MBA Highlights Return to Westchester

With a blizzard bearing down on the East Coast in early February, the Fordham Management Institute's "Highlights of the MBA" remained snowbound. But the Graduate School of Business Administration (GBA) program will come out swinging this weekend, March 1st and 2nd, when the first of two weekend sessions will be held at the Westchester Campus.

This unique program offers an intense sprint through the highlights of Fordham's well-established Executive MBA program, and furthers the Westchester campus' developing reputation as a center for executive thinking.

"This course is positioned for professionals who do not have the luxury of time for the MBA but need some of the content for their current positions," explained Francis Petit, Ed.D., the associate dean for executive programs at GBA. 

Rooted in the fundamentals of business management, the weekend sessions seek to improve participants’ leadership skills and cue them in to cutting edge business conversations.

Petit said this years participants represent an advanced group from a diversity of industries. With an average of 17 years work experience between them, the group is curated in a manner that the participants will likely learn as much from each other as they will from their highly qualified instructors.

-Tom Stoelker

Sketches Are Stars at New Lincoln Center Art Show

What does the future hold for the sketch drawing, that integral link between imagination and reality? 

Sketch., a new show at the Lincoln Center’s Center Gallery, hopes to address that. 

Organized by Sandra McKee, adjunct assistant professor of architecture at Fordham, in association with New York-based curators d3, Sketch. opened on Feb. 18 and runs through March 19. A reception will be held Thursday, March 7 from 6 to 8 p.m.

The show, which is sponsored by Fordham’s theater and visual arts departments, seeks to revisit the use of classical sketching approaches, while engaging with the new technologies that have expanded the contemporary opportunities of sketching as a conceptual generator.  

Works on display include analog sketches, digital drawings, and digital images of sketch models.

Gallery organizers describe it thusly:

“Sketching is a fundamental and time-tested tool of design communication-- an intuitive practice that conveys ideas and assumptions rapidly and directly. With the rise of trans-disciplinary practices and digital methods, the conventional act of sketching has been profoundly transformed by a proliferation of diverse methodologies and emerging technologies.” 

“While the perception and notion of what constitutes a sketch continues to expand, many designers are reconsidering and expanding upon the historical role of sketching. This emerging dialogue reveals unparalleled synergies between 21st century innovation and classical tradition.”

The Center Gallery is open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. For more information, visit http://fordhamuniversitycentergallery.com/artwork/3032381_Sketch.html

—Patrick Verel

Recyclemania Challenge Nears Half Way Point

Three weeks into Recyclemania 2013, all the action in the competition to see which Fordham residents have a better knack for collecting cans, bottles and paper is confined to the northwest corner of the Rose Hill campus.

According to results released on Tuesday, Feb. 26 by consultant Wake Forest, Martyr’s Court, which recycled both the most glass, metal and plastic, and paper and cardboard in the first week of the competition, came out on top in the latter category this week, with .87 pounds of paper and cardboard per person. 

The residents of neighboring Salice-Conley Hall, on the other hand, took top honors in the glass/metal/plastic category this week, with .76 pounds per person. This was the second week residents there led in that category.

At the other end of the spectrum, the residents of Alumni Hall South managed to recycle the least amount of glass, metal and plastic (.37 pounds per person) and the least amount of paper and cardboard (.48 pounds per person). 

But hey, they also generated the least amount of trash of anyone on Rose Hill, with 4.09 pounds per person. As in past weeks, it was a trifle compared to the 2.79 pounds per person generated by the Lincoln Center campus residents who call McMahon Hall home. But it was still better than Martyr’s Court’s 6.41 pounds of trash generated by person.

Recyclemania continues through April 1. For more information, visit recyclemania.com.

—Patrick Verel

Wall Street Journal Follows Notorious Ph.D. Music Tour

The Wall Street Journal recently sent cameras to trail Professor Mark Naison, aka-The Notorious Ph.D., as he took a group of music afficionados on a trolley tour of Bronx music history. In what he referred to as the "three great traditions: Latin Caribbean, West Indian, and African American," Naison unabashedly blasted music from a boom box, provided thoroughly academic commentary, and rapped. "Nowhere else in the world were these three traditions together," said Naison, as the trolley swept past the home of jazz great Maxine Sullivan and a schoolyard considered "the single most important hiphop center."

Upcoming Panel at GSE Aims to Help Aspiring Educators in Today’s Job Market

An upcoming panel hosted by the Graduate School of Education (GSE) will examine new trends in education hiring and professional development, and how future educators can improve their marketability in this shifting field.

“Careers in Education Today: Developing, Updating, and Promoting Your Skills in Today’s Job Market”
Tuesday, March 5
6 p.m.
12th-Floor Lounge/Corrigan Conference Center | Lincoln Center Campus

A diverse panel of experts will discuss current trends in hiring, high needs areas and certifications, and trends in pedagogy and technology. Participants will learn about the skills that new hires need, and how both current and aspiring educators can stay current and marketable in the world of education.

Panelists include:

• Moderator Linda Horisk, assistant dean of admissions at GSE;
• James Hennessy, Ph.D., dean of GSE;
• Abigail Woods Ferreira, GSE career counselor;
• Rakeda Leaks, Ed.D., senior director of Teacher Recruitment and Applicant Services, of the New York City Department of Education;
• John Lee, Ed.D., clinical professor at GSE and vice chair of the Division of Educational Leadership, Administration and Policy; and
• Marilyn Terranova, Ph.D., superintendent of the Eastchester School District.

For more information, read the story on the GSE blog.

— Joanna Klimaski

Panel Queries the Global Role in Congolese Conflict

From left, Aimee Cox, Ph.D., Aseel Sawalha, Ph.D.,
Fawzia Mustafa, Ph.D., and Evelyn Bush, Ph.D.
Photo by Janet Sassi

Cell phones, computers, and electronics, the indispensable tools of modern life, don’t show any outward signs of the warzones that generate them.

Yet the mineral used to manufacture these devices has contributed to years of war in the Congo, where conflict over natural resources continues to decimate the land as well as its citizens.

Helping to shed light on the issue, Fordham’s Theatre Program is running the 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner Ruined as the third show of its 2012-13 mainstage season. Written by Lynn Nottage, Ruined is the story of four women struggling to survive in war-torn Eastern Congo, a region rife with abuses of human rights, especially sexual violence.

On Feb. 22, a panel of Fordham professors gathered on the Pope Auditorium stage for a discussion on the complex issues raised by Nottage’s play.

The panel featured:

• Moderator Aimee Cox, Ph.D., assistant professor of performance and African and African American studies;
• Aseel Sawalha, Ph.D., associate professor of anthropology;
• Fawzia Mustafa, Ph.D., associate professor of English and African and African American studies;
• And Evelyn Bush, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology.

With the militaristic set of Ruined providing a sinister backdrop for the panel, Cox explained that Eastern Congo provides 70 percent of the world’s supply of coltan, the mineral used in many electronic devices. The abundance of the mineral makes the Congo a magnet for civil conflict and corporate greed.

“In Ruined, we are compelled to question how a country that has been described as ‘the rape capital of the world’ becomes so through transnational capital flow and the exploitation of natural resources,” Cox said. “We are asked to consider how human life becomes devalued… [in part] through Western interest that believes that the right to trade is more powerful or valuable than the right to live.”

That capitalist mindset, Bush said, often pervades political discussion, seeps into media coverage, and then percolates down into public opinion. And though talk of independence from foreign oil has made headway in public discourse, the prospect of a similar outcome with coltan is dim.

“Coltan is the new oil,” Bush said. “It’s something that we’re building the entire infrastructure of our society around, so the stakes are incredibly high… And because of that, activism or movements in response are going to be very difficult.”

Meanwhile, as the war over resources drags on, civilians suffer. Hundreds of thousands of women have been caught up between warring factions since the conflict began in 1996. For Congolese women and girls of all ages, the threat of sexual violence is constant.

“In most wars, the rape of women is not for pleasure—it’s to punish the nation,” Sawalha said. “By contaminating the bodies of these women, the new generation that’s going to be produced because of it is contaminated as well.”

It leads us to ask why, in the face of overt violence, does the world not intervene, the panelists asked.

“We know an awful lot about what has happened and why,” Mustafa said. “But it continues. Nothing that we understand about this has stopped it from happening, even with the publicity, even with advocacy. It brings us back to the question of who benefits.

“You can pinpoint two culprits,” she continued. “One is the market as it functions right now, and the other is the ways in which patriarchy has become so horribly skewed in Africa.”

The panelists acknowledged that the evening’s discussions, as well as the play itself, do little to effect more than awareness and advocacy. Nevertheless, that is where justice must begin.

“It’s not about easy answers or coming to resolutions, but grappling with the various questions we find in the play,” Cox said.

Ruined continues this week on Feb. 27 through March 1 at 8 p.m. in Pope Auditorium. A post-show talkback exploring the artistic choices behind the play will take place on Feb. 28 in Pope Auditorium.

On April 10 and 11, Ruined playwright Lynn Nottage will be visiting both the Lincoln Center and Rose Hill campuses to discuss her play.

For more information about Ruined and the Theatre Program’s mainstage season, read the article in Inside Fordham.

— Joanna Klimaski

New Book from Fordham University Press Leads Media Rescue Mission

The success of a democracy hinges, in part, on the free flow of news and information.

And to maintain that flow of information, certain conditions need to be in place for the press. One of these conditions, theorists contend, is media pluralism, the existence of many, diverse media outlets that can present a cross section of news and a wide range of opinions.

That’s the theory—but is it working?

A new book coming out of Fordham’s Donald McGannon Communication Research Center and Fordham University Press argues that the concept of media pluralism has been stretched to suit different political purposes, reduced to empty catchphrases, and become mixed up with consumer choice and market competition.

According to Kari Karppinen, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Social Research at the University of Helsinki, Finland, the concept needs to be rescued.

In his book, Rethinking Media Pluralism (Fordham University Press, 2013), Karppinen explains that because of the breakdown of media pluralism, important questions about social and political values, democracy, and citizenship are ignored. Karppinen calls for a re-envisioning of media pluralism that puts the focus on challenging inequalities and creating a more democratic public sphere.

“Uncertainty or disagreement over how to conceptualize media pluralism is a persistent stumbling block in academic and policy debates,” said Natali Helberger, Ph.D., of the Institute for Information Law. “Tackling this difficult issue is an important, brave, and necessary exercise, and it is what this book does.”

The Donald McGannon Communication Research Center conducts, supports, rewards, and disseminates research that informs communications policymaking processes and ethical decision-making within media organizations.

Rethinking Media Pluralism marks the second volume in the Center’s Everett C. Parker Book Series, a series dedicated to the publication of research that addresses social and ethical issues in communication policy.

— Joanna Klimaski

Sixth Annual Subway Summit Makes a Stop Uptown

The Subway Summit on Cognition and Education Research marked its sixth annual gathering this year with a new stop on the subway—this time, uptown.

The summit, which has been taking place at Fordham since its 2008 launch, was held on Jan. 25 at Columbia University’s Teachers College, marking the beginning of a new rotating format.

“[The rotation] gives the conference longevity,” said summit co-founder William B. Whitten II, Ph.D., distinguished research scholar at the Graduate School of Education (GSE) and director of the Center for Learning in Unsupervised Environments (CLUE). “It shows a successful long-term contribution to the NYC area research community by Fordham.”

The summit began as a research exchange conference among local university faculty and graduate students from Fordham, Columbia, New York University, and the City University of New York Graduate Center. Rutgers University in New Jersey joined the summit in 2011, making the conference “a subway summit and light rail series,” Whitten said.

This year’s conference featured about 30 presentations on cognitive psychology/science and education from faculty, graduate students, and post-doctoral researchers. Topics included the use of multimedia to facilitate learning, the dynamics of collaborative learning, and designing more effective homework.

Intervals between presentation blocks and a post-conference reception provided an opportunity to network and forge research relationships among the schools, Whitten said.

“There’s time for people from these different universities to get to know each other and build linkages that can lead to future collaboration and networking,” he said.

“[The students] get a lot out of it—they have the opportunity to present their own research outside of their university and get feedback from others about their research approach.”

Presenters from Fordham included Whitten; GSE students Jun Li and Lindsay Blau Portnoy; Sandra E. Whitten, consultant to CLUE; and Mitchell Rabinowitz, Ph.D., chair of GSE’s psychological and educational services division and associate director of CLUE.

“There are lots of conferences, but what’s unique about this is that there are about 70 to 90 people in the room, and they’re all local, and it doesn’t cost anything other than a subway ticket,” Whitten said. “It’s a great opportunity to get together and share.”

— Joanna Klimaski

A Blast from the Past: Fordham Celebrates Black History Month

Civil rights pioneers, entertainers, preachers, politicians, educators—Over the years, Fordham has played host to some of the most dynamic black leaders in our time. In honor of Black History Month, we revisit the archives to showcase a few who have brought their inspiration to the University.

Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to Congress and the first major-party black candidate for President, spoke at the National Black Affair conference at the Lincoln Center campus on Feb. 28, 1970. 

The Most Reverend Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu, (pictured with Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham) who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid in his native South Africa, was given an Doctor of Humane letters, honoris causa, at the University Church on Feb. 23, 2005.

Leopold Senghor, the first president of Senegal and one of Africa’s seminal statesmen, as well as a respected poet, professor and intellectual, visited the Rose Hill campus in November 1961. His name is engraved on the Terrace of Presidents there.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson debated presidential hopefuls Al Gore and Paul Simon at a Democratic presidential candidate debate about urban issues at the Rose Hill campus on March 28, 1988.

See more photos in issue #8 of Inside Fordham when it hits the bins on Feb. 25.

—Patrick Verel

Spotlight on Historian’s Second Amendment Expertise

Saul Cornell, Ph.D., the Paul and Diane
Guenther Chair in American History.
Photo by Gina Vergel


Saul Cornell, Ph.D., the Paul and Diane Guenther Chair in American History, has been enriching the current national debate on gun regulation with a historian’s perspective. 



In the wake of the Newtown tragedy, Cornell’s op-eds and commentary have appeared in a variety of news outlets. This month Cornell will be part of a PBS weeklong exploration of guns in America, from their Colonial roots to their present-day politics. Flagship programs, from Frontline, to Nova, to Washington Week, will all feature the subject.



An expert on the history of the Second Amendment and author of A Well Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control (Oxford University Press, 2006), Cornell has gone on record with his concerns of when the Second Amendment overshadows the First Amendment. “Judging by the effort to deport Piers Morgan, the CNN host who promoted gun control, there is at least a constituency among Second Amendment supporters who don’t seem to have read the First Amendment—they seem to have just skipped to the Second Amendment,” he said recently. 



Cornell will be exercising his right to free speech on Feb. 19 at 9 p.m. on PBS nationwide, Channel 13 in New York as part of "After Newtown: Guns in America." You can see the trailer here.

Recyclemania 2013 Officially Underway

The competition among Fordham's residence halls to see who can recycle the most and waste the least kicked off on Feb. 2, and after the first week, leaders have emerged. 

According to results released on Tuesday, Feb. 12 by consultant Wake Forest, Rose Hill’s Marytr's Court leads the pack in both the categories of most paper and cardboard and most glass, metal and plastic collected, at .98 pounds per person and .89 pounds per person, respectively. 

Rose Hill's Tierney Hall and Lincoln Center's McMahon Hall recycled the least amount of paper and cardboard, just .50 pounds per person. Rose Hill's Alumni South recycled the least amount of glass, metal and plastic at a paltry .32 pounds per person.

Reflecting the differences between the two campuses, the 2.89 pounds of trash per person counted at Lincoln Center's Walsh Hall was far less than any amount recorded at Rose Hill. The students there who kept the most trash out of the garbage stream are at Salice-Conley Hall, at 3.49 pounds per person. Curiously, Martyr’s Court was on the opposite end of the spectrum, as its residents generated a whopping 7.55 pounds of trash per person.

It would seem that in the first week of Recyclemania, the 446 residents of Martyr’s Court are the most prodigious, both in conservation and in waste. Keep it up guys! Also, stop it!

Recyclemania continues through April 1. For more information, visit recyclemania.com.

—Patrick Verel

GBA to Host NYC Chief Digital Officer at TimesCenter

NYC Chief Digital Officer Rachael Haot

As the namesake of one of the world's top media and technology companies, it's not surprising that Mayor Michael Bloomberg ushered in several tech innovations at City Hall. Chief among them was the creation of the Digital Roadmap in 2011, which has been overseen by Chief Digital Officer Rachel Haot.

Next week, the Fordham Graduate School of Business Administration will host a talk with Haot at the TimesCenter in the New York Times building on Wednesday, February 20 at 6 p.m. The conversation will launch GBA's Digital Media Disruption Lecture Series and will be moderated by Athan Stephanopoulos, CEO and founder of GorillaSpot Media, and an adjunct professor in the Communications and Media Management Program at GBA. 

"We're in the second most active tech community in the nation," said Stephanopoulos. "The convergence of technology and media is disrupting a lot of industries, including the academic industry. This series will give students and the public a chance to participate in the dialogue."

Stephanopoulos said subsequent lectures would build on the Media Week event, with smaller lectures given throughout the year, and two keynote lectures to be given in the fall and in the spring.

Haot will discuss the city's strategy to engage New Yorkers in the digital realm, as well as how the administration is partnering with the thriving tech sector. Currently, the city's digital audience comprises more than 5.4 million users tuning in to more than 200 social media feeds.

As an official participant in Social Media Week, the talk is slated to be streamed live at http://bit.ly/UZXMla.

You can reserve a seat by clicking here, or follow the event live with @DMdisruption, @fordhamnotes, @Stephanopoulos on Twitter at #smwdigitalmediadisruption.

—Tom Stoelker

Impulse + Warhol + Ross McLaren

Ontario native Ross McLaren, artist-in-residence in Fordham’s Department of Theatre and Visual Arts, is one of the few professors with a red chili pepper next to his name on the Rate My Professors.com (that's for “hotness” . . . )

The filmmaker is on fire in his former hometown of Toronto, too, where his films will be featured on Feb. 9 and Feb. 10 at The 8 Fest, a weekend festival for Super 8, 8mm, 9.5mm and other small-gauge films. On Feb. 9, McLaren’s early work will be featured with the work of Andy Warhol and new artists in a session co-presented with Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC). On Feb. 10 he will be a featured speaker. (photo: mikehoolboom.com)

Fordham Hosts Inaugural Conference on Workplace Diversity

Loretta A. Penn, former president of Spherion Staffing Services, will deliver the keynote address at “Diversity in the World of Work Conference: Finding Balance, Achieving Empowerment,” Fordham’s inaugural conference on diversity in business.

Panelists will present on a variety of topics pertaining to finding balance through diversity on business teams and empowering within oneself on Saturday, Feb. 9 in the McGinley Center at the Rose Hill Campus.

The conference begins with registration at 9 a.m. and will end at 3 p.m. with a performance by Thirza DeFoe, Grammy Award winning artist from the Ojibwe and Oneida tribes of Wisconsin. She is best known for her sacred hoop dances.

The event is sponsored in part by the Office of Career Services and Office of Multicultural Affairs. For more information, contact Maria Aponte at (718) 817-4315 or maponte@fordham.edu.

Fordham IPED Grad Is D.C. Bound

Photo by Janet Sassi

Wander Cedeño, GSB ’10, GSAS ’12, just accepted a job at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington, D.C., where he will be an economist covering energy and chemicals. The 25-year-old spent most of the past year as a New York City Urban Fellow in the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation, where, among other things, he helped assess and catalog the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in Manhattan parks.

Fordham Notes talked with Cedeño about his new job offer and his time at Fordham, where he earned his bachelor’s in economics and his master’s in international political economy and development (IPED). He was inspired to pursue the latter degree after a meeting with Leonel Fernández, former president of the Dominican Republic, whom he personally greeted on Fordham’s campus in 2008. 

Does this new position live up to your expectations as your first real full-time job?
This is better than what I had envisioned. It’s the preeminent fact-finding agency in the U.S. government. It’s a great place to start a career.

How did you go about securing this position?
I applied in November through USAjobs.gov, the federal job site. I didn’t really think twice about it because I’ve applied for so many positions. Three months later they called. We set up two phone interviews, but then I was going to be in D.C. for (President Obama’s) inauguration, so I could go in person. That’s what made the difference.

How has Fordham prepared you for your new role?
I was an econ major at the Gabelli School. Economics was a way for me to understand the social inequalities in my community—Washington Heights. I’m a lifelong resident. My professors always stressed to look beyond the numbers.

Also, I was member of CSTEP (the Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program). I worked for them this past summer. I love CSTEP. They provided a lot of guidance along the way.

You are the first member of your family to go to a four-year college. How did your parents react to this job offer?
They’re absolutely ecstatic. They’re very supportive. It’s bittersweet, leaving New York. But I think everyone understands the journey. Not only mine, but my family’s journey, coming to America 30 years ago. And this is part of the reason.

—Nicole LaRosa

Recyclemania Back for Third Year

Recyclemania, the annual competition that pits residence halls against each other for the title of "Greenest of them all," kicked off on Monday, Feb. 4 at the Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses.

This is the third year that the university has entered the competition, which runs through April 1. As with the past two years, Fordham will participate in the "benchmark" division of the competition, which challenges dormitory residents to see who can simultaneously collect the most paper, cardboard glass, metal and plastic and generate as little solid waste as possible.

Waste Watcher Recycling Stations

Weekly updates will be issued by sustainability consultant Great Forest and sent to the residence halls weekly so students can track their progress.

The competition does not include administrative or academic buildings, but this year the Rose Hill campus' ten residence halls do have a partner in Hughes Hall, the new home of the Gabelli School of Business.

As part of the universities’ ongoing sustainability programs, Hughes Hall has been outfitted with seven new Waste Watcher Recycling Stations. The stations, which contain three bins for paper, plastic and garbage, are part of a pilot program that may be implemented in some of the 147 classrooms at the Rose Hill campus.

For more information about Recyclemania, visit http://recyclemaniacs.org.

—Patrick Verel

Newest Cura Magazine now Online

The 7th issue of Cura, Fordham's Literary Magazine of Art and Action, is now online. Among its featured contributors is Elisabeth Frost, Ph.D., associate professor of English.

Thinking Outside the Box Puts Alumnus on Top

At last fall’s Value Investing Congress in New York City, Ryan Fusaro, FCLC ’07, made a name for himself alongside billionaire hedge-fund heavyweights Bill Ackman and David Einhorn, who were among the speakers at the event CNBC has dubbed the “Super Bowl of Value Investing.”

Fusaro’s presentation on the national hamburger chain Jack in the Box earned him first place in the Value Investing Challenge Contest and a chance to share the stage with some of the world’s most respected investors.

“It was almost surreal to present among these luminaries. It’s a cool experience,” said Fusaro, an analyst at LionEye Capital Management. “It was kind of like American Idol for investing.”

The Value Investing Challenge, an investment idea contest hosted by the Value Investing Congress and SumZero, was created in July 2012 to encourage high-quality investment research and to give lesser-known investors the chance to present their ideas to a big and influential audience.

“[The contest] gives you the opportunity to be heard. The challenge is an inspiring idea because it’s very merit-based, no pedigree required,” said Fusaro, a native New Yorker. “An average guy can present here and if you have a good idea, you could win.”

Photo credit: The Value Investing Congress

From more than a 100 contest applicants, a panel of anonymous money managers selected three finalists, and then 4,000 value investors voted for a winner at the conference. In his winning presentation, “Thinking Outside the Box,” Fusaro talked about the value of investing in Jack in the Box. The company, he said, has “substantial hidden assets,” including its franchise Qdoba Mexican Grill and rent-generating real estate assets, which are not currently factored into its share price. If factored in, he said, the company’s “shares could conceivably be worth $57 by 2015, significantly more than where it was trading given all those attributes.”

After his Value Investing Challenge victory, Fusaro was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Finance, a list of young men and women who are making their mark at investment firms, hedge funds, and other financial firms.

“It’s an honor. I try not to take it to heart, but it does feel incredible to get credit for things I’ve been working on for a long time,” he said. “It’s a stamp of approval.”

It was at his first job after Fordham, at Ramius Capital, where he realized he liked value investing. He started to learn investors’ thought processes and what makes for a good investment idea. With that inspiration, Fusaro started putting together his own investment presentations after work and on weekends. He personally invested in the companies he recommended and shared the presentations with people in the industry whom he admires. “Some replied and some didn’t, but it was a great way to learn and get feedback on my work. That was a real honor,” he said. “I developed a little network and made new friends in the business.”

While an economics major at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, Fusaro particularly enjoyed courses in corporate finance and financial markets taught by Michael Buckley, Ph.D., clinical associate professor of economics and a former managing director at JP Morgan Chase.

“A lot of the topics could be taught in a way that was dull, but he presented them in a way to keep you interested,” said Fusaro. “His course textbooks were one of the few textbooks that I kept after Fordham. That’s a testament to him and his courses.”

After graduating from Fordham, Fusaro looked for a way to stay connected to the University. About three years ago, he joined the Young Alumni Committee, which promotes the University’s young alumni-focused programs and services, and he now serves as the committee’s secretary.

“It’s a unique committee in that you’re trusted with a particular level of confidence and license to build up Fordham,” he said. “Fordham embeds certain traits in you. It makes you curious; it makes you want to understand the world.”

Read Fusaro’s winning presentation here.

—Rachel Buttner

Career Assistance for Alumni

Whether you are a recent graduate looking for your first job or an experienced professional ready to make a career change, Fordham’s Office of Alumni Relations is here to help you achieve your employment goals.

Alumni relations offers several specialized services for all alumni who need assistance finding work, changing jobs, networking, polishing their interview skills, updating their resume, and much more—all free of charge.

The services include career development workshops, individual counseling, and a monthly career support group hosted by two Fordham alumni.

“Alumni need an objective sounding board—whether it’s updating their resumes, learning about growth fields and how to align their skills with them, or how to use social media,” said Annette McLaughlin, who hosts the workshops and offers personal coaching and referral services.

McLaughlin has more than 20 years of experience working with job seekers. Prior to starting her own consulting firm, she was vice president of talent at the Response Companies, a recruiting and advisory services firm. Since 2008, she has been helping Fordham University’s alumni with their career needs.

“I offer a broader perspective,” said McLaughlin, who has an M.B.A. in personnel and employee relations from Georgia State University. “I can show alumni different routes they can take with their career paths.”

She hosts four workshops on career development each semester—at the Westchester and Lincoln Center campuses—covering such topics as defining a personal brand and an “elevator pitch,” and making the most of connections and networking events. She also provides individual coaching to alumni of the Graduate School of Business Administration.

McLaughlin also emphasizes that LinkedIn can be an effective tool for career support. The alumni-driven Fordham University Alumni Networking Association LinkedIn group offers an online resource for alumni to network, set up discussion groups, and exchange ideas. The 11,000-member group includes alumni from a variety of industries—from law to public relations.

In addition to the workshops, alumni can benefit from individual counseling with Jorimel Zaldivar, a career counselor based at the Lincoln Center campus. With a master’s in counseling for mental health and wellness and a certificate in career planning and development from New York University, he also brings to Fordham more than 10 years of experience. Zaldivar provides one-on-one counseling and career assessments for Fordham’s undergraduate students and alumni of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

“It’s very person-centered,” he said. “Wherever alumni are in their career process, I help find out what they want to do, how to transition to another career area, review their resume, or offer advice on networking and interviewing skills.”

Networking skills, he said, are a key component to the job search process—a component that many alumni can find challenging.

“Alumni are very curious about how to network,” he said, but one of the only ways for alumni “or any job seeker to advance is to have some face time with their fellow professionals in the field. It’s very important.”

Zaldivar offers about 26 counseling appointments per week to students and alumni throughout the year.

“We want it known that the service is available. We like to help those who need the help,” he said. “The job search can be very tough and alumni don’t have to go through it alone.”

Alumni can also get help from fellow Fordham alumni Nick O’Neill, FCRH ’55, and Bob Miller, FCRH ’55, who have been sharing their advice and professional expertise through the Career Continuance Support Group for 17 years.

O’Neill and Miller founded the group in 1995, one year after O’Neill, an independent insurance broker, was seeking a new job. He contacted former classmate Miller, a principal in a New Jersey-based career outplacement and consulting service firm, for help, and when O’Neill landed a job, the two decided to help others benefit from the strength of the Fordham alumni network.

Over the many years, the two men have helped hundreds of Fordham alumni and friends who are out of work, contemplating a career change, or searching for more meaningful employment. The group’s sessions, held on the last Saturday of each month at the Lincoln Center campus, cover resume writing, interviewing, and many other topics.

“We get a lot out of this, too,” said O’Neill. “It’s amazing to see the growth [of the University], and to still be a part of it.”

Zaldivar added: “We try to communicate to students that Fordham is always here for you.”



Visit the alumni events calendar for more information on Annette McLaughlin’s upcoming workshop, and on the next Career Continuance Support Group meeting.

To set up a session with Jorimel Zaldivar, e-mail jzaldivar1@fordham.edu or call 212-636-6280.

—Rachel Buttner

African American Slave Burial Database Goes Live

Fordham’s Burial Database Project of Enslaved African Americans, a portal for the public to submit locations suspected of being the site of unmarked graves of slaves, went live today.

The database, which is located at www.vanishinghistory.org, was launched on the 150 anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, which abolished slavery in the United States. 

In a recent ceremony at Fordham’s Lincoln Center Campus, Sandra Arnold, a history student in Fordham’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies (PCS) who is spearheading the project, thanked everyone who helped make the site a reality. 

“In my research on slave burial grounds, I’ve learned that in almost every society in the world, the burial ground of a loved one is considered sacred. The place where the deceased is buried is a symbol, or a monument that the person that lies in that grave meant something to someone, were cared for, and that they were missed,” she said.

"I’ve also learned to believe there are no insignificant people in history, and that all people had a role in shaping in shaping history. Therefore I also believe all people should be remembered.”

Members of the Department of African and African American Studies such as Irma Watkins-Owens, Ph.D., associate professor of history and African American studies, and co-director of the database project, were also on hand for a celebratory champagne toast.

“The launching of this project comes at a really important historical moment. Not only is it timely because this year is the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation; it is also a moment of some urgency, because many of these burial spaces of enslaved people are rapidly vanishing in the memories of the descendents as well as the memories of the communities,” she said. 

“This is a real call to the public to help us to identify and place these spaces in the historical record.”

For more on Fordham’s African American Slave Burial Database, read the article in Inside Fordham. 

—Patrick Verel

Gabelli School of Business Kicks off International Business Week

The Gabelli School of Business will be reaching far and wide next week, as it presents a raft of events geared toward learning more about international business, economics, politics and culture.

The week will feature:

-A global showcase fair of business opportunities staffed by international students

-A speech by Juan Carlos Vignaud, ambassador in residence of Argentina on Monday

-A speech by Alfonso Fanjul, GSB ’59, CEO of Florida Crystals, followed by a desert tasting on Tuesday

-Lunch with Lee Ballin, sustainability manager at Bloomberg LP, on Tuesday

-A speech by Pedro Murilo Ortega Terra, Chefe do SECOM and head of the Brazilian Trade Bureau, on Wednesday

-Lunch with Scott MacDonald, senior managing director of MC Asset Management Holdings, who will cover European politics and markets.

For more information and to register, visit http://www.gabelliconnect.com/ibw-2013

—Patrick Verel