Ninety-four percent of undergraduates in the Class of 2024 were employed, enrolled in continuing education, or doing volunteer or military service six months after earning their degrees, according to Fordham’s Office of Institutional Research, which compiles this information each year. The “landed rate,” as it’s called, rose five percentage points from 2023, an increase largely driven by a jump in the arts and sciences rate—from 85% to 93% year over year. 

Tracking Graduate Success

Fordham’s commitment to its students continues after commencement; the University’s Career Center follows up with recent arts and sciences graduates, sending surveys, checking in on their plans, and offering help to those who need it. The Gabelli School’s Personal and Professional Development Center follows up with recent Gabelli School graduates, and works with students on career readiness extensively throughout their undergraduate years.

94% of 2024 graduates found jobs and meaningful opportunities within six months of earning their degrees.

According to Career Center Director Annette McLaughlin, the University was able to track down 87% of the 2,115 students who graduated in 2024—an exceptionally high “knowledge rate.” In 2023, the average knowledge rate for American universities was about 55%. 

“ The Career Center and Gabelli’s Personal and Professional Development Center take it very seriously to get as close as possible to knowing where every single student ends up,” said McLaughlin. “We’re proactively reaching out to find out who’s still seeking and why, as well as how we can help them get over the finish line.”

Helping Students Become Career-Ready

As for the eight-point jump in the arts and sciences landed rate, McLaughlin attributes it to a number of efforts that have been rolling out for several years, including partnerships with arts and sciences faculty to bring Career Center staff into their classrooms; working with student “career ambassadors” to connect the student body with Career Center resources; bringing students and alumni together for mentorship; and a one-credit career exploration course that helps students become career-ready. 

According to McLaughlin, even the most highly engaged students can need some help making the shift from college to career. 

“ Many students who do very well academically may not have focused on, ‘What next?’” she said. “We create opportunities for them to catch up.”

Health Careers and Med School

About 8% of 2024 arts and sciences graduates, or 56 alumni, entered the health care field, an industry that’s projected to grow much faster than average over the next decade. Many of these students landed job titles like medical scribe, research assistant, or lab technician, which are often a step before medical school, McLaughlin said.  

This was the case for 2024 graduate Sophie Epstein, who studied neuroscience and sociology at Fordham and is now a clinical research assistant at Mount Sinai. She says her well-rounded undergraduate education prepared her for her job, as well as for her successful medical school application. 

“ Sociology exposed me to the structural factors that might affect how someone interacts with the health care system differently than what I see in a textbook,” Epstein said. “It was a great way to prepare to address those differences so I can best treat everyone as a doctor.” 

Blending Research with Clinical Work

At Mount Sinai, Epstein is researching how different socioeconomic factors—like race, income, insurance status, or zip code—impact patients’ recoveries after surgery for a brain tumor. She’ll be starting medical school at Stony Brook in the fall, pursuing both her M.D. and a Ph.D. 

This dual track will allow Epstein to train as a doctor while also building on her research skills, a passion she developed during her time at Fordham in the chemistry lab of  professor Nick Sawyer, Ph.D. Epstein is interested in researching drugs so she can not only provide care, but also discover treatments.  

“ If I want to be a neurologist and treat patients with Alzheimer’s, I want to also be looking for a drug that treats Alzheimer’s,” Epstein said. “It feels like the perfect way to do the most I can for patients.”

That’s according to recent research by Eun-Hee Kim, Ph.D., a Gabelli School of Business professor who studies the tensions between businesses’ climate pledges and shareholders’ concerns about costs and the bottom line.

While the carbon reduction plans of corporations have been widely studied, “we know less about what happens after companies adopt carbon targets” and how they may adjust them, said Kim, a professor of strategy and statistics.

Carbon Reduction Versus Profits

Companies have been setting carbon emission reduction targets for the past few decades because of pressure from climate-conscious investors, customers, their local communities, or regulators

After taking advantage of “low-hanging fruit” like energy efficiency improvements, companies may have to turn to more expensive efforts, like overhauling their technologies or business processes, Kim said, noting that these practices may eat into profits.

Moving the Goalpost 

Faced with pressure to appear environmentally friendly while also controlling costs,  companies will sometimes deceptively tweak their targets: while maintaining an “eye-catching”  overall goal, like a 20% reduction in greenhouse gases, companies will quietly lengthen the timeline for meeting it, Kim said. 

A five-year timeline might become a 10-year timeline, “effectively ‘kicking the can down the road’” and reducing the effort required per year, the study says. 

Deceptive Changes

She and a colleague from the University of Vermont examined this practice in a study of 546 firms’ carbon targets from 2011 to 2019. Published last fall, the study showed that this kind of deceptive change was most likely among firms struggling to meet an ambitious target, but also among firms with smaller targets who decide to adopt bigger ones. 

And a new study they are conducting casts a wider net, looking broadly at companies who changed their targets, whether or not they were deceptive about it.

Unsurprisingly, it found that carbon emissions grew among companies that relaxed their carbon targets. But, similar to the findings in their earlier study, they found that emissions also grew among companies that strengthened their targets, since they tended to stretch the timeline for meeting them and didn’t face “immediate pressure,” Kim said. Also, these firms didn’t make greater investments in carbon reduction after strengthening their targets. 

Aiming for Transparency

Her research shows the need for climate-concerned investors to look closely at a company’s carbon reduction targets and practices, and could inform regulatory efforts aimed at greater disclosure, she said. 

Media scrutiny can also be helpful: Her study from last fall found that if media outlets covered controversies around companies’ carbon emissions practices, the companies were less likely to deceptively change their targets.

Companies have recently become less enthusiastic about carbon targets, in part because of the priorities of the Trump administration in Washington, she said. But students’ interest in the topic remains strong, said Kim, who teaches a class in sustainability and business strategy.  

“As long as younger generation are interested, I feel that the research around [climate targets]would continue,” she said.

That’s according to experts who spoke at a March 11 Fordham event. Governments are increasingly relying on AI and machine learning to handle visa applications, refugee claims, naturalization requests, and the like—raising concerns that citizenship could become commodified, said Kevin Jackson, Ph.D., professor of law and ethics in the Gabelli School of Business. 

AI Could Make Immigration More Transactional 

AI-based systems tend to be transactional and “prioritize applicants who can maximize economic utility for a nation-state,” he said. “Are we seeing a fundamental shift in the meaning of citizenship and the moral worth of individuals due to the rise of AI?”

He and his research assistant, Emma Foley, a Gabelli School graduate student, presented two ethics case studies: In the United Kingdom, an AI system for screening visa applicants reflected past pro-Western bias and discriminated against people from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, reinforcing racial and economic disparities in global mobility, Foley said. That system was suspended about five years ago after legal challenges. 

And an AI-powered initiative of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), proposed in 2017, drew criticism for its “extreme vetting” of immigrants in America, monitoring everything from social media use and employment records to religious affiliations, Jackson said. 

The project, also dropped following legal challenges, “highlights how AI-driven immigration systems can redefine the moral worth of migrants by preemptively classifying them as threats on one hand or as assets on the other hand,” he said. “Making AI immigration decisions open to public scrutiny and to legal appeal are important.” (Today, DHS says it uses AI responsibly across a variety of functions.)

AI, Immigration, and Social Justice

Jackson and Foley spoke at Fordham’s International Conference on Im/migration, AI, and Social Justice, organized in concert with Sophia University in Japan and held at Fordham.

Faculty and graduate students, as well as alumni experts and others, spoke about how AI can enhance immigration processes but also about the potential perils.

Communication professor Gregory Donovan, Ph.D., suggested that AI might be used to provide legal assistance for migrants as they negotiate immigration processes, given the lack of enough lawyers to serve them. But even then, “It actually demands more human involvement.” 

“You’re going to need humans who are understanding of how trauma works, who are able to be there culturally and emotionally for someone as they interact with a chatbot to figure out their legal fate,” he said.

Retaining the Human Touch

Another presenter, Sarah Blackmore, LAW ’14, is a senior associate with Fragomen, an immigration services firm. She noted that AI can be helpful in immigration by streamlining administrative work and repetitive tasks like processing immigration applications, freeing up staffers to focus on “the more complex cases that need a human touch.”

That human touch is needed when, for instance, someone’s asylum case could hinge on fine nuances of translation and emotion and context, she said. “With AI, it’s really important, especially for sensitive things, that there is always this human oversight,” she said. 

She was answering a question by Carey Kasten, Ph.D., professor of Spanish, who noted that “so much of immigration law and asylum laws … have to do with the way you tell your story.” 

‘I Am Afraid’

A key element in those stories is fear—particularly, fear of gender-based violence, “one of the main factors pushing people out of their countries,” said Marciana Popescu, Ph.D., professor in the Graduate School of Social Service and co-director of Her Migrant Hub, an online information hub for women seeking asylum. Women are nearly half the population of globally displaced people, and 40% to 46% are under 18, she said during her own presentation. 

In her own work with migrants, the three most common words she has heard, she said, are “I am afraid.” She ended with a plea: “I am asking you, dear colleagues, that are looking into AI—think of AI as a tool that can expand sanctuary. This comes from the voices of the women, because it is [their stories that matter]most.”

ChatGPT: Less Empathy for Men

She and her co-authors found that self-identified men will likely receive less empathetic responses, compared to women, when they type their mental health concerns into AI platforms like ChatGPT. It’s one example of how “human biases or stereotypical impressions are inevitably fitted into the training data” that AI models are based on, Ren said.

The study is one of the few in the nascent area of gender, technology, and mental health. It comes as AI is moving beyond business-related uses and increasingly entering the interpersonal sphere—for instance, serving as a virtual confidante providing pick-me-up comments and a dash of empathy when needed.

An Easy Avenue of Support

Sometimes seeking support from an AI chatbot like ChatGPT is more appealing than speaking to family or friends because “they could be the source of the anxiety and pressure,” Ren said, and seeking professional therapy may be taboo or unaffordable.

At the same time, she noted AI’s potential to “backfire” and worsen someone’s mental state. For the study, said Ren, “we wanted to see whether or not AI can actually be helpful to people who are really struggling mentally … and be part of the solution,” and they chose potential gender bias as their starting point. 

Analyzing AI for Empathy

Titled “Unveiling Gender Dynamics for Mental Health Posts in Social Media and Generative Artificial Intelligence,” the study was published in January in the proceedings of the 58th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Ren co-authored the research with business scholars at the University of Richmond and Baylor University, and she’ll present it on Monday at Fordham’s International Conference on Im/migration, AI, and Social Justice, seeking audience feedback that helps with preparing it for publication in a business journal.

The researchers analyzed 434 mental health-related messages posted on Reddit, in its subreddits for mental health, mental illness, suicide, and self-harm. They included posts by self-identified men and women and those who specified no gender.

The researchers fed those posts into three AI platforms—ChatGPT, Inflection Pi, and Bard (now Google Gemini)—and then used a machine learning system to analyze the bots’ responses for their level of empathy. They also included other people’s posted responses to the Reddit messages to have a point of comparison.

The combined results show that women’s posts received more empathy than those by men or people of unspecified gender across all platforms—from AI and from people responding on Reddit.

Purging Bias from AI

Eradicating such bias, she said, is a matter of carefully selecting the data used to train AI models, as well as having moderators—either human or virtual—who keep an eye out for biases creeping into the system.

“Many younger people, like minors, are using it, because [technology] is their comfort zone,” showing the need for regulation, she said.

Any empathy provided by AI is “clearly different from how trained medical professionals provide empathy in face-to-face settings,” the authors write. But AI technologies can at least provide temporary comfort to those who are struggling, the study says.

“Regardless of gender, everyone wants to be seen, everyone wants to be understood,” Ren said. “So we are looking at the very basic form of that, which is empathy.”

The cafe will open in September at the Lincoln Center campus in 140 West, in the garden-level space currently occupied by Argo Tea.

Wanted: A Student CEO

Saxbys, which bills itself as “an education company disguised as a coffee company,” will recruit students to run the cafe, including a “Student CEO” who will be responsible for all operations for a six-month term. In exchange for salary and course credit, the CEO will oversee 15 team leads and roughly 34 team members.

The first Student CEO will be chosen from the Gabelli School of Business, while successive ones will be drawn from throughout Fordham’s student body. The other positions, including team leads, will be open to all Fordham students from the start.

When the cafe opens, Fordham will join roughly 30 other colleges, primarily in the Northeast, that operate cafes in partnership with Saxbys. Fordham will be the company’s first New York City partner.

“When people support a Saxbys, they’re not just getting a great product and a great hospitality environment. They’re supporting the next generation of leaders and entrepreneurs,” said CEO Nick Bayer.

“These are really hard jobs with high expectations where young people are taking what they learned in the classroom, they’re getting a learning experience, and they’re coupling those two things together to go off and be great leaders.”

Saxbys arrival marks the second student-run coffee shop at Fordham, joining Rodrigues, located at the Rose Hill campus. 

Argo Employees to Stay at LC 

Since Saxbys is run exclusively by students, the current Argo employees will remain valued members of the Ram Hospitality team at Lincoln Center.

Saxbys Staples: Cold Brew and Grilled Cheese

The cafe will feature an expansive menu anchored by cold-brew coffee, grilled cheese sandwiches, and smoothies. Bayer said the expanded offerings will extend the appeal of the space beyond mornings when coffee and tea are in higher demand.

“We really want to continue to energize that space and make it one that people are excited to visit morning, noon, and night,” said Bayer. 

New Kind of Experiential Learning

Vincent DeCola, S.J., assistant dean at the Gabelli School, said the Saxbys partnership will dramatically expand opportunities for experiential learning–a priority for the business college. 

“They’ll be learning in real-time about supply chains, maintaining inventory, planning for the pricing, the placement of things, and promotions,” he said.

“It’s a terrific experience, especially in areas like marketing, entrepreneurship, and accounting.”

Because the Student CEO role will be a full-time position, DeCola said he expects those students’ course load to be adjusted accordingly. Credits will be applied from their time managing the cafe, and they’ll also be given the opportunity to take a night class.

He said he was encouraged by the fact that the arrangement has been successful at so many other colleges, including St. Joseph’s University, a Jesuit school in Philadelphia. He noted that one of the supports that Saxbys offers to student CEOs is access to a group of former Student CEOs who they can turn to for advice.

“We anticipate that we can do this in a way that’s meaningful, and we’ll find things to improve each semester as we move forward,” Father DeCola said.

The Fordham community is invited to a tasting event at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 26, in the Garden Lounge, on the ground floor of 140 W. 62nd St.

A region’s second-place franchise can emerge from shadows if an owner is willing to shell out cash, Fordham University professor Mark Conrad said, citing the NBA’s Steve Ballmer, who has remarkably made L.A. Clippers games fashionable events.

“The focus of New York baseball could be shifting now,” said Conrad, who teaches sports law at Fordham’s business school.

“The Mets were run like a minor league team for years under [former owner Fred]Wilpon. And now you have [Cohen] coming with a Steve Ballmer mentality: ‘This is my thing, and I will do what it takes.’ It’s a new incarnation of a George Steinbrenner.” 

“People get excited about the $2 T-shirt” and don’t think about the impact on factory workers making the clothing, Susan Scafidi, director of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham, told Fordham Now.

But industry leaders are looking to help companies and consumers change, in part by incorporating more sustainable practices that are better for workers and the planet.

Three Fordham graduates in the fashion and beauty worlds shared some industry and personal insights at a recent Fordham Women’s Summit.

Corporate and Consumer Responsibility Is a ‘Give and Take’

Georgeanne Siller, GABELLI ’17, an assistant buyer for women’s apparel at Macy’s, said that customers can be “catalysts for positive change” in the fashion and beauty world through their buying habits. However, oftentimes she feels “an undue amount of responsibility falls on consumers when it’s really the companies that need to be driving the change.”

“I think that there’s a lot of company influence on consumers, things like seeing the popularity of TikTok hauls, where fashion influencers will just buy an insane amount of clothing at one time,” she said, adding that influencers can end up buying tons of products each week “looking for dupes or cheaper alternatives.”

“There’s a lot of give and take, I think, with the consumers and the companies, and I think the responsibility definitely tips towards the companies, but consumers can still be a powerful voice for that change,” she said.

Companies Can Do More to Source Sustainably Created, Long-Lasting Materials

Fast fashion usually involves “cheaply produced and priced garments” that are designed and produced quickly, according to Earth.org, an environmental news organization.

Claudia Rondinelli, FCLC ’91, head of global materials, leather, and trims at Ralph Lauren, said the company is working to “take a more proactive approach when we’re talking about material research and materials we’re using—specifically on handbags and footwear—but also in apparel.”

This means sourcing materials that will last longer, leading to less turnover and waste, as well as materials that are made sustainably, such as by using recycled products.

“It is really [about] selecting materials that are truly making a difference, and focus[ing] on the circular life of the material, not just looking at it from a short term, on how it might look like it’s less impactful on the environment, but really looking at end of life,” Rondinelli said.

Stacey Ferrara, GABELLI ’10, director of strategic initiatives and operations for Estée Lauder, said the company is working to make its sourcing practices more sustainable.

“We really want to help the communities [where] we live, work, and we source our ingredients from,” she said. “We’re partnering with organizations around the world, assisting women who are sourcing our ingredients—we’re working with them to make their lives better and help them get the tools that they need to succeed.”

An Eco-Friendly Approach to Packaging Materials Can Help Reduce Fashion and Beauty Industry Waste

One way Estée Lauder is looking to reduce waste is through their packaging, Ferrara said.

“By 2025, we aim to have at least 75% of our materials be recyclable, reusable, refillable—and refillable is something that I really am hoping is going to be a trend,” she said.

Ferrara said that this is a practice she’s incorporating at home and is starting to see it more with beauty companies, where people can bring their containers and have them refilled.

Poets&Quants calculates its scores based on a weighted average of rankings from five major sources: U.S. News & World Report, The Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, LinkedIn, and The Princeton Review. These rankings take into account factors such as long-term career outcomes, student experience, admission statistics, starting compensation for graduates, campus environment, and professor quality.

STEM-Designated Fordham MBA Program Offers Tech Skills

The full-time MBA program is STEM-designated, helping students to develop the technical and analytical skills they’ll need to succeed in an increasingly tech-dominated economy. The program features a “Gabelli Launch Month,” a month-long pre-semester initiative where incoming students participate in workshops, networking events, and projects designed to prepare them for the academic and professional challenges ahead.

“Over the past year, we’ve focused on enhancing key aspects of the program, such as experiential learning opportunities, career outcomes, and global exposure,” said Alex Markle, the full-time MBA program’s director. “I’m proud of this momentum and excited to see how we continue to build on this success.”

Both Gabelli School MBA programs offer a Jesuit business education in the heart of New York City. Admissions are selective, with the full-time MBA enrolling approximately 60 students each year, and the EMBA enrolling cohorts of approximately 30. This small cohort size allows for more personalized attention and a closer-knit student community, faculty said. 

A Focus on Values

Francis Petit, the EMBA program’s director, says the program’s success is a product of Fordham’s Jesuit values. 

“Our goal has always been, as the Jesuit EMBA Program of New York, to offer a cura personalis approach to our students that is unique, personalized, and transformative,” said Petit. “We are very proud of our dynamic EMBA students and alumni, along with our committed faculty and staff.”

“I’m grateful that they gave me a shot to come here,” said Bernard Anderson, a mixer at Greyston. “[When I] came here,” Anderson said, “I stopped going to jail.”

He and other employees who have flourished at Greyston tell its story in a documentary recently co-produced by Gabelli School of Business professor Michael Pirson, Ph.D. It’s the latest outgrowth of research by him and his colleagues about how businesses can succeed by tuning in to their employees’ humanity.

Addressing the Great Resignation

Key to this approach is promoting employees’ dignity, according to an Oct. 30 Harvard Business Review article co-authored by Pirson, Gabelli School professor Ayse Yemiscigil, Ph.D., and Donna Hicks, Ph.D., an associate at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

The article describes how to lead an organization with dignity—by defining it clearly, recognizing people’s inherent value, and acknowledging dignity violations, among other things. The goal is creating workspaces “where people feel seen and heard, and where they can collaborate at the next level” because of it, said Pirson, the James A. F. Stoner Endowed Chair in Global Sustainability at the Gabelli School.

Yemiscigil said it’s an urgent topic because of the so-called Great Resignation and “the epidemic of low employee engagement.”

“There are all sorts of indicators showing that the way that we manage and lead organizations is not working for the majority of people,” she said.

Creating a dignity culture, Pirson and Yemiscigil said, involves such things as listening to understand people, acknowledging employees as whole human beings, and giving employees a greater voice in the organization. “It doesn’t take long” for this culture to take hold if there’s enough intention and commitment, Pirson said.

Inspired by Sesame Street

Helping companies make this shift is the idea behind the documentaries Pirson started co-producing about four years ago after he happened to meet some of the (human) cast members of Sesame Street through a Gabelli School connection. Inspired by the show’s emphasis on human potential, he set out to feature companies that exemplify humanistic management, working with co-producer Alison Bartlett, a writer, director, and Emmy-nominated actress who was a Sesame Street cast member.

His second short film, Zen Brownie, focuses on Greyston Bakery, a supplier of Ben & Jerry’s founded in 1982 by Bernie Glassman, a physicist and Buddhist monk. (One of Glassman’s friends, Oscar-winning actor Jeff Bridges, narrates.) The bakery’s dignity-based open hiring policy creates “a virtuous cycle of trustworthiness,” Pirson says in the film. “Trust that you place in other people typically gets trust back” and often inspires the recipient to want to live up to that, he says.

Studying Student Behavior

His team has shown the documentaries at film festivals; they’re looking for a distributor and planning a few more films. He and Yemiscigil are also working on studies, soon to be submitted to the Journal of Business Ethics, that show how dignity can boost employees’ motivation and engagement as well as teams’ performance. Some of their findings come from a study of 800 Gabelli School students preparing for a consulting competition, working in teams.

Dignity is important not only for companies but for society because it frees us to think more about large-scale problems, Pirson said, giving climate change as an example.

Without “dignity wounds” occupying our minds, he said, “we move from a defensiveness into a space of abundance where we can create, and that is what’s necessary for our species to actually survive.”

This was the first time the Gabelli School has been named in this ranking, and its inclusion reflects investments Fordham has made to nurture an entrepreneurial spirit, said Dennis Hanno, Ph.D., who leads the school’s entrepreneurship programming.

“We are gaining momentum,” he said. “We’re dedicating more resources both in our curriculum and in places like the Fordham Foundry,” Hanno said. He noted that the Foundry, which helps students and alumni start viable, sustainable companies, recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. 

Hanno cited The Ground Floor course as one example of how first-year students are exposed to entrepreneurship. Every student who takes it pitches a new business idea to a panel of judges at the end of the semester.

The Princeton Review entrepreneurship rating follows other impressive rankings for Fordham’s business school. Poets & Quants ranked the school 21st among the best undergraduate business schools in the country for 2024. In September, U.S. News & World Report ranked the Gabelli School 77th in the country. It also singled out specific undergraduate business programs: The school ranked 13th for finance, 17th for international business, 14th for marketing, 21st for accounting, and 21st for entrepreneurship. 

Hanno also noted that entrepreneurship at Fordham extends beyond the Gabelli School. The Fordham Foundry, for instance, holds a separate pitch challenge that is open to all students.

“Whether you’re in business school or not, you’re going to have opportunities here from day one to connect with people who have been entrepreneurs and have worked with entrepreneurs of all different kinds,” said Hanno.

He noted that an expansive view of entrepreneurship can be seen in the work of faculty such as Gabelli School professor Michael Pirson, Ph.D., whose research encompasses humanistic management and sustainable models of business. 

“We embrace a broader definition of entrepreneurship to include social impact as a major focus of what we do,” said Hanno, who created a Fordham course called Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Rwanda. He took a group of students to the African nation last spring. 

 “So if you want to change the world, Fordham is the place for you.”