the list (we are number 9 right now), if we could only get the word out to the Fordham family and get them to log on their hours!”

The challenge runs through March 30. For more information, visit http://www.nycservice.org/college_challenge.php or contact Sandra Lobo Jost at 718-817-4510