Creating a Playlist Generator

Using Google’s application programming interface, or API, she created a playlist generator that allows users to make a custom-made playlist of 10 to 15 songs based on any theme, which they can export to Spotify. She even made a playlist for herself that commemorates her time at Fordham, using the prompt, “Create a playlist for a Fordham NYC – Lincoln Center Undergraduate student.”

“I really just wanted to test myself on how I could develop something from scratch, from start to finish,” she said. (The export function is not available to the public yet, but a version of the generator can be used to create a playlist.)

Using Math in the Tech Field

For Dedvukaj, it was just one way she made the most of her time exploring different fields. 

She started as a computer science major, thinking it would be a surefire way to stand out when she eventually applied to law school. 

But multivariable calculus, a course she took with professor Han-Bom Moon, Ph.D., in her second year, showed her how valuable a math degree could be when paired with computer science. 

“It just made me really excited for my future,” she said.

“As a concept, math is so abstract, even if you’re taking an applied course. So to see how all of what you’re learning directly correlates to what huge tech companies are doing was really interesting.”

This month, she is graduating from Fordham College at Lincoln Center with a B.S. in math and computer science. In the fall, she’s starting a new position as a data analyst at Jolt, a film marketing and distribution firm in Manhattan.

Finding Community on Campus

After a year of living on campus, Dedvukaj, a first-generation college student whose parents emigrated from Montenegro to the United States in the 1990s, opted to commute from Saddle River to Manhattan.

She still found a sense of community with other commuter students, as well as in her roles as treasurer of the mathematics club and a member of the computer science society.

“One of my fears with commuting was that I wasn’t going to be able to contribute to a lot of the off-campus activities, but they really accommodate you well,” she said.

Internship + Research + Full-Time Job Offer

The job offer from Jolt came after Dedvukaj found a spring internship position there through Handshake, the University’s career portal. She started there in February and was offered a full-time position there beginning this September.

She credits the experience she gained from working with Moon as a research assistant in the summer of 2023. The project that she assisted with, On Algebraic Space Filling Curves, involved meeting twice a week with Moon and three other students to tackle a problem using a combination of linear algebra, geometry, and abstract algebra. 

“[The people at Jolt] were really interested and wanted to hear a lot about the trials and tribulations of the research,” she said.

“It showcases that you are good in collaborative settings, that you’re able to come up with new ideas, and that you’re able to speak to those ideas in your interview.”

“He is Fordham Lincoln Center,” said Elizabeth A. “Betty” Burns, FCLC ’83, a Fordham trustee fellow and one of many speakers at the event who lauded Father Grimes, dean of the college from 1998 to 2018. “Bob, thank you for all you’ve done for this school.” (See related story on the dedication ceremony.)

The fundraising effort behind the creation of the five practice rooms, which opened to students this year, was full of heartfelt gifts. Many came from the members of Father Grimes’ former advisory board, including Burns, as well as members of his family.

Fordham Trustee Kim B. Bepler, who attended the event, donated a Steinway piano for one of the practice rooms. And the rooms themselves were named for other donors—including Burns as well as Margitta Rose, a FCLC ’87, a longtime benefactor of the college and former advisory board member who supported the project because of “my great admiration for Father Grimes” as well as their shared love of music.

“Music, more than any other art form, reaches you at a level that … you can’t even express,” she said.

Love for music also motivated Maria del Pilar Ocasio-Douglas, FCRH ’88, and her husband, Gary J. Douglas, to support the project. Music is a creative outlet for both of them, and for their son, James, a Fordham junior majoring in film, who taught himself piano during the coronavirus pandemic, she said.

When told about the project, she loved the idea of “giving the students a place where they can play, not be heard, and really pour themselves into it,” she said.

‘A Significant Space’

Rose also lauded the efforts of Father Grimes’ successor, former FCLC dean Laura Auricchio, Ph.D., who initiated the music rooms’ creation, and spearheaded the fundraising, soon after coming to Fordham in 2019.

Dedicated music practice rooms were “a must-have,” said Auricchio, who attended the event. It was her idea to name them for Father Grimes—because “there were a lot of people … who felt that he deserved to have a significant space devoted to him,” said Auricchio, now vice president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

The naming also made sense because of Father Grimes’ music background, she said. An ethnomusicologist by training, he is a tenor soloist who sang for decades with the Fordham University Chorus, Bronx Arts Ensemble, and other organizations.

Setting the Tone at Lincoln Center

One donor, Delia Peters, FCLC ’85, longtime chair of Father Grimes’ former advisory board, recalled how Father Grimes set a friendly and happy tone at the college—in part, through his personal attention to students.

“I liked his style of ‘deaning,’” said Peters, who played a key role in reaching out to donors for the music rooms. “I would be walking with him down a hallway, and he would know every student’s name. And whatever was needed, he somehow found the money to fund it.”

In an interview, Father Grimes, a 1975 alumnus of Fordham College at Rose Hill, said he was “absolutely amazed” by Fordham College at Lincoln Center soon after arriving there as a music professor, and “started dreaming about the possibilities of what might be.”

When he became dean, he did whatever he could to “prompt and encourage” others—along with raising funds—to realize those possibilities, he said..

The results included the creation of an early set of music practice rooms; the Franny’s Space rehearsal space and Veronica Lally Kehoe Theatre; a faculty and student exchange program with the nearby Juilliard School; and the Fordham College at Lincoln Center Chamber Orchestra, among many other initiatives in the arts arena alone.

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

Lead supporters of the Robert R. Grimes, S.J. Music Studios project:

Kay Yun, PAR, and Andre Neumann-Loreck, PAR 
Maria del Pilar Ocasio-Douglas, FCRH ’88, and Gary J. Douglas
Margitta Rose, FCLC ’87
Mark Luis Villamar, GABELLI ’69, and wife Esther Milstead
Elizabeth A. Burns, FCLC ’83
The Grimes Family
Patricia A. Dugan Perlmuth, FCLC ’79
Delia L. Peters, FCLC ’85

Scholarship Eligibility

Thaier Hayajneh, Ph.D., director of the Center for Cybersecurity, said that the Center of Academic Excellence (CAE) designation for the minor means that undergraduates can apply for scholarships that are funded by certain grants, such as a $4.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) the center received in 2022.

That grant money was previously only available to students enrolled in one of the four master’s level cybersecurity degrees the department offers, including undergraduate students enrolled in an accelerated five-year program.

Undergraduates in the cybersecurity minor—open to students in all of Fordham’s undergraduate colleges—can now apply for DoD Cyber Scholarships to offset their tuition. Those who accept scholarships make a commitment to work for at least two to three years for a federal agency such as the National Security Agency.

More Job Opportunities

Upon graduation, students in the minor can expect that job opportunities will expand as well. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, there are currently about 3.4 million unfilled jobs in cybersecurity globally, including an estimated 640,000 in the United States. Many of those jobs are only open to graduates from CAE-designated programs.

“All of these federal agencies, like the NSA, the FBI, and the CIA, have special career fairs that are only for CAE-CD accredited programs, so that will give students more opportunities,” said Hayajneh.

“Employers in the private sector will also have more confidence in our graduates when they know that our students have been through a C-designated program. So it’s an exciting opportunity.”