Student Leadership – Honors Blog

A Budding Bronx Partnership Takes Root

Author: Danielle D’Alonzo, senior

Last year, we could only see our classmates’ faces in little Zoom boxes. All of the events that usually bring people together, like Club Fair and Spring Weekend, were canceled. Many of our friends did not even come to campus. At a moment when human interactions were so restricted, I was grateful for a chance to experience myself and others as social beings.

The new Youth Engagement Program builds unity and understanding between two communities: Fordham Rose Hill Honors Program, and Jonas Bronck Academy, the middle school across the street from our campus. Each Fordham student is paired with a JBA student in a one-on-one mentoring relationship. As preparation for the program, Fordham students met with JBA staff to complete training sessions on the theory and practice of mentoring. Some of the main lessons were that the mentors should encourage goal-setting, a healthy work/life balance, and personal and civic responsibility.

Once the weekly meetings began, things became more free-form, with each mentor-mentee pair charting their own path. Whether it was through casual chatting or helping with homework, talking about mental health, or playing video games, the mentors helped the mentees achieve their goals and maintain their social and emotional wellbeing. That is not to say that the mentors did not learn and grow from the meetings, as well. At the end of the semester, when all of the program participants came together, mentors and mentees alike expressed the same sentiments. “It’s so nice to have somebody to talk to, and somebody to listen to.” “It’s really fun to share my interests with my mentor/mentee.” “I am learning so much from the weekly meetings.”

I truly appreciate the trust and rapport that my mentee and I built together, and I hope that she feels the same way. I have high hopes that this program will keep thriving, and expanding our social lives even after we say goodbye to Zoom!

A Mentoring Role Grows into a Lifelong Connection

Author: Megan Farr, junior

I first discovered South Bronx United (SBU) as a first-year student helping put on a resume workshop through Fordham’s College Access program. I fell in love with the SBU students, staff, and mission pretty much instantly. As a first-year student, I had some vague idea that I might like to work in education policy someday, but I knew for sure that I was passionate about equitable education, especially in the Bronx community we’re so lucky to live in at Rose Hill. Working with SBU seemed like a no-brainer for me: I love kids, am passionate about equitable access to educational resources, and enjoy teaching. So I emailed SBU’s Education Director, went through the internship hiring process, and started working with SBU in an official capacity during the fall semester of my sophomore year.

For context, South Bronx United is a local non-profit organization that uses soccer as an outreach tool for students in the Bronx. Two days each week, middle and high school students play on competitive club soccer teams; for another two days each week, they attend after-school tutoring sessions where they get homework help, extracurricular enrichment for math and language arts, and SAT preparation. I’m fairly terrible at soccer, so I work on the academic programming side of SBU. I was an Education Intern my sophomore year and a Room Lead and volunteer tutor this year, my junior year.

My time at SBU has been one of my favorite parts of my time at Fordham — from the serious moments, like when a student confided her troubles with some of her teammates to me, to the funny ones, like when a student put a reminder to do his homework into his phone’s calendar under the name “Megan’s head is going to explode if you don’t do your work.” Even through the start of the pandemic last spring, with the transition to online learning, SBU has been a constant in my life. My friends and family know the names of the students I’m closest to, and I’ve even seen some of my students on Fordham Road and the subway.

My experience with SBU has aligned beautifully with my Honors experience – learning to work collaboratively with Honors students has made me a better tutor, and building relationships with other Honors students and professors in an academic setting has made me a better mentor. I like to joke that I’m going to be involved with SBU until I die, but I sincerely think that’s the truth – they’re my family now too, just as much as Honors is.

A New Partnership: The YEP Holistic Mentorship Program

Author: Cristina Scofield, first year

Earlier this month, Honors students and Jonas Bronck Academy scholars met for the inaugural meeting of the Youth Engagement Program (YEP), a mentorship initiative between the Rose Hill Honors Program and the Jonas Bronck Academy (JBA), a public middle school near Rose Hill. Initially proposed by Brenda Gonzalez, principal of JBA, and Dr. Keller, director of the Rose Hill Honors Program, YEP was turned into reality with the efforts of JBA administrators and five Honors students. YEP is the first of its kind: a holistic mentorship program designed to connect Honors mentors with JBA scholars to help the middle school students plan and achieve their goals, both academic and personal.

At the inaugural meeting of YEP, many of our Honors mentors described a similar inspiration for their involvement: to engage with the Fordham neighborhood, fully embodying our mission as a Community of Scholars for Justice. The Honors mentors representing Fordham this year are Nick Urbin (‘23), Danielle D’Alonzo (‘22), Jack Amrol (‘24), Maniza Khondker (‘24), and me, Cristina Scofield (‘24).

For many of us, the first meeting with our mentees served as a goal-setting workshop. We encouraged them to identify their goals and then outlined plans to achieve them. In addition to academic goals, our scholars outlined goals in other areas, such as a college or career dream or another area they’re passionate about. In this first session, I was truly inspired by my mentee’s ambition and determination. While we mentors have experience and advice to share, we have just as much to learn from our mentees! I, just like my fellow mentors, cannot wait to see how far they come during the eight weeks of this spring’s YEP program.

While we are restricted to virtual meetings for the time being, hope is not lost on an eventual in-person reunion of the JBA and Fordham Honors communities. We are looking forward to future sessions of YEP, when we hope to expand the program to welcome more mentor-mentee partnerships!

The Inaugural Van Cortlandt Park Scavenger Hunt!

Author: Julian Navarro, sophomore

On September 5th 2020, Honors Program First-Years completed a scavenger hunt as a part of the Honors’ orientation programming, a tradition hundreds of First-Years before them have had the fun of experiencing as well. This year’s scavenger hunt, however, was quite different than years prior. Instead of taking the D Train down to Columbus Circle and running around Central Park to take photos in the Shakespeare Garden or at the Bethesda Fountain, the Class of 2024 logged into a Zoom call for a virtual scavenger hunt “in” Van Cortlandt Park.

The idea to move the annual Honors scavenger hunt from Manhattan’s Central Park to the Bronx’s Van Cortlandt Park first came about during one of this past summer’s Honors Mission Discussions, a series of meetings between current Honors students and professors that served to assess the Honors Program’s role in newly prevalent public dialogues on racial justice. Honors Sophomores Erik Brown, Amelia Medved, Julian Navarro, and Pilar Valdes designed, organized, and hosted the hunt with the intent of creating a Bronx-affirming program to highlight disparities in care, treatment, and accessibility between Van Cortlandt Park and Central Park. Fordham’s hybrid approach to the Fall 2020 semester complicated the original plans for an in-person event, but the scavenger hunt was quickly adapted to an online format as a Google Form.

The First-Years were asked to research and answer a series of trivia questions that were scored on correctness and timeliness. The trivia emphasized Van Cortlandt Park and the Bronx’s historical significance as well as their contributions to the beauty of New York City. Examples of such questions are, “Which park is one of the 3 largest parks in New York City?” and, “Which park has over 1000 acres of land considered to be ‘Forever Wild Reserve,’ an NYC Parks program that was established to protect ecologically valuable land?” The correct answer to both of those questions is “Van Cortlandt Park.”

Julian and Honors first-year students overlooking the city from Van Cortlandt Park.

After the virtual scavenger hunt, an in-person, socially distanced trip to Van Cortlandt Park was planned for those who could safely attend. A total of eight First-Years, accompanied by three of the hunt’s organizers, Erik, Amelia, and Julian, as well as sophomore Nick Urbin, walked northward to the park along Mosholu Parkway. Everyone noted the difficulty of reaching the park from anywhere south or southeast of it as Sedgwick Avenue and the Major Deegan Expressway’s on-ramps are formidable opponents to foot traffic. However, trumping the sight of such deficits on the trip was the beauty of Van Cortlandt Park and the Bronx. Friendly hellos were exchanged with people barbecuing along the Parkway on the walk; the historical Van Cortlandt House stood in all the vibrant green of New York City’s third largest park; and from the Vault Hill Overlook everyone caught a glimpse of the Manhattan skyline and the roofs of the wonderfully colorful borough the Honors Program has the privilege to call home.

Gathering with Honors Students Across the Country, United by Jesuit Mission

Authors: Megan Farr, first-year; Hannah Teligades, first-year; Andrew Souther, sophomore; Rachel Daso, sophomore

Often, when we think of Fordham’s Honors Program, we get so caught up in our specific program, curriculum, and community that we forget that we, as a Jesuit university, belong to a much larger network of other honors programs. A few weekends ago, we had the opportunity to travel to the American Jesuit Colleges and Universities Honors Conference at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio.

Andrew, Rachel, Hannah and Megan at John Carroll University.

We spent the weekend being reminded of our interconnectedness and dependence on not only other Fordham Honors students, but also on other honors programs across the country. At the conference, various schools volunteered to lead discussions on their favorite aspects of their respective programs, so we could all learn from each other’s strengths.

We presented on our Student Activity Committee (SAC), which organizes student-led, Honors-specific activities and events throughout the school year. Several other honors programs shared that they struggled to create an honors community within their larger universities, and we felt like SAC offered a unique way to build community within Honors, but in a more social, rather than academic, setting. We focused on a few specific committees within SAC: Wellness, Alumni Relations, Recruiting, Alpha House Upkeep, and Bronx Exploration. Other schools were interested in how flexible and fluid our SAC committees are, and how easily students of all experiences, grade levels, and fields of interest get can involved. We learned from other programs’ presentations and brainstormed what we might like to incorporate into our own program in the future.

We also had a great time building community and getting to know each program through its students and their unique personalities. Besides the obvious common ground of being honors students at Jesuit schools, we found that many of us had taken similar classes and read similar materials, which gave us a starting point for conversations. Being in this conference environment gave us an opportunity to talk about serious topics, but also to have fun learning about different parts of the country and different schools. Not only did we learn about other programs, but we were able to build friendships with honors students from across the US.

Overall, our experience at AJCU gave us an opportunity to learn about other honors programs, brainstorm possible additions to Fordham’s Program, and further build our Jesuit community.

Engineers Without Borders: An Honors Duo’s Trip to Uganda

Author: Stephanie Albert, junior

Honors students Kelsey Vinzant ‘20 and Meg Whelan ’21 first connected with each other through the Honors Mentorship Program, which pairs incoming Honors students with upperclassman peers. In one of their first conversations, Kelsey mentioned her involvement with Fordham’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB), which has since become another shared experience for the pair.

Kelsey, the current president of the club says, “At Fordham, EWB is a group of students of many disciplinary backgrounds and we are partnered with a community in Uganda through an NGO there called “Selocoffi” which stands for Serere Local Community Fish Farming Initiative. Through their partnership, we are linked to communities that are interested in building fish farms. Our task is to visit and survey land, then design a suitable fish farm for their community.” Thus far, the Fordham chapter of EWB has successfully built two fish farms.

This past August, Kelsey and Meg, along with several other Fordham participants, visited their partner community in Uganda. The trip lasted for 10 days and involved almost 48 hours of travel to get from the United States to the small villages in Uganda. The main purpose of their trip was to oversee construction to make sure things were going well. Three people who went on the trip were very involved technically so they could help with any issues or any necessary deviations from their designs that arose. They also met with the community to sign contracts and assign roles, such as a security guard, for the new fish farm. The Fordham group also was able to briefly look at land for a new breeding center project location, which is the third stage of Fordham’s EWB project. It will allow the club to have a more widespread impact because more Ugandans will have access to the center, making the project more sustainable for the communities. The Fordham students were also able to go visit a full-scale fish farm that is funded by numerous organizations including the UN, so they were able to get to see how a larger-scale project operated and what their project could possibly grow into in the future.

While visiting, the group stayed at the home of the man who operates Selocoffi. “His family was really wonderful and his daughter Lucy was always cooking for us and bringing out these amazing meals.” “The trip didn’t seem as busy [while we were there] but looking back on it, we were able to do quite a lot.”

Both Meg and Kelsey noted that community interactions were the most memorable parts of the trip. A particularly special interaction was meeting the Ugandan students who benefit from the portion of farm proceeds that goes to local education and healthcare initiatives. They interacted with the students by exchanging language lessons — the Fordham students shared some English phrases with the kids, who then taught them some words in Ateso, their native dialect. This was Meg’s first ever trip abroad, so a lot stood out to her but learning about the culture of the people they were visiting was the most impactful.

For each Fordham EWB delegation, there are a few students who have participated in previous visits. Their leadership helps facilitate introductions and interactions with their host community. The most rewarding aspect of the trip was the meeting with the host community because they presented gifts to the returning Fordham delegates. “We have an adult professional engineer who travels with us and they gave him a live chicken which is a big deal,” shared Kelsey.

In reflecting on taking this trip with her Honors mentor, Meg spoke about how grateful she was to have Kelsey to help orient her in addition to orienting the whole group. The last three presidents of EWB have been Rose Hill Honors students and numerous other members of the club have also been Honors students. Although there were cultural and communication barriers as well as a variety of stakeholders for the Fordham team to coordinate with, Meg and Kelsey used the skills they’d learned around the Honors seminar table to discern when to speak up and when to listen, in order to collaborate well for this global partnership.

Redesigning The Student Mentorship Program

Started several years ago, the Honors Mentorship Program paired incoming Honors first-years with sophomores or juniors during the summer before their first year. With the help of current Honors junior Henry Zink, the program was redesigned for the 2018-2019 school year. This new Mentorship Program allows Honors first-years to enter into mentoring “families,” in which they join with students from each cohort within the Program, creating small groups rather than pairs.

A psychology major and music and theology double minor, Henry found his experience as a first-year in the Mentorship Program valuable. “I appreciated the opportunity to get to know an upperclassman and to pick his brain about both Honors-specific and general college topics,” he told me. However, as Henry completed his first few semesters within the Honors Program, he noticed that younger students were looking for more ways to foster community with older Honors students: “Many Honors students felt that they had more success forming connections with other upperclassmen who weren’t their mentors.” With this in mind, Henry started looking for ways to expand the Mentorship Program.

With funding from the Honors Program, Henry was able to attend the 2017 AJCU Honors Conference at Loyola New Orleans. There, he spoke with Honors students from other Jesuit schools about their student mentorship programs. Inspired by these conversations, Henry pitched the idea of redesigning the Rose Hill Honors’ Mentorship Program to the program director, Dr. Eve Keller. He believed that by placing students into mentor families, rather than pairs, they would be encouraged to stay more connected and spend more time together. Moreover, he hoped that involving Honors students from all grades would promote bonding across the Honors Program as a whole.

The new iteration of the Mentorship Program officially kicked off with the annual Mentorship Reception in September. At the event, Honors first-years were welcomed into the Honors community as they met their new mentor family and got to know the upperclassmen better. So far, Henry has received positive feedback about the program’s redesign: “It seems like people are excited about their mentees and the opportunity to be involved in a mentor family. I’m excited to see what happens in the next two years and beyond, as the program grows.”

Student Advisory Council Meeting

The Honors Program’s first Student Advisory Council (SAC) meeting of the year was a great success, with twenty-five students representing each class year in attendance.

Honors Students at the AJCU Conference in 2016

Dr. Keller, the Honors Program Director, began the meeting by recapping some of the highlights of last year’s SAC, including presentations at the AJCU Honors Conference at Gonzaga in February (pictured) and a pilot program on Professional Development. Then, she invited student leaders of each SAC committee to say a bit about their committee’s work last year and plans for this year. Finally, she opened the floor to new ideas, which ended up including the addition of six new committees.

Here’s a list of the Honors Student Advisory Council committees for 2016-2017:

1. Arts and Entertainment

2. Curriculum Enrichment

3. Service and Social Justice

4. Professional Development

5. STEM/Pre-Health

6. Web Presence

7. Outreach and Recruitment

AND, our new committees:

8. Wellness and Puppies

9. Humanities

10. Junior Year Events

11. Senior Event/Seminar

12. Alumni Relations

13. Business Initiatives

Dr. Keller invited students to share their ideas for the future of SAC

We’re looking forward to a great year with SAC!