More than 1,300 people joined the Fordham University Alumni Association at Yankee Stadium to watch the Twins squeak out a 4-3 victory over the Bronx Bombers on a night that began with a pregame reception for alumni at Yankee Tavern on 161st Street, continued with the distribution of special-edition, Fordham-branded Yankees jerseys inside the gate, and featured no shortage of Rams apparel and block Fs mixed in with the pinstripes and famous interlocking “NY” logo of the Yankees.

Some in the Fordham contingent were seated in right field, just below the Yankee Stadium “Judge’s Chambers” section and a baseball’s toss away from the super-slugging Aaron Judge himself. Among them was the University’s new president, Tania Tetlow, who attended with her husband and daughter and paid a pre-game visit to the press level, where she met with broadcasters Michael Kay FCRH ’82, and Justin Shackil, FCRH ’09, as well as Greg Colello, FCRH ’07, senior director of scoreboard and video production at Yankee Stadium.

“It’s clear that Fordham loyalty runs deep,” said Tetlow on the strong turnout from Fordham grads. “It’s so exciting to know how much Fordham alumni want to come together and to be at the other heart of the Bronx, Yankee Stadium.”

‘So Much Fordham Spirit Up in the Bronx’

It wasn’t Tetlow’s first game in the Bronx: She said her family had taken one in earlier in the summer, when they first arrived in New York. “We got our requisite gear and hats and started training our daughter, Lucy, on the joy of baseball,” she said. The family’s allegiances had been up for grabs because their former home, New Orleans, doesn’t have a big-league team. But Tetlow said their rooting interests are settled now: “We are fully committed to the Yankees.”

Fordham trustee Kim Bepler said she was excited that large groups could once again gather for “fantastic” events like this. “People want to be with people, and what’s better than going to Yankee Stadium?” she said. “And part of the joy of this is also accompanying our new president. So I get to see her cheer on the Yankees with her family.”

Samara Finn Holland, FCLC ’03, a member of the Fordham University Alumni Association Advisory Board, also praised the outing’s large turnout.

“I think it’s amazing,” she said. “It’s so great to see so much maroon and so much Fordham spirit up in the Bronx. And I think it’s really important as Fordham continues to unify all of its schools to have an event like this, where you have alumni from all the undergraduate colleges, as well as the graduate schools, all be able to come together and then celebrate.”

A Ram on the Mound, Camaraderie in the Stands

The Fordham grads in attendance got to see one of their own on the field: Greg Weissert, GABELLI ’18, who made his big-league debut on August 25, becoming the first Fordham grad to play for the Yankees since Johnny Murphy in 1946.

Weissert’s appearance in the Fordham Night game marked the seventh outing of his rookie season, in which he’s shown off deceptive sinkers and sliders, as well as a wicked two-seam fastball. A day after picking up a win with an efficient three-pitch outing to improve his record in relief to 3-0, Weissert entered in the eighth, giving up a home run that would prove to be the difference in the game.

But while the outcome of the game wasn’t what the Yankees fans in the Fordham group were hoping for, the night was about more than the result on the scoreboard.

Steve O’Dowd FCRH ’78, said he and his wife had been planning to come up to the New York area from the Jersey Shore for a wedding the weekend after the game. But when they heard about the alumni outing, they extended their trip (and added a pre-game detour to Arthur Avenue).

“I actually became a Yankees fan starting around the time I went to Fordham,” said O’Dowd. “Prior to that, I was a Mets fan, believe it or not. We’d cut classes and come to a lot of games. Thurman Munson was my hero; that’s why I have this number [15] on my jersey.”

Debbie Myllek, FCRH ’90, another former Mets fan who switched sides upon arriving at Fordham, said her family jumped at the opportunity to bring two generations of alumni to the event.

“We’re Yankee fans and massive Fordham fans,” she said. “My husband and I met at Fordham; I was a sportswriter on The Ram and he was my editor. Now both of our kids go to Fordham. For our friend group, we try to make sure we all sit in the same section, and now my son and his friend started doing the same. It’s really nice.”

—Joe DeLessio, FCLC ’06

The event was the third in a series, hosted by the Office of Alumni Relations in partnership with the Office of Undergraduate Admission, designed to appeal to Fordham graduates as well as newly admitted undergraduate students and their families.

Here are some of the stories Fordham alumni shared.

Learning to Be Flexible

Before the pandemic hit New York City in March 2020, Javier Morgado, GABELLI ’06, had never produced a TV show from home. Morgado, the executive producer of CNN’s 11 a.m. weekday show At This Hour with Kate Bolduan, said he remembered being sent home on a Friday in mid-March, unsure of how he and his team would pull off their next show.

“I remember … getting a note from the president of CNN saying, starting on Monday, I need you to do your show from home and figure it out. We’ve never done that,” he said. “Adjusting to change is part of reality in the business of entertainment and news.”

It’s something Morgado said he had to do as a graduate student at Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business.

“I started grad school in January of ’03, and America went to war in Iraq in March of ’03, so I was barely eight weeks in and I worked on the international desk at NBC, and now I was faced with being a part-time business student, needing to tell my professors that I can’t go to class because we’re at war,” he said.

Morgado said that his professors were extremely willing work with him to help him make it through graduate school.

“I actually found all of my professors beyond accommodating—they completely understood what I did,” he said. “Most of the other students in my classes were finance people or people that were marketers and accounting types, so [they were]like, ‘OK, we get it. You’re the news guy. No problem.’ And we found ways to work around it.”

Samara Finn Holland, FCLC ’03, senior vice president at Kaplow Communications, said that Fordham taught her practical life skills that help her remain flexible in a changing work environment, something she tells people to this day when they ask her about what she learned in school.

“I learned how to problem solve. I learned how to ask questions. I learned how to critically think. I learned skills that I’m applying every single day, no matter what type of project … I’m working on,” she said.

Thinking Creatively

Amen Igbinosun, GABELLI ’10, an actor, producer, and teacher at California State University in Los Angeles, had been directing a play in March 2020, but COVID-19 caused that project to end abruptly. He said lessons he learned at Fordham helped him get through a difficult time.

“I was upset and quite concerned, but at the same time, people were getting sick—I had members of my family get sick, so I was a lot more concerned about other things during that time period,” he said. “But I do think that one of the great things … about Fordham is that they don’t teach you how to be a cog in the machine—you know, just shuffling papers. I was able to think outside the box.”

He said the pandemic gave him a chance to turn back to personal projects he is passionate about, such as telling stories of the African diaspora in the United States.

“I was able to engage my community,” said Igbinosun, who was born in Nigeria and grew up in Rahway, New Jersey. “I was able to continue engaging my craft, continue to stay afloat during this time of uncertainty.”

Managing Compassionately

For Morgado, who got his MBA from Fordham, the past year has made him think back to a class he took with James A.F. Stoner, Ph.D., called “Management, Spirituality, and Religion.”

“We’re [usually]taught to manage by looking at profit and loss statements and bottom lines,” but Stoner’s course focused on the benefits of “managing with compassion and heart, and understanding that people are human,” he said. “That was never more tested than in the last year.”

Morgado said he had to communicate uncertainty to the members of his team and help them deal with their fears about getting sick and working during a pandemic.

“How do you deal with all that? I would say that the backbone of all that was birthed in that classroom, and little did I know 15 years later, it would play out with a global pandemic while I was managing my own show,” he said. “But Fordham made me ready.”

Learning from Your Connections

Besides learning from her professors, Zubi Ahmed, FCRH ’12, a writer, comedian, filmmaker, and host of Kutti Gang, a live comedy show featuring South Asian performers based in Brooklyn, said that learning from her classmates at Fordham really helped her in her professional and personal life.

Ahmed said she met a fellow student through Fordham’s Commuting Students Association who said that he tried to reflect daily on what was happening to him and take notes on it each day. That lesson on the value of reflection and journaling stuck with her, and it became something she did to get through the pandemic.

“I literally just started to reflect on everything that I had gone through— if I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t have realized how far I had come and how much growth there has been,” she said. “I did have to take therapy, and that helps a lot, but [a lot of]that is realizing what parts of your life do you want to grow in. Reflecting has definitely helped me, and that’s something that I learned from Fordham.”

Taking Advantage of New York

One of the biggest things that impacted Igbinosun’s career was the access that Fordham provided him while in school. As a football player in the business school, Igbinosun said he and some of his teammates decided to take Invitation to Theater as one of their electives. As part of the course, students went to see plays throughout New York City and then discussed them in class.

Seeing King Lear performed at the Classical Theatre of Harlem was life-altering for Igbinosun, who has gone to act in TV shows, such as TNT’s hit show The Last Ship, History Channel miniseries Texas Rising, and Tina Fey’s multicamera comedy pilot The Kicker.

“It was an all-Black cast, and it was the first time in my life that I saw someone who looked like me, a Black man, walk on stage and say, ‘I am king,’” he said. “And I believed them. It was so powerful for me to see those images that instantly I had to stop what I was doing in the business school, and I ran into the theatre program.”

Igbinosun, who graduated with a business degree and theatre minor, said that he immediately began spending countless hours in Walsh Library reading stories and plays by Black authors, while also creating his own works.

“That kindling happened at that time I was at Fordham, where I was vulnerable to receiving ideas and collaborating and thinking of what could be,” he said.

“Community Building in the Time of Binge-Watching” was one of three events in a series titled From Fordham to Your Field. Read about the two other events in this series, “Forge Your Own Path: Creative Career Journeys” and “Caring for Others in a Pandemic.”

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

“If I wasn’t [going]to work in music, which was my actual passion, I always figured I would
go somewhere in the business world using [my]math skills because that’s always
something I enjoyed,” she said.

Ramirez majored in accounting at Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business, earning her B.S. in 2014, and stayed on to finish her M.B.A in 2015, through a five-year program.

But music kept calling her. As an undergraduate, Ramirez sang with the Fordham Hot Notes, one of several a cappella groups at the University. And during her senior year, she paid a fateful visit to the New York City location of Howl at the Moon, a national chain of clubs that feature dueling piano players.

“I ended up going to their happy hour and watching the dueling pianos play. I was like, ‘That looks just like the [best]time ever,’” she said. “I went up to one of them and said, ‘Hey, how, how did you get involved in this?’”

Soon, she was auditioning and eventually training with the Howl at the Moon, initially as a side gig while working as an accountant.

“I was like, ‘I’m going to just try to balance both at the same time,’ and then once I was pretty much done with training, I was like, ‘OK, I can just do this as a full-time job,’ and my focus became music,” Ramirez said.

Ramirez, who is now a full-time player at Howl at the Moon’s San Antonio location after the New York location closed, shared her story as a guest on Fordham Footsteps, a new podcast from the Fordham University Alumni Association.

‘Save it for the Podcast’

The podcast, which is hosted by Sara Hunt Munoz, FCRH ’99, GSE ’10, ’19, senior director for strategic initiatives in the Office of Alumni Relations, and Matt Burns, FCRH ’13, associate director for young alumni and student engagement, allows alumni to share stories about their careers and how Fordham helped them get where they are. In addition to highlighting the professors, courses, and programs that made a difference for them, guests share some tips for current students.

The idea for the podcast came to Munoz and Burns through their jobs, where they continuously meet a diverse group of alumni, many of whom have interesting stories to tell about how they discovered their real passion and used it to find fulfilling work.

“Every time another one came up,” Burns says during the introductory episode, “one of us would shout—”

“‘Save it for the podcast!’” Munoz interrupts.

One of those stories involved Samara Finn Holland, FCLC ’03, senior vice president at Kaplow Communications, who began working as a social media influencer before many people even knew what they were.

“I actually credit another alum that I met post-Fordham for a little bit of inspiration,” she said, referring to Charlie O’Donnell, GABELLI ’01. “He was more involved in the finance space, but he started a blog right when blogs started, and on his blog, he talked a lot about digital advancements and social media. So when Charlie joined Twitter, I joined Twitter. When Charlie got a blog, I started watching blogs.”

Holland, whose work includes campaigns for Covergirl and Merck for Mothers, said her classes at Fordham gave her a strong base for her career.

“Even though … I didn’t study influencer marketing at Fordham, I learned how to think, how to think critically, how to problem solve, how to approach different situations,” she said.

Beyond the Classroom

John Scott, FCRH ’12, a wild animal keeper at the New York Aquarium, said that his courses at Fordham helped him look at problems and projects in a new way.

“Fordham I think really provided a great framework and a great foundation for my current job because Fordham kind of inspires their students to think about issues from all different sides and all different perspectives,” said Scott, who majored in political science and environmental policy. “And I think that’s been really helpful in my current job, because you never really know what the day is going to turn out to be like.”

Scott said he also appreciated the access to internships he had while at Fordham, which helped him realize his passion was working with animals. He interned at the Bronx Zoo, in the bird and animal departments, while at the University.

“Working alongside gorillas and elephants and even smaller bird species, it was just this moment of like, ‘This is it, this is what really inspires me,’” he said.

Putting Skills into Practice

Emily Pandise, FCRH ’14, an associate producer for NBC News and MSNBC, said her extracurriculars at Fordham—running the Fordham Mornings weekly TV show, producing plays for Mimes and Mummers, and working at WFUV—helped her explore a variety of career paths and passions.

“I mean every career I’ve ever wanted since I was a little kid really came back to storytelling, right?” she said.

Those activities also taught her life skills, such as time management and teamwork.

“I loved being involved in so many different things,” Pandise said. “I feel like Fordham definitely taught me how to multitask.”

To hear their full stories, listen to the Fordham Footsteps podcast.