Paving the Way to Better Cancer Treatments

Christian Chung and Michael Kong, both natural science majors, have been studying the gene BRCA2 in a lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering. The gene produces proteins that repair damaged DNA, which is why people who inherit mutations in BRCA genes are prone to cancer. 

Kong, a junior, is researching how cells can continue to live and replicate when missing the gene. Chung, a senior, is examining how different changes to BRCA2 affect a cell’s ability to repair itself, as well as its sensitivity to certain chemotherapy treatments. 

Doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering apply the lab’s findings to improve cancer treatments for their patients. “Essentially, we’re feeding our data to the clinicians for them to optimize their therapies,” said Kong. “By understanding the mechanism behind how the cell develops, we can modify the therapy to better treat specific cases of breast cancer.” 

Documenting the Shifting Landscape of the West

Alison Kulak, a senior studying visual arts with a minor in environmental studies, traveled to Idaho to document the relationship between humans and nature through photography. For the fair, she compiled her images into an exhibit,“Natura Es Perpetua (Let Nature Be Perpetual): A Visual Examination of Human-Environment Interaction in the Northwest United States.” She also created a photography book as part of the project.

“I wanted to explore the respectful, give-and-take relationship people have with the land out west,” Kulak said, noting that she also wanted to capture the ways that relationship is changing due to raw materials extraction and industrial animal operations. Her photos feature subjects like windswept prairie grass with a lonely grain silo in the distance, ranchers riding horseback before a mountain range, and crowded cattle feedlots. 

Insights from an Indigenous Island Culture  

For her research project, senior Katrina Martinez Luna traveled to Batanes, a remote island group north of the mainland Philippines where the majority of the population are Indigenous Ivatan people. 

Luna, an international political economy major who grew up in the Philippines herself, wanted to understand why the Ivatan have higher standards of living and less food insecurity and poverty than many Indigenous groups. 

Through 15 interviews with locals, she uncovered one possible explanation: self-determination. The Ivatan have a lot of freedom to make decisions about land use, resources, and governance independently. They’ve used that freedom to apply deeply held cultural values around mutual cooperation and sharing, raising the quality of life for everyone, Luna said. 

“They have a really strong network of grassroots cooperatives and associations,” said Luna. “They make sure that everyone is able to bring home a fair wage.”

She hopes her research can serve as a caution to governments as they consider new laws that may restrict Indigenous rights. 

Learn more about the 2025 ARS Nova participants and their projects.  

Washington, a 1977 graduate of Fordham College at Lincoln Center, said, “This is a 48-year journey for me. Forty-eight years ago, I played Othello at 22, right down the block at Fordham at Lincoln Center. I go past it every day on my way to rehearsal. It’s fascinating to have been too young for the part, and some may say now, too old. Forty-eight years experience, 48 years of pain, pleasure, and life has informed my approach to playing the role.” 

Before we dive in, we want to hear your recommendations as well! Share your favorite spots using this form and we’ll add them to the list.

Here are six recommendations for noontime nibbles and happy hour hangouts near the Lincoln Center campus, from Fordham faculty and staff: 

1. Kashkaval Gardens , 852 9th Ave.

A staple of the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood since 1997, Kashkaval Gardens comes recommended by both Associate Professor of Theology John Seitz and DAUR’s Rachel Kartinger, associate director of young alumni and student engagement. 

Kartiganer recommends bringing a few friends to the cozy spot known for their Mediterranean tapas and sharing the 4-dip sampler and the kale salad. “I am not a big kale person but this salad has converted me,” she said.

2. Alfie’s Kitchen & Craft Beer Bar, 800 9th Ave.

According to Daniel Marcus-toll, adjunct professor at Fordham’s School of Law, Alfie’s is the perfect spot for end-of-semester celebrations.

Specializing in craft beer, cocktails, and “elevated comfort food,” Alfie’s has happy hour specials that run until 7 p.m., seven days a week. 

For a midday break, try the $20 lunch deal, which includes a burger, fries, and a beer.

3. Kung Fu Little, 811 8th Ave.

Kung Fu Little is a short subway ride from campus, but according to Holly Curtis, Fordham’s assistant provost for corporate relations, it’s well worth the trip (or, a delivery order). 

This fast, casual Midtown spot specializes in steamed buns, soup dumplings, and ramen made with fresh hand-pulled noodles.

4. The Independent Cafe, 61 W 62nd St.

Inside the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center is the Independent Cafe, which sells reasonably priced sandwiches and coffee drinks that are, admittedly, similar to the offerings of other cafes nearby. 

But what is unique about this spot are the free live performances you can sometimes catch from one of the cafe tables. That’s what makes it a favorite for Sharif Mowlabocus, associate professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies.

5. Breads Bakery, 1890 Broadway

Breads Bakery offers fresh-baked breads, pastries, sandwiches, salads, and espresso drinks. According to Audrey Gilbert, director of marketing strategy, the spinach and feta burekas are unforgettable. 

Gilbert says she’s also a big fan of the chocolate babka, which was once named the Best Babka in New York by New York Magazine.

6. Burrito Box, 885 9th Ave.

Sometimes you just need some Mexican food. When those moments arise at work, Polly Kaplan, associate director of academic affairs and academic records, turns to Burrito Box. 

The hole-in-the-wall shop just two blocks from campus has been serving standard Tex-Mex faire in the neighborhood for over 20 years, including many vegetarian options.

Bonus Picks

Tartinery, 10 Columbus Circle, Third Floor: On the upper level of the Shops at Columbus building is an outpost of Tartinery, a French cafe-bar known for its open-faced sandwiches, pastries, and coffee. For Sarah Gambito, professor of creative writing, the stand-out menu item is the warm goat cheese salad, which includes bacon, pine nuts, and toast. 

The Greek Kitchen, 889 10th Ave.: For a quick lunch or a meal before a Lincoln Center performance, Linda Loschiavo, Director of Libraries, heads here for the fresh, well-prepared food. She recommends the grilled chicken platter, the keftedes (pan-fried meatballs), and their traditional Greek salad. As a bonus, Loschiavo says their large portions make it easy to share dishes with colleagues.

Justino’s Pizza, 881 10th Ave.: Patricia Rodriguez, Director of Operations and Events at the Graduate School of Social Service, is a big fan of the consistently flavorful food and dependable delivery at Justino’s. Their pizza is excellent, she said, and they have the best meatball parm hero on a toasted garlic roll.

For Fordham grads Dana Covarrubias and Lilian Rebelo, working on the stylish murder mystery comedy Only Murders in the Building—alongside stars Selena Gomez, Steve Martin, and Martin Short—has been a killer experience. The show, which gives its three podcaster lead characters a new murder to solve each season, has earned critical praise and devoted fans both for its striking design and comedic performances.

Costuming the ‘Best-Dressed Show on TV’

Growing up in San Antonio, Texas, Covarrubias was “obsessed with clothes and fabric.”

“Most parents take their kids to a playground to play, and my parents took me to the mall,” she half-jokes. “I would hide in the clothing racks and just rub all the fabrics on my face.”

Covarrubias also became obsessed with theater as a sixth grader, and once she arrived at Fordham, the interdisciplinary nature of Fordham Theatre allowed her to work both behind the scenes and onstage. During her junior year, a friend who was directing a show asked her to do costume designs, and she says she “started falling in love with it more and more.”

After graduating in 2007, Covarrubias got an internship in the costume department of the sketch comedy show The Whitest Kids U’ Know. “My very first day on that job, I walked in and I saw a bunch of costume crew members building a giant bear costume, and they were just covered in brown fur and had glue guns and they seemed like they were having the best time,” she recalls. “And I was like, ‘Oh, you can get paid to do this.’”

Covarrubias spent the next decade-plus designing for critically acclaimed shows like Master of None, Claws, and Ramy. It was in 2020 that her agent told her about an opportunity: a new series starring Gomez, Martin, and Short that would follow their characters as they try to solve a series of murders via their true crime podcast.

“Once I found out who the cast was, I was trying not to freak out,” she says. “But then once I got the call that I was hired, the line producer of season one was like, ‘Oh my God, can you believe we get to work with Steve Martin and Martin Short? This is insane.’ And that was the first time I let myself be like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’” As the lead costume designer of the show, Covarrubias has been nominated for three Emmys, and the characters’ outfits have attracted a fanbase all their own. Gomez’s in particular have inspired fawning coverage from Vogue, Elle, and W—all of which touched on viewers’ longing for her looks—and Defector called the series the “best-dressed show on TV.”

Design Guided by the Search for Connection

Covarrubias’ approach to designing the series is guided by the idea that it’s a show about people trying to find connection, she says, and the original script gave some character traits that influenced costume choices off the bat.

Martin’s character Charles, for instance, makes the same omelet every day, so Covarrubias knew he would find comfort in sameness and would have a limited color palette. Short’s Putnam, on the other hand, is a theater director and a narcissist, and Covarrubias knew his costumes would have to be showier and more colorful.

For Covarrubias, the job as lead costume designer—while it includes everything from creating a season’s mood boards to shopping to being on set to monitor every new costume as it’s introduced—often starts with creating relationships, “knowing how to interact with the producers and the directors and having those creative conversations, and then [building] your relationship with the actors.”

“As a costume designer, you’re often the first person that an actor is meeting when they come to the job,” she says. “You have that responsibility and you represent the show in a lot of ways.”

An Actress’s ‘Dream Project’

In the show’s fourth season, one of those actors was Rebelo, a 2021 Fordham Theatre graduate who played Ana, the daughter in a family that occupies an apartment in the somewhat mysterious western wing of the titular building.

She was drawn to Fordham, like Covarrubias, because of the holistic style of learning she could bring to her acting training.

“I really love learning and I love school, so going somewhere that would allow me to keep learning other things alongside my acting was really important to me,” says Rebelo, who also majored in Latin American and Latino studies. “I find it makes you a better actor, makes you a better person, to be able to know a little bit of everything.”

After graduating during a mid-pandemic lull in acting jobs, Rebelo stayed sharp by doing as many readings, workshops, and auditions as she could while working survival gigs. The New Jersey native had gotten an agent from her senior showcase at Fordham, and in the summer of 2023, landed what she says was her biggest job to date at the time, a role in the West Coast premiere of My Dear Dead Drug Lord—a play from which she had performed a scene as part of her senior showcase.

Back in New York in early 2024, Rebelo got an email from her agency telling her there was an audition for season 4 of Only Murders. After a first reading over Zoom and a subsequent callback, Rebelo got word she landed the part. Filming began less than a month later, beginning what Rebelo calls a “dream project … start to finish.”

“I was acting around legends, literal legends,” she says. “Daphne Rubin-Vega is playing my mother, and I am just hanging out with her in the green room and talking to her. And then every time we were filming, I was sitting across the table from Martin Short and Selena Gomez and Steve Martin. I was just trying to soak it all up.”

Rebelo, who just wrapped up a role in The Irrepressible Magic of the Tropics at INTAR Theatre in Manhattan—where she interned as a Fordham student—says that one of the most memorable experiences of her time on Only Murders came at the very beginning of filming: her first costume fitting with Covarrubias and her team.

“They kept putting me in all these outfits and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is awesome,’” she says. “I felt like the coolest person on earth.”

Get involved now with these four service outings happening in January and February.

1. Help Provide School Supplies for Neighborhood Children

Monday, January 27, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.
Lowenstein Center, Room 1004

Join your fellow Rams on the Lincoln Center campus to wrap school supply care packages for neighborhood children. Participants can also include personal notes of affirmation.

2. Create Food Packages for Senior Citizens in Need

Saturday, January 25, 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.
239 West 49th Street

Fordham’s commitment to the Broadway community goes beyond excellence onstage and behind the scenes. This month, the University is joining Encore Community Services—a Catholic Charity partner just a short subway ride from the Lincoln Center campus—to create food parcels that will support neighborhood seniors in need, many of whom worked in the performing arts. Since 1977, Encore has provided seniors with a range of services to help them live independent and dignified lives in the midtown Times Square and Clinton communities. For this reason, and its focus on initiatives such as “aging gracefully through the arts,” Encore has earned a reputation as “Broadway’s Longest Running Act of Loving Care.”

This event is sponsored by the Office of Alumni Relations, as part of its For and With Others Volunteer Day, but it’s open to the entire University community.

3. Fight Food Insecurity in the Bronx

Friday, January 31, 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
St. Ignatius Middle School

Wednesday, February 12, 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.
McShane Campus Center Entrance

Among the issues affecting New Yorkers daily, food insecurity is one of the most pressing. According to the New York State Department of Health, about one in four New Yorkers report that they do not have sufficient access to food.

Two upcoming events give the Fordham community an opportunity to promote food security in its own backyard. Students and other volunteers will gather to make up to 200 meal packs for community fridges, and conclude the day with a brief Ignatian reflection. The first of these events will happen alongside students at St. Ignatius Middle School in the Bronx. The second will take place at the McShane Campus Center.

Both events are offered through Fordham’s Department of Mission Integration and Ministry, which is rooted in the Jesuit tradition of balancing reflection and action, a practice developed by St. Ignatius Loyola, the 16th-century founder of the Jesuits.

4. Connect with Those Experiencing Houselessness

Sunday, February 23, 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Meet in the Lowenstein Center Lobby

Volunteers will join forces with students enrolled in the Philosophical Ethics course at the Lincoln Center campus and visit Xavier Mission, a nonprofit organization in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. Together they will share in conversation and serve a hot meal to people experiencing houselessness in New York City. Attendees will take the brief subway trip together, with MetroCards provided.

This experience is presented by Fordham’s Center for Community Engaged Learning, which connects Fordham with dozens of local and global partners to provide students with opportunities for experiential learning, research, and civic engagement.

B.A. Van Sise was driving his young nephew to the Cherokee Heritage Center in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, several years ago when he heard Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on the radio. The Moana actor was reflecting on his Samoan heritage. For years he had a hole in his heart, he said, because he didn’t speak the language of his maternal ancestors.

“I suddenly had this moment of epiphany,” Van Sise recalled.

Since graduating from Fordham College at Lincoln Center in 2005, Van Sise has worked as a photojournalist, artist, and author, but he studied linguistics at the University, and his degree is in both visual arts and modern languages. He took courses in Italian and Russian, and he also speaks French, German, and Ladino, an endangered language he learned from his mother and maternal grandfather growing up in New York.

“I realized I wanted to explore language in America,” he said. “​​What does American language look like?”

It’s more diverse than you might think.

The Resilience of America’s Endangered Languages

English has been dominant on the North American continent for centuries, subsuming other languages, “turning them upside down and shaking their pockets for loose vocabulary,” Van Sise said. And yet, “against unspeakable odds”—despite colonial forces, disease, cultural displacement, migration, and remixing—hundreds of Indigenous and diasporic languages exist in America.

Much of these languages’ variety and complexity is on brilliant display in Van Sise’s latest book, On the National Language: The Poetry of America’s Endangered Tongues, and in a solo exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles through March 2.

The book features speakers, learners, and revitalizers of more than 70 languages in the United States. From Afro-Seminole Creole to Zuni, each language featured includes a brief cultural summary. And each portrait is paired with a single, often hard-to-translate word designed to inspire Van Sise’s visual approach and “show off the poetry inherent in each language,” he said. “Fundamentally, it is not an ethnicity project. It’s about the poetry of languages.”

In that sense, it’s a sequel of sorts to Van Sise’s first book, Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry (2019), and it bears a kinship to his portraits and essays about Holocaust survivors in Invited to Life: Finding Hope After the Holocaust (2023). Like Holocaust survivors he met, endangered language speakers and revitalizers are “obsessed with the future,” Van Sise said, “the future of their stories, their legacies, their own families, and the people who come after them.”

Van Sise initially thought he might photograph “the last speakers” of various languages, “a really colonialist idea that I’m slightly embarrassed of,” he said. But he ultimately focused on the many people and groups working to revitalize—and in some cases resurrect—these languages. He traveled to 48 states with pivotal support from the Philip and Edith Leonian Trust, he said, and worked with dozens of Indigenous and diasporic cultural organizations, Native tribes and nations, and the Tribal Trust Foundation.

And while he photographed a Bukhari speaker and a Judeo-Spanish singer in his hometown of New York City, most locations weren’t so easy to reach. “Endangered languages really do best in places that are remote and where communities can still speak to each other,” he said.

Striving for Balance

Laura Tohe, former poet laureate of the Navajo Nation, met Van Sise near the Superstition Mountains, two hours east of Phoenix. She had a turquoise dress made specifically for the photo session, and “God gave me the sky” to match, Van Sise said. His playful sense of humor is on display in the way he and Tohe depicted hózhó, or striving for balance, “an extremely famous concept in Diné,” the Navajo language, he said.

Whimsy is also evident in Van Sise’s portrait of former Houma chief Kirby Verret in Gibson, Louisiana. Verret and an alligator teamed up to show off the Houma French word onirique, or something that comes from a dream.

Van Sise spent nearly a week with Amish community member Sylvan Esh before Esh agreed to work with Van Sise on the photograph. Part of getting to know Esh included waking up at 4 a.m. several days in a row to milk his cows, Van Sise said. The Pennsylvania Dutch concept he ultimately depicted with Esh, dæafe, or to have permission to do something, is “extremely, unbelievably important in the culture,” Van Sise said.

A Movement to Revive Lost Languages

Amber Hayward, a member of the Puyallup tribe in Tacoma, Washington, chose the Lushootseed word ʔux̌ʷəlč, or the sound of saltwater waves washing onto the beach. Lushootseed once numbered 12,000 speakers along the Puget Sound “before going extinct approximately twenty years ago,” Van Sise writes. As director of the Puyallup language program, Hayward has aided its rebirth. It’s just one of several languages featured in the book that boast healthy revitalization programs.

Another is the Kalispel language, represented by Jessie Isadore. She recommended the word cn̓paʔqcín, or the dawn comes toward me, said Van Sise, who explained that Kalispel is one of several languages historically spoken in what is now Montana and Washington state that make no distinction between nouns and verbs. “The whole thing just becomes one idea,” he said. “There’s something really lovely about that.”

Nahuatl is one of few languages highlighted in the book that is not spoken primarily in the U.S., but Van Sise could not resist the Aztec language’s centuries-old tradition of making as big a poem as possible with a single compound word. He and Los Angeles–based folkloric dancer Citlali Arvizu (pictured at the top of the story) chose tixochicitlalcuecuepocatimani, or, you are bursting into bloom all over with stars like flowers.

Working with people like Arvizu to create “visual poems” in these languages is more than an artful way to document linguistic diversity. For Van Sise, the goal is to raise awareness and inspire further education and preservation.

“I can’t do much to make the Haida language revitalization program more robust,” he said, picking just one example. “But I can provide the sizzle for the steak.”

8 Uncommon Words to Spark Your Interest in Endangered Languages

B.A. Van Sise’s book On the National Language features conceptual portraits of more than 70 speakers, learners, and revitalizers of endangered languages in the U.S. Each image is inspired by a single word in the speaker’s language, one that isn’t always so easy to translate into English. He hopes readers might “find one impossible word, and want to learn another and another.” Here are eight.

tekariho:ken
between two worlds
Mohawk

kapará
worse things have happened
Judeo-Spanish, or Ladino

puppyshow
showing off behavior
Afro-Seminole Creole

amonati
something you hold and keep safe for others
Bukhari

koyaanisqatsi
nature out of balance
Hopi

ma’goddai
feeling when the blood rises that makes you act both violently and lovingly
Chamorro

opyêninetêhi
my heart is taking its time
Sauk

uŋkupelo
we are coming home
Lakota

Attendees included music students, music and art faculty members, donors who supported the project, Fordham President Tania Tetlow, and Father Grimes himself, as well as members of his family. (See related story about the fundraising effort.) They gathered at the Lincoln Center campus outside the Robert R. Grimes, S.J. Music Studios, which opened this fall, providing students with five soundproof rooms designed to enhance their music practice.

Related story: Student musicians began the academic year on a high note when the music studios opened. (With video)

Speakers took turns thanking donors and lauding Father Grimes, a former Fordham music professor and a singer himself.

“You have been always a supporter of the arts here, whether that meant the [Ailey/Fordham BFA in Dance program], the theater program, visual arts, and of course the music program,” said Daniel Ott, D.M.A., associate professor of music and chair of the Department of Art History and Music.

Students Finding Their Musical Voice

The gathering took place in the Lipani Gallery, part of a newly renovated visual arts complex adjacent to the five new music practice rooms. In her remarks, Tetlow spoke of “how profoundly Jesuit music is” because of its mix of intellect and passion.

“Know, for all of you who gave to this project, that you are creating a space where every day, Fordham students … are going to literally find their voice and discover what they have to say to the world, and that will be true for the rest of their lives, so thank you so much.”

Father Grimes thanked the donors as well, and said he was “so happy for the students to have something that is so important to any music program.”

In an interview before the event, he said “it’s quite an honor” to be the namesake for the new music suite. “Fordham College Lincoln Center is very, very close to my heart,” he said. “I loved my time there. And so if I’ve left a little of my sense there, I’m very happy for that.”

‘We Need Artists’

The event was emceed by Maco Dacanay, a junior and a music major.

“In this world that we all live in, not only do we need artists, but we need people who are willing to put in the work to become their best selves for the sake of the community,” he said. “These practice rooms grant us the space to put in that work, and for that, I am beyond grateful.”

The five rooms range from smaller rooms for individual practice to larger spaces for ensembles. Their features include recording capability and virtual acoustic environments so that students can hear how they would sound in a cathedral, concert hall, or other settings, Ott said. He noted that the rooms—open 8 a.m. to midnight—are available to all students, not just music majors.

A student group called the Lincoln Center Jazz Ensemble provided background music. Another group of student musicians performed Haydn’s String Quartet in D Major, to applause and cheers. “That just made my day,” Father Grimes said after their performance.

Vincent DeCola, S.J., an assistant dean in the Gabelli School of Business, spoke last, giving a blessing of the new space. “No doubt, we each have experienced the divine in listening to the particular music which enlivens our spirits,” he said.

But before that, he brought the house down with some singing of his own, “with apologies to Misters Gilbert and Sullivan”—an adaptation of the song He Is an Englishman, with lyrics tailored to Father Grimes.

Its title? “He Is a Fordham Ram.”

“I hope that we can continue to make memories and find ways to come together,” she says of the affinity chapter, “because I think Ailey and Fordham have such a special history. It’s an incredible program.”

Where did you grow up and how did you end up in the Ailey/Fordham program?
I grew up in Mesa, Arizona. The summer after my junior year of high school, I actually attended the Ailey Summer Intensive and got to stay in the dorms [at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus] for six weeks. That was a little sneak peek of what college could look like for me. My four years at Fordham were absolutely amazing. I definitely wouldn’t be where I am today without the Ailey/Fordham BFA program. I actually saw the Christmas Spectacular for the first time my freshman year of college through tickets that I got from Fordham.

And did you get to do any workshops with the Rockettes at Ailey?
Yes, they would come in and do workshops at Ailey about two or three times a semester. The spring of my sophomore year, I auditioned for the ensemble in the Christmas Spectacular, and I did that the fall of my junior year. So I was working and going to school and was a part of the show. Then, after I graduated, I auditioned for both the ensemble and the Rockettes. I would’ve been ecstatic either way, but I was offered the role of Rockettes for the Christmas season in 2021, and I’ve been doing it ever since.

So when do rehearsals start for the Christmas Spectacular?
They usually start at the end of September or early October. And we rehearse for about six weeks leading up to opening night, six days a week for about six hours each day. And we slowly layer on choreography, tech, with lighting, costumes, the orchestra, and then it’s opening night and we’re doing it every day up to four times a day. Typically, we do up to 15 or 16 shows in a week.

What are you doing for the rest of the year?
All of us are doing different things, but for me personally, I teach dance and I’m a fitness instructor. I also still do a lot of things with the Rockettes in the offseason. I’ve actually been able to go back to Ailey and teach classes, both at Ailey and at Radio City, where we actually bring the dancers to the music hall and give them that experience of rehearsing there. That has been really special because that’s how I got my introduction to the Rockettes, those workshop classes.

Outside of that, we always keep up with social media and doing different routines and additional performances that pop up last-minute. But then all of a sudden, it’s Christmastime and we’re back at the hall rehearsing and performing for 6,000 people every night. So it goes by quickly. Really, we’re always working and doing things in that time to prepare for the next season.

How do you manage seeing family and friends around the holidays?
I’m so fortunate that my family and friends make their way out here for the holidays. My parents were actually just here for a few performances, and they may come back up for Christmas. But they know that this show is where I’m at during the holiday season, and they’re just so proud of me. And I think that’s what’s special—I can make new memories during the holiday season, and I’m glad that I’m able to make the time to FaceTime and call and send gifts or do whatever it may be to stay connected.

What would your childhood self think about your job?
I think little Maya would be in awe of where I’m at now and would probably not even believe that that’s how I’m spending my Christmas morning. It’s definitely a huge dream come true that I didn’t even know was a dream at the time.

What’s your favorite part of the show?
I really do love our “New York at Christmas” number. We’re on a double-decker tour bus, which takes us through New York City and Central Park and Fifth Avenue, and then you end up at Radio City Music Hall. I love how it incorporates everyone in the show—the singers, the ensemble, the principals. And there’s moments where I’m on the bus and you can really look out into the audience and see individual faces of some of those kids, and their eyes really do light up when they see us come on stage. I feel like it’s one of those numbers that you take it in, like, “Wow, I’m performing at Radio City Music Hall.”

What’s your favorite Christmas song?
“Jingle Bells.”

What’s the best gift you’ve received?
I’m a sentimental person, so just a classic Christmas card from friends or family. I usually keep all of those.

What’s your favorite place in New York City at Christmastime (that’s not Radio City)?
This might be a boring answer, but my apartment. I feel like after the shows and the busyness of the holiday season, I think being at my apartment—which is very much decorated with the holiday spirit and it’s just super cozy—is my favorite place at the end of the long day.

—Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Adam Kaufman, FCLC ’08.

Check out more photos from the Radio City Christmas Spectacular below (all photos courtesy of MSG Entertainment).

RELATED STORY: How to Become a Radio City Rockette
RELATED STORY: Inside a Dream Internship with the Radio City Rockettes

In an email last week to students and colleagues, May Adrales, director of the Fordham Theatre program, called Jenness’ death an “enormous loss for Fordham, for the theatre community, and for the world at large.”

“Many playwrights and directors working today can trace their beginnings in American theatre back to Morgan,” said Adrales of Jenness, who used they/them and she/her pronouns. “Their support didn’t end with encouragement; Morgan championed the work they believed in, often connecting creators with exactly the right collaborators to bring bold theatrical visions to life.” 

A Powerful Mentor to Young Playwrights

Fordham graduate Morgan Gould, FCLC ‘08, credits Jenness—who Gould described as her “professor/mentor/kooky aunt/mom/theater doula”—with where she is today: a published playwright, director, and writer for television shows such as A League of Their Own. 

“She treated every student as if it was only a matter of time that you were going to be a world-famous auteur. She would drag me to every kind of theater opening and introduced me to everyone as a young director. Having someone so sure that it will happen is something you never forget, and for so many of us, she was the first person to do that.” Today, Gould said, “I make my living only in the arts. Morgan was a huge part of making that possible.”

Another former mentee of Jenness’, Peter Gil-Sheridan FCLC ’98, said that countless Fordham friends reached out to talk about Jenness’ impact on their lives.

“Morgan left the world a better place than they found it,” said Gil-Sheridan, a former Fordham adjunct professor who is now assistant professor of playwriting at Vassar College. “Their passing is seismic in the theatre community. But so is their impact. I am so proud to be one of the students that was so deeply held and felt by my dear teacher. We can all honor them by continuing to demand more of our selves in our work, to see the theatre as a space for activism, cultural critique, and radical love.”

Uplifting Playwrights 

Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, said that Jenness helped redefine the role of a dramaturg, who is traditionally called upon to aid actors, directors, and playwrights in their understanding and presentation of a play. 

“Morgan was one of the first generation of people who were defining what a new play dramaturg was: the midwife and support system of a playwright,” he told The New York Times, whose obituary noted Jenness’ impact on the careers of successful playwrights, including MacArthur “genius” grant winner Taylor Mac and David Adjmi, who wrote the 2024 Tony Award-winning play Stereophonic.  

“Countless” artists “across all generations” felt “seen and loved” by Jenness, said Fordham’s former head of playwriting, Daniel Alexander Jones.

“In everyday conversation, she would lift the names and works of artists and advocate for them constantly. Carl Hancock Rux, Erik Ehn, Luis Alfaro, Taylor Mac, Bridget Carpenter, Marcus Gardley, Keith Josef Adkins, David Adjmi, and Alice Tuan are the first names that come to mind when I turn on the spigot of those early memories of time with Morgan. … When she taught, she carried us into the lesson plans, alongside those departed luminaries whose beacons she also tended.”

Jenness is survived by a brother, four nephews, and two nieces, one of whom, Martinique Gann, is quoted in The New York Times about Jenness’ dedication to students and the theater. 

“There was no stopping my aunt for anything,” Ms. Gann recalled. “She picked me up in a cab from the airport. And right away, with my two suitcases, we drove straight to Fordham University to see a play one of her students had written.”

The Lincoln Center Learning & Innovative Technology Environment, located on the fourth floor of Lowenstein in room 416, was operating at full tilt as of last Thursday. A miniature, plastic model of the Eiffel Tower was coming to life in the belly of a 3D printer. Students with virtual reality goggles practiced hurling imaginary objects across a giant flat-screen. And inside the brand-new video/podcasting studio, a pair of LITE’s work-study students demonstrated how to record a video while jotting notes on a screen, weatherman-style.

“People say when they walk into the space, they feel more creative—that LITE lets them think outside the box and be able to apply these technologies in their classes,” said Nicole Zeidan, Ed.D., assistant director of emerging educational technologies and learning space design. She helps connect LITE’s resources to students and faculty, such as Assistant Professor of Art History Nushelle de Silva, Ph.D.

Virtual Reality for Museum Studies

Earlier this fall, de Silva wanted her Museum Architecture students to see how a museum experience changes when you “visit” it virtually. Using VR headsets at Rose HIll’s LITE, students were able to view the “Mona Lisa” up close without the hordes of tourists in the Louvre. 

With this technology now available at Lincoln Center, said de Silva, “ I could turn this into homework. And then we would have the whole of the class time to talk about that experience.”

Printing Sturdy Replicas of Fragile Artifacts 

The tools at the LITE Center in Lowenstein and its counterpart at Rose Hill are designed to make classes experiential and creative work more accessible. Students can fashion theater costumes with LITE’s sewing machines or repair objects with its soldering equipment. A too-fragile-to-touch artifact can be 3D scanned, then 3D printed to create a durable facsimile, like the medieval seals the LITE Center recreated for Center for Medieval Studies Director Nicholas Paul. “The originals … are made out of wax and, obviously, extremely old, so having copies that we can pass around and look at closely is really useful in classes,” he said.

Fleur Eshghi, Ed.D., associate vice president of educational technology research computing, said she thinks many academic departments will make good use of the center. 

“We have been looking for space for Lincoln Center to build the same facilities [as Rose Hill],” she said. “And we have finally succeeded … I’m extremely excited.” 

Letting the Light in

Nicola Terzulli, learning space design lead for the Office of Technology, made the most of Lincoln Center’s light-filled space when designing the different stations.

“Lowenstein has those iconic windows for each floor,” said Terzulli, so he found a manufacturer who could soundproof a podcasting room but keep the glass walls. When the studio is not in use, you can see through it. But should you need privacy—or want to use the room to record a media-rich lesson for Panopto, Fordham’s platform for video classes—you just draw the room’s thick black curtains to enclose it.

Terzulli even used all-glass cabinets to make the tools at Lincoln Center’s LITE easy to see. 

“We wanted as much glass as possible … so people when they walk in, they see [these tools]and they’re like, ‘Hey, what’s that? Can I do that? Can I use that?’”

For details on the features and hours of the Lincoln Center and the Rose Hill LITE Centers, visit their site.

Coco de Marneffe and Ian Muir Smith, both FCLC ’22, were the lead organizers of this year’s Local Conference of Youth (LCOY USA), an annual event that brings together over 125 young people from across the country carefully selected for their leadership in the climate movement. Ashira Fisher-Wachspress, FCLC ’23, and current Fordham student Kenny Moll were also part of the 15-person organizing team for the event, which took place in Tempe, Arizona in September.

De Marneffe, who majored in theology, served as the conference’s general coordinator. She said a “Religion and Ecology” class she took her senior year, taught by Christiana Zenner, Ph.D., started her down this path. She hopes LCOY will inspire other young people to get involved in climate advocacy. 

“You don’t have to be a Nobel Prize-winning scientist to contribute to this work. You just have to find your place in your community,” she said. “For me, it started with one class I took in college. Thanks, Fordham.”

The National Youth Statement

The centerpiece of the conference is the National Youth Statement, a list of climate-related policy demands that the young delegates draft together. Smith describes the statement as a democratically-crafted tool that advocates can use to push policy makers further on climate change. Once complete, the statement is shared with local governments and incorporated into the Global Youth Statement, the official youth stance on climate change presented at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Conference of Youth and Conference of Parties, which will be held in November in Baku, Azerbaijan.  

Smith acknowledges that some of the statement’s demands may seem radical — such as disbursing at least $446 billion annually in climate finance to the Global South, or increasing federal investment in public transportation to reduce car dependency by 50% by 2030 — but he says that’s as it should be. “It’s the responsibility of youth in some ways to push our policymakers to consider what is radical. Really, it only seems radical because what we’re doing now is so inadequate,” he said. 

Climate Week in NYC

De Marneffe, Smith, Moll, and Fisher-Wachspress also organized a NYC Climate Week event, which coincides with the U.N. General Assembly in New York City. There, they presented the National Youth Statement to U.S. climate negotiators from the State Department as well as to other young climate organizers. 

“A lot of this work is unglamorous,” said de Marneffe. “What makes it worth it is the people around you who are encouraging you, and who believe in the same things you believe in.”