Husband and Wife Team Up to Run Medieval Academy of America

Eileen Gardiner, TMC ’69, GSAS ’80, and Ronald Musto, FCRH ’69, met as pre-med students in a science lab on Fordham’s Rose Hill campus in the late 1960s.

“I was pulling Ds,” Musto said. “She was pulling Cs. I asked to borrow her [burners] and flasks. Hers were always clean. Mine were not.”

Musto and Gardiner’s interest in medicine didn’t stick. She found her calling in English—medieval literature, in particular—and he rediscovered his love of history.

“I was always reading history as a kid,” said Musto, who earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in medieval history at Columbia University. “It constantly raises questions that fascinate me.”

Meanwhile, Gardiner went on to earn her doctorate at Fordham. She was “drawn to the amazing imagination that one could find in [medieval] literature, which combined religion and nature and a sort of way of life that was so different from our own,” she said. “There was just something that naturally attracted me to it.”

As Gardiner and Musto found their academic calling, they also fell in love.

“We tried to get married [at Fordham] one night by a Jesuit friend,” Gardiner said. “He told us to go home and sleep it off!”

They did, but eventually married in 1970, a year after graduation, and they’ve been together—personally and professionally—ever since.

Recently, Gardiner and Musto were named executive director and editor, respectively, of the Medieval Academy of America and its journal, Speculum, following a successful 10- year stint as co-directors of the American Council of Learned Societies’ humanities e-book division.

“We’ve always done things together. We were business partners from so early on,” said Gardiner.

“It makes for an interesting breakfast conversation,” Musto said. “It makes for obsessiveness,” Gardiner added.

In the first of their many projects together, Gardiner and Musto started the Co-Op Bookstore at Fordham with a $10,000 investment from the University’s United Student Government. They ran the store, located at 613 Fordham Road, during their junior and senior years.

Later, after earning their doctoral degrees, Gardiner and Musto worked in book publishing. Eventually, they decided to start a publishing house.

In 1985, they founded Italica Press, publishing six titles in their first year, mostly out-of-print books. Though they still publish roughly the same number of titles today, Gardiner and Musto have expanded their list to include original academic titles.

They also publish electronic books, something they did earlier than most houses.

In 1999, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) tapped them to publish an electronic collection of monographs in history.

Together, Gardiner and Musto created the ACLS Humanities E-Book Division, a fully searchable online collection of nearly 3,000 titles. With more than 640 institutional subscribers, in 33 different countries, it is widely considered one of the best online resources for research and scholarship.

At the Medieval Academy of America, Gardiner and Musto will help bring the academy into the digital realm, while maintaining the quality of the academy’s journal.

It is, in a sense, their dream job.

“The opportunity to work for the Medieval Academy really combines everything that we could imagine to be able to work on,” Gardiner said, “and to do it for the premier society in the world is an honor.”

“We’ve always been outsiders,” Musto said. “We’ve never held academic positions. I think it’s delightful and in a certain sense ironic that we’ve ended up in a position that is central to this world.”

—Miles Doyle, FCRH ’01

Lincoln Center Construction

These images of the construction at Fordham's Lincoln Center campus were taken on Thursday, Feb. 17, 2011, from one of the McMahon Hall terraces and the roof of Lowenstein Center.
Click on images to enlarge.

We're facing north in this image.
The rubble is likely part of a demolished wall.

We're facing northwest here. The white structures in
Damrosch Park (since taken down) are tents set up for Fashion Week.

Ryan is the editor of FORDHAM Magazine, the
University alumni magazine. We were scouting the
rooftops for future photography shoots of the
construction site. We're on one of the McMahon terraces,
facing east, with Lowenstein on the right side of the image.

We're facing east in this image, again taken
from a terrace at McMahon Hall.

London Premiere of Edward Fox: Trollope in Barsetshire

This week Edward Fox premieres in Trollope in Barsetshire, devised and directed by Richard Digby Day, artistic director of Fordham’s London Dramatic Academy.

Edward Fox, the eminent British actor, brings to life the author and the world of Anthony Trollope in a one-man performance drawn from extracts of the Barchester Chronicles and from An Autobiography.

Anthony Trollope stands out as a hugely popular novelist, one of the greatest of the Victorian era, an author invested with a wonderful gift for words. For six of his novels he invented Barsetshire, both a county and a town and he filled this world with an astonishing range of characters from Dr. Harding, the gentle Warden, to Mrs. Proudie, the domineering Bishop’s wife. Like all truly celebrated novelists, Trollope deals with conditions of life that touch men and women, against the background of country life and the complexities, plots and counter-plots of the cathedral close. Humane, witty and well-observed Edward Fox wields his magic to bring many of these much-loved characters to life. The extracts from the novels are joined together with parts of Trollope’s controversial autobiography published a year after his death in 1883. This book, unlike the novels, is as famous for what it leaves out as for its plain spoken directness.

This piece is the result of a collaboration between Richard Digby Day and Edward Fox, which began five years ago. The play opened in 2008 and was widely performed again in 2010, its success resulting in the current run for six weeks in the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, London. Throughout his long career, Digby Day has made many other one person performance pieces for a variety of famous British actors, including Honor Blackman and Geraldine McEwan. Digby Day is the Artistic Director of Fordham University’s London Dramatic Academy, a challenging, practical study abroad program focusing on British theatre.

POST-SHOW DISCUSSION
There will be a post-show discussion at the Riverside Studios with Edward Fox and Richard Digby Day on Fridays February 25 and Friday March 25.

TICKETS and INFORMATION
February 22 to April 2, 2011
Riverside Studios, Crisp Road, Hammersmith, London W6 9RL
Box Office: 020 8237 1111 www.riversidestudios.co.uk
£15 - £25

IPED Alumna Takes Post at Japanese Development Agency

Mayu Sakagauchi, GSAS ’11, has been appointed to the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Sakagauchi is an alumna of the graduate program in International Political Economy and Development (IPED). Sakagauchi graduates in May. Following the completion of four months of orientation in Japan, she will begin a two-year assignment to the African nation of Malawi. While in Malawi she will represent the Japanese government as a community development officer and will work closely with the Malawi Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development.

While at Fordham’s IPED, Sakagauchi specialized in international and development economics with a focus on project management. Her initial interest in Africa came from her participation in IPED’s summer study tour of South Africa.

Law School Examines Legal Activism and AIDS in China

Who are the Chinese anti-discrimination activists fighting for their nation’s disenfranchised? What are the obstacles that persons with HIV/AIDS face in China? How do human health rights NGOs deal with China’s regulatory environment?

These and other topics will be the focus of a daylong Fordham Law School conference on Thursday, Feb. 24 at the Lincoln Center campus, “Civil Society and Legal Activism in China: The Public Health Challenge.” The event is free and sponsored by the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice.

The conference gets underway at 9:30 a.m. in the 12th Floor Lounge of the Lowenstein Center, and consists of four panels throughout the day: Civil Society in China, Regulation and Practice; Anti-Discrimination Efforts in China; Public Participation Toward a Responsive Health System and China; and China: The Response to HIV/AIDS.

Scholars and activists who will be speaking include Timothy Webster, senior fellow at the China Law Center, Yale University; Benjamin Liebman, professor of law and director of Center for Chinese Legal Studies at Columbia University; Scott Burris, professor of law, Temple University and associate director of the Center for Law and the Public’s Health; Wan Yanhai, director of Beijing’s Aizhixing Institute; and Sara L.M. Davis, executive director of Asia Catalyst.

For more information or to register, contact Joy Chia jchia@law.fordham.edu.

—Janet Sassi

TLC Commissioner Visits GSS Class

At the same time that the recession-weakened nation experiences headlined slashes in public services, Graduate School of Social Service (GSS) students are being trained to identify and implement low-cost or no-cost ways to help the needy, and to become a force which shows that society can improve despite the Great Recession.

New York City Taxi and Limousine Commissioner David Yassky addressed this topic when he spoke to students in Professor Allan Luks’s Advocacy and Public Policy class on Feb. 1. "It's always hard to get social changes approved," said Yassky, "but I don't think it's any harder now to get change, as long as it doesn't cost a lot of money. And you, as social workers, through your daily experiences, can identify such solutions and fight to get them adopted."

Each one of the second-year students in Luks’s course must identify and advocate for a new, small public policy that can improve society at little cost. The students have had no problem finding these issues and their public policy solutions. Some examples include: stopping users of suboxone, a methadone-like drug, from selling their supply to get others high; requiring people who are HIV positive to inform those they are sexually active with; have public TV and radio regularly post social indexes on how well or poorly society is solving its social ills and invite public involvement where changes are most needed; offering affordable transportation for low-income cancer patients, who now may be late or even miss appointments; regular mental health seminars in high schools so students can identify warning signs in themselves and others and prevent the violent behaviors; a requirement that public housing conditions that cause asthma be fixed within a month rather than a year; and allowing pregnant women to avoid going through school metal detectors.

"Social workers are required by their profession to identify solutions to public problems and advocate for their implementation," said Luks, who also directs Fordham’s Center for Nonprofit Leaders. "For the needy, who are most affected by the Great Recession, these small ideas of social workers become a balance that says optimism for the future is still possible."

A former nonprofit executive with more than two decades of experience, Luks tells students of his successful efforts to champion laws that have since become national models. In the 1980s, he led the adoption of New York City's law requiring posters in bars and restaurants warning about drinking during pregnancy, which resulted in national legislation. He also advocated successfully for the city law preventing job discrimination against recovered alcoholics, which was then adopted by many states and cities. In 2007, he led the call for the state law requiring mentoring programs to inform parents about whether or not they did background checks on their mentors.

“Social workers starting out today have high tuition bills, a high cost of living and the worry of their charitable employers cutting back,” he said. “So, there is pressure on them to just do the work they are employed to do and not to go beyond and start trying to change public policies.

“The goal of the Fordham program is to show the second-year graduate students that social workers are one vital counterweight to the Great Recession.”

Ailey/Fordham B.F.A. in Dance Performance Benefit

Fordham hosts a performance by the students of the Ailey/Fordham BFA Program in Dance to benefit the Denise Jefferson Memorial Scholarship Fund. The 11th Annual Ailey/Fordham B.F.A. Scholarship Benefit will celebrate the life and work of Denise Jefferson.

Thursday, March 10, 2011 | 7 p.m. (5:45 p.m. pre–performance cocktail reception)
Pope Auditorium | Lowenstein Center | Lincoln Center Campus

In the last 12 years of her life, Denise dedicated much of her energy to the development of dancers in the Ailey/Fordham BFA Program in Dance. The University will remember and celebrate Jefferson in this performance. The proceeds will make it possible for Denise Jefferson’s’s dreams to continue in the training of exceptionally gifted dancers in the Ailey/Fordham program.

Ailey/Fordham B.F.A. Benefit Committee
William F. Baker, Ph.D.
Clifton Brown
Elizabeth Burns, FCLC ’83
Andrew H. Clark, Ph.D.
Patricia Dugan, FCLC ’79
Amanda Hearst, FCLC ’08

Tickets required. Register Online

For event information, please contact Jill Logan at (212) 636-6440.

To support the Ailey/Fordham BFA program, please contact Rodger Van Allen at (212) 636-6562 or vanallen@fordham.edu.

Fordham Research Asks: Are The Kids Alright?

On Wednesday, Feb. 9, three of Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences faculty—one psychologist, one theologian and one sociologist -- presented their original research around the issue of children and their mental and physical well being.

The event, “Are The Kids Alright?” was coordinated by the Office of Research to help showcase the growing research among Fordham faculty.

Laura Sosinsky, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology, (center) presented an ongoing longitudinal study on how a cohort of first-time Bronx mothers are choosing childcare before and after the birth of their child. Sosinsky said her study was inspired by the fact that, while rates of new mothers returning to the workplace has risen, the child care choices for women have not kept pace.

Matthew Weinshenker, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociology, (left) presented his research on “Evening Dads, Couch Potatoes and Others,” a look at fatherhood in the United States and how different categories of fathers engage with their children. He said he hopes the study promotes a better understanding of what behaviors promote father-child involvement.

Charles Camosy, Ph.D., assistant professor of theology with an emphasis in Christian ethics, (right) presented research on neonatal ICUs and the financial and moral cost of saving young lives. Camosy recently published a book, Too Expensive to Treat? Finitude, Tragedy and the Neonatal ICU (Eerdmans 2010), which explores the moral issues of health care rationing in the United States.

All three presenters were recipients of Fordham Faculty Research Grants.

—Janet Sassi

FORDHAMScience: Sudan Meteorites Offer Look at the Early Solar System

In a small laboratory in John Mulcahy Hall, Jon Friedrich and Julianne Troiano have opened a window that looks 4.5 billion years into the past. That window is Almahata Sitta: fragments of a rare, carbon-rich type of meteorite called an ureilite deposited in northern Sudan in 2008, when asteroid 2008 TC3 slammed into Earth’s atmosphere and exploded 37 kilometers above the ground.

Friedrich is an assistant professor of chemistry at Fordham; Troiano is a senior at Rose Hill, majoring in chemistry. The window they’ve opened doesn’t look like much—a tiny speck of material that resembles a black breadcrumb—but the insights gleaned from it have already changed the way we think about the composition of matter in the early solar system.

Images: Right, Jon Friedrich; Left, Julianne Troiano at the Mass Spectrometer (click to enlarge).

“The great thing about is that it allows us to see what the early solar system was like without having to back-calculate the effect of terrestrial contamination,” Friedrich says. “There’s a chemical signature that occurs in most ureilites known to date… and that chemical signature was not present in Almahata Sitta. We were actually able to say that okay, Almahatta Sitta does not contain that signature, so other meteorites of this class maybe actually somewhat contaminated.”

Friedrich says the chemical composition of Almahata Sitta is intriguing because it’s so atypical (the technical word for “weird”). The most common type of asteroid in the asteroid belt (a vast collection of small objects between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter) is something called an s-type asteroid. If you held a part of one in your hand, it would be heaver than a ureilite of the same size because the s-type would probably about 10 to 15 percent metal—particularly nickel iron, or nickel metal, and it would be gray in color.

“We have the samples, and they’re pretty small—probably the size of a pinky nail,” Troiano says. We grind the samples so it’s easier to dissolve them, then we mix them with nitric acid and hydrofluoric acid and we put them in a microwave digestion system that heats them up and increases the pressure so the samples can dissolve in the acid. When they dry down and they sort of just look like goo.”

The goo is mixed into a 50 milliliter solution and put into a mass spectrometer, which tells the researchers which elements are present and in what amounts. The results are then fed into Excel spreadsheets for analysis.

“One of the things that came out of all of the work that’s been done by people all around the world is that we know the 2008 TC3 asteroid that produced the Almahata Sitta meteorite was a very un-homogenous chunk of rock,” Friedrich says. “Julianne and I focused on the pieces that were ureilitic in nature, which is the majority of Almahata Sitta and the TC3 asteroid. But what we did find was that if you’re a geologist and you had an asteroid and you grabbed pieces of rock, they’d look a little different.”

He says it seems that different pieces of the asteroid did have different internal chemistry to it to some extent. Whether the different parts were formed under different temperatures might be one reason why this is so.

Analysis of Almahata Sitta tells us that not everything in the asteroid belt is of the same composition, which has implications for how these objects should be dealt with should they be nudged into an Earth-crossing orbit. Should an object of sufficient size be on a collision course with Earth, the results could be catastrophic. One of the leading suspects, if not the leading suspect, in the extinction of the dinosaurs is the Chicxulub asteroid, a chunk of rock at least 10 kilometers across that crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago. The impact, at a speed at least 20 times greater than that of a rifle bullet, left a crater 180 kilometers across. It would have caused an enormous shock wave, global tidal waves, a tremendous earthquake, hurricane winds, and trillions of tons of debris ejected into the atmosphere. The forests of the Americas would have been set ablaze. The resulting smoke and particulate debris would have created months of darkness and cooler temperatures globally, and concentrated nitric acid rains worldwide.

Though so-called “slate wiper” impacts are rare (perhaps once every hundred million years), they are a real threat. NASA thinks so, and has created the Near Earth Object Program to track possible impactors and devise defenses, most likely nudging those objects out of their Earth-crossing orbits long before they reach us. How the objects get nudged away depends on their composition.

“One of the things that we’re learning is that asteroids aren’t necessarily big, giant rocks in the sky that are one big piece,” Friedrich says. They can be made up of lots of little pieces sort of weakly held together…and the structure you know is something that’s typically strong, a big piece versus something that is weakly put together in sort of a boulder pile. The official term is rubble pile—that’s what people call it in the asteroidal community. Trying to destroy or alter the course of asteroids with these two different properties is going to take different tactics.”

Friedrich has published on the composition of Almahata Sitta before, including in the March 2009 issue of Nature. We wrote about his work at the time (see “Fordham Scientist Helps Tie Chemical Makeup of Meteorite to Parent Asteroid”). He and Troiano have also published several papers on the meteorite, in the peer-reviewed journals Meteoritics & Planetary Science and Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta—a somewhat unusual honor for an undergraduate researcher.

Troiano, a Clare Booth Luce Scholar, has made the Dean’s List for the last two years. She is a cheerleader, a member of the Expressions Dance Alliance, and a member of both the American Chemical Society and American Geophysical Union. Troiano says she was already interested in chemistry in high school, and that two great teachers brought her further along that path.

“I came into Fordham as a chemistry major already,” she says. “From there, I guess, once you make it past sophomore year—kind of breaking point—if you make it past that, you can make it through the rest of the major.”

She’s applied to nine graduate schools, but hopes to attend either the University of North Carolina or the University of California, Berkeley, for their analytical and physical chemistry programs. “UNC is the top school for analytical chemistry—they have a lot of really awesome chemistry going on there.”

Friedrich’s research is supported in part by a Fordham Faculty Research Grant. Troiano’s summer research was supported by her Clare Boothe Luce Scholarship.

Fordham Law Dispute Resolution Society World Champions

Dear members and friends of the Fordham Dispute Resolution Society:

I am extremely honored to announce that the Fordham Dispute Resolution Society became World Champions this morning in Paris, surpassing 57 universities from around the globe to win the International Chamber of Commerce Mediation Competition.

Please join me in congratulating competitors Matt Bress, Christie Houlihan, Pat Jacobs, and Veni Manickam. Matt, in addition to competing, directed the efforts of the team as this year's ICC Editor.

Each competitor's display of talent and hard work over the past several months and through the grueling 8 rounds of competition was truly phenomenal and sets an incredible standard for the Society going forward this year and in years to come. Thank you to each competitor for the success and the honor you have brought to our Society and the Law School.

Congratulations and many thanks are also due to Steve Grable ('07), who has built an impressive record coaching our ICC Team each year since graduating, dedicating numerous weekends and countless evenings preparing the competitors and working alongside them as they move into the finals in Paris. Special thanks also to alumni Dan Hope ’08, Henry Ko ’08, Kenny Shaw ’09, Cindy Alvarado ’10, Justin Elliot ’10, and Mike Kanatake '10, and DRS Managing Editor Tres Bulger for their huge support in preparing the teams. It goes without saying that the Society is indebted to our alumni and senior members for their continued dedication to our competitors.

Additionally, and as always, we are forever grateful for the matchless professional and academic guidance of Professor Jacqueline Nolan-Haley, who has been instrumental in establishing Fordham as a permanent presence at the invitation-only global competition.

Thanks and congratulations again,

Iverson
(you can read more about Fordham's Dispute Resolution Society here)

Iverson Long, Chairman
Dispute Resolution Society
Fordham University School of Law

Fordham Law's Dispute Resolution Program is ranked 8th in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. The Dispute Resolution Society competes in national and international negotiation, mediation, and arbitration competitions, hosts a leading annual symposium and international commercial arbitration practice tournament, and teaches a course on negotiation techniques to local high school students at MLK Jr. High School. For more information, please visit the Dispute Resolution Society website.

EMBA Program Offers New Professional and Personal Development Initiative, Executive Certificate

Fordham’s Executive MBA program has launched two exciting initiatives that will make the entire experience more "Jesuit" in nature.

“We have been tirelessly focusing on how we can increasingly instill the Jesuit ideals within the Fordham Executive MBA experience,” said Francis Petit, Ed.D., associate dean for EMBA programs. “These initiatives focus on the education of the ‘whole person’ as well as building the global mindset and the importance of social responsibility.”

In addition to the required academic coursework, EMBA students will have the option of participating in a “Professional and Personal Development Initiative” within the Jesuit tradition. It is based on the following themes:

Career Management

This includes executive coaching, career life planning, goal setting, career enhancing skills and networking opportunities. Executive students will have the option of working with a coach/mentor throughout their studies and have access to career enhancing skills workshops, the Fordham University Alumni Database and other resources within the Office of Career Management.

Wellness

This includes areas such as health, nutrition, balance, meditation and spirituality. The goal is to enhance the creation of a well-rounded individual within the three pillars of the mind, body and soul. This initiative involves a working relationship with the NYU Langone Medical Center and Exhale (mind/body) on 59th Street in Manhattan.

Social Skills

This includes various social skills that are essential for business including wine tasting events, a golf clinic and other activities.

The second initiative is an Executive Certificate Option.

In addition to the academic degree requirements and required international capstone trip, Fordham EMBA students and alumni have the option of participating in a week-long international "Gateway" program that has a focus on strategy, business development, and social responsibility within a specific region of the world in the context of the Jesuit Tradition.

“Each ‘Gateway’ will incorporate class sessions, corporate visits, government appointments and a cultural component,” Petit said. “In order to qualify and obtain an Executive Certificate, current EMBA students and alumni must participate and complete one international Gateway program.”

Trip options include an executive certificate in global strategy on “Doing Business in South Africa” from June 19 through the 25th at the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science in Johannesburg.

A Gateway program for London, England, at Fordham’s London Centre at Heythrop College in Kensington Square is in the works for January 2012. Details are forthcoming.
“With these new offerings we are not only trailblazers in the Jesuit EMBA market but also in the entire industry as no other programs are offering such initiatives,” Petit said.

For additional information, contact Francis Petit at petit@fordham.edu and/or (914) 367-3271.

Also visit the following links:

Professional and Personal Development Initiative

Executive Certificate Option

—Gina Vergel

New Fordham Poetry, Make That Times Three

Congratulations to three members of Fordham University’s Department of English, who have each published a new volume of poetry—all within a month of each other (more or less).

The authors are Heather Dubrow, Ph.D., John D. Boyd, S.J., Chair in the Poetic Imagination (left), Elisabeth Frost, Ph.D., associate professor of English and Women’s Studies (center), and Janet Kaplan, Fordham's poet-in-residence (right).

Dubrow’s book, Forms and Hollows (Cherry-Grove Press, 2011), includes poems in a range of forms as well as free verse. Its subjects also range widely, including the death of a parent, the cities of Paris, Sydney, and New York, and the everyday topics of teaching and food (herbs, bread). The publisher states that “Dubrow writes with a quiet, intimate sensibility that hits similar notes whether she is writing a dramatic monologue or a personal lyric.”
You can read more at http://www.cherry-grove.com/dubrow.html

Frost’s debut collection of poetry, All Of Us, (White Pine Press, 2011) is described as “narrative prose poems that explore misfires of communication, gaps in memory, and the simple limitations of language that cause frustration and isolation. The title poem explores a cityscape where community is vertically compressed, and strangers – who are also neighbors – appear eye-to-eye at the peep holes of their locked doors.”

For more on the book visit http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9781935210238/default.aspx

Lastly, poet Janet Kaplan has published a third collection of poetry, Dreamlife of a Philanthropist (Notre Dame, 2011), which won the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, sponsored by the creative writing program at Notre Dame.. The poems and sonnets are “packed with postmodern language-leaping, modern irony and absurdity, and a poet’s ageless ear for the pleasures of the lyric and formal experimentation,” the publisher writes. The award is given annually to writers who have published at least one volume of poetry. For more information visit http://undpress.nd.edu/book/P01472


Perhaps these talented poets will show up on Thursday, March 24, when Poets Out Loud hosts its Fordham Faculty Reading at 7 p.m. in the 12th Floor Lounge of Lowenstein Center.

—Janet Sassi

Fordham Nightly News Now Seen All Over the Bronx

Fordham Nightly News (FNN), the on-campus broadcast journalism club, is now airing a new show off campus via a Bronx public television network.

Bronx residents can watch the FNN show, Eye on Fordham, on BronxNet, said Jonathan Sanders, Ph.D., the club's advisor.

The show features faculty and student interviews as well as features on athletics and other programs at Fordham. Eye on Fordham began broadcasting on Jan. 26, joining several universities that broadcast off campus into their local communities.

-Gina Vergel

Iron & Wine Perform on WFUV

Iron & Wine Perform on The Whole Wide World With Rita Houston
Friday, February 4 | 7 p.m.

New York, NY — Before their sold out concert at Radio City Music Hall last weekend, Iron & Wine visited WFUV’s Studio A for an exclusive session with Music Director Rita Houston. Iron & Wine’s new CD, Kiss Each Other Clean, is another step in the beautiful journey of Sam Beam's poetic songs. In Studio A, he talked about his songwriting process, his love of Edie Brickell, his five daughters and his dogs. Hear the entire session, with a four-song acoustic performance tonight, February 4, at 7 p.m. on The Whole Wide World with Rita Houston and see a bit in this video performance of “Tree by the River” on the WFUV YouTube Channel at www.youtube.com/WFUVRADIO.

The Whole Wide World With Rita Houston airs on WFUV, 90.7 FM in New York City and at www.wfuv.org around the world.

Every Friday night from 7 - 10 p.m. EST, the genre-melding Whole Wide World showcases Rita Houston’s famously wide ranging musical tastes. Perhaps the only place on the New York radio dial where one can hear Nancy's Sinatra's "Bang Bang" and Manu Chao's "Bongo Bong" on the same show, WWW mixes rock, pop, world, electronica, lounge, soul and dance tunes into a mellow Friday night soundtrack, punctuated with interviews and in-studios performances

WFUV is a non-commercial, listener-supported public radio station, licensed to Fordham University for more than 60 years. Serving the New York area as well as an international audience on the web, and a leader in contemporary music radio, WFUV is Rock & Roots Radio, offering an eclectic mix of rock, singer-songwriters, blues, world and other music, plus headlines from National Public Radio and local news.

FCLC Alumna Explains How Online Gaming Will Help Save The World

Online gaming is a multibillion-dollar business, trailing only the film industry in popularity and financial might.

But according to Jane McGonigal, Ph.D., FCLC ’99, the industry and gamers themselves have the potential to do something even Hollywood cannot. They can help solve some of the world’s most challenging problems.

“Gaming can help you make yourself better and help change the world,” McGonigal said on Feb. 2, during the inaugural lecture in Fordham College at Lincoln Center’s Industry Leadership Series. “I want to make it as easy to save the world in real life as it is to save the world in online games.”

For McGonigal, a member of O Magazine’s 2010 Power List, this is hardly idle chatter.

In 2009, she helped launch World Without Oil, a simulation designed to let players imagine—and avert—a catastrophic global oil shortage.

More recently, she created EVOKE, a 10-week online game that encouraged players to become social entrepreneurs. She said people from 130 countries participated in the game (which she created with support from the World Bank) and ultimately started more than 50 companies to address critical issues, such as poverty, hunger and access to clean water.

Massively multiplayer online games such as these encourage international collaborations and generate collective intelligence, McGonigal said, which can be used to help improve the quality of life around the world.

She singled out a number of online games, including Foldit, an interactive game designed by researchers at the University of Washington that asks participants to solve protein-folding puzzles. Scientists then use gamers’ solutions to design new proteins to help treat and cure specific diseases.

McGonigal said she wrote Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World (Penguin Press, 2010) to examine in greater detail the cognitive and behavioral science behind games.

During her lecture, she discussed eustress, or positive stress. Although there is no physiological difference between positive and negative stress, eustress motivates people and allows them to meet self-imposed goals and expectations.

“If we create our own stress, if we create our own obstacles, we feel like we’re in an optimal state,” she said. “We want to tackle these challenges. We’re in a positive state of being.”

She then showed the audience several portraits of gamers in positive states of being—showing what she called their Epic Win Face.

“These are the faces we want to see when we tackle the world’s toughest problems,” she said. “I want people to make [this face] in the real world and not just in a virtual world.”

As director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future, McGonigal and her colleagues work to create Epic Win futures, “the insanely positive outcome that was so implausible you never thought you could do it.”

“We decide what kind of future we want to create,” she said. “What is the best case scenario.”

Her Epic Win future? She wants to see a game designer earn a Nobel Peace Prize by 2023.

“This is hard to imagine,” she said, “if you only think of games as escapist.”

The Fordham College at Lincoln Center Industry Leadership Series invites distinguished FCLC alumni to campus to speak about their profession or field of expertise.

—Miles Doyle

(Photo by Bruce Gilbert)

Studying Shakespeare in London

Students and faculty on learning and performing Shakespeare at Fordham's London Dramatic Academy (LDA).



LDA is a fully accredited, 14-week intensive theatre programme at the Fordham University London Centre in Kensington Square (located at Heythrop College, University of London). March 1 is the application deadline for Fall 2011. The most up-to-date application forms are available at: www.fordham.edu/LDA. Completed forms can be emailed to LDA@fordham.edu.

Gabelli School of Business Kicks Off International Business Week

New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin will headline Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business’ International Business Week with an appearance at the Rose Hill campus on Tuesday, Feb. 8 at 7 p.m.

Sorkin, the author of Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System -- and Themselves (Viking, 2009) will speak at the McGinley Ballroom.

Too Big to Fail, which details the backroom machinations behind the financial crisis of 2008, won the Gerald Loeb best business book of the year award in 2010. It is also the source for a currently in production HBO film starring Paul Giamatti as U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

International Business Week also features the following events:

Meet International Students at Fordham: Sunday, February 6 at 4 p.m. McGinley Ballroom

Social Business Fair Trade Market: Wednesday, Feb. 9 at 4 p.m. O’Keefe Commons

Global Etiquette Dinner: Thursday, Feb. 10 at 6 p.m. Tognino Hall, Duane Library

For more information and registration, visit the Gabelli School of Business blog.

—Patrick Verel

Fordham Professor Tapped for US2010

Emily Rosenbaum, Ph.D., professor of sociology, is one of 26 researchers who have been chosen from universities all over the United States to participate in a new report on changes in American society, as reflected in the 2010 census.

US2010, Discover America in a New Century, is being funded by the Russell Sage Foundation and coordinated through Brown University. The project, a two-year study which will culminate with a book, got underway when the 2010 census showed virtually no change since 2000 in black and white segregation in the housing markets.

Rosenbaum, a housing inequality expert and author of The Housing Divide: How Generations of Immigrants Fare in New York’s Housing Markets (New York University Press, 2006), will be heading up the research on “How We Are Housed.” Drawing from a few different sources of data, Rosenbaum will analyze recent trends and differentials in home ownership, and housing and neighborhood quality, for the decade 2000-2010.

“Home ownership is widely recognized as a barometer of the U.S. population’s and economy’s well being,” wrote Rosenbaum. “And thus has long been integral to policy making.”

But home ownership, she said, was only “part of the total picture.” Neighborhood safety, access to services such as good schools, and a deteriorating housing unit can adversely affect quality of life and health, she said.

“The persistence of racial/ethnic differentials in housing and neighborhood quality may be a partial explanation for [the] continued patterns of inequality,” said Rosenbaum.

What was surprising about the U.S. 2010 census is that the recent decade of stagnation in black-white segregation followed two decades (1980s, 1990s) of growing diversity. Why has it stopped? This is one of the things the study will look at.

Beyond housing, said John Logan, Ph.D., professor of sociology at Brown and director of US2010, the concluding publication will include studies on immigration, segregation, economics, education, aging and the changing American family, among others.

“US2010 . . . tackles questions of change in American society not from the perspective of one scholar or one topic, but with the expertise of a nationwide team of scholars who were brought together for this purpose,” he said.

—Janet Sassi

Alumni and Friends of Fordham Dominate at 2011 Irish America Hall of Fame

When Irish America magazine celebrates the inductees at the 2011 Irish America Hall of Fame awards luncheon on March 15, Fordham alumni and friends will be a big part of the proceedings.

The ceremony at the New York Yacht Club will honor Dr. Kevin Cahill, FCRH '57, director of Fordham's Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs; bestselling author Mary Higgins Clark, FCLC '79, grand marshal of this year’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Manhattan; William J. Flynn, GSAS '51, chairman emeritus of Mutual of America, and champion of the Irish peace process in his role as chairman of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy; and diplomat Jean Kennedy Smith, who received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Fordham in 1995 (the same year Mary Robinson, then president of Ireland, delivered the commencement address).

Honorees Denis Kelleher, founder and CEO of Wall Street Access, and Chuck Feeney, Irish American billionaire philanthropist, also have close ties to the University. They are being honored along with James Watson, Ph.D., co-discoverer of the double helical structure of DNA (for which he received a Nobel Prize in 1962), and Michael Flatley, choreographer and dancer, and the creator of The Lord of the Dance.

The Irish America Hall of Fame honors “the extraordinary achievements of Irish-American leaders — from their significant accomplishments and contributions to American society, to their personal commitment to safeguarding their Irish heritage and the betterment of Ireland.” Irish America magazine has been in print for more than a quarter century, and is a leading publication of Irish interest in North America.

Marketing Professor Wins Outstanding Teacher Award

Assistant Professor of Marketing Luke Kachersky, Ph.D., has been awarded the 2011 Outstanding Marketing Teacher of the Year Award by the Academy of Marketing Science (AMS).

The academy cited Kachersky for his teaching, use of technology in the classroom, and assessments of student learning based on recommendations from peers, students and administrators.

“Luke does not just teach his students in the sense of imparting knowledge,” said Dawn Lerman, Ph.D., associate professor and area chair of marketing. “He also seeks to reach them and to engage them in ways that will benefit their classroom learning but also serve them outside of the classroom.”

This is not the first accolade Kachersky has received for his teaching abilities. He was honored in 2010 with the Cura Personalis Award for challenging students while providing them support to excel. He also earned the Marketing Area Teaching Excellence Award for 2009.

Among his many—and perhaps less official, noteworthy achievements—Kachersky has won praise from his students for his approach to teaching marketing research. That staple of marketing programs is, said Lerman, “notoriously feared by students and one that yields lower than average evaluations, regardless of the instructor.”

Kachersky reverses the teaching progression so that students learn data analysis before research design, allowing them to understand and appreciate nuances of the entire research process. He also incorporates social media into his courses to provide students with an understanding of how such media provide market insights.

“Ours is a dynamic field, perhaps the most among all courses of study in higher education,” Kachersky said. “We, as marketing professors, are charged with an insurmountable task of making sense of a field that changes continuously. If we embrace the process and the burden of struggling with this task, we can deliver much value to our students, enabling them to confront similarly unresolvable issues in their lives and careers.”

In addition to his teaching load, Kachersky is a busy scholar with two papers scheduled for publication this year: “Do Moniker Maladies Afflict Name Letter Brands? A Dual Process Theory of Name Letter Branding and Avoidance Effects” in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology; and “The Role of Wireless Service Provider Trust on Consumer Acceptance of SMS Advertising,” co-authored with his Fordham colleague, Assistant Professor of Marketing Sertan Kabadayi, Ph.D., in the International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising.

Kachersky is also one of the driving forces, along with Lerman and Associate Professor of Marketing Marcia Flicker, Ph.D., behind Fordham’s newest research center, the Center for Positive Marketing. The center studies marketing from the demand (consumers’) as opposed to the supply (marketers’) perspective.

Kachersky joined the Fordham business faculty in 2008 after receiving his doctorate from Baruch College of the City University of New York. He will receive his award, and make a presentation on his classroom success, in May at the AMS Annual Conference in Coral Gables, Fla.

--Syd Steinhardt

Reflections on the “Lost” Conference

Tom Beaudoin, Ph.D., associate professor of practical theology, wrote a blog on the conference held at Fordham University this past weekend on Twenty-Somethings and the Church: Lost?, where he hosts a link to a video made by lay ministers on what the twenty-somethings in attendance thought of the conference theme.

You can view it here.

Political Science Professor Wins Book Award

Assistant Professor of Political Science Robert J. Hume, Ph.D., has won the 2010 Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award for his book, "How Courts Impact Federal Administrative Behavior" (Routledge-Taylor & Francis, 2009).

Hume was one of only four winners in the professional studies category, out of 42 entries from 16 Jesuit institutions. The awards are given annually by the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, and the Alpha Sigma Nu Honor Society.

"For legal scholars and politicians who are interested in the 'art of the possible,' and ordinary citizens who care about persuasive writing, this book might very well be considered required reading," said one of the judges, in part.

"I am thrilled to win a national book award," said Hume, "but I take special pride in being recognized by a Jesuit honor society at the national level."

Hume is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 2003, and came to Fordham in 2005. His teaching and research interests are in the areas of constitutional law, the judicial process, and public administration, with particular emphasis on the implementation of court decisions.

-- Syd Steinhardt