In 2006, McKay began taking courses at Fordham without telling her relatives.

“I wanted a degree that was recognizable and prestigious and to me that’s what Fordham is,” she said. “Everybody knows Fordham.”

Over the course of her schooling, she had to balance several responsibilities: She got married; she worked full time at major brokerage firms, and; she helped raise her nieces and nephews for her twin sister.

It’s no small miracle, she said, that she has made it to college at all. McKay and her fraternal twin sister were born addicted, as both of their parents were chronic heroin users. Her mother died a few years later and her father abandoned the twins shortly thereafter. McKay said that foster parents took them in as a source of income—and she doesn’t flinch when telling the story.

“I don’t have any shame; who wants to be born addicted to heroin?” she said. “I never did drugs because I saw what it did to people.”

Even though she never succumbed, her parents’ affliction became the family’s legacy, affecting both her brother and her sister. She said her foster mother was abusive, telling her and her sister that they “came from nothing” and they’d “amount to nothing.”

“I remember holding my sister’s face in my hands, telling her, ‘Don’t listen to them, they don’t know what they’re talking about.’”

For the young McKay, school became her “great escape.” Growing up, she rarely missed a day. After high school she enrolled at the State University of New York at New Paltz, but found that her education had left her ill prepared for college life. After struggling for two years, she returned home to Harlem, where she found an apartment and a job.

She also stepped in to help her sister, who had two older children, was pregnant with a third, and was struggling with an addiction. After the birth, child services was threatening to take her sister’s baby, who was born addicted, and put it in foster care. So McKay adopted the newborn.

“I said, ‘we can’t continue this, this is a cycle and we need to break the cycle.’”

Even though her career rose at a steady clip—she worked at Paine Webber, Bear Stearns, Mariner Investments, and finally at Guggenheim Securities where she works now—the desire to finish college was still nagging at her. So on a friend’s encouragement she came to Fordham.

“I thought if she could do, then I can do it,” she said.

She is hoping that her graduation will come as a surprise to many in the family, including her sister, whose steady recovery over the years has made her proud. With her degree, she hopes to help children overcome abuses like those she and her sister faced.

Although she does not blame anyone for her “unfortunate circumstances” while growing up, remnants of her childhood remain. She said fear of failure sometimes nags at her.

“I still never believed I could do this, but at Fordham the deans and professors really believed in me,” she said.

He was getting through college the same way, until he took a course on cognitive behavior. There, he began to explore the possibility that his ADHD might be something more.

Through therapy, Browne realized that his attention deficit coupled with social anxiety placed him on the autism spectrum, and that he had been misdiagnosed earlier.

“ADHD is connected to attention domains, but in my case I literally didn’t want to talk to my classmates, not because I felt rejected by them, but because I found no motivation to talk to them,” Browne said.

Browne is earning a master’s in social work from the Graduate School of Social Service. He has already begun a career through the Mental Health Association of Westchester as a recovery specialist for people diagnosed or labeled with mental health conditions from across the autism spectrum. He works at the Sterling Community Health Center in White Plains, New York.

“Part of me is very glad for the degree of independence I had in college so that I could figure it out, but I had some very difficult years before that,” he said. “I had to ‘study’ what some kids just ‘do.’”

In his work with autistic clients, he said he sees symptoms that can be very extreme, like repeating a sentence or phrase until it’s said perfectly. Often he recognizes such symptoms in himself.

“I can relate to those folks; I get where a lot of that’s coming from,” he said. “But once I went through treatment I recognized my own dysfunctional thoughts. Now I look for alternatives that push me out of comfort zones that I used to be confined to.”

While Browne says his diagnosis is more nuanced than some of the cases he encounters at work, he has publicly embraced the autism moniker as a way to fight the misperceptions of mental illnesses in general.

“Autism is classified as a developmental disorder, though many who have it don’t love the label because they say labels help others pigeonhole them,” he said. “But I like the label because it explains my quirkiness and because I’ve learned not to be held back by my symptoms.”

Unfortunately, he said, “there’s a profound fear of people with these disorders, and society treats them with suspicion. I see the role of any social worker as working to dispel that fear.”

Given that computer algorithms and other forms of artificial intelligence increasingly disrupt the financial service industry, Zhang said knowledge of progressive trends in finance is important to have.

“Finance used to be about looking at the fundamentals of accounting, the cash flow, balance sheet, and the value of a company,” said Zhang. “Nowadays, I feel the trend is more data-and technology-driven.”

Halpin said he was considering a career in journalism and communications when he first enrolled at Fordham. But after taking a few courses in information systems during his sophomore and junior years, he realized that it was a “perfect blend” of everything he was interested in.

“What really excites me about the future of technology, and especially graduating with this degree, are the endless possibilities to leverage technology to improve business and solve problems,” he said.

Earlier this month, Halpin was one of 200 technologists across the country selected to participate in the Fourth Annual LGBTQ Tech & Innovation Summit and Fellowship at Google’s Washington D.C. offices. The event aimed to use technology to address pressing issues that are affecting Americans and members of the LGBTQ community, including mental health, criminal justice, poverty, and educational equity.

“I was so excited to learn from and work alongside such accomplished leaders in tech,” said Halpin, who is preparing to present his team project at a New York tech summit in September.

Opportunities for growth

Last June, Zhang secured a full-time position as an analyst at Morgan Stanley, while continuing his studies in the master’s in quantitative finance program.

“Taking 16 classes in total in my first year was very tough, but looking back I think everyone in the program realizes how much they have learned through that process,” he said.

Zhang moved to the United States from China in 2008, and called a number of states home before coming to Fordham. He attended high school in Kentucky, and studied mathematical economics and finance as an undergraduate at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Before enrolling in graduate school, he worked as an associate consultant at Utegration, Inc., a Texas-based consulting and solutions company focused on SAP (System Applications Products) technology. His desire to be in a more active and energetic city led him to New York, the world’s financial capital, he said.

“I always wanted to be in the financial service industry,” said Zhang. “It’s not an industry where you can be just anywhere.”

For Halpin, who hails from the suburbs of Chicago, Fordham’s proximity to an array of New York startups and businesses allowed him to get hands-on experience in business and technology. In addition to helping to build Fordham’s entrepreneurial community through the Fordham Foundry, TEDx Fordham University, and the annual Entrepreneurship Conference, Halpin interned for AOL when it was being acquired by Verizon.

“It was exciting to be at a company that was going through such a transition,” he said.

At another internship at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Halpin said he was able to use his information systems training to help its risk and compliance analytics group prevent money-laundering within the financial services industry.

“Fordham was in the perfect spot to study, and New York was perfect to put what I learned into action,” said Halpin, who has served on the Gabelli School Academic Dean’s Council and recently led the Gabelli School›s freshmen/sophomore retreat at Fordham’s Goshen Retreat House.

Making connections

Both Zhang and Halpin said Fordham’s extensive alumni network has been an important part of their success. In fact, Zhang said four Fordham alumni—Christopher Busch, GABELLI ’06, James V. Bruno, GABELLI ’00, Brent A. Masucci, GABELLI ’08, and Lindsay Heather Starr, GABELLI ’03,—guided him through the recruitment process at Morgan Stanley.

“You can very easily find Fordham alumni in any of the major firms,” he said. “They’re able to help you and answer your questions, especially if there are any openings in their firms or groups.”

Halpin, who will be working as an analyst at BlackRock after graduation, said the BlackRock opportunity came about through a conference he attended during his senior year, at which a few Fordham alumni who worked at BlackRock shared their experiences.

“The people that I’ve met over the past four years, from students to professors to administrators to deans, have been invaluable to my Fordham experience,” he said. “Nothing has been more true.”

The Class of 2017 Fordham Law student has been a Stein Scholar, a Moot Court competitor, an associate editor of the Fordham International Law Journal, and a president of the Latin American Law Students Association.

The National Jurist named her one of the 25 “Law Students of the Year” for 2016-17.

Outside of Fordham, Jiron has held a variety of internships that have focused on civil rights and social justice. Among these are positions with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the family and immigration unit of NYC Legal Services, and Day One, which provides free legal advocacy to youth who are victims of intimate partner violence.

A Deeply Personal Choice

Jiron said her desire to attend law school was rooted in deeply personal experiences. She was raised in Miami by a single mother who emigrated from Nicaragua in 1974. When Jiron was 22, she lost her mother to cancer and was left to face all the outstanding legal and financial issues on her own.

“I just felt so lost,” she said. “And I remember thinking, ‘I wish there were a lawyer in the family so that I could ask questions.’”

She set out to become that lawyer herself. Now that she’s achieved her goal, she says she’ll be able to provide the help that she had needed to women in similar situations.

“I knew I wanted to empower women,” she said. “But I needed a law degree.”

Jiron said she was drawn to Fordham because of its strong public interest program, which has set her on a path to achieving her long-term goal of doing civil rights work. With a bachelor’s degree in political science and French from Middlebury College in Vermont. Jiron has used her fluency in both Spanish and French to assist those who may face difficulties in accessing legal aid.

In particular, she recalled a client from the Dominican Republic she met at Day One who did not have strong English skills.

“We made a connection, and I think it was because I have this skill set that she doesn’t have, but yet she trusted me. Why? Because I speak her language and I look like her, and my mother had been in her situation,” she said.

After she graduates this month, Jiron will embark on a two-year Equal Justice Works Fellowship. With Day One, she has created the Single Mother Empowerment Project, through which she will represent young mothers from immigrant communities.

As with all her legal work, the fellowship will help her carry out her beliefs about using her abilities to help others.

“If I can make one person’s life better, I’m good,” she said,

“I just want to make a difference on an individual level because I know first-hand that everybody has a battle. Everyone’s life is hard in its own way.”

—Nina Heidig

Of all the lessons Roche has learned throughout his time at Fordham both on the football team and in class, nothing compares to his experience donating bone marrow to help a 60-year-old woman who was suffering from leukemia three years ago.

“It definitely opens your eyes and changes your whole perspective on life,” said the Fordham College at Rose Hill senior, who is graduating with a degree in economics. “Not only does it make you realize how precious and short life is, it just makes you appreciate it every day.”

Roche was selected as a potential donor for the woman after giving a cheek swab at the annual Fordham football Be the Match registry in 2014. At the time, there was a 1-in-9 million chance of a match.

He did more tests in August 2014, when the odds were down to 1-in-10 that he would be a compatible match. The following month, he received an official confirmation of an exact match with the critically ill woman.

“It’s still very possible for the recipient’s body to reject the donor’s bone marrow, so I was nervous that the donation process wouldn’t be successful,” he recalled.

Preparation for the donation began during football season, two months before the procedure. A nurse came to Roche’s residence hall and gave him shots to prepare his marrow.

He said the actual procedure took about five hours, during which he had to sit perfectly still in a chair.

“Through the help and full support of my coaches, Coach Marmaros and former Coach Joe Moorhead, donating during football season was a very efficient and smooth process,” he said.

Roche was asked to donate to the same woman again in 2015 after tests suggested that she might become ill again from her cancer. He did not hesitate to help and said the experience was life changing.

“I was willing to make this sacrifice not only because it was the right thing to do, but because if I had a loved one in that situation, hopefully someone would do the same thing,” he said.

Roche credits his parents for instilling positive moral values in him. His mother is a special education teacher and his father, a 9/11 first responder, helped with the rescue and with cleanup efforts after the tragedy. Both of his parents taught him the importance of “doing the right thing,” of “persevering” in the face of challenges, and caring about the well-being of others.

This year, Roche was named to the 2016 Patriot League Academic Honor Roll for academic excellence. While he is still weighing potential career paths in economics, Roche said he hopes to work in asset or portfolio management. After graduation, he will be interning with OppenheimerFunds’ equity product management team, and hopes to pursue a master’s degree in finance.

“I know it’s cliché, but it’s true what they say,” he said. “College is really the best four years of your life. It shapes you into a person that you know is going to be successful.”

When she lies down to sleep at night, she’s in the 21st century. But during the day, Barnhouse is firmly ensconced in centuries long past.

Barnhouse, who is earning a doctorate in history on May 20 from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, has long been interested in questions about how law, the practice of the religious life, and social expectations of men and women intersect in the Middle Ages.

“I’ve been fascinated by stories about the Middle Ages since I was young enough to be falling out of trees while pretending to be Robin Hood,” she said.

She’s also been interested in medieval health. In her dissertation, “The Elusive Medieval Hospital: Mainz and the Middle Rhine Region,” Barnhouse researched four independent hospitals in Mainz, Germany: a 12th-century foundation, another hospital established by women forced to leave that foundation, a leper hospital, and a private foundation that functioned in the 1350s. She explored the seldom-examined comparisons between leper hospitals and other hospitals.

She said that leper hospitals have often been treated in scholarship as a separate category, distinct from multipurpose hospitals. Such a division is more a modern construction than actual history, however, as all kinds of medieval hospitals were legally defined as religious institutions. Therefore, she argues that “the regulation of medieval leper hospitals was not driven primarily by any fear of the disease.”

“The history of medieval hospitals remains quite fragmented even as it grows,” said Barnhouse, who visited Mainz on a Fulbright Fellowship from 2013 to 2014.

“I’m attempting to provide a basis for further synthesis that will enable us to incorporate medieval hospitals into our larger hospital history, to get a longer view of health care, and to avoid isolating the Middle Ages and making careless assumptions.”

Although it was the era’s vividness that piqued her initial interest in the medieval, what keeps Barnhouse coming back for more, she said, are the questions that don’t have obvious answers.

This coming fall, Barnhouse’s love of all things medieval will continue, as she’ll be teaching medieval history and literature as a visiting assistant professor at the College of Worcester.

She is also a founding member, along with Elizabeth Keohane-Burbridge, of the podcast series Footnoting History. Since the series’ launch in February 2013, she has contributed 18 episodes on women’s history, medical history, opera, and British popular fiction of the early 20th century. It’s both an outlet for Barnhouse to talk about interests not directly connected to her research, and a model for establishing communication between academics and the public.

“At Footnoting History, not only do we tell cool stories of historical research, but we explain how we found them.”

Six years later, however, McCauley has embraced a different calling. The Houston native is graduating with a major in mathematics and a minor in economics. This year, he realized he had a knack for computer coding—and the response he received at a recent interview at Google has convinced him to pursue it as a career.

He discovered an interest in coding after spending his junior year studying abroad at the London School of Economics. Even though he was able to line up several internship interviews for positions in management consulting, nothing came of them. He found himself with no plans for the summer.

So he turned to his thesis adviser, David Swinarski, Ph.D., assistant professor of mathematics, to see if he could assist in any research. With a summer research grant, McCauley created an analysis suite using raw data from motion capture technology that Columbia Presbyterian Hospital doctors are using to study breathing.

“Breathing looks very different in a person with emphysema compared with a normal person,” he said. His resulting research shows how those differences can be expressed mathematically.

“When I started this project, I realized I could take it as far as I wanted to,” he said. “It ended up being a much more valuable experience, from the standpoint of developing skills and having some experience, than a management consultancy would have been.”

As his interests have evolved from theater to finance to coding, McCauley  also feels like he’s learned how to relax more. A 4.0 student in his first semester, he joked that he felt like he learned more during some of those subsequent “3.75” semesters. His four years at Fordham also afforded him the chance to form long term relationships outside his immediate family. This year, he shared an apartment in Harlem with two fellow honors students who he first met his freshman year, and spent a great deal of his free time at a poetry collective that one of them started.

The college’s small size and liberal arts focus made it the perfect fit, he said.

“If you put yourself out there, you have direct access to everybody—from the professors all the way up to [FCLC Dean] Father Grimes,” he said.

“People really express an interest in the individual student’s well-being.”

Unlike men who’d fought in World War II, baby boomers came of age in an era that was more global. They engaged more with the world outside of themselves and their families. They were less insular, but they experienced late onset PTSD symptoms. And they reacted differently to retirement.

“I thought the different attitudes were fascinating, so I put it in the back of my head, thinking I might want to look at it later,” she said.

Aware that there was very little research on baby boomer retirement, Selkirk, a native of Brandywine, Maryland, undertook a dissertation, “A Longitudinal Study Of Retirement Satisfaction In Baby Boomers And Vietnam-Era Veterans.”

Using data from a longitudinal study conducted by the University of Michigan, Selkirk attempted to measure the predictors of retirement satisfaction for veterans and civilians of the baby-boom generation.

Among civilians, she found that having financial security and physical health before retirement were the best predictors of post-retirement satisfaction. She also found that physical health, emotional health, and retirement choice were predictive of retiree satisfaction.

However, Selkirk found that none of those predictors had any effect on retired Vietnam-era veterans. In fact, she realized that variables such as marital status, which had had an effect on World War II veterans, had less impact on Vietnam-era veterans, while issues such as peer support, which was important to them, were never explored.

She said the subject of retirement satisfaction and baby-boom veterans is still relatively new. Now that she knows which variables are inapplicable, she can focus on other more poignant variables in future studies.

“This tells us that there needs to be further investigation into how being a veteran uniquely impacts not just somebody’s retirement, but their whole life trajectory,” she said.

It is important to undertake these studies now, she said, because veterans of recent conflicts in the Middle East have a lot in common with vets from the baby-boomer generation. Finding new ways to treat today’s returning vets could help.

Selkirk interns at the VA hospital in Manhattan. Upon graduation, she’ll stay on as a postdoctoral fellow in geropsychology. Enthusiastic about working with older patients, she calls it “an honor” to work with veterans who were drafted against their will and witnessed unspeakable violence, and yet persisted upon their return to America.

“For some of them, that has meant shoving their military experience into a deep, dark place in their brain, and then as they get toward their advancing years, finding the strength and courage to face it, be curious about it, and explore it,” she said.

But she dreams of a much larger meditative rose garden, one where the youth in her care can go to reflect about life and about God. On returning to her country she will run a youth program at Mater Christi Youth Religious Formation and Counseling Center.

“We’ll call it a mystical rose garden,” said Sister Maria, who is receiving her master’s in youth ministry from the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. “I call myself a spiritual gardener. When [girls]come, I will teach them to understand the symbolic meaning of roses—to see that each rose grows uniquely, that each has a different scent, and each unfolds in its own way.”

Before coming to Fordham, Sister Maria said, she didn’t quite see things the way she sees now.

“Before Fordham, I was so absolute, black or white,” she said. “My Fordham education brought me awareness of critical reflection.”

Sister Maria said that she wants her students to understand that their development requires critical reflection, which is not unlike appreciating a rose garden.

“When you connect the rose to how each youth develops into a solid human personality, you appreciate their inner beauty, and you can help them discover who they are, in relation to their God,” she said.

“If you want to come into my garden you put your hands behind your back, and you don’t touch the roses,” she said. “Sexuality is not just about sex, sex is just an iota of sexuality. To understand your body is to understand it is a temple of the Holy Spirit.”

She said that in caring for a rose, one mulches, waters, and prunes—but the blossoms don’t need to be cut to be appreciated. She expressed concerns not just for the girls’ physical health, but for their spiritual health as well.

“Nigeria has moral and faith crisis, but after coming to Fordham I am able to see that there are many other ways to look at life,” she said. “Morally, you cannot focus myopically.”

At the Mater center, she said she plans to teach her girls to live holistically. This was the way that the Irish nuns trained her growing up, though she didn’t realize it at the time.

In fact, she confesses that, as a girl, she found the sisters of Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of Christ very strict. But now, as a member of their order, she appreciates how the Irish nuns trained them with a focus on the uplifting of women and girls through education, though now as an indigenous order, they do compassionate work “within their own cultural values.”

“When you educate a woman you educate a nation,” she said.

Dear graduating friends of Fordham:

I am delighted to be able to address these words to you in this solemn moment of your graduation from this prestigious university. I thank Fr. McShane and his colleagues for the honor that you give me by conferring an academic degree upon me.

I want to briefly reflect with you on mercy and its wonderful ability to change hearts through kindness.

Recently the Italian philosopher, Gianni Vattimo, analyzed the impact of Pope Francis in a worldly society that is fragmented and searching for meaning. As evident in the media and elsewhere, society is currently polarized and it sometimes seems that history is walking backwards. Without a doubt we are facing what some call, “a new world” and it would seem that the old world is collapsing. What does this signify for you, dear graduates?

First of all, a territory to explore is fraught with fear and risk, but also adventure. In the twenty first century it would seem that there is nothing else to explore. But humanity continues to change; it is not static. People change. New ways of being in the world continue to be formulated. And you should be prepared for this. Territory to explore.

In the second place: Seeing humanity as it is today, interpreting in depth what is happening as a way of understanding people. Communication goes beyond the internet and the ipads. We need to speak and interpret the current language of today’s world. Language assumes a dispatcher and a recipient. If we are not in the right frequency, the recipient many times doesn’t understand us. Then we ask ourselves: How do we understand humanity if we do not know the language of today’s world? That is why we always need to learn anew.

In the third place: New opportunities. What exists are new opportunities, not only problems. Where we see problems it is best to see opportunities. People need experiences of salvation because we live in a turbulent world. You have a whole world to discover. But you also face new risks: The one who’s paralyzed in front of risks loses opportunities.  We can make our risks manageable. And it is here when we can remember the new direction that Pope Francis give us: “The Church’s primary task is to bear witness to the mercy of God and to encourage generous reactions of solidarity in order to open a future of hope. For where hope increases, energy and commitment to building a more human and just social order also grows”.

Before a culture of violence and death this is what we propose: The culture of the good. No more discrimination, no more anti-semitism, no more hatred, no more violence.

How loud the words of the Pope resonate when he held up “men and women with others and for others; true models in the service of others”. Then the Sovereign Pontiff told us something fundamental, with which I would like to conclude: “In your society, which is deeply marked by secularization, I encourage you also to be present in public debate, in all the areas where humanity is at issue, to make God’s mercy and his tenderness for every creature visible.”

Yes, dear friends, let us remain committed to work with courage and heroism for “the cause of the human being”. In this way, and only in this way, will we all exhibit the transparency of God’s mercy, mercy that is love, a love that starts at home.

To be spiritual is to live life according to the Spirit, what can be called a transcendent humanism. Transcendent humanism flows from the tradition of a Christian mysticism that can appear paradoxical. Yes, it is centered on the search of God through Jesus, but it is also centered on human experience and in the search for fraternal love. it lives in the hope for the Kingdom that will have no end, but it fully embraces the work of the Kingdom in history and in society today. Yes, it receives faith as a gift from God, faith that is irreducible to any human experience, but it also acknowledges that faith takes shape in the context of particular culture, each with its own challenges and commitments.

Transcendent humanism acknowledges that the experience of God is inseparable from commitment to all that is human, and that commitment must also be to the experience of God. Without doubt, transcendent humanism is the “place” in which the mercy of Christ is incarnate and becomes practical, in love towards brothers and sisters and in the preferential love for the poor and the suffering. It is in the world as it is that the mystical becomes incarnate, in a spirit of Christian realism based on the demands of the practice of faith and love, in commitment to our brothers and sisters, in service to the poor.

The Pope tells us that parishes and communities must “become islands of mercy in the midst of the sea of indifference.” He reminds us that a merciful heart does not mean a weak heart. Anyone who wishes to be merciful must have a strong and steadfast heart, closed to the tempter but open to God. And the mercy to which we are called embraces all of creation, which God entrusted to us so that we keep it, not exploit it or worse still, destroy it. This reminds us that we, as believers, have an obligation to care for our common home, from which we receive many homes.

The encyclical letter Laudato Si, cannot be forgotten. Yes, it cannot be forgotten. For Pope Francis, mercy is not just an abstract word, but a face that we recognize, contemplate and serve. And as such he manifested it in the Bull of Mercy which he called the Jubilee:  “Jesus of Nazareth, by his words, his actions, and his entire person reveals the mercy of God. Nothing in Him is lacking in compassion”. And then he added:  “His person is nothing but love, a love given gratuitously. The signs he works, especially in favor of sinners, the poor, the marginalized, the sick, and the suffering, are all meant to teach mercy. Everything in him speaks of mercy. Nothing in him is devoid of compassion.”

In conclusion, I congratulate you once again on your graduation. I express my best wishes to your families and to you so that this new stage of your life may be filled with mercy and that God will continue to transform your hearts to build a culture of kindness.

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