The warm, sun-soaked day began early for attendees who took part in the 13th Annual 5K Ram Run, a three-lap race around campus. By 11 a.m., grads and families began to pack the tents on Edwards Parade for pregame food and drinks. Face painters and caricature artists worked the kid-friendly family tent, and as game time approached, the Fordham cheerleaders and pep band helped lead fans to Moglia Stadium. On the field, despite a strong effort, the football Rams lost to Stony Brook 27-21, breaking a two-year streak of dramatic, come-from-behind victories at Homecoming. 

This year featured a strong turnout from Lincoln Center students, including many who helped kick off the weekend at the President’s Ball on Friday evening.  The annual formal dance, held under the Homecoming tent, drew more than 1,500 students. Meanwhile, nearly 500 recent grads gathered for dinner, dancing, and cocktails on the annual young alumni yacht cruise around lower Manhattan.

Save the date: Homecoming 2025 will be held on Saturday, Oct. 18, when the Rams take on the Dartmouth College Big Green at Rose Hill.

Undeterred by a steady rain that would turn heavy at times, alumni and families began filling the Homecoming tents on Edwards Parade at 11 a.m., two hours before kickoff, to eat and drink, reunite with old friends, and celebrate their love of Fordham.

Across the lawn, Maria Shkreli, GABELLI ’03, was attending her third Homecoming as an alumna, but the first in the family tent with her young son. “We really wanted to get the little one here this year,” she said. “We want to start planting roots.”

Doryce Hargett, a 2008 Marymount graduate, also braved the rain with her young son to attend this year’s event. “I was talking to my son about college, and I wanted to show him the Fordham experience,” she said. “I wanted him to see what you can achieve if you work hard.”

Lasting Friendships and Returns to Campus

Many in attendance were celebrating longtime friendships born out of their time at Fordham. Rich Hamm, FCRH ’71, and Ed Lambert, FCRH ’71, LAW ’75, met as undergraduates and have stayed close since, with Ed having served as the best man when Rich and Mary Hamm, GSE ’00, were married 53 years ago. While they frequently come back for athletics events and reunions—including, by their estimate, about 50 Homecomings—these alumni said they continue to be impressed by the changes on campus.

“The McShane Campus Center is beautiful,” Mary said, with Lambert adding that the campus “outclasses” any other he’s seen.

The game itself marked a special kind of Homecoming for broadcaster Connell McShane, FCRH ’99, who called the game for ESPN+. “It’s always fun to be back here,” said McShane, who got his start in broadcasting at WFUV, Fordham’s public media station, when he was an undergraduate at Rose Hill in the 1990s. “I think this is the first Fordham–Lehigh game I’ve called in 25 years,” he said with a laugh.

A Tribute to Joe Moglia, a Thrilling Victory, and ‘Lives of Integrity’

As kickoff approached, the Fordham cheerleaders and pep band amped up an already enthusiastic crowd under the tent and led them to the stadium. And Brian Kenny, GABELLI ’84, settled in with his wife and 1-year-old granddaughter near the front of the bleachers. “Traditions have gotta bear the weather,” he said. “And we’re starting a new tradition bringing her.”

Joe Moglia, a 1967 Fordham Prep and 1971 Fordham College at Rose Hill graduate, award-winning football coach, and transformational business executive, joined the players for the ringing of the Victory Bell. Fordham also honored Moglia during an on-field ceremony between the first and second quarters, when he was presented with a commemorative ball and a framed photo of the football and soccer stadium that now bears his name.

Leading up to Saturday’s gatherings in the tents and the big game, seven former student-athletes and one coach were honored at the 2023 Fordham Athletics Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Edwards Parade on Thursday evening, and on Friday night, more than 700 alumni who graduated between 2013 and 2023 participated in the annual Young Alumni Yacht Cruise, sailing in New York Harbor and along the East and Hudson rivers.

On Saturday morning, around 50 people braved the elements to take part in the annual 5K Ram Run at 9 a.m., while others joined campus walking tours.

Before the tents opened, alumni and friends also gathered in the Great Hall of the McShane Campus Center for a “Coffee and Conversation” event featuring Fordham President Tania Tetlow. She reflected on her first year as president and described alumni as “force multipliers” for the University.

“We continue to have an outsized impact on the world because of what our alumni like you achieve with the education that you got—the impact you’ve had on the world, the ways that you live lives of integrity, all of the ways that you touch society,” Tetlow said.

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From Oct. 1 to 4, hundreds of alumni, family, and friends—from as far as Germany—tuned in for an expanded series of virtual events that drew on some of the best-loved Homecoming traditions, like the 5K Ram Run and tailgate parties, and included a “pub” trivia competition, updates on academic and student life amid COVID-19, and a tribute to the 50th anniversary of a Fordham football milestone.

In addition to joining panels and discussions sponsored by the Office of Alumni Relations, Fordham graduates took to social media, where thousands viewed Homecoming Instagram stories and tweets shared via the @fordhamalumni accounts, and others used the #FordhamHomecoming20 hashtag to post their own messages, including pictures of pets and kids decked out in Fordham gear.

A Forum for FCLC

Things kicked off on Thursday evening with a panel discussion featuring two relative newcomers to the Fordham College at Lincoln Center community: Laura Auricchio, Ph.D., who became dean of the college in August 2019, and Tracyann Williams, Ph.D., who joined FCLC as assistant dean for student support and success last February.

Fordham University Alumni Association Advisory Board member Samara Finn Holland, FCLC ’03, moderated the discussion, during which the deans shared their observations about FCLC students.

“They are an amazing bunch of people,” Auricchio said. “These are students who are not only intelligent and motivated, but they’re really just decent, kind, wonderful human beings.” She recalled several instances of students greeting her when they saw her around the city.

Auricchio noted that political science, economics, and psychology are the three most popular majors among current FCLC students, and the fashion studies minor is growing particularly quickly. She said her office is focused on four areas: connecting to neighbors, enriching courses, enhancing research, and globalizing the curriculum.

Both she and Williams addressed the unique challenges faculty and students face during the pandemic, and Williams noted that part of her job is to help students acknowledge their feelings of disappointment that it’s not a typical academic year, and doing what she can to assist them.

“I am very much interested in always asking students what their needs are and not deciding for them,” she said.

Having worked at other New York City universities before arriving at FCLC, both Auricchio and Williams shared what they think makes Fordham so special.

“I feel as though it’s a unique place where students can come be part of a deeply caring, close-knit community that will support them and help them as they branch out into the city,” Auricchio said. “And to me, it’s just the best of both worlds.”

Pub Trivia at Home

Alumnus Tim Tubridy, FCRH ’99, and his brother, James Tubridy, co-owners of DJs @ Work, hosted a virtual pub trivia session on Friday night. Attendees were invited to answer 10 Fordham-themed questions, either individually or as teams.

The first question of the night delved into a bit of the University’s architectural history: “For what church were the stained-glass windows in the University church intended?” Father McShane delivered both the question and answer (St. Patrick’s Cathedral, when it was located on Mulberry Street), joking that he’d been imagining Jeopardy! theme music playing as he gave contestants time to respond.

Other fun facts unearthed during the Q&A included how many books are housed in the Fordham libraries (more than 2 million), how many acres the Lincoln Center and Rose Hill campuses encompass (8 and 85, respectively), and how many live ram mascots have lived on campus (28).

At the end of the hour-long session, three teams were tied for first place with a whopping 20,000 points each.

A Virtual 5K Ram Run

While the 5K Ram Run is usually held at Rose Hill during Homecoming weekend, this year, alumni were invited to run, jog, or walk a five-kilometer trek of their own and to share photos on social media. Runners were also encouraged to share their finishing times by taking screenshots of their running apps, and the Office of Alumni Relations will be sending prizes to those who submitted their times.

Justin LaCoursiere, FCRH ’12, posted a photo from Central Park and said, “Fordham Homecoming looks a little different this year, but I’m still taking part in some fun [virtual]activities, like the Annual 5K Ram Run.”

Academic and Student Life Amid the Pandemic

On Saturday morning, a panel of Fordham administrators and faculty discussed the continued uncertainty of COVID-19, its impact on current and prospective Fordham students, and how they’re working to build and strengthen a sense of community under the circumstances. The conversation was moderated by Michael Griffin, associate vice president for alumni relations.

J. Patrick Hornbeck, professor of theology, secretary of the Faculty Senate, and special faculty advisor to the provost for strategic planning, said that soon after Fordham canceled in-person classes and shifted to a virtual format this past March, faculty began planning to avoid such abrupt disruptions for the fall semester. That’s how Fordham developed its flexible hybrid model, which mixes online and in-person learning.

“We would provide opportunities for students to learn and for faculty to teach in several different modalities,” he said. “The idea was, we did not know how things were going to go week-by-week and month-by-month. How could we deliver [a Fordham education]regardless of the way the pandemic would play out?”

During the panel, Patricia Peek, Ph.D., dean of undergraduate admission, said that some of the changes implemented this year, such as virtual guided tours and information sessions, could become permanent to help make Fordham more accessible in the long term.

“I think, even when we’re fully on the ground, we will now always have virtual events because they’re providing so many opportunities and access for students,” she said.

Clint Ramos, head of design and production for Fordham Theatre, noted that the shift “was especially challenging for theatre because our education … is really experiential and a lot of our pedagogy is founded on the ability to gather.” But he said the program has met these challenges head-on, pointing to opportunities for creativity, like a collaborative effort he initiated with theater programs at Princeton, Georgetown, SUNY Purchase, and UMass Amherst. The One Flea Spare Project allows students to virtually attend classes at other universities and collaborate with each other on projects on multiple platforms based on themes in One Flea Spare, a 1995 play by Naomi Wallace set in a plague-ravaged London during the 17th century.

Juan Carlos Matos, assistant vice president for student affairs for diversity and inclusion, spoke about creative ways in which students have tried to maintain a sense of community, whether or not they’re studying on campus. This has included hosting socially distanced outdoor events, such as a “silent disco” on the plaza at Lincoln Center or a musical performance from the Coffey Field bleachers at Rose Hill, for an online audience and a limited number of students in person.

He also said that the pandemic has sharpened students’ focus on social justice, in particular the calls for racial equality that were revitalized this summer.

“Energy that usually is exhausted on other things was nailed into Black Lives Matter in a way where folks who have privilege are just realizing, ‘Hey, these things are happening,’ whereas folks on the margins have always experienced these things.”

Matos said this has spurred action at the University, including an anti-racism plan from Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. And he said the offices of student and multicultural affairs are continuing to offer a variety of programming to keep students engaged. One of the benefits of having virtual or hybrid events is that more students can attend.

“Sometimes it’s difficult for someone to have to choose one campus or the other or we may be offering something on one campus and not the other,” he said. “But virtually, now people can attend in any capacity.”

Shakespeare and Pop Culture

Shakespearean scholar Mary Bly, Ph.D., chair of Fordham’s English department, led a mini-class titled “Pop Romeo & Juliet” on Saturday afternoon. Attendees were encouraged to watch Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film, Romeo + Juliet, prior to the class, during which Bly delved into the afterlife of the teen duo and their famous star-crossed love.

“Sociologists have made a pretty reasonable case for the argument that Romeo and Juliet actually changed the way we think about love in the Western world, which is very interesting,” Bly said.

Joined by English professor Shoshana Enelow, Bly discussed the idea of cultural capital, looking at how the characters of Romeo and Juliet have survived and how they’ve been transformed in modern adaptations, other films, music, and advertisements. She and Enelow drew parallels to West Side Story, the Beatles, and even a Taylor Swift music video, inviting attendees to write in impressions and examples of their own using Zoom’s Q&A feature.

An Afternoon with Athletics

Fordham sports fans attended two athletics-focused virtual events on Saturday afternoon, including a conversation between Ed Kull, interim director of athletics, and Head Football Coach Joe Conlin.

While the football season, along with those of other fall sports, has been pushed back to spring 2021, winter sports like basketball are planning to get started in late November. Kull highlighted some of the work that has been done to facilities during the pandemic, noting that not having students around for games has allowed several projects to be completed earlier than expected. Among the upgrades that players, coaches, and fans will now find are a new floor for the Frank McLaughlin Family Basketball Court in Rose Hill Gym, renovations to the strength and conditioning and team medicine spaces, and new offices for football staff.

As his team prepares to play in the spring, Conlin discussed the changes to workouts and practices they’ve had to adopt in the time of COVID-19, including health monitoring, socially distanced weight training, and wearing masks under their helmets during practice. Although he and his staff are not allowed to recruit high school players in person this year, they have been talking to recruits over Zoom and reviewing videos to assess their strength and athleticism.

“It’s been challenging at times, but it’s also been a lot of fun,” he said of this new way of doing things on and off the field. “We’ll continue to make it work for as long as we have to.”

Kull noted that out of the 44 seniors across spring sports whose final season was interrupted by cancellations last spring, 19 have decided to come back for a fifth year of eligibility.

Later that afternoon, the Tubridy brothers returned to host a virtual tailgate party that featured a welcome from Father McShane, trivia, performances by the Fordham band from the Coffey Field bleachers, and video updates from departments and groups like the Fordham University Alumni Association, the Center for Community Engaged Learning, and the Mimes and Mummers Alumni Association.

Kull and Conlin also returned for a pre-recorded video from the gravesite of Fordham graduate and NFL coaching legend Vince Lombardi, FCRH ’37, an appropriate lead-in to the tailgate’s final portion: a roundtable discussion with nine players from Fordham’s 1970 football team, which defeated Georgetown 50 years ago during that year’s homecoming game, just weeks after Lombardi’s death.

Moderated by WFUV’s Emmanuel Berbari, a Fordham College at Rose Hill senior, the players recalled the dominant ground game displayed by the Rams in their 39-17 win over the Hoyas, led by Eric Dadd’s 235 rushing yards and three touchdowns. Kevin Sherry, GABELLI ’70, who played offensive tackle, noted that Georgetown had beaten Fordham the previous year, and the Rams were looking for revenge.

Perhaps an even greater motivation for the team was the emotional pregame scene, when Lombardi’s widow, Marie, his brother Joseph, and the remaining members of Fordham’s “Seven Blocks of Granite” offensive line from Lombardi’s playing days honored the Fordham and NFL legend, who had died of colon cancer on September 3. The 1970 season also marked the return of varsity football to Fordham.

Peter “Pino” Carlesimo, FCRH ’71, the team’s starting quarterback, was among the panelists. “I think the importance of the game can be summed up very easily when I when I looked at that film and I saw my uncle Pete [Carlesimo, FCRH ’40, Fordham’s athletic director at the time] escorting Mrs. Lombardi off the field and tears coming down her eyes,” he said. “It was probably the biggest game I played in my career.”

Closing with Centeredness and Prayer

On Sunday morning, Carol Gibney, associate director of campus ministry for spiritual and pastoral ministries and director of spiritual life, leadership, and service, led a session focusing on “integrating Ignatian spirituality with the practice of yoga.” During the 45-minute practice, Gibney used breathwork to break down the word “grace,” infusing the ideas of gratitude, reflection, affirmation, centeredness, and enthusiasm and excitement into the yoga flow.

The virtual—but still communal—Homecoming weekend came to a close with a livestream of Mass from University Church, concelebrated by Father McShane and Damian O’Connell, S.J., alumni chaplain.

—Additional reporting by Kelly Kultys and Sierra McCleary-Harris

Stovall arrived at Fordham on July 1 from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), where he was dean of the humanities division and distinguished professor of history. Before arriving at UCSC in 2015, he served as dean of the undergraduate division of letters and science at the University of California, Berkeley.

During the town hall, which was introduced by F. Jay Breyer, Ph.D., GSAS ’81, chair of the Dean’s Leadership Committee, and moderated by committee member Immac “Casey” Thampoe, Ph.D., J.D., FCRH ’80, GSAS ’82, LAW ’94, Stovall said he was attracted to the strong sense of community at Fordham, the University’s location in New York City, and the idea of cura personalis, or “care of the whole person,” which is central to Fordham’s academic mission.

As dean of GSAS, Stovall is the chief academic officer of a school that offers degrees in more than 20 different fields of study. He said his priorities include plans to promote student-faculty collaboration, work closely with alumni to strengthen career and mentorship networks, focus on support systems for students through counseling and advising, emphasize job placement both within and outside of academia, and make sure faculty and students know that the administration “has their back.”

To learn what that kind of support means for graduates, in mid-July, Stovall wrote to GSAS alumni and asked them to complete a brief survey to let him know “what you need and want from your alma mater.” Based on the responses to that survey, Stovall related, many GSAS graduates are eager to reengage or stay involved with the school, and they are particularly interested in institutional anti-racism efforts. Along those lines, Stovall said GSAS and Fordham as a whole need to look beyond the gates of the University to a deeper engagement with the community, and as he stated in the letter to alumni, “examine the dead weight of racism in our lives and the best ways to free ourselves from it.”

Although Stovall will not be teaching any courses this academic year, he said he hopes to teach a graduate seminar in the near future. He earned his Ph.D. in modern European/French history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and has authored 10 books and numerous articles in the field of modern French history, specializing in transnational history, labor, colonialism, and race. His latest book, White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea, will be released by Princeton University Press in 2021.

Asked about the common research ground between him and Fordham College at Lincoln Center Dean Laura Auricchio, who holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University in art history and archaeology with a specialty in 18th-century France, Stovall joked that it was no coincidence.

“No one makes a better dean than a French historian.”

The day began with 75 hardy souls taking part in the annual Ram Run, which sent runners on a 5K loop around the campus.

While they passed beneath the boughs of stately elm trees lining the campus, other revelers passed beneath the arches of Rose Hill’s Southern Boulevard entrance, heading to the parking lot where they set up for tailgate parties. The lot drew fans of both Fordham and the College of the Holy Cross, whose Crusaders ultimately won the Homecoming matchup 49 to 27.

Joe Jordan, GABELLI ’74, a Fordham Football Hall of Fame inductee who received the 2019 Mara Family Award, joined former teammate John Lumelleau, FCRH ’74 at the lot. Jordan was a freshman when football was reinstated as a Division I varsity program in 1970, after it was stopped in 1954 and revived as a club in the 1960s and then a Division III team in the NCAA.

“They brought back varsity on a shoestring, really,” said Lumelleau, who is also a member of the Fordham University Board of Trustees. Still, there was excitement on campus for the program, particularly a game their freshman year against Georgetown, soon after legendary coach Vince Lombardi, FCRH ’37, passed away.

“At halftime, they had the six surviving Seven Blocks of Granite,” Jordan recalled, citing the nickname given to Fordham’s fearsome linemen, including Lombardi. Wellington Mara “[current co-owner of the New York Giants]. was there, Marie Lombardi was there. There was no Lombardi Center—that’s when they dedicated it.”

The pair and many of their teammates still get together every year as a part of the “Rams of the ’70s” group that Lumelleau, a 2015 Walsh Family Award winner, helped start.

Reuniting Under the Big Tent

In the center of campus, beside the field where the Holy Cross Crusaders would face off with the Fordham Rams for the 57th time, several thousand alumni, students, families, and friends flocked to massive tents on Edwards Parade for burgers, pulled chicken, and libations. Several tables offered information about various alumni affinity groups, while the Fordham University Alumni Association (FUAA) collected four boxes of goods that attendees donated for POTS, a nonprofit that helps individuals facing poverty in the Bronx.

Outside the tent, Giant Jenga games lured guests on the west side of the parade, while face painting, a bouncy castle, wall climbing, and corn hole enticed families by the steps of Keating Hall.

Elsewhere on campus, members of the Mimes and Mummers Alumni Association celebrated their annual “Collins-coming” at Collins Auditorium, and former Fordham Law School Assistant Dean Robert J. Reilly, FCRH ’72, LAW ’75, guided a group of 30 on a walking tour of the campus titled Hidden in Plain Sight: Discover the Jesuit Presence at Rose Hill. Among the tidbits he shared was the fact that the statue of St. Ignatius of Loyola next to Hughes Hall was commissioned by Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, who requested that the founder of the Jesuits be depicted facing directly up at the heavens.

“If you Google St. Ignatius of Loyola, you will not find that except for one place. This is a very, very unusual statue,” he said.

A Welcoming Community

Seated at one of the blue tables in the tent reserved for Marymount College alumnae was Teresita Abay-Krueger, MC ’80, who studied biology and chemistry and went on to work at IBM. For several years, she served on the Marymount alumnae board.

“Fordham has been a very welcoming community to the Marymount alumnae … You’ve really been cheerleaders for [our]  legacy in many respects. And we not only appreciate it, but we respect that,” she said.

“It’s just been a natural melding of the two communities. And what better place to have it than Homecoming, where we get to celebrate a nice football game on a beautiful campus with plenty to eat and drink?”

A Bond Among Jesuit Schools

The event also drew families for whom loyalties between the Rams and the Crusaders were split. Bob and Rose Shea, natives of West Hartford, Connecticut, who graduated from the College of Holy Cross in 1985 and 1986, respectively, were sporting dark purple garb, while their daughter Fiona Shea, FCRH ’19, wore a hat that said simply, “Bronx.” Rose said they love the camaraderie between alumni of Jesuit schools. She’s also confessed to being obsessed with New York Botanical Garden, and noted that they became members during Fiona’s freshman year. Arthur Avenue is a must-stop for them every time they visit.

“Being from Connecticut, we’re more familiar with Boston, and of course we’re familiar with New York, but having Fiona here, it opened a whole new world to us,” she said.

A Time for Families

Multiple generations of Rams took part in the day’s festivities. Lynn and Ryan Flaherty, both FCRH ’00, watched their children Nolan, 9, Reagan, 7, and Ainsley, 5, take their turns on the bouncy castles; they said there was never a question that they’d make the drive from Amityville, New York, for the day.

“We love bringing the kids here, and showing them where mom and dad went to school,” said Lynn. “They really do try to do something for the kids. Ryan’s parents join us, so we make it a big family thing.”

Jerry Breslin, FCRH ’59, likewise said he treasured the memories of his time on campus. He started returning after his son, John, graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1991. When he was an undergraduate, he said, he befriended the priest who was then the dean of men, and the priest officiated at Breslin’s wedding. Most of his former classmates had good friends who were Jesuits, he said.

“In the springtime, after dinner we’d come out and play softball. There’d be a hundred Jesuits standing around, watching the game. You’d make an error or something, and they’d yell, ‘Breslin, you’re just as bad at softball as you are in the classroom,’” he said, laughing.

Chris Healy, on the other hand, never graduated from Fordham, but nonetheless feels at home at Rose Hill. He’s been coming here since he was seven, when his father, Richard Healy, FCRH ’50 and uncle, Stan Bloomer, FCRH, ’50, brought him to his first homecoming.

“My family has such a history here,” said Healy, wearing a Fordham jacket more than three decades old. “To me, it’s tradition and history that embellishes this University.”

His daughter, Brittany Healy, GABELLI ’17, was celebrating in the main tent, too. Growing up, she and her two older brothers frequently watched football games at the Rose Hill campus. Years later, she majored in business administration and marketing at Fordham—just like her grandfather.

“My friends and I always talk about how Fordham is really like no other place on the planet,” said Healy, who is now an account executive at a public relations agency. “The community feel and the love that we have at this college is just different than anywhere else.”

For self-proclaimed “Fordham fanatic” Maggie Wimmer, FCRH ’16, this year’s homecoming had extra resonance.

“I love coming to homecoming. Whenever I get the chance to come back, I really enjoy it. And now that he’s in the program, it’s even more of a reason,” she said, motioning to her boyfriend, Matthew Glaser, a Ph.D. student in philosophy at Fordham.

“I haven’t even been to my undergraduate homecoming before, so this is a new experience for me,” said Glaser, who lives near Arthur Avenue.

Wimmer said she loves running into people she knew at Fordham, even if they were just acquaintances at the time.

“When you see them, it’s so exciting to relive those memories. It’s like you all have something to come back to,” said Wimmer, who majored in psychology at Fordham and now works in public health outreach at Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan.

“When we were graduating and Father McShane said, ‘This is your home, stay long and visit often’—you just connect with that, because when you walk on campus, it feels like home, like a breath of fresh air.”

View more photos from Homecoming.

Taylor Ha, Kelly Kultys, and Nicole LaRosa contributed reporting.

“Sister Mary was much loved at Fordham, and by everyone who knew her,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “She was a guiding light to our alumni, especially the Marymount alumnae, and of course a dear friend and confidant to her fellow sisters of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary. The Fordham family mourns with Sister Mary’s loved ones and friends, and with the many alumni who knew her company, our grief leavened with the knowledge that she surely rests with the Lord today.”

Sister Mary was known for her service to others. As Marymount alumnae chaplain at Fordham, she tended to the spiritual, social, and educational needs of her fellow alumnae. She went wherever she was needed to support those in crisis, traveling as far as Zambia and Zimbabwe. And she did it all with warmth, humor, and patience, said her colleagues and loved ones. 

“In this day and age, we’re quick to find faults in people,” said Michael E. Griffin, Fordham’s associate vice president for alumni relations and executive director of the alumni association. “Mary was somebody who always found the good.”

Sister Mary, previously known as Sister M. Gailhac, was born on August 6, 1940, in New York City to Carl and Florence Heineman Heyser.

As a child, she was shy, athletic, and “a bit of a tomboy,” said her older sister, Sally Heyser Ryan, MC ’58. They lived on the Long Island Sound, where Sister Mary enjoyed swimming and playing tennis. When they grew up and Ryan had five children of her own—and, eventually, 14 grandchildren—Sister Mary was very fond of them, Ryan said. 

“She was my only sister,” Ryan said. “I’m going to miss talking to her weekly and hearing about all the good work she was doing.” 

In 1962, Sister Heyser graduated from Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York, where she received a bachelor’s degree in social studies/science and economics. At age 24, she entered the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary in Tarrytown. She spent the next four decades working in ministries across the globe, from her home state to the African continent. From 2003 to 2009, she served as a provincial councillor of the Eastern American Province of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary. 

From 2009 to 2018, she served as the Marymount alumnae chaplain in the Development and University Relations (DAUR) division. 

“She would always start the day by coming to our section of the office and saying hi to everybody,” said Shannon Quinn, associate director of alumni relations. “She would bring up something or other that she knew about you and check in on you.” 

Quinn recalled Sister Mary’s great collection of “snazzy” floral blazers, her opportune sense of humor, and her penchant for Planter’s Punch cocktails. She said Sister Mary taught her three lessons: to assume good intentions in others, incorporate joy in all things, and lead a balanced life. 

“The best thing—and something that probably a lot of people would say about Mary—is that knowing her made you a better person. Because you couldn’t be around Mary … without taking to heart her kindness of spirit,” said Quinn. 

She was a “bright light” who loved the color pink and saw the positive side of things, said Jane Bartnett, MC ’76, former president of the Marymount Alumnae Board. At alumnae board meetings, she delivered thought-provoking prayers that were relevant to world events. And she was a “healing factor” for many Marymount alumnae, including those who were still unhappy that the college, located on the Hudson River in Tarrytown, had to close in 2007.

“She really helped bring Marymount into the Fordham family,” Bartnett said. 

At Fordham, she delivered the opening prayers for many big events, including 2015 Commencement and a Washington, D.C. alumni chapter event honoring Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor that same year. At the 2015 Marymount Founder’s ceremony at the Rose Hill campus, the school’s alumnae board honored her with the Mother Butler Leadership award in honor of her service. 

Sister Mary’s service extended beyond Fordham. In a 2019 story posted by her religious order, she described what it was like to assist refugees at the Annunciation House, a volunteer-run sanctuary in El Paso, Texas. She drove to local bus terminals and an airport, where she helped refugees receive their tickets. She made peanut butter jelly sandwiches, packed food bags for the refugees, and served meals on site. Although she wasn’t fluent in Spanish, she struck up conversations through a Google translation app. Sometimes, she worked as long as 11 hours. 

“Mary was a woman who was passionately committed to ministry. She was willing to go anywhere and do anything,” said Catherine Patten, R.S.H.M, MC ’61, a fellow sister and a friend. “She had this great sense of mission and great care for the poor, immigrants, and people who are most in need, wherever she was.” 

Sister Mary also spearheaded grassroots efforts against human trafficking. She was featured in the book If Nuns Ruled the World: Ten Sisters on a Mission (Open Road Media, 2014) that described how she, along with six sisters from other New York congregations, formed a powerful coalition in 2005. 

“[She] became the glue for the group that would be known as NY-CRC-STOP: New York Coalition of Religious Congregations to Stop Trafficking of People,” wrote the book’s author, Jo Piazza, an award-winning reporter and editor. 

The group organized two Fordham conferences on human trafficking. Through the STOP Coalition, she helped raise funds for LifeWay Network to open its first safe house and assisted in opening two more safe houses in the New York City region. She served on the LifeWay Board for eight years. 

Last year, she moved to Immokalee, Florida, to begin a new ministry in immigration advocacy. Shortly before her death, she returned to the Marymount Convent in Tarrytown, where she received hospice care.

“She brought so much strength and joy to her role in building the bond between the Marymount College and Fordham University communities,” said Samantha MacInnis, MC ’00, current president of the Marymount Alumnae Board, in an email. “It was impossible not to feel that love and commitment when you were around her.”

She is survived by her sister, numerous nieces and nephews, and the members of her religious community. 

All services will be held at the Marymount Convent Chapel, 32 Warren Avenue, Tarrytown, NY. The wake is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 6, from 3:30 to 7:30 p.m. Vigil service begins at 7:30 pm. The Mass of Christian Burial will be Thursday, Nov. 7, at 10:30 a.m. The burial will be at Mount Calvary Cemetery in White Plains. In lieu of flowers, gifts in her name may be made to Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, 50 Wilson Park Drive, Tarrytown, NY, 10591.

“It was like seeing the bat signal,” said Kulik, who quickly alerted his college roommate Tom Penna, FCRH ’93.

For three years Kulik and Penna were roommates at Rose Hill, and neither told the other they were gay. It wasn’t until a few years later that they came out to each other.

“It was a difficult time; I was very scared of AIDS,” said Penna. “It was a different world back then.”

Kulik and Penna’s not-coming-out story was a familiar one to most of the alumni gathered, even recent grads from the Class of 2013, and certainly to those from 50 years ago.

Jim Gifford, FCRH ’68, and Tom Reilly, FCRH ’68, shared a room at Fordham for several years. But just like Kulik and Penna, neither knew the other was gay until a few years after graduation.

“It was all very closeted,” said Gifford. “We had our suspicions, but we never mentioned it.”

Before coming to his Golden Jubilee this year, Reilly said he contacted the organizers in the Office of Alumni Relations to see if there was would be an LGBTQ gathering and was happy to find out there would be.

“It occurred to me that that there might be gay people on campus and there’d be an organization, so I sent an email and someone responded and said, ‘Yeah, we’ll be here!’”

It was a far cry from the late 1960s when coming out of the closet wasn’t really an option.

“The atmosphere was very different, all men wearing suit jackets to classes—we were very stiff upper lip,” recalled Gifford. “So, coming back here and seeing that there’s a gay alliance, I thought of course there is! It’s quite a change that makes me see Fordham in a new light.”

Most agreed that Pope Francis has created a more spiritually sensitive environment for Catholics generally.

“When I heard Pope Francis say, ‘Who am I to judge?’ it was a wonderful moment,” said Gifford. “I thought, ‘How wonderful,’ but being that he was a Jesuit, I knew we were in for new times.”

For outgoing Rainbow Rams President Stephen Erdman, seeing LGBTQ Golden and Silver Rams celebrating with his Class of 2013 was a bittersweet culmination of his brief tenure at the two-year-old group. He said that finding out that friends were gay after you leave campus is still a common occurrence.

“It still happens, which is why I think it’s important that we have these groups, because there are still people who feel that they can’t come out on campus,” said Erdman. “But college is an important time to meet each other and be true to ourselves.”

From the Vietnam War through the AIDS crisis, many said the bucolic Rose Hill campus often acted as a buffer and respite from the harsh realities of the day.

“It was very much a tale of two cities, New York was great place to be a young gay kid, but then you come to campus and it was almost like you were living a different life,” said Kulik.

But he was quick to add that not coming out at Fordham was his choice. He recalled that as early as the late 1980s there was a lesbian and gay alliance. Still, he didn’t feel the campus culture was accepting.

“I don’t think Fordham was ready for that yet,” he said.

He added that being gay was only part of his identity. He “had a blast” on campus and was very involved as member of FUEMS and The Ram.

“I love Fordham, I was like Mr. Fordham for a while, but I didn’t feel coming out was an option back then—but this,” he said, gesturing to the crowd, “This is fantastic!”

The parade drew 250 members of the Fordham community, whose marching performance earned Fordham first place in the Universities category.

Accepting the award on the University’s behalf before the foundation’s quarterly meeting at the Lincoln Center campus were Tom Dunne, vice president for administration, and Shannon Hirrel, FCRH ‘10, assistant director of alumni relations, NYC programming.

Fordham’s deep ties to the parade will continue, as Michael J. Dowling, GSS ‘74, president and chief executive officer of Northwell Health, will serve as Grand Marshall for the parade in 2017.

A native of Limerick and a former professor of social policy and assistant dean at Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Services, Dowling is believed to be the first head of a hospital to lead the 255-year-old parade.

For the last six years, she’s also been a bridge between Marymount College, where she graduated in 1962, and Fordham, which acquired Marymount in 2002. As the University’s current Marymount chaplain, Sister Heyser tends to the spiritual, social, and educational needs of the college’s alumnae.

[She has also been called on to deliver the opening prayers for the 2015 Commencement ceremonies at Rose Hill and for a D.C. alumni chapter’s evening honoring Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor in September 2015.]

On Dec. 6 at a Marymount Founder’s ceremony at the Rose Hill campus, the school’s Alumnae Board will honor Sister Heyser and Sister Margaret Ellen Flannelly, RSHM, with the Mother Butler Leadership award.

Both women have served in the chaplain ministry: Sister Heyser since November 2009 and Sister Flannelly, a former Marymount professor and academic dean, from 2007 to 2009.

Sister Heyser never held administrative posts at the college, but whether she is working against human trafficking or on behalf of the Marymount family, she has always had a knack for making connections.

At Fordham, she makes connections with the Marymount alumnae via monthly newsletters, retreats at Cormaria House, and communications with women who attended the school that Mother Marie Joseph Butler founded in 1907. Part of the job, she said, is listening to alumnae who are still unhappy that the college, located on the Hudson River in Tarrytown, had to close in 2007.

“I listen, because it’s a journey of sadness they have. But I say, look at other women’s colleges that have closed. They have no place to gather, no place to have reunions, no place to have opportunities for educational talks,” she said.

“So we’re very lucky in that sense to have an institution that’s welcoming us and allowing us to be part of the big family.”

When Marymount closed, the alumnae also board started a legacy fund that grants scholarships to Fordham women who have a family member who attended an RSHM school.

Being part of a large Jesuit institution has also given her a platform from which to expand her passion of fighting human trafficking, which afflicts 21 million people around the globe.

She’s on the Coalition of Religious Congregations to Stop Trafficking of Persons (CRC-STOP), which organized two Fordham conferences on the subject. Through the STOP Coalition, she has helped raise funds for LifeWay Network to open its first safe house and to work to open two more safe houses in New York City area. She served on the LifeWay Board for eight years and just recently left that position.

Sister Heyser said the subject resonates deeply with the women in her order. One of the first actions Father Jean Gailhac took when he founded the order with Mother Saint Jean in 1849 was build a shelter for prostitutes and an orphanage for children.

“I look at things that need to be done and try to do them. I may not stay with them forever [as]I invite other people to join me and move on to something else.

“I can’t leave human trafficking issue though. It’s still such a terrible crime,” she said.

Awareness of the problem has been growing, she said, and authorities are beginning to finally focus less on prostitutes and more on johns. But challenges still remain, she said. One challenge is that many people can’t accept the possibility that trafficking could be happening right in front of them.

“It’s that attitude, of ‘Nothing like that happens in my neighborhood, it can’t happen in my building.’ So how do you become alert? You look for signs that persons may not really be in charge of their own lives,” she said.

“They don’t have any papers; they’re not even sure where they live. Maybe there are a lot of men going into a house, or there are a lot of women there. Why are there so many young people there? Just begin to ask the questions.”

If you do see something suspicious, call the National Human Trafficking Resource Center at (888) 373-7888.

It’s a knotty problem that taps into troubling issues of economics, sexuality, and psychology, and fighting it is firmly in line with the teachings of Jesus and of course Mother Butler, she said.

“When Mother Butler founded Marymount, she told the students they should be focusing out to the world ‘You should be somebody who speaks out in society, and knows what’s going on,’” she said.

But for current leadership at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), the question to start asking is: Why wouldn’t an English scholar be the perfect fit for such a job?

This year GSAS launched a new professional development initiative called GSAS Futures. Funded by GSAS and the Graduate Student Association and staffed by graduate students, the program aims to prepare GSAS students for innovative careers after Fordham—whether or not these careers are academic.

The Futures program pivots on the idea that an advanced degree in the arts and sciences is intrinsically valuable. Its philosophy is a unique response to an ongoing national conversation about the “usefulness” of graduate studies, especially in the humanities, relative to disciplines such as science and technology.

According to GSAS Futures, graduate students do not need to justify their training by recasting it in more “marketable” terms; rather, students need to harness and articulate their distinct expertise.

“It’s not about ‘translating’ skills. It’s about owning the skills,” said James Van Wyck, an English doctoral candidate and GSAS Graduate Student Professionalization facilitator.

“It’s saying, ‘This is my skill set, and it prepares me to do many things well.’ The idea is to identify what those skills are and how they match up with the needs of a nonprofit organization, or a government agency, or any of the careers our alumni have entered.”

For an English scholar like Tinker, this would mean underscoring skills such as being able to grasp complex material quickly or distilling a vision for multiple audiences, Van Wyck said.

“With GSAS Futures, we want to ensure that if Nathan Tinker had wanted that career all along, we would’ve been preparing him from the moment he arrived on campus.”

“Alternative” academic careers

Historically, graduate arts and sciences programs have often demurred from encouraging students to consider careers outside of academia, said Interim Dean of GSAS Eva Badowska, PhD. However, the data on actual students outcomes have consistently told a different story.

“About 50 percent of graduate students nationally go on to nonacademic careers,” Badowska said. “We have lived in a kind of imaginary space believing that only a small proportion of PhD holders end up in nonacademic careers, whereas there has always been a substantial number of PhDs who do so.”

Graduate schools are slowly starting to recognize this reality by offering more robust career preparation, Badowska said. At Fordham, this recognition has manifested through initiatives such as the newly formed Liberal Arts Task Force and now GSAS Futures.

“Preparation for academic careers happens beautifully in academic departments. But the graduate school can provide something in addition to that, which is the more professional side—for instance, CV and résumé writing, networking, digital presence,” she said.

“We’re giving students the space to think about and articulate the high-level skills they have away from the particular academic field in which they already practice them.”

Anna Beskin, an English doctoral candidate, regularly attends GSAS Futures events. One of the program’s greatest benefits, she said, is the opportunity to gather with peers and share thoughts about graduate training and life after Fordham. These discussions have helped Beskin and her classmates home in on the skills and qualities they have to offer the professional world.

“Being good at close reading, at analyzing, at seeing various perspectives of the same issue serves me well in daily life, not just in academics,” Beskin said. “I see that with my own [undergraduate]students, too. Every time we push their understanding of a text, or complicate something that seemed simple originally, it opens up a different path of thinking. It’s exciting.

“I wish we didn’t have to defend [graduate study], but I feel we sometimes do. So it’s good to be self-aware enough to at least be able to speak about it from your own perspective.”

Data mining

In addition to organizing professionalization events for GSAS students, the Futures program is also working with campus partners such as Alumni Relations to collect extensive data on graduate student outcomes. The goal is to both analyze where alumni have ended up and follow up with current students after graduating.

There’s more to the data analysis than simply observing outcomes, Van Wyck said. It is also important to dig deeper to understand the steps graduates took that led them to the jobs that seem incongruous—like Tinker’s path to biotechnology.

“The data is beginning to tell us a story that many people still have trouble believing. Yes, many of our students go on to nonacademic careers, but they don’t go on to failed careers,” he said.

“The clichés circulated in the media about the PhDs who go on to work at Starbucks are flat-out wrong, especially for Fordham graduate students. They don’t take into account the complexity of the lives our students lead after they graduate and the interesting careers they build for themselves.”

“We need to jettison the idea that there is something incongruous about going from being an English scholar to the director of New York Bio,” Van Wyck said.

Nearly 100 alumni—representing all 10 schools of Fordham University—filled a room at the Roosevelt Hotel on May 1 for Fordham at the Forefront of Business Ethics: How to Make Smart Trust Decisions and Create High-Trust Organizations.

“We are at an all-time low in trust in Congress; trust in CEO credibility is at an all-time low; trust in banks—or restoring trust in banks—is at an all-time low,” Hurley said. “We have a trustworthiness problem.”

Low trust creates a snowball effect of subsequent challenges for businesses, Hurley said, including higher employee turnover, lower profits, less information sharing, and less innovation. “Companies become dysfunctional.”

The good news is that when these trust violations are “systemically produced, we can understand how to prevent them, how to detect them, and how to manage them,” said Hurley. “There will always be bad apples and rogue employees. That’s not the problem; the problem is bad barrels.”

Hurley offered a three-part solution: become better trust decision makers, develop more trustworthy leaders, get those trustworthy leaders to engineer trust into their organizations.

How can trustworthiness be assessed and built? Pulling from his book The Decision to Trust: How Leaders Create High-Trust Organizations (Jossey-Bass, 2012), Hurley outlined six factors: similarity, alignment of interests, benevolent concern, capability of competence, predictability and integrity, and communication. High-trust leaders, he asserted, are transparent, dependable, and care for others.

Some companies are setting the standard for trustworthiness, Hurley said, like Zappos, the SAS Institute, and GE, “by creating value within their organizations. All high-trust organizations are value-driven companies. All of these values—competence, integrity—can be embedded into companies and leaders.”

Hurley said Fordham is contributing to the solution through its Consortium for Trustworthy Organizations, which he directs and which the Schools of Business founded in August 2012 to provide research, tools, and solutions for leaders to build trustworthy organizations.

“We care as a Jesuit university about producing leaders that are ethical and trustworthy, and making the world a better place. In some ways, a lot of the Jesuit philosophy is encapsulated in this notion of trust and being trustworthy and benevolent; those things that are essential in the values at Fordham,” Hurley said. “Hopefully you’re agents of that.”

The Office of Alumni Relations hosts several Forefront events throughout the year in the New York City metro area and around the country, highlighting Fordham faculty members’ expertise in such areas as elections and campaigns, sustainability, and healthcare reform.

– Rachel Buttner