Alumni Spotlight: In Mentorship Pairing, Aspiring Physician Finds Inspiration in Surgeon

After watching a boarding schoolmate endure multiple reconstructive surgeries following a plane crash in her native Nigeria, Princess Chukwuneke knew she wanted to be a doctor. Now the Fordham senior is working toward her goal with help from Ray Longobardi, M.D., FCRH ’86, through the Fordham Mentoring Program.

Chukwuneke, who is majoring in general science with a minor in chemistry and creative writing, has found a good match with her mentor. “He’s destroyed every stereotype [I’ve had] about doctors. He’s one of the funniest persons I know, and he has wonderful rapport with his patients,” she says. “I just watch [him] and think, this is how it’s supposed to be.”

Princess Chukwuneke, a pre-med senior at Fordham College
at Rose Hill
Photo by Kathryn Gamble 

Throughout the year, she’s watched Longobardi, an orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist, perform several surgeries, and she’s shadowed him during his rounds in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center, where he is an assistant professor of clinical orthopaedic surgery.

“The fact that he’s allowed me in to see surgeries—it’s an opportunity you don’t [often] get [as an undergraduate],” says Chukwuneke, “it’s what medical students get.” She says Longobardi also quizzes her about what she sees on X-rays, explains anything that she finds confusing, and asks her about her Fordham science classes. “He just treats me like a student interested in medicine. ‘See what you like, see what you don’t like.’ I think that is great.”

Longobardi, who has been a mentor in the Fordham Mentoring Program for four years, says, “No one learns in a vacuum. We’ve all been taught by other people. I try to impart some of the things [my teachers] taught me about taking care of people.”

It was after he broke his wrist as a freshman at Fordham that led Longobardi to one of his mentors, Kenneth Kamler, M.D., a microsurgeon specializing in hand reconstruction and finger reattachment, and an eminent adventure physician who practices medicine in remote regions. “I met him right after he came back from an expedition to the Amazon,” says Longobardi. “I was taking general chemistry then and while he was putting the cast on my arm, we were talking about the chemical reactions happening. He always made it very easy to understand what’s going on in orthopedics. That’s something that I always admired and always tried to replicate.”

It was that experience with Kamler, whom Longobardi calls “a mentor, an inspiration then, and friend to this day,” that spurred his interest in orthopedics. The interest was enhanced by his construction work experience during high school and college. “I had some ideas about drills and saws, so orthopedics kind of came naturally. But it’s not for everyone,” he says.

After observing a knee replacement surgery, Chukwuneke knew she could stomach being a doctor, but her career aspirations lie in becoming a reconstructive plastic surgeon. In 2005, when Chukwuneke was a student at the Loyola Jesuit College in Nigeria, Sosoliso Airlines Flight 1145 crashed in Omagwa, killing 108 people, including 60 students from the school. One of the two survivors, a friend of Chukwuneke’s, was critically burned. “I watched how she struggled through one plastic surgery after another,” says Chukwuneke. “She’s so much better now than she was.”

Chukwuneke sees plastic surgery as an outlet for her creative side. “I believe science and art are inseparable and for this reason, I tend to incorporate both in nearly everything that I do,” says Chukwuneke, who sings with Fordham’s Gloria Dei Choir and attends performances at the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Ballet as often as she can. “Plastic surgery is the one place in medicine where I could explore both sides of me.”

Dr. Ray Longobardi

She’s also sharing some of her varied interests by tutoring and counseling high school and Fordham students. Through a summer program in Fordham’s Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program, Chukwuneke has tutored local 10th and 11th graders in poetry and calculus, and counseled them on the college experience. Since her sophomore year she has been providing tutoring assistance in math, music history, and general chemistry to students in Fordham’s Higher Education Opportunity Program. “I love it,” she says. “It’s really rewarding for me.”

Longobardi finds fulfillment, too, in sharing his knowledge with students. A member of the admissions committee at the NYU School of Medicine, he’s conducted mock interviews with Fordham students preparing for medical school admission and given lectures to pre-health professions students.

“I really love the University. I always feel you need to give back and give back not just by giving monetary donations,” Longobardi says. “What’s really going to help students is guidance. And if there are areas that you can help in that way, that’s what’s going to make the programs at Fordham better, and give the students a better edge so that they can make better and more intelligent decisions.”

His “take-home message” to students is to “find what you really love,” says Longobardi, an avid baseball and football fan who has treated athletes from the New York Islanders, Florida Marlins, and University of Tennessee. “If you’re going to spend your life doing something, find something you love.”

—Rachel Buttner

Alumna Gives CSTEP Scholars Practical Advice on Medical School

Applying to medical school can be daunting, especially for minority students who may not have had the educational advantages of their peers.

But Nilda I. Soto, a two-time Fordham graduate and assistant dean in the office of diversity enhancement at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, wants students to know that with the proper support, they can become doctors.

Nilda I. Soto with Fordham CSTEP students at Einstein

“This is a doable, attainable goal that you have,” she told a group of 10 incoming freshmen in Fordham’s Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program (CSTEP) for minority and economically disadvantaged students. “It’s a very disciplined endeavor but it’s doable.”

The students visited Einstein on July 22 as part of Fordham’s five-week CSTEP Summer Scholars program. Students live on the Rose Hill campus, take math and science courses, and visit medical, dental, and optometry schools.

In a conference room on the Einstein campus, Soto doled out practical advice on how to sequence college courses, when to take the MCAT, and the importance of summer internships.

Part of her goal for the afternoon was to debunk “the horror stories” about medical school admissions. Everyone’s heard a tale about the student “with the 3.88 average and the fabulous MCAT score who didn’t get in.” But admissions staff value more than scores, she said, citing her colleague in the diversity office at Einstein who “looks at the road you have traveled.”

If students can remain focused on their studies despite significant challenges, Soto said, “then we feel comfortable that you’re going to succeed in medical school.”

She cautioned, however, that the percentage of minority students in medical schools is low. She noted only 500 black men matriculated into medical school in 2013, out of 20,000 students, according to a chart from the American Association of Medical Colleges that Soto included in a packet she put together for the CSTEPpers. “If you don’t get the support and help, our numbers are going to look worse.”

A Bronx native, Soto graduated in 1974 from Thomas More College (Fordham’s undergraduate women’s college, which existed from 1964 until 1974, when it merged with Fordham College at Rose Hill). After earning a B.A. in urban studies, she worked on the Rose Hill campus for HEOP, the Higher Education Opportunity Program, and went on to earn a master’s degree from Fordham’s Graduate School of Education in 1978.

She has been at Einstein for 24 years, during which time she has worked closely with Michael Molina, CSTEP’s director at Fordham, advising CSTEP students early in their college careers.

“You have very good and focused young people,” she said, but they are competing against kids who’ve gone to high schools with extensive science equipment and resources. “And here are these kids thinking, ‘Maybe I got to dissect a frog.’ The program is needed to help level the playing field.”

Soto also accepts CSTEP students into her summer research program at Einstein and, in the case of at least one aspiring medical student, has provided extended mentorship.

CSTEPper Nabilah Nishat said the afternoon at Einstein—and the summer program—have made her goals seem more realistic.

“CSTEP showed me it’s possible to go into the health professions,” she said, “and because it’s possible, I’m inspired to go on.”

 —Nicole LaRosa

CSTEP Students Host Young Visitors on Rose Hill Campus

It’s never too early to think about college.

A group of kids from Hour Children, a nonprofit that supports incarcerated women and their children, got a taste of college life during a visit to Fordham’s Rose Hill campus last week. Ranging in age from 9 to 16, the kids shook things up in Fordham’s seismic station, ate lunch in the cafeteria, and even got a peek at a dorm room.

Acting as their hosts were eight students from Fordham’s chapter of CSTEP—the New York state-sponsored Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program for minority and economically disadvantaged students.

CSTEP students, Hour Children kids and staff, and President’s 

Council member George McCartney (back, left) in front of 

Duane Library on the Rose Hill campus. 

“They were terrific with the children,” said George McCartney, FCRH ’68, LAW ’74, a member of Fordham’s President’s Council and a longtime volunteer with the Long Island City-based Hour Children.

“And the director [of Fordham’s CSTEP, Michael Molina,] made a very important point. He said to them, ‘You belong here. This is not just a place you’re coming to look at.’”

Kiki Leonard, 15, a counselor-in-training at an Hour Children afterschool program, said her visit to Fordham was “a great experience.”

“I learned a lot from it,” she said, adding that she enjoyed hearing about the University’s extracurricular activities. The CSTEP students she met inspired her to apply to Fordham’s STEP program (CSTEP’s counterpart for high school and junior high students).

“I’ve wanted to be a doctor since I was in eighth grade,” she said. “A pediatrician. I love kids.”

Most of the young people from Hour Children had not had any exposure to higher education, said McCartney, former vice president and general counsel of Nippon Life Insurance Company of America, who arranged the visit.

“I thought it would be very good for them to see Fordham, to show them what was available to them if they did their work in school and applied themselves,” he said.

Breaking into small groups, the Fordham students talked to their eleven young visitors about college life, as well as the CSTEP and STEP programs. Both programs encourage minority students to pursue careers in healthcare, the sciences, technology, and licensed professions by offering internship opportunities, test prep, tutoring, and more.

At the William Spain Seismic Observatory, the kids jumped up and down to create their own “earthquake,” making the seismometer shift. They also received a mini lesson on radioactivity from Benjamin Crooker, Ph.D., associate professor of physics at Fordham, who runs the station, which has been recording the Earth’s rumblings from different locations on the Rose Hill campus since 1923.

“They really enjoyed the talk and they asked some terrific questions,” said McCartney, whose wife, Mary Jane McCartney, TMC ’69, sits on Fordham’s Science Council and serves with him on the President’s Council.

The visit also included stops in Hughes Hall, home of the Gabelli School of Business; the University Church; the William D. Walsh Family Library; the cafeteria in the McGinley Center; and Loschert Hall, where the kids got an up-close look at a student’s room.

“I think it really inspired them to be interested in higher education,” said McCartney, “and it was fun.”

—Nicole LaRosa