Walsh worked for more than two decades at the library’s electronic information center, where she had many responsibilities, including scheduling and supervising student workers. She also maintained an encyclopedic knowledge of the library’s spaces and their respective schedules.

“She knew the geography of the building perhaps better than anybody,” said Linda Loschiavo, director of University Libraries. “She seemed to know every member of the University administration, every dean, every chair. She knew every name that popped up.”

When a flood on the library’s lower level caused the staff to temporarily relocate in 2021, Loschiavo spent the year sharing her office with Walsh. She described the experience as “the silver lining” of a difficult time for the library staff.

“Jean was one of the kindest individuals I’ve ever met,” Loschiavo said.

Walsh’s daughter Jeannette Ginther also reflected on her mom’s giving nature.

“She was just so caring and so selfless,” she said. “She really put everybody in her life before herself.”

Walsh was born in the Bronx to Victor and Lucy Spaccarelli. She owned Jean’s Hallmark Shop in the Galleria at White Plains for more than 10 years before joining the staff at the William D. Walsh Library on the Rose Hill campus, where she worked for 21 years.

Walsh’s connections to Fordham began with her father, Victor, a master bricklayer and stonemason who did extensive work on the Rose Hill campus, including building the very library where his daughter worked.

“He had a hand on a stone of every building of the Rose Hill campus,” her son, Thomas Walsh Jr., FCRH ’07, said of his late grandfather.

Her brothers Victor Jr. and John Spaccarelli, the current director of special projects and facilities at Fordham; her husband Thomas Walsh; and son Thomas Jr. have been decade-long employees of Fordham in various fields, including facilities and project management.

“Between Victor Sr., his son, John, and myself, we have worked on every building on all three campuses,” said Thomas Walsh, adding that the family history was a great source of Jean’s pride in being a Fordham employee.

“My mom’s first priority was always her family,” Ginther said. “She also treated her employees and her coworkers like family.”

Walsh’s passion was cooking—a love that she shared with friends and family alike by hosting big holiday dinners and frequently bringing baked goods for her student workers and colleagues at the library to enjoy.

But Walsh’s greatest joy was watching her grandchildren, Richie, Justin, and Natasha, grow up. Walsh was a constant presence in their lives and spoke of them so often that fellow Fordham staff members felt they knew them personally.

“At her wake and her funeral, there were so many Fordham colleagues that came,” said Kristina Karnovsky, Walsh’s youngest daughter. “When they had a chance to meet my children and my sister’s children, it was like they already knew them because she spoke of them so often and had their pictures at her desk. ”

A funeral Mass was held at St. Columba Church in Hopewell Junction on Feb 12. Donations in her memory can be made to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital or the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

“You remember people, I think, for how they made you feel,” Karnovsky said of the impact her mother had. “And she made everyone feel so loved.”

“There’s something really important about the fact that we are in the business of teaching,” said Tetlow. “If there’s anyone who should understand how to spread information, how to help people understand—it’s us. So how do we model our own pedagogy with each other?”

Tetlow spoke on the Twice Over Podcast, which was developed during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to find meaning and connection during a turbulent time. Over the past two years, it evolved into a platform where students, faculty, administrators, and guest speakers at other academic institutions share effective practices in their work and build connections through candid conversations. More than 40 guests have been interviewed by the podcast’s two hosts: Steven D’Agustino, director of online learning, and Anne Fernald, special advisor to the provost. They conduct recording sessions in a sound-controlled studio within the Learning, Innovation, Technology Environment, a new center in the basement of Walsh Library where students, faculty, and administrators use cutting-edge technology for their research.  

The podcast episode featuring Tetlow was published on Nov. 28. For nearly an hour, Tetlow speaks in depth on many topics, including why she decided to work in higher education and how her second grade teacher changed her life. The podcast episode can be streamed on Twice Over’s website, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, and YouTube. 

The 250-kilowatt installation, which will be installed by Bloom Energy, will generate clean electricity on site and provide that power directly to the five-story, 240,000-square-foot library.

The solid oxide fuel cell technology produces electricity without combustion using a highly efficient electrochemical process, resulting in electricity that is cleaner than the local utility grid. As a result, Fordham will offset more than 300 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year—the equivalent of burning 328,000 pounds of coal.

In addition to generating virtually none of the smog-forming particulate emissions that cause air pollution and respiratory distress, the servers use almost no water. By contrast, the power plants that supply the U.S. grid withdraw 150 million more gallons of water per megawatt of electricity each year. With their use, Fordham will conserve 39 million gallons of water annually, in keeping with a pledge the University made last year when it signed onto the New York City’s Water Challenge, which called for Universities to reduce their water use by 5%. The installation is also expected to result in lower and more predictable energy expenses.

“We are deeply aware of the fact that responsible stewardship of the Earth is a charge from God our creator, who has entrusted it to our care,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

“Therefore, we are aware that we must bring to the present challenge all the wisdom and commitment that we can muster. The new servers are an important part of our strategy to make a meaningful reduction in our carbon footprint.”

Bill Bockoven, vice president of Eastern Region at Bloom Energy, applauded Fordham for its efforts.

“Fordham University is ahead of the curve in sustainable campus practices and green campus initiatives,” he said.

“By adopting innovative technology to achieve green campus goals, Fordham illustrates its foresight and investment in protecting the campus and local environment, and leadership in the midst of today’s climate realities.”

The installation is the latest in a series of steps that Fordham has taken to shrink its carbon footprint. As part of its commitment to meet New York City’s Carbon Challenge to reduce its carbon footprint by 40% by 2030, the University in March covered the roof of the Rose Hill parking garage with a 963-kilowatt solar panel array. In July, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, FCRH ’79, chose Fordham as the location to sign into law the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.

The Walsh Family Library, which first opened in 1997, is the largest of the University’s three libraries and is host to more than one million volumes. It is also one of the most energy-intensive buildings on campus, and is the site of the Fordham’s first solar panel installation, a 25 kilowatt array installed in 2010.

A groundbreaking for the installation is scheduled for later this fall.

Wed., Nov 2 from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.Once considered the ugly stepchild of original source material and the bane of professors, Wikipedia has evolved into go-to source of in-depth information on the internet.

Now, a group of Fordham librarians is spreading the word that Wiki is not only reliable, but continues to evolve into a high-quality source of information sharing.

Next week, the librarians will hold a Fordham-focused edit-a-thon on Wed., Nov. 2 from 12 noon to 3 p.m. The event will take place in Lab 047 at the William D. Walsh Family Library on the Rose Hill campus.

According to Wikipedia, an edit-a-thon “is an organized event where editors edit and improve a specific topic or type of content, typically including basic editing training for new editors.”

In celebration of Fordham’s Dodransbicentennial, the librarians have chosen University history as the topic. The intent is to beef up citations for existing Wikipedia articles, and to add content that may have been overlooked—such as the history of women and minorities at the University, said Shira Atkinson, who works at Quinn Library as the scholarly communications and distance learning librarian.

Another benefit of the event will be three hours of training on Wikipedia for professors, students, and staff. No prior experience is necessary. A representative from Wikimedia New York City will be on hand for the training.

Wikimedia “is a global movement whose mission is to bring free educational content to the world.” Through its various chapters, the group has held edit-a-thons on a variety of topics and for a variety of organizations. Last month an edit-a-thon focused on African-American history. In June there are edit-a-thons to build up LGBTQ history.

“At MoMA they held one that helped expose hidden resources at the museum,” said Elizabeth Karg, emerging technologies librarian at Fordham Libraries. “For a large and complex organization like Fordham, this very important. A couple of our schools don’t even have a Wikipedia article and several of our notable faculty are missing.”

Timothy Ryan Mendenhall, metadata librarian at Fordham Libraries, said that participants will start by setting up account and making their first edits. They’ll then move toward best practices and learn how to make entries that meet Wikipedia’s increasingly stringent standards.

“There’s a huge community out there that goes through the cue of articles and decides which ones are good,” said Karg. “Once it’s taken from there it’ll go on the web. After that, simple things like enriching citations make the article better.”

Mendenhall said that edits can be done by anyone with an account at any time. He added that faculty-directed class projects on the site can help build the Wiki community and improve the quality of the site.

The librarians said they understood there is a lingering reticence on the part of the research faculty to encourage students to use Wikipedia, but they insist that the site is a far cry from what it once was.

Mendenhall said that having an article on a topic, person, organization, or event in Wikipedia can greatly increase its prominence in Google search results,

“This make  Wikipedia a crucial gateway for the online representation of an organization like Fordham,” he said. “But beyond the University, it’s crucial that scholars leverage Wikipedia to improve global knowledge of underrepresented topics.”

“The fact is that articles are promoted by Google, and we all use it almost every single day,” said Karg.

“Students may not want to admit they use it, but they do,” added Atkinson. “If you show them how to better use it, they’ll understand what the information limits are.”

It was dark and dreary, but the old Quinn Library held fond memories for generations of Lincoln Center students—even if it wasn’t an ideal place to study.

Now, instead of one rambling open floor plan down on the lower level, lit entirely by florescent lights, a new Quinn Library staggers across three floors and opens to the sun.

“For years we were removed from weather and time,” said Linda LoSchiavo, director of Fordham Libraries. “The big joke became if someone came in with a wet umbrella we’d say, ‘Oh, it must be raining.’ Just the fact that there are now windows and sunlight pouring into this building is a sea change.”

The new library reflects the urbanity of a vertical campus in Manhattan, said LoSchiavo. Situated in the freshly renovated 140 West 62nd Street building, the new library is a funky mix of building materials, with curvaceous metallic grids and wood panels dropping from the ceiling, and multi-colored patterns popping up from the floor.

“The campuses have their own distinct feel: Rose Hill is more the ivy-covered halls of academe and the Walsh Library reflects that, whereas Lincoln Center has an edgier feel,” she said. “We wanted something that picked up the pulse of the campus and the neighborhood. I think we achieved that.”

The library’s main level can be accessed from Robert Moses Plaza, where one enters a two-story atrium-like space with a balcony and catwalk that hover above the library’s lower level. The lower level has a community-focused room with access to the stacks, coffee, and conversation. Called the “Learning Commons,” it’s open 24 hours a day, Sunday through Thursday.

Just beyond glass doors on the balcony level sits the circulation desk, a staff area, and computers and study tables. On the third level is the “Quiet Zone” with private booths, tables, and six study rooms, four of which are equipped with smart technology.

More than 80,000 books have been moved to the new library, while more than a quarter million books will stay behind in the old, lower level space , now called Quinn X. Any book published before the year 2000 will stay at Quinn X, while all books published since 2000 have been moved to the new Quinn. The staff will retrieve books requested from QuinnX.

“It was a considerable achievement to tag 260,000 books with Quinn X stickers,” said Robert Allen, assistant director of Fordham Libraries. “We started in the summer of 2015 with teams of students putting the stickers on.”

A Manhattan Library with Roots in the Bronx (and Kentucky)

The actual move was done over the summer. It revealed quite a bit about the history of the Lincoln Center library, which is inextricably linked to the history of Fordham’s libraries in the Bronx and other long-gone Fordham libraries housed in former Manhattan locations, said Patrice Kane, head of Archives and Special Collections.

Many Fordham students are aware that, in the 1840s, Edgar Allan Poe was given free rein to use the college’s library when he visited to play cards with the Jesuits, who had brought their books with them from Kentucky when they started the university.

Eventually Duane Library housed the growing collection, until 1997 when the Walsh Library was opened. But in the early part of the 20th century, the Law School, the Business School, and the School of Social Service grew their book collections in their various locations in downtown Manhattan. (The social service library shared its collection with students from Dorothy Day’s School for the Catholic Worker.)

When the downtown collections were moved to Lowenstein in 1968, they barely filled the miles of empty shelves. So a request was made to Duane Library to send books.

Now nearly 50 years later, the renovation has rustled books from their sleepy shelves, revealing a few treasures here and there, like an 1896 edition of Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain.

The Mark Twain edition speaks to a 175-year legacy that makes up an extremely comprehensive liberal arts collection, said LoSchiavo, to say nothing of philosophy and theology.

“It is a testament to the faculty and the staff of the library, for the last 175 years, that we have the magnificent collection that we do,” she said. “I am often stunned when I see a book cited as a source, I’ll think, ‘I wonder if we have that?’ I’ll check and find that we do.

“That’s because of the combined knowledge, over 175 years, that has gone into putting the collection together.”