ESPN Documentary Celebrates Hope for Girls

Mobolaji Akiode, CBA ’04, founder of the nonprofit Hope 4 Girls Africa, is the subject of the ESPN special Her Story: Ten Times Over. The half-hour show, narrated by Robin Roberts of Good Morning America, takes its name from a Nigerian proverb—“What you give, you get ten times over.” It focuses on Akiode’s work teaching and empowering young Nigerian girls through basketball.

A native of Nigeria, Akiode was a standout on the Fordham women’s basketball team. She later played on Nigeria’s 2004 national team, the first African women’s basketball team to earn a victory in Olympic competition.

Her Story is scheduled to air on Sunday, April 4, at 2:30 p.m. on ESPN. It will be rebroadcast on ESPNU on Thursday, April 8, at 5:30 p.m., and several times on ESPN Classic: Tuesday, April 6, at 7 p.m.; Thursday, May 20, at 9 p.m. and 10 p.m.; Wednesday, June 9, at 12:30 p.m.; and Thursday, June 10, at 9:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.

Akiode is also the subject of a Q&A, “Seven Questions with Mobolaji Akiode, Sports Activist for Women,” in the spring issue of FORDHAM magazine.

RELEVANT LINKS:

Seven Questions with Mobolaji Akiode, Sports Activist for Women

ESPN’s Web Release on Her Story

Hope 4 Girls Africa

Business Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow... How to Be Successful in Corporate America

FLAUM LEADERSHIP LECTURE SERIES

Hosted by

Fordham University Graduate School of Business Administration
and Sander Flaum, Chair of the Fordham Leadership Forum

Featuring
Paul Carlucci, CBA ’69
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, News America Marketing; Publisher, The New York Post

“Business Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow...
How to Be Successful in Corporate America”

Monday, 12 April 2010 | 6 p.m.
McNally Amphitheatre | Fordham Law School
Fordham University | Lincoln Center Campus
Reception in the Platt Atrium immediately follows the lecture.

RSVP by Monday, 5 April 2010, to the Office of Special Events at:
specialevnts@fordham.edu or (212) 636-6575.

Remittances to Haiti are Critical, says Alumnus

Some staggering statistics were presented on March 26 at Fordham’s second annual Migration and Microfinance Research Conference, a research-centered conference co-sponsored by the Graduate School for Arts and Sciences’ Center for international Policy Studies (CIPS).

Jovis Wolfe Bellot, Ph.D., GSAS ’02, a consultant for Haiti’s central bank and a professor of economics at State University of Haiti, said that remittances from migrant workers living abroad made up 25 percent of the Haitian GDP in 2009. Some 1.1 million Haitians receive remittances on a regular basis, amounting to $1.6 billion last year.

With no economic opportunity, no social system, and no access to credit, those remittances are now, more than ever, critical to the nation’s recovery following the January earthquake, he said.

“Families with remittances enjoy a better life,” said Bellot. “My point is that in a time of crisis, remittance flows are a lifeline, a safety net.” Bellot made his presentation from hand-written notes instead of a powerpoint; both the central bank and his university were damaged in the quake.

The daylong conference looked at remittances and microfinance in several developing nations, and also offered for sale Fair Trade jewelry and soapstone carvings made by Kenyan-owned small businesses. The women-run businesses received microfinance loans from Fordham business students, and all items are available for purchase on campus through Kate Combellick, Ph.D., assistant professor of business and director of International Service Learning.

J.S.

Things That No Longer Delight Me

Poet Leslie C. Chang reading from her work on Tuesday, March 23, at Fordham University as part of the Poets Out Loud series.



This year the Poets Out Loud series concludes with a special reading by Edward Hirsch and high school poets, on Wednesday, April 14, at 7 p.m. in the 12th-Floor Lounge, Lowenstein Center, at the Lincoln Center campus. Hirsh is a distinguished poet and director of the Guggenheim Foundation (his latest book, The Living Fire was very favorably reviewed in The New York Times Sunday Book Review on March 28). He will be reading with student poets chosen by the Cristo Rey and LaGuardia schools, and by the GirlsWriteNow program, which pairs at-risk young women and mentors.

Bill Baker on Journalism in Crisis

The Media: Journalism in Crisis, is a timely documentary that explores how a tough economy and changing technology threaten the survival of responsible journalism in the 21st century. Bill Baker, president emeritus of WNET.org, returns to public television to trace the history, milestones and possible collapse of America’s traditional news industry.

The Media:
Journalism in Crisis
Sunday, April 4 | 11 p.m.
WNET Channel 13
(check local listings for other
public television stations.)

The documentary examines some of the major issues that have led to the near demise of print news–and offers possible strategies for its survival in the digital age. It contrasts the days when the nation relied on three network newscasts and a small group of correspondents, led by Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, to the modern advent of cable TV, talk radio, and blogs, which provide seemingly unlimited platforms for voices and opinions. A preview is available on thirteen.org.

William F. Baker, Ph.D., is the Claudio Aquaviva Chair and Journalist in Residence at Fordham's Graduate School of Education. In the documentary, he provides critical analysis of how instant access demands a continuous stream of new content, and as a consequence the line between “news” and “entertainment” has been blurred. The program includes interviews with on-air personalities Keith Olbermann, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and many more.

The Media: Journalism in Crisis uses footage from actual news broadcasts and features interviews with journalists and academics. The film concludes with a sobering look at the current state of print news, with unique perspectives from those working on the frontlines, including Tom Curley, president of Associated Press; Bill Keller, managing editor of The New York Times; and Andrew Meagher, content development director at Reuters. The Media: Journalism in Crisis explores how the industry has struggled to adapt for a new generation and raises the question: “if nothing in life is free, then why should news be?”

“During this time of transition, we can’t act quickly enough to preserve America’s tradition of an independent news media,” Baker says. “Newspapers and web journalism need new business models and, more important, new ways in thinking about the value of information.”

The Media: Journalism in Crisis is the centerpiece of a multifaceted project that will include a companion book, written by Neal Cortell, as well as an e-Book, audio book and DVD.

Founder’s Award Dinner Video

Fordham University celebrated its ninth annual Founder’s Award Dinner on March 22 at New York City’s Waldorf Astoria.

Video of the evening will come to this page soon.

The annual fundraising event, which benefits the Fordham Founder’s Presidential Scholarship Fund, raised $2 million and recognized three accomplished alumni. The 2010 Founder’s Award recipients were Maurice J. Cunniffe, FCRH '54; Mario J. Gabelli, CBA '65; and Regina M. Pitaro, FCRH '76.

Michael Sulick, Ph.D., director of the National Clandestine Service for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), will deliver the Inaugural Lecture on Leadership and Government Service on Thursday, March 25.

The event, which will take place at 7 p.m. in Keating First Auditorium on the Rose Hill campus in the Bronx, is sponsored by Fordham University's United Student Government.

Sulick has led the National Clandestine Service since 2007, having previously served in the Agency from 1980 to 2004. A specialist in Russia and Eastern Europe, he is in charge not only of the CIA’s overseas spies, but also responsibile for monitoring the activities of other services, including the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Sulick holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Fordham in Russian studies and a Ph.D. from the City University of New York.

-Gina Vergel

Fordham Marches in St. Patrick’s Day Parade

Flashes of Fordham maroon dotted Fifth Avenue on March 17 as University alumni, friends and families of all ages marched in New York City’s 249th St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

Nearly 500 people walked with Fordham on a day that was ideal for the parade—sunny with temperatures in the mid-60s. The pleasant weather also kept everyone’s spirits high.

“It’s one of my favorite days to be a Fordham graduate,” said Kat Bride, FCRH ’03, who has marched five times with the University. “I started in 2004 when it snowed beautifully, but we’ve never had a day like today. Today’s a gift.”

The day’s celebrations began with Fordham’s traditional St. Patrick’s Day Mass at St. Agnes Church, where Patrick J. Ryan, S.J., Fordham’s Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society, and the Rev. Richard Adams, pastor at St. Agnes, concelebrated the Mass.

At 45th Street and Madison Avenue, march participants lined up between bands from Cardinal Hayes High School and the Notre Dame Alumni Society of New York, before taking their first steps in the procession at 2:15 p.m.

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham University, with a Ram staff in hand, led the group up Fifth Avenue, past the thousands cheering for Fordham and giving high-fives to the marchers.

After crossing the parade finish line at 86th Street, just past the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dan Cremin, FCRH ’65, said he has been walking in the parade since 1957, first as a high school student and then with Fordham.

“I have a great time always,” he said, “but I can’t remember a better day.”

—Rachel Buttner

Photos by Chris Taggart

Things That No Longer Delight Me

Poet Leslie C. Chang will read from her work on Tuesday, March 23, at 7 p.m., at Fordham University’s Lowenstein Center, 12-Floor Lounge, 113 W. 60th St., in Manhattan, as part of the Poets Out Loud series.

In the Language of the Here and Now

1

After a mid-winter death, I heard my aunts
say, He couldn't pass through that gate.

You are like a Silk Route merchant with
a caravan, in their old idiom; or a minor
official sent to the border regions

to collect a salt tax. Every city has a gate,
the narrow portal between seasons. Difficult to pass.

In unaccustomed light, the daily banishment
of what you knew before, bitter flavors, foreign cold.

Come spring, showers harrow the road,
its shoulder the muted color of an astrakhan coat,
iris in long grass circling weathered milestones.

Forbearance in their words for one arriving
at a new city, seeing the tall embankment, wanting rest.

From Things That No Longer Delight Me
Fordham University Press

See the complete poem at Poetry Daily.

Wild Man Returns

Wild Man, written and performed by Matthew Maguire, director of Fordham's theatre program, returns for two nights in April:

Wild Man
HERE
145 6th Ave.
(Enter on Dominick, 1 block south of Spring St.)
Monday, April 5, and Tuesday, April 6 | 7 p.m.
Tickets: HERE.org/wildman, or (212) 352-3101.

The New York Times said, "If audiences go to a theater hoping to be thrilled, Mr. Maguire goes them one better."

The show, which "probes ecstasy, runaway horses, the Book of Esdras, smuggling watermelons, and cheatin' death," was produced by The Wild Project in association with Creation Production Company, and has been made possible in part by the New York Foundation for the Arts, which awarded a grant to Matthew Maguire for its creation.

FCLC Alumnus on Study Abroad in Senegal

Joel Rowe, FCLC 2009, on his study abroad experience in Senegal in 2008 under a Gilman Scholarship.

The Heroic City: Paris 1945 - 1958

Rosemary Wakeman's The Heroic City is a fascinating account of how Paris’s public spaces came back to life after the Nazi occupation. Wakeman finds that the city’s streets overflowed with ritual, drama, and spectacle.

"I discovered Paris as an Heroic City while researching newspapers from the 1950s," Wakeman says. "I suddenly realized that there was a vibrant, extraordinary public world in Paris that had never really been talked about or seen. Uncovering the films, photographs, the memories was sheer pleasure."

Rosemary Wakeman, Ph.D., is director of the Urban Studies Program at Fordham. She teaches courses on the European City, World’s Fairs, Maritime Cities, the Social History of Architecture. She also teaches as an Invited Professor at the Institut d'urbanisme de Paris at the University of Paris XII.

She is also the author of Modernizing the Provincial City: Toulouse 1945-1975 (Harvard University Press, 1998). She is editor of Themes in Modern European History, 1945 to the Present (Routledge, 2003). Wakeman writes regularly for the Revue Urbanisme, most recently an article on the New York mega-region (no. 368, Sept.Oct.2009). She has published numerous articles on urban history and on cities, including a recent special issue of French Politics, Culture & Society on “The Renovation of Les Halles” in Paris (Summer 2007). She also co-edited (with Charles Rearick) a special issue on Paris for French Historical Studies (Winter 2004). She writes frequently on urban waterfronts and is currently working on an article about the redevelopment of Mission Bay in San Francisco. Her current project is an intellectual history of the New Town Movement in Europe and the United States. Wakeman is also co-editor (with Dorothee Brantz) of the Metropolitan Studies series published by Berghahn Books.

A Grand Book about Bronx's Grandest Boulevard

Fordham University Press has taken honors with its Intersections: The Grand Concourse at 100, edited by Sergio Bessa (curator of The Bronx Museum of the Arts) with a foreward by Daniel Libeskind (FUP 2009). The book received The Bookbinder's Guild of New York award in the Scholarly and Professional Category, and was displayed at the 24th Annual New York Book Show, held on March 9.

The book documents the heyday of Bronx’s most famous boulevard, when tree-lined sidewalks and grand art deco apartment buildings with doormen made it one of the borough’s most fashionable thoroughfares.

J.S.

Engineering Physics at Fordham

Martin Sanzari, Ph.D., assistant professor of physics and director of the Engineering Physics Program addresses the Fordham College at Rose Hill Board of Visitors on February 18, 2010.

Coffee and Conversation with FCRH Dean

Michael Latham, Ph.D., interim dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill (FCRH), shared his goals for the college, elicited student input and listened to student concerns on March 3 at Rodrigue’s on the Rose Hill campus.

Latham opened “Coffee and Lunch with the Dean” by outlining three areas he has targeted for development: undergraduate research, international education and science programs.

According to Latham, increased funding for undergraduate research and the continued development of the annual undergraduate research symposium are crucial to getting students involved not just in absorbing information, but in producing it themselves.

On the subject of international education, Latham laid out a threefold plan, which included:

- more financial support for study abroad;
- more diversity in foreign language study to reflect future business, political and economic needs; and
- expanded student participation in internships with non-governmental organizations, such as the United Nations, UNICEF and World Vision, which are aligned with the Jesuit mission in their work to promote human rights and end poverty and hunger.

Some key areas of interest and concern raised by students included: grade deflation, research resources, advising, national ranking, language courses and funding for travel abroad.

A spirited debate arose when Latham asked students for feedback regarding the core curriculum, which is the center of the FCRH education. While some students felt that taking required courses across disciplines helped them to define their interests and expand their background, others felt the program was restrictive or repetitive.

Latham encouraged students to see the value in their diversified requirements. “In many fields an employer can train you in how to do a specific job, but they can’t teach you how to write, they can’t teach you how to think, they can’t teach you how to analyze,” he said. “But a liberal arts education can do that, and something like the core curriculum can help do that.”

“Coffee and Lunch with the Dean” was sponsored by United Student Government, the Dean’s Office at FCRH, Rodrigue’s and Fordham Club.

- Nina Romeo