Veterans Find Closure Through Writing

For the fifth consecutive year, Fordham has made Military Times magazine’s annual “Best for Vets” list of the top colleges and universities for service members, military veterans, and their families.

Fordham has been ranked regularly on the list, thanks to the diverse and comprehensive programs provided by the FordhamVets Initiative — which helps veterans transition from the military to college life — and to the financial support the school provides through the Yellow Ribbon Program.

One program that has been particular helpful to Fordham veterans is the Veterans Writing Workshop, which has been held at Fordham’s Westchester campus since 2010 and recently expanded to the Lincoln Center campus. The workshops are held three times per year at both campuses.

Veterans meet weekly to learn about and practice the craft of writing and to receive feedback and support from their peers. The workshop is “intensive and creative,” said founder and instructor David Surface, and functions primarily as a writing class rather than as a support group or a therapy session. Even so, it’s difficult to separate the therapeutic value of such a group from its artistic value.

“Writing can be healing,” Surface said. “When you write about your experiences, particularly in a serious, intensive, craft-based way, there’s something that happens that doesn’t happen in a therapy session or support group. It has to do with taking mastery of your experience, or taking control of your experience in a way.”

The veterans are not required to write specifically about their experience at war because not all of them are ready to put their trauma into words, Surface said. Instead, they write about whatever inspires them in the moment, whether it’s a memory from the battlefield or a hike with family.

At the conclusion of the workshop, the veterans’ writings are published as an anthology, which the veterans share in public readings and events. In addition to preserving and celebrating their writing, Surface said, the book helps to raise awareness about veterans’ experiences by hearing it in the service members’ own words. This year’s book, Afterwords: Looking Back, marks the 15th edition of the publication.

“There’s a lot of talk these day about the military/civilian divide in our country. Civilians don’t understand what veterans have experienced and vice versa,” he said. “But having the veterans themselves write about these experiences is one of the best ways to help narrow that gap.”

The Veterans Writing Workshop was developed in 2010 through collaboration between Arts Westchester (formerly the County Arts Council), the Hudson Valley Writers Center, and Fordham University Westchester as part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ The Big Read Program. Free of charge, the workshop series is open to veterans from every conflict.

Often, Surface said, a workshop will find veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan sitting side by side with veterans from Korea, Vietnam, and even World War II.

“They talk about their stories, about their feelings,” he said. “There is a comradeship that forms.”

Over and over again he has seen the veterans draw on that natural bond to help each other not only with their writing, but also with the struggles they face in the aftermath of war. He recalled an instance when one veteran decided to write about an event that had triggered a severe post-traumatic stress disorder. When the writing process became distressing for him, another veteran in the workshop offered support.

“He just sat with him while he wrote the story,” Surface said. “They help each other through these experiences.”

In addition to continuing the workshops at Fordham’s Westchester and Lincoln Center campuses, Surface will be running a Women’s Veterans Writing Workshop starting this spring at Arts Westchester. And in February, a Families of Veterans Writing Workshop will begin at Fordham Westchester for friends, family members, and supporters of military personnel.

“What I hope they learn is that their own experiences — their own memories, feelings, and thoughts — are valid,” Surface said. “They don’t need to look outside of themselves for material to write about. I just try to give them skills and tools to do that.”

— Joanna Mercuri

Calling all Foodies

Those of us who work in the Bronx already know a well-kept secret: there are plenty of great eats to be found right here in the Rose Hill campus' borough. And over the next week, the fourth annual Bronx Restaurant Week offers good deals as well.

Here are a couple of recommendations from Fordham faculty and staff:

MARK NAISON, professor of history:

Pio Pio - Great peruvian restaurant on 139th St. and Cypress Ave.
Crab Shanty on City Island. Great lunch special!
Neerob, a South Asian Restaurant near Parkchester.

PATRICK RYAN, S.J., Avery Dulles Professor of Theology:

Emilia's on Arthur Avenue, excellent prix fixe lunch.

GEORGE EVANS, director of technical operations for WFUV Public Radio:

Tino's Delicatessen on Arthur Avenue.
Roberto's or Zero Otto Nove for fancier Italian/American dishes.
Something I've grown up eating since I was a little boy is the round Italian bread from Terranova Bakery.


Savor the Bronx is underway and lasts through November 14. For more information, go to www.savorthebronx.com.

--Rachel Roman

Fordham Inspires Internships for the Common Good

Greg Mason chats with Susannah Bourbeau and Sr. Mary Heyser of RSHM Volunteers.

On Nov. 5, Fordham sponsored its first Common Good Internship Fair at the Rose Hill campus, bringing in recruiters not from for-profit corporations but from nonprofits, education, healthcare, government, post-grad service, and social enterprising industries.

The idea is to offer Fordham students more mission-centered opportunities.

“At most career fairs the nonprofits are shoved in the corner,” said Greg Mason, FCRH ’05.

Mason was back at his alma mater to recruit Fordham talent for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.  He said that it was unique to see the nonprofits being separated out from the financial and marketing firms that usually dominate career fairs.

“It’s not surprising that Fordham would have a career fair like this, but it is surprising that it’s the first one,” said senior Rachel Nass, a sociology major looking for a job that would include doing work for for social justice.

Indeed, many of the students and recruiters found the event to be a tangible example of “Living the Mission” campaign adopted by University Mission and Ministry, which co-sponsored the event through the Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice. Together with Fordham's Career Services, the center was able to keep the costs of participating at minimum in order to encourage cash-strapped nonprofits to participate. Among those who were able to attend were East Harlem Tutorial Program, LAMP Ministries, Global Citizen, and the Fresh Air Fund.

Career services’ employee relations specialist Christie Welch said that while the career fair didn’t command the attendance numbers of a general fair, recruiters had great feedback about those who did attend, calling them “superb” students who “really knew what they were talking about.”

Fordham College at Rose Hill senior Frank Shaparro, an economics major with a theology minor, fit the profile of a Fordham professional with a concern for the common good.

“I’m interested in how our Christian ideals work their way in to the way we organize our economy,” said Shaparro. “So this is great because it provides both opportunities--you can apply to the nonprofits and some private-side initiatives.”

Donna Smith, senior recruiter at YAI, an agency that services intellectual and developmentally disabled adults, said that she found the fair heartening on a personal level.

“I was pleasantly surprised to come to a fair that targets human services, because it’s so needed,” she said. “It really speaks to people who do passion work and it reinforces for me why I do the work I do.”

--Tom Stoelker

Faculty Reads: Psychologist Adds Heart to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Techniques

What we think affects how we feel, and how we feel affects how we behave, and how we behave then affects what we think about ourselves…

If one or all facets of this thoughts-feelings-behavior triangle become dysfunctional, though, life can fairly quickly turn chaotic. Luckily, therapeutic techniques such as cognitive behavioral therapy help restore our inner life to harmony and break the cycle of disorder.

The question is: Are these techniques doing enough?

Psychology Professor Dean McKay, Ph.D. recently published Working with Emotion in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: Techniques for Clinical Practice (November 2014), a book he co-edited with his former doctoral student Nathan Thoma, Ph.D., GSAS ’08, ’11, a clinical psychologist in New York City.

The book features writings from leading psychologists on the role of emotion in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a psychotherapy that focuses on the relationships between thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. This short-term, goal-oriented, and empirically validated treatment aims to change a client’s problematic behaviors and thinking patterns, which thereby improve how the client feels. It has proven to be effective for a range of psychopathologies, including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The problem, McKay says, is that the emotional aspect does not always get its due, which means that clients sometimes leave treatment with a reduction in symptoms, but without fully resolving the issue at hand.

“Clients often seek treatment due to a range of emotional struggles, ones that might linger after successful treatment for behavioral problems and [improving] patterns of thinking,” said McKay, who specializes in treating people with anxiety disorders. “While emotion has never been neglected in CBT, the emphasis on emotional processes has not been as high as it is for the other two domains.”

The book offers information about emotional processes and includes techniques that clinicians can use to better address emotion in therapy. Topics covered include the use of mindfulness therapy and the importance of exposing clients to difficult emotions so that they learn to face uncomfortable feelings rather than use maladaptive behaviors to escape them.

“CBT has long emphasized behaviors and thoughts (or cognitions) as centrally important in psychopathology,” McKay said. “But [we] developed the book in an effort to fill an important gap in the available sources for clinicians.”

— Joanna Mercuri

The Berlin Wall 25 Years After the Fall

Few symbols of the Cold War are as potent as the Berlin Wall, which was brought down in a raucous and chaotic celebration 25 years ago, Nov. 9, 1989.

Like the Cold War, the wall, which severed Germany’s capital in half and was the site of an estimated 136 deaths, is in many ways a distant memory. But sections of it survive, including a 0.8-mile-long section known as the East Side Gallery. 

It features 105 paintings on the east side by artists from all over the world that were painted in 1990 as a memorial for freedom.

In 2012, students in the Department of Modern Languages visited Berlin to do a study tour, “Berlin Tales—Observation.” Fordham College at Rose Hill senior Kingsley Lasbrey’s project for the class, “Representations of Post-war Identity Through Art and Graffiti,” included a series of photos of the wall’s remains—now a worldwide symbol of freedom over tyranny.

Lasbrey said that when he first saw the wall it was “Like seeing history before me that I’d seen only in books.”

“I could see the impact it must have had on the people behind it, and you can see the remnants of the ‘death strip’ where they [used to] monitor East Berliners trying to escape over the wall.”

Rosemary Wakeman, Ph.D., professor of history, head of Fordham’s Urban Studies program, visits the city often, as the program does partnerships with several universities there. She said the wall is one of several “sites for memory” for Berliners, who have wrestled for years with questions of how much to preserve. Portions of it are crumbling, and last year, a section was briefly removed to make way for construction of condominiums.  

“There’s a deep interest in preserving that history of the Cold War and a divided Berlin, and a tremendous battle over the memory of that epic, and what deserves to be saved and what does not,” she said. 

“It implicates the Berlin Wall, and it also implicates Communist institutions of one kind or the next that represent very different things for different people.

She noted that even though Berlin was reunified a quarter century ago, the process of reknitting the metropolis together is still continuing. Even without a physical barrier, for instance, many East Berliners still feel very much like second-class citizens. 

“The whole episode of the city’s division is still very much a living memory, and a very emotional realization of life that people are trying to live with,” she said.

And while plenty of historical sites have been preserved in West Berlin, landmarks that were constructed by the former Communist regime have not fared so well.  

“Memories of the Second World War, whether it’s the Nazi regime or the bombing by the allies, or the Holocaust, are there, tend to be in West Berlin, whereas the question of what to preserve about the Communist period in East Berlin is not so easy. A lot of things have just been cast aside as not worthy of preservation,” she said. 

Lasbrey for his part feels the murals and graffiti have given the wall a new purpose.

“It was something to be feared, not to go near. Now it is all about peace, freedom, love, and unity,” he said.

“I think those people who weren’t around 25 years ago can still get a sense for what the wall was back then, so it’s a reminder of where we came from. But it is about where we want to go. We don’t want to repeat the past. Its fall proves we had the hope and energy to reinvent ourselves and move forward.” 

--Patrick Verel  (Photos by Kingsley Lasbrey)

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Alumni Spotlight: Out of Grief Comes Social Change

From art to public housing policy, Sarah Whitlock, GSS ’13, has many interests, but it wasn’t until her brother became seriously ill that she found her passion.

As a social worker at New Alternatives For Children in Manhattan, she helps kids who have severe physical, emotional, and behavioral challenges and developmental disabilities. They come from all five boroughs of New York City, and many of them live at the poverty level, Whitlock says. She connects them with a range of health and social services, helping them find the support they need to remain at home with their family or, in some cases, find an adoptive family.

“I really love [working in] child welfare,” she says. “I think the biggest impact a social worker can make is with a child, before other outside factors come in. Nothing will keep you more grounded.”

Sarah Whitlock, GSS '13

 Whitlock’s path to social work was one lined with detours and transformative experiences. A native of Cheshire, Connecticut, she dreamed of becoming an artist. At Roger Williams University, she majored in visual arts, later adding minors in marine biology and sociology. “I was totally lost,” she says. “I wanted to do everything.”

After graduating in 2003, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked as a paralegal at a law firm, conducting research on low-income housing policy. Three years later, she left for New York City to take a job at the Nonprofit Finance Fund, analyzing social impact data and reviewing loans for nonprofit clients. She also would be close to her younger brother, Mark, who was living in the city while attending Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

Not long after she moved to the city, Mark was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Whitlock shared an apartment with her brother and supported him while he was undergoing treatments. After 18 months battling the disease, Mark passed away on May 19, 2010, two weeks before his law school graduation day.

“I had an awesome journey with him,” says Whitlock, who is an active volunteer with the National Brain Tumor Society. “Something happened to me while he was sick. That experience, I couldn’t go back to my office job. I wanted to do something more meaningful.”

She enrolled in Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service (GSS) and found an immediate camaraderie with her fellow students. Like her, she says, they all had a significant reason for wanting to be a social worker. In the MSW program, she studied leadership and macro policy, and completed internships at the Brooklyn Family Defense Project and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center.

Sarah Whitlock addresses her class at the 2013 GSS
diploma ceremony.  Photo by Bruce Gilbert

“Sarah’s leadership skills were clearly evident” early on, says Susan Egan, Ph.D., associate dean for student services and administration. During the first half of the MSW program, Whitlock spoke with Egan about the need for a formal mentoring program. She and her fellow students recruited volunteers, implemented a training system, and began mentoring incoming students, Egan says. “In turn the mentees become mentors and the program continues to have success.” 

With the support of Whitlock’s peers, Fordham faculty and administrators selected her to speak at the GSS diploma ceremony at Avery Fisher Hall on May 20, 2013. 

It was an especially poignant day for Whitlock, as three years prior, on the same stage, she had accepted Mark’s posthumously awarded J.D. diploma.

“Today I want to remind you of why it was that you decided to become a social worker and urge you to never forget that reason,” she told her fellow classmates. “Never lose site of your own personal mission. You are here to change the world in whatever way means the most to you, and I know you can do it. You already have.”

Whitlock says she “loved every second of being at GSS,” and she’s staying connected to the school and her peers through the Fordham Social Workers Group, which she formed before graduating. The group, led by Whitlock with a committee of five other 2013 graduates, hosts picnics, support group meetings, training sessions, and happy hours for all GSS alumni.

“I didn’t connect so much to my [undergraduate] college experience because I wasn’t connected to what I was studying. But choosing my master’s program, I was committed to it,” Whitlock says. “It was so meaningful.”

—Rachel Buttner

“Science, Philosophy, and Religion” Lecture to Explore “What is Wisdom?”

What makes a person wise? Is wisdom different than intelligence? Is God the only one that can be called “wise”?

Stephen Grimm, Ph.D., as associate professor of philosophy, will take up the topic of wisdom for the next installment of Fordham University’s John C. and Jeanette D. Walton Lecture in Science, Philosophy, and Religion.

“What is Wisdom?”

Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2014

6:30 p.m.

12th-floor Lounge / Corrigan Conference Center

Lincoln Center Campus

113 W. 60th St., New York City

Grimm, a philosopher who specializes in epistemology, is the recipient of a $4.2 million John Templeton Foundation grant — the largest award Fordham has ever received in the humanities. The grant funds Grimm’s interdisciplinary project, “Varieties of Understanding: New Perspectives from Psychology, Philosophy, and Theology,” a three-year initiative that sponsors research into the many ways in which human beings understand the world.

“As human beings, we have a natural desire to understand the world and our place within it… But what exactly is understanding?” said Grimm.

We know generally what understanding is, he said; namely, it is a higher-order cognitive capacity that falls within the broader category of knowledge. To put this in practical terms, the person who has knowledge of a thing might possess a collection of facts about that thing, but the person who understands it is able to also see how these facts relate to one another and to the larger picture.

Wisdom, though, is another category altogether. In the Walton lecture, Grimm will explore questions surrounding this topic, which was favored by ancient and medieval philosophers, yet has been given relatively little attention by contemporary thinkers.

The Walton lectures and workshops features scholars of the highest caliber on topics at the intersection of science, philosophy, and theology. Upcoming events will cover current research on how consciousness and free will relate to the brain, the role of science in contemporary society, and more.

For more information, contact the Office of Special Events by email or at (212) 636-6575.

— Joanna K. Mercuri

Dr. Kevin Cahill Honored with Ireland's Distinguished Service Award

Dr. Kevin Cahill, left, with Ireland's President Michael D. Higgins.

Kevin M. Cahill, M.D., University Professor and founder of Fordham's Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs, was recognized on Oct. 30 by the government of Ireland for his tremendous work in peace, reconciliation, and development. 

In a ceremony in Dublin, Dr. Cahill was presented with the 2014 Presidential Distinguished Service Award by Ireland's President, Michael D. Higgins. Actress Fionnula Flanagan, top EU civil servant Catherine Day, Australian author Thomas Keneally, and Irish-American activist and newspaper publisher Niall O’Dowd were amongst those who were also honored.

The award is given to individuals living outside of Ireland who have made great contributions to Ireland, Irish communities abroad, as well as Ireland's international reputation.  Dr. Cahill also serves as the president of the Center for International Humanitarian Cooperation, a nongovernmental organization that promotes healing and peace in nations shattered by national disasters, armed conflicts, or other violence. 

Congratulations, Dr. Cahill!

Halloween Parade Brings Little Ghosts, Goblins, to Rose Hill

Edwards' Parade played host on Saturday, Oct. 25 to a parade of children decked out in costumes as ninjas, knights, zombies, super heroes, and princesses.

The march around Edwards Parade and party that followed at O'Keefe Commons was sponsored by the Fordham University Association, which puts on events throughout the year for members of the faculty, staff and administration. There was a photo-op for all little goblins, fairy princesses, witches, and more in front of a haunted house backdrop.

All in all, a fitting gathering for a college campus that has long been rumored to be one of the most haunted in the country.

—Photos by Jill LeVine

Beinecke Scholarship Winner Honored

Thomas Parkinson and Nikolas Oktaba exchange greetings
at the Lincoln Center campus.
Photo by Jill LeVine

Last spring Nikolas Oktaba, a Fordham College at Lincoln Center, (FCLC) junior majoring in classical civilizations and classical languages, learned that he’d won one of 20 prestigious Beinecke Scholarships, which would allow him to continue his studies in graduate school.

On Oct. 24, it was made official, as Thomas Parkinson, Ph.D., program director for the Sperry Fund, which administers the scholarship, formally made the announcement in the office of FCLC Dean Robert Grimes, S.J.

The scholarship includes $30,000 for studies at a yet-to-be-determined graduate school and another $4,000 to cover the cost of applications.

Also on hand for the event were Fordham faculty members Andrew Clark, Ph.D., associate professor of French and comparative literature, Anne Golumb Hoffman Ph.D., professor of English, and Mary Shelley, assistant director of prestigious fellowships at Lincoln Center.

The awards were established in 1971 by the Board of Directors of the Sperry & Hutchinson Company in honor of Edwin, Frederick, and Walter Beinecke. Parkinson said that he makes a point to present the scholarships in person. 

“It gives me a chance to get out and meet all these wonderful and talented people,” said Parkinson. “The family believes that rather than just give the students the money and say good luck, they really want a more involved relationship.

“One of the nice things about doing this is you work with really quality people. I’m sure that wherever Nicholas is accepted, he will find that he’ll do well,” he said.

Oktaba said the scholarship commitment was of “existential importance” to the liberal arts. He thanked Parkinson for supporting his plan to study how ancient people’s social construction of painful questions of identity had an impact on life in late antiquity. 

“I would like to show people that the classics are more than lifeless ruins and broken statuary,” he said. “I would like to give students the ability to engage with these sometimes painful questions of gender, sexuality, and identity as a whole, in a deeper, more meaningful manner.”

Andrew Clark, Anne Hoffman, Thomas Parkinson, Nikolas Oktaba, Mary Shelley, and Robert Grimes, S.J.
Photo by Jill LeVine

—Patrick Verel