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.”

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.  

The National Gardening Association has plenty of great tips for aspiring gardeners, but we also know Fordham has some amazing weed warriors and green gurus willing to share advice on how to make this season a fruitful one. 

Preparing Beds for Flowers

As Fordham’s assistant gardener, Jason Cruz oversees the planting of 200 to 300 hydrangeas, pansies, geraniums, and sunpatiens around the Rose Hill campus. High-profile areas like the space around Cunniffe House need to look their absolute best for Easter, so the past few weeks have been all about prepping soil beds. 

To prepare the beds for the day the flowers arrive from the nursery, Cruz uses a few tricks gardeners can try at home: He mixes in soy conditioner every two years, and this time of year, he also mixes in Coast of Maine’s Dark Harbor mulch. For him, it’s both an aesthetic and a practical choice.

“We’ll plant the plants, and then we’ll throw a top dressing of the mulch, so you have this really nice dark background with all these vibrant colors.”

Planting with Pollinators in Mind

Chomri Khayi, who was hired last year as the first land manager of the Calder Center, Fordham’s biological field station in Armonk, New York, has been focused on a large pollinator garden behind Calder Hall. Her advice? For the sake of bees and other pollinators, don’t clear the ground too early.

“Everyone’s tempted to clean up everything and have this aesthetically pleasing space, but it would be wiser to minimize that cleaning as much as possible or even delay it,” she said.

She said to wait until mid to late April, when temperatures consistently stay above freezing, to clear away things like dead leaves that are carpeting the ground.

“There are beneficial insects that rely on that ground cover for protection.”

Serena Feldman, a Fordham ecology master’s student who previously worked as a land steward at the Nature Center at Greenburgh in Scarsdale, New York, recommended planting native plants when possible. Black-eyed Susans, purple coneflowers, and mountain mints are great choices, because they’re beneficial to insects and birds that are key to the local ecosystem.

“Ask yourself if you’ve ever seen a bee land on a petunia or a butterfly sit on a begonia. It just doesn’t happen because those plants weren’t bred to be valuable for pollinators in general,” she said.

Building Raised Beds 

When he moved to Patterson, New York, last year, Justin Pool grew mini pumpkins, green beans, and peppers in raised beds. Pool, a senior lecturer of biological sciences and faculty director of STEM strategic initiatives, learned from that experience not to underestimate the cost of the soil you will need to fill a bed properly. He also had some advice on materials.

“For a raised bed, plain cardboard on the bottom makes for great weed control and is biodegradable, with no nasty plastic to deal with,” he said. 

“Just make sure all the tape has been removed, lay it on the ground, and add your garden soil on top of it.”

Potted Plants for City Living 

Annika Hinze, an associate professor of political science and director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program, relies on pots to plant outside her house in the Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale.

“Two years ago, I discovered that Stew Leonard’s sells bags of pollinator seeds for around five bucks. I found them to be super potent, and the first week of April is the perfect time to start them,” she said. 

“I also have a rhododendron, which is about to bloom. It makes the prettiest pink blossoms, and my mom, who passed away in 2021, helped me buy it. I like to think she’s saying hello every time it blooms.”

Caring for Indoor Plants

And if you live in an apartment, indoor plants also react to the changes in temperature and light that the spring brings. Khayi tends to 16 plants in her Manhattan apartment, including a very large monstera deliciosa.

“With the heat on during the winter, they tend to dry out a lot,” she said.

“So around late March, I start to feed them a little Miracle Grow every two weeks just to increase or to help them come out of the dormant phase.”

Adrian Kochanowicz is also paying special attention to his indoor plants. 

In August, Kochanowicz joined Fordham’s Office of Military and Veterans’ Service, and he brought three plants to his Lincoln Center office: a calathea medallion; a philodendron hederaceum; and a Aglaonema Siam Aurora, also known as a Red Chinese Evergreen. 

They get no light from the sun (he uses a grow light), but they still react to the change of the seasons, so he’s also started to fertilize them every two weeks. His advice is to water less, as it’s very easy to overdo it.

Clerkin serves as the director of climate resilience research and innovation at the International Rescue Committee, an organization that delivers humanitarian aid to people in acute political and economic crises across the globe. Her experiences with JVC, and later with Fordham’s Graduate Program in International Political Economy and Development (IPED), helped solidify her interest in humanitarian work, and ultimately her passion for supporting agricultural communities grappling with the effects of climate change. 

A Finance Major Turned Jesuit Volunteer 

Clerkin graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2010—a couple of years into the Great Recession—with a degree in finance. Rather than entering the dismal job market, she chose to join JVC. She served as a caseworker at a homeless shelter in Hartford, Connecticut, helping people apply for food stamps and housing. It was a “wet shelter,” meaning they didn’t turn away people with criminal histories or active addictions. 

Though she realized direct service work wasn’t for her, the experience was transformative for Clerkin. “It was a big year of growth for me. I learned  a lot of lessons in radical compassion and empathy for populations that often get dismissed and ignored,” she said. 

Fordham’s IPED Program: A Natural Next Step

Next, Clerkin entered the IPED program at Fordham, a natural choice considering her father, grandfather, and uncle all attended the University. 

In keeping with the Jesuit tradition of being “men and women for others,” Fordham has a close connection with JVC: 304 Fordham undergraduates have volunteered with JVC since 1977, and at least one Fordham alum has volunteered every year since, including four who are currently volunteering, the group said. Another 15 students who earned their undergraduate degrees at other universities also joined JVC after earning a graduate degree from Fordham’s IPED program.

A Clinton Foundation Internship

While in IPED, Clerkin was most interested in clean energy programs. But during her first job after graduate school with the Clinton Foundation, she worked on an agricultural project with a small team in Rwanda, Malawi, and Tanzania and “fell in love” with agriculture. 

Even then, Clerkin was hearing from local farmers about shifting weather patterns and changes in crops. “Farmers, especially in countries that are bearing a higher burden of the climate crisis, are the canaries in the mine shaft,” she said. “ The bad part about that analogy is that the canary dies.” 

Building Global Climate Resilience

Clerkin has since turned that experience into a calling. As director of climate resilience at the International Rescue Committee, she helps farmers find strategies to adapt to climate change. One of her current projects in Syria helps farmers test and develop wheat seed varieties that are more drought and heat resistant, which could help mitigate the region’s ongoing famines. 

“ Climate resilience is integral to food systems, especially in rural communities where agriculture is the backbone of the economy,” she said.  “We’re committed to building resilience in these protracted crisis settings that are also bearing the highest burden of the climate crisis.” 

It’s the second consecutive time that two Fordham students have received the award, which is awarded annually to about 400 natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics students. A major requirement for the scholarship is a demonstrated body of research that a student has conducted since entering college.

Lorna Ronald, Ph.D., director of the Office of Fellowship Advising, said the consecutive wins show the strength of the STEM community at Fordham.

“It’s really exciting that we’ve been able to build that up over the last couple of years,” she said. 

Combating Antibiotic Resistance

Clemente’s research explores how to design and develop peptides that can be used to influence DNA replication in bacteria, which can cause mutations that lead to antibiotic resistance. It’s a joint research project between chemistry professors Nicholas Sawyer and Elizabeth Thrall.

“My research so far this year has been looking at a peptide that has been known to inhibit the specific protein interaction involved in the replication of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which is the bacteria that causes tuberculosis,” she said. 

“It’s a naturally occurring antibiotic peptide, but I’m seeing if I can improve upon it and make it synthetically.”

A native of Washingtonville, New York, Clemente said the opportunity to do research sealed her decision to attend Fordham. She hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in biochemistry.

For Sawyer, ambitious and enthusiastic students like Clemente are invaluable.

“Having ambition and enthusiasm for [a research project]provides the resilience to deal with challenges along the way,” he said.

“She’s skyrocketed in terms of not only managing her own project, but also in providing peer mentoring to junior students in the lab.”

Targeting Tumors

Das, a biochemistry major who also works for Fordham University Emergency Medical Services, is focused on developing peptide-linked molecules to target cancer tumors. She hopes to attend medical school upon graduation.

She co-authored three papers published in academic journals. In October, she was the lead author of one about peptides designed to target cancerous lung cells that was published in the journal Molecular Diversity.

In addition to biochemistry professor Ipsita Banerjee, Das shared authorship of the paper with Mary Biggs, who earned one of last year’s Goldwater scholarships. That kind of collaboration between students is not something she expected.

“I want to give a lot of credit to Mary because this past summer, she basically taught me everything,” she said.

She also credited Banerjee for pushing her to achieve more.

“She’s just an amazing mentor,” she said. “It’s because of her motivation and her belief in me that I did as much research as I did.”

Banerjee said she’s seen Das grow tremendously. 

“One of the things that we look for in students is a willingness to put in the time, and last spring 2024, there were some techniques that Amrita needed to learn about, like cell culture,” she said.

“She came in during spring break, and we spent two whole days working on it. So she was very willing to learn, put in the effort, and stay focused.”

Manhattan’s Glasshouse venue was buzzing with pride on Monday evening as 800 Fordham donors, alumni, and scholars gathered for the Fordham Founder’s Dinner. They had much to celebrate: The dinner raised more than $2.5 million for the Fordham Founder’s Undergraduate Scholarship Fund and commemorated the successful conclusion of the University’s fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student.

“This night is so much fun. We toast each other, we celebrate Fordham, we pray together and we laugh,” said University President Tania Tetlow. Fordham gives students the skills they need to matter to the world, she said, shouting out the alumni in the room as “proof” that it works. “So for all of you who came tonight, thank you.”

The annual Founder’s Dinner recognizes an exceptional group of students, the Fordham Founder’s Scholars, as well as the generous donors who make their studies possible. Three benefactors—Henry S. Miller, FCRH ’68, PAR; Cathy E. Minehan; and David M. Tanen, LAW ’96—were presented with the Fordham Founder’s Award in honor of their personal accomplishments and unwavering support of the University.

A Night of Celebration and Gratitude

His Eminence Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, who received an honorary doctorate from the University in 2012 and a Founder’s Award in 2016, delivered the evening’s invocation. Next, Alexa Carmona, FCRH ’26, sang the national anthem, while members of the joint service Color Guard of Fordham’s Army, Navy, and Air Force ROTC posted the colors.

“Fordham is proud of its 177-year military legacy,” the announcer said, noting that the University “is home to more than 500 military-connected students, including veterans, veteran dependents, and future leaders in our ROTC programs.”

Armando Nuñez, GABELLI ’82, chair of Fordham’s Board of Trustees, then gave a brief introduction.

“We have so much to celebrate tonight,” said Nuñez. He noted that Fordham had surpassed its fundraising goals for the Cura Personalis campaign, which concluded in the fall, raising over $370 million to enhance the student experience, increase financial aid, and more. “We are so incredibly proud of our talented students and so appreciative of our generous donors,” Nuñez said. 

Watch Nuñez’s full speech.

Speaking on behalf of the 48 Founder’s Scholars, Yves Andradas, FCLC ’25, expressed gratitude for the donors to the scholarship fund for opening the doors to a Fordham education for students like him.

“Every donor in this room plays a significant role in making my dream … a reality. So on behalf of all the students who were graced enough to be named Founder’s Scholars, our gratitude stretches far and wide,” said Andradas, who is studying philosophy and theology. “If hearing it from me isn’t enough, let my immigrant Haitian parents tell you they are so grateful not to have a college tuition bill at their doorstep every semester.” 

Watch Andradas’ full speech.

Helping the Next One in Line 

While accepting his award, Henry Miller shared words of wisdom from country music star Tim McGraw. 

“When you get where you’re going, don’t forget to turn back around and help the next one in line,” said Miller, quoting from McGraw’s song “Humble and Kind.” 

It was an appropriate sentiment from Miller, who attended Fordham on scholarships and then went on to build an extraordinarily successful career in business. He has since served on Fordham’s Board of Trustees and given generously to the University to support the Jewish studies program, athletics, scholarships, and more. 

Miller went on to share heartfelt advice with the scholars and attendees that touched on six key principles: philanthropy, integrity, respect, hard work, talent, and sense of humor.

Watch Miller’s full speech.

Cathy Minehan, who made history as the first female president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, discussed her late husband, E. Gerald Corrigan, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and proud Fordham alumnus, benefactor, and trustee. 

“Jerry credited Fordham with preparing him for the economic and theoretical challenges he faced in his career, but way more importantly, for the strong public service thread of Fordham’s Jesuit education,” said Minehan. “I have been honored to continue Jerry’s legacy of generosity in supporting Fordham students.” 

Watch Minehan’s full speech.

David Tanen, a biotech entrepreneur whose generosity has greatly impacted the Fordham School of Law, expressed his appreciation for the opportunity to contribute and urged others to follow suit. “I encourage everyone to uphold the values Fordham represents and support the community that has given us so much,” said Tanen, who has supported scholarships, professional programs, and more at the Law School.

Watch Tanen’s full speech.

Tetlow, addressing the Founder’s Scholars, echoed donors’ remarks and encouraged students to pay it forward when they can. 

“You have no idea how happy it makes us to do for you what others did for us. We hope that one day, years from now, you get a chance to invest in other young people and that, at that moment, you’ll remember this magical night,” said Tetlow. 

Watch Tetlow’s full speech.

Looking Toward the Future 

Founder’s Scholar Hiba Haloui, GABELLI ’25, one of the student emcees during the second half of the evening, offered a brief reflection on the close of the Cura Personalis campaign.

“The impact of this campaign and every Fordham donor was felt by every Fordham student,” Haloui said, before sharing that the Founder’s scholarship was the “cornerstone” of her journey from Morocco to New York.

Founder’s Scholar Noah Khalil, GABELLI ’25, introduced a video featuring student reflections in celebration of the close of the Cura Personalis campaign. He expressed gratitude to the evening’s donors.

“The Fordham Founder’s Scholarship is an immense blessing, not only for its financial support, but mainly for what it symbolizes,” said Khalil. “It’s a representation of your belief in our ability and potential to achieve more than we ever thought possible.”

In her closing remarks, President Tetlow sketched out a bright future for the University, made possible by the ongoing support of Fordham’s community. 

She highlighted the recent announcement of a $100 million donation from trustees emeriti and former Founder’s honorees Maurice and Carolyn Cunniffe—the largest gift in the University’s history—which will pave the way for a cutting-edge science facility and the expansion of STEM degree programs. 

Tetlow said Fordham will set itself apart by not only teaching technical skills, but by giving students the ethical foundation to wield emerging technologies like AI for the greater good. 

“For almost two centuries we’ve transformed lives as Ignatius taught us. And thanks to all of you, we will keep doing that for centuries to come,” said Tetlow. “The great philosopher Archimedes said, ‘Give me a fulcrum and I shall move the world.’ Fordham is that fulcrum and all of you have used it to move the world tonight.” 

The video below, shown at the dinner, was created to celebrate the close of the Cura Personalis campaign. It is a gift of thanks from our students to our donors:

Titled Masculinity in American Politics, it collects essays from scholars across the country to address  a topic rising to the fore in the political sphere. The book shows how masculinity and its stereotypes affect campaigns and elections, sometimes in surprising ways. 

Campaigning on Masculine Themes

Among other things, the book shows how women candidates feel pressure to highlight masculinity in their campaign messages—with Latinas and Asian American women more likely to rely on masculine imagery.

It shows how precarious manhood—anxiety that one’s masculinity is under threat—can lead politically liberal men to embrace more aggressive policies, such as the death penalty and the use of military force.  

One of McDermott’s own co-authored essays centers on U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, who suffered a stroke in 2022 during his campaign and was treated for depression after taking office. The stigma surrounding disability hurt his masculine image—even though Fetterman “looks about as  masculine as you’re ever going to get,” she said. 

McDermott’s goal was to foster a more nuanced understanding of masculinity in American politics at all levels—all the more important because of the emergence of Donald Trump, “an unapologetic masculine figure,” she said. With this book, she’s continuing a research interest that began years ago—with a novel classroom exercise that generated surprising findings among her students. 

How did the subject of masculinity in politics capture your interest? 

The fields of psychology and sociology have long understood the difference between sex and gender—sex is biological and gender is the social construct, but political science still uses the term ‘gender’ to refer to sex. I wrote a book in 2016 that made that distinction after seeing it play out in the classroom. I was teaching a class on gender and politics, and I decided to give my students the Bem Sex Role Inventory, or BSRI, which measures how masculine or feminine one’s psychological profile is. A lot of the women found out their profiles were deemed more masculine than feminine, and even more masculine than the men in the class. It caused quite a stir, and the wheels started turning.

Why is this more nuanced view of gender in politics important?

The power structure in our country has always been based on traits traditionally seen as masculine, like dominance and forcefulness, at least according to the BSRI. Those are the traits that we value in leaders. Aggression is one trait, and I think it can be negative, neutral, or positive, depending on the direction it takes. By not examining that, we’re leaving out an awful lot of the explanation of what’s going on in our politics.

The book mentions inequities in politics because of the emphasis on masculinity. Can you elaborate?

Female candidates face a double bind because they need to show some masculinity to prove that they can lead and fight for you in Congress, things like that. At the same time, if they’re not feminine enough, they’re seen as overstepping traditional sexual norms. Plus, women aren’t recruited to be candidates at the same rates as men are, so those who don’t show masculine traits very strongly don’t put themselves forward to run; they doubt their own abilities to compete.

What do you hope people take away from the book?

That academics aren’t just trying to trash masculinity. That’s not what this book is about—it’s an objective look at masculinity, and in some ways its positive effects. I think a healthy masculinity means you have strong leadership skills, you have independence, you have your own beliefs and you’re willing to defend them, but you’re also willing to listen to other people’s beliefs and not just close it down with no discussion. And I think there are lots of political leaders who are like that.

You’ve mentioned you want to study the ‘manosphere’ next. Tell me more.  

This is the part of the internet that is dedicated to traditional masculinity and hyper-masculinity and promoting that, in reaction to this sense that males are being attacked and aren’t getting their fair share and things like that. I’m going to research whether it played a significant role in the 2024 election when Trump started going on these shows and promoting his campaign. The question is, to what extent did their ‘bro’ following then become politicized and possibly change the profile of the electorate?

When the City Stopped (Cornell University Press, 2025) tells the story of the pandemic through the voices of New Yorkers who were unable to flee the city or work from home. 

Author Robert Snyder, Ph.D., the Manhattan borough historian, collected narratives, interviews, and poems from groups such as Queens Library’s Queens Memory Project and Fordham’s Bronx COVID-19 Oral History Project. Fordham’s interviews were conducted in 2020 by researchers affiliated with the Bronx African American History Project.

“The most compelling narratives that I put in the book, including the Fordham narratives, are about people who saved themselves, but then they went out, and they helped others,” said Snyder, who is also a professor emeritus at Rutgers University.

Focusing on essential workers, Snyder sought out stories from healthcare workers, grocery clerks, community activists, and transit workers.

Tales from a City Under Siege

Of the roughly 20 interviews conducted for the Bronx COVID-19 Oral History Project, Snyder chose four, including Maribel Gonzalez, the owner of the South of France restaurant, and Ralph Rolle, a drummer and owner of Soul Food Snacks Cafe.

Another Fordham interview subject, Patricia Hernandez, described the stress of commuting from her home in East Tremont to John Jay College of Criminal Justice and to her job as a sales clerk at a T-Mobile in Kips Bay, where employees were deemed essential workers.

“I really didn’t have a choice but to go to work and get paid,” said Hernandez, who lived with her mother and sisters and had to help pay the bills. 

On the subway, she said she was “pretty much in fear the whole time.” 

“You’re really in an environment where you feel like you are surrounded by COVID.” 

Nichole Matos, another Bronx resident interviewed, lost her job at a Riverdale gym 24 Hour Fitness and was forced to quarantine after she was potentially exposed to COVID-19.

“You get tired of eating the same thing, watching the same things, reading the same things for class, and meeting for these virtual classes,” she said.

The Resilience of the Bronx

Veronica Quiroga, a 2020 graduate who conducted the interviews with Hernandez and Matos, was majoring in African and African American studies when the pandemic hit; she quickly shifted from conducting interviews for the Bronx African American History Project to the COVID-19 project. 

She’s proud of the attention the project brought to struggling businesses. She’s also grateful to the people who shared their stories.

“Nobody knows more than the people themselves what they go through during these times,” she said.

“The fact that people are willing to get on a public platform and be so vulnerable demonstrates not only the resilience of the people of the Bronx but also the potential that lies within them.”

Highlighting Disparities  

Carlos Rico, a 2021 Fordham graduate who was the lead coordinator for the oral history project, said that interviewing Bronx residents prepared him to think more deeply about the income and racial disparities that left so many Bronx residents exposed to the pandemic in ways that others were not.

It’s a skill he uses daily as an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, a job he landed shortly after earning a law degree from Fordham Law School last year.

“I’m proud of the way that we were able to communicate with neighbors of the University and make that space so they could feel heard,” he said.

What’s driving the trend? While some smaller clusters reflect poverty and lack of health care, “by and large, these much larger pockets are in places where people just have an aversion to vaccines, likely due to misinformation,” said economics professor Troy Tassier, Ph.D., author of The Rich Flee and the Poor Take the Bus, a 2024 book focused on socioeconomic aspects of controlling outbreaks.

Eighteen states, from New York to Alaska, have reported a total of 378 measles cases as of March 21, and 17% of them required hospitalization, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC. There has been one confirmed death, of an unvaccinated school-age child in Texas. That’s where the real surge has been, with 327 cases reported since late January, the state’s health department said.

Two percent of cases in the current national outbreak involved people who were fully vaccinated. While two doses of the measles vaccine are 97% effective at preventing the disease, vaccinated people can still get “breakthrough” infections amid an outbreak in their communities, according to the CDC. 

More people are seeking exemptions to states’ vaccination requirements, citing personal or religious reasons, Tassier said. The number reached an all-time high in the 2022-2023 school year, contributing to a 2% decline in vaccinations nationally, he wrote on his Substack, citing CDC data. That leaves the national rate at approximately 93%—which is worrisome, Tassier said.

Why is a 2% drop in our national vaccination rate a cause for concern? 

That drop isn’t happening evenly across society; it’s happening in specific places. If every population that you can think about—every school district, every community, every county, every state—had a 93% vaccination rate, we’d be in pretty good shape. The problem is we get 93% because most counties have near 100% coverage and other counties have 60% coverage. And that’s more dangerous than having everybody at the same level.

So how does that relate to social networks like Facebook?

Your social network spreads out in layers—you connect with people you see every day, then work colleagues, then friends you see rarely. And then you might connect with an old friend who opens up 20 more connections to your high school crowd. Epidemics kind of spread the same way. When a kid gives measles to a friend a couple counties away and they’ve got a bunch of unvaccinated friends, then it spreads from one social network to another. And then it sort of pockets itself again and replicates in that county. Then it could go to another county and another.

Tell me more about the trends and your predictions.

Outbreaks like the one in Texas are becoming more common because of these pockets of unvaccinated kids. It used to be that our vaccination rates and the distribution of vaccines were more evenly spread across the country, so that we had only a handful of cases every year, but that started to change around 2010. Since then, every two or three years you get a year where there’s hundreds of cases, or even more than a thousand.

So in some ways, this outbreak isn’t that bad. But the danger with measles is that once it takes hold in an unvaccinated population, it just goes everywhere. If a school has only 70% vaccine coverage, and an infected kid walks into the lunchroom, that’s a whole lot of kids exposed. And it lingers in the air for as long as two hours—through that lunch period and the next one and the next. We’re going to get a case in one of these schools that’s going to make this outbreak look really, really small. I’m amazed it hasn’t happened yet. An outbreak in New York City fueled a thousand-plus U.S. cases in 2019.

Are the unvaccinated risking only their own health?

No. The danger is that not everybody can be vaccinated. Some immunocompromised kids, for medical reasons, can’t be vaccinated. And folks like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. want to talk about parent choice and all of that, but that kid doesn’t have a choice. He can only stay home from school and live at home or go out in the world. 

Track the outbreak on the CDC’s website.

“Regina is an inspiring role model who will show our graduates what it looks like to live out our Jesuit values,” said Fordham President Tania Tetlow. “Her remarkable talent, strong work ethic, and unwavering commitment to justice make her the ideal speaker for our commencement ceremony. We’re thrilled to honor her.” 

Road to Hollywood

Hall has appeared in numerous hit films, including The Best Man, Love and Basketball, the Scary Movie franchise, Girls Trip, The Hate U Give, Master, and will be in the upcoming Paul Thomas Anderson movie, One Battle After Another.

But a Hollywood career wasn’t always her plan. Born in Washington D.C., Hall graduated from Fordham in 1992 with a degree in English. She was inspired to pursue acting after a personal tragedy—her father died unexpectedly of a stroke while she was in grad school studying journalism. 

“When you’re young, you don’t necessarily realize life’s brevity,” Hall told The LA Times. “It wasn’t like I didn’t want to do journalism. It was more like, you live once, life is short.”

Hall started taking acting classes and auditioning, and soon she was landing roles. 

Awards and Accolades 

Hall has appeared in many popular television series, including Ally McBeal; Law & Order: Los Angeles; Black-ish; Insecure; Nine Perfect Strangers; and Black Monday, which she co-produced. In 2022 she appeared in Peacock’s The Best Man: The Final Chapters, based on the popular Best Man film franchise. 

Hall is known for her versatility as an actress, standing out for both her comedic chops and dramatic range. BET called her performance in the megachurch dark comedy Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul a “masterclass in subtle comedy and emotional depth.” She was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and an NAACP Image Award for the performance. 

For her role in the 2018 dramedy Support the Girls, in which Hall plays the manager of a sports bar, she became the first Black woman to win the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. She has also been honored with the Women’s Image Network Award for Best Supporting Actress, NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress, and more. 

In 2022, Hall hosted the 94th Academy Awards with Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes. It was the first time in history three women hosted the ceremony. 

Hall’s production company, Rh Negative, is currently developing projects on the scripted and unscripted sides of television as well as film.

Faith and Advocacy 

Throughout her life, Hall has maintained a strong connection with faith. She attended a Catholic high school before Fordham, and as an adult she’s drawn spiritual inspiration from Christianity along with Buddhism, Hinduism, and other faiths. 

“I’ve always had a relationship with God,” Hall told The Cut in 2022. “A deep and sometimes complex relationship with God has carried me through my difficult times.”

One such difficult time came in 2006 when her mother was diagnosed with scleroderma, a rare autoimmune disorder. Hall became an advocate for scleroderma research, and she now serves on the Board of Directors for the Scleroderma Research Foundation. 

Hall has also been involved with organizations including the American Red Cross, the Ronald McDonald House, Habitat for Humanity, Smiles for Speech, Solutions Project, and Just Like My Child. 

“Regina’s dedication to advocacy embodies the principles we hold dear at Fordham,” said President Tetlow. “We can’t wait to welcome her back to campus.”

That’s how planting is done in a number of countries around the world including Ethiopia, the focus of graduate student Tierney Kulju’s project. Kulju is studying practices that “have been in use for thousands of years by Indigenous communities, by traditional farmers,” to help foster more sustainable approaches for smallholder farmers and in large-scale agriculture, she said.

As a Fordham graduate student in biology, Kulju is involved in a transatlantic research effort —involving the New York Botanical Garden, Ethiopian scientists, and other institutions—to address interconnected challenges including sustainable growth as well as helping crops withstand the droughts that are more common because of climate change.

New York Botanical Garden Partnership

Kulju got involved because of Fordham’s ties with the botanical garden, which is across the street from the Rose Hill campus. While interning there as an undergraduate, she discovered her interest in intercropping, or planting different crops together. It’s been done for centuries, often by mixing a grain crop that depletes the soil, like wheat, with a legume crop that replenishes the soil with nitrogen or other nutrients.

In collaboration with scientists at Wollo University in Ethiopia, Kulju, FCRH ’24, is helping to show what happens in the soil when two legume crops are planted together. Working at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus and its Louis Calder Center, a biological field station, she’s replicating Ethiopian intercropping in New York soils, hoping to gain insight that helps revitalize the practice in Ethiopia and elsewhere.

“Basically, we know almost nothing about legume-legume mixtures,” said Alex McAlvay, Ph.D., a scientist at the botanical garden who mentored Kulju’s undergraduate research and is sitting on the committee for her thesis, focused on her intercropping research. 

Sustainable Farming with Fava Beans and Peas

Last summer she planted fava beans and field peas in diverse soils at the Calder Center, and today she’s conducting experiments to find out how much nitrogen and carbon they left behind.

Fava beans and field peas, long grown together in Ethiopia, are one of many mixtures that “have often been ignored or dismissed as backwards or primitive,” McAlvay said. “They’re based on millennia of observations and experimentation, so they’re grounded in time-tested traditions.”

The two plants have different root structures that allow them to occupy the same soil at the same time, Kulju said. They each have a way of sheltering and nourishing underground microbes that, in turn, convert nitrogen in the air into a form that’s usable by plants.

Because they leave behind nitrogen in the soil, legume intercropping can be alternated with nitrogen-hungry plants such as wheat and corn to replenish the soil, reducing the need for heavy doses of artificial fertilizers that wind up running off the land and polluting the water supply, Kulju said.

The healthier soils fostered by intercropping are also better at retaining water and withstanding droughts, she noted.

A Hungrier World

There’s high demand for soil-depleting crops like wheat and corn, she noted—“People love them, people want them, and the world is getting larger and people are going to want more,” she said. “So we’ve got to find ways to address that in a way that’s sustainable for both people and for the environment.”

She hopes her research can help point the way to wider use of dual legume mixtures as a sustainable, environmentally friendly approach that could also be more profitable—in part because of the savings on fertilizer, she said.

Through her research collaborations, she said, “I’ve just been very inspired to make a difference that is feasible, scalable, but also something that’s sustainable for the long term.”

Learn more about the Traditional Grain Mixtures Project, led by the New York Botanical Garden.