Academic Year 2023-4
We are delighted to announce the Faculty-Led Initiatives for the academic year 2023-2024. This year, 10 projects spanning across various disciplines have been selected and funded. These initiatives represent the diverse and innovative ideas of our faculty members who are dedicated to enhancing community engagement at Fordham. We look forward to witnessing the positive outcomes and contributions these initiatives will bring to our neighboring communities.
Addressing Mental Health Needs in the Bronx with Third-Wave Cognitive Behavioral Therapies
Elizabeth Raposa, Associate Professor, Psychology
This project aims to establish a collaboration between the Fordham Department of Psychology and one or more community organizations serving Bronx residents in order to address unmet mental health needs, including common issues like depression, anxiety, and substance use. This collaboration involves two broad aims: (1) to provide community agencies working with individuals with unmet mental health burdens to establish effective pipelines for their clients with local clinics that are providing effective treatments for psychological disorders (including the Fordham Community Mental Health Clinic), and (2) to develop a set of evidence-informed procedures for training Fordham graduate students in culturally sensitive implementation of cutting-edge psychological treatments.
Elizabeth Raposa, Associate Professor, Psychology
This project aims to establish a collaboration between the Fordham Department of Psychology and one or more community organizations serving Bronx residents in order to address unmet mental health needs, including common issues like depression, anxiety, and substance use. This collaboration involves two broad aims: (1) to provide community agencies working with individuals with unmet mental health burdens to establish effective pipelines for their clients with local clinics that are providing effective treatments for psychological disorders (including the Fordham Community Mental Health Clinic), and (2) to develop a set of evidence-informed procedures for training Fordham graduate students in culturally sensitive implementation of cutting-edge psychological treatments.
Black Education: Faith, Race and Educational Equity (BE FREE)
Phillip Smith, Assistant Professor, Educational Leadership, Administration and Policy, Graduate School of Education
Lori Wolff, Professor, Division of Psychological and Educational Services
Aida Nevárez-La Torre, Associate Professor, Curriculum and Teaching
This project will examine a phenomenon of Black educational leadership. Specifically, Black Education: Faith, Race and Educational Equity (BE FREE), grounded in a Black leadership epistemology (ways of knowing) as a race-conscious, culturally sensitive pedagogical approach to teaching, leading and learning. The project examines how Fordham Graduate School of Education (GSE) faculty and student participation in one or more of three BE FREE Black Educational Leader Speaker Programs affects how they describe, and experience the nature of Black educational leadership, community engaged learning, and community.
Phillip Smith, Assistant Professor, Educational Leadership, Administration and Policy, Graduate School of Education
Lori Wolff, Professor, Division of Psychological and Educational Services
Aida Nevárez-La Torre, Associate Professor, Curriculum and Teaching
This project will examine a phenomenon of Black educational leadership. Specifically, Black Education: Faith, Race and Educational Equity (BE FREE), grounded in a Black leadership epistemology (ways of knowing) as a race-conscious, culturally sensitive pedagogical approach to teaching, leading and learning. The project examines how Fordham Graduate School of Education (GSE) faculty and student participation in one or more of three BE FREE Black Educational Leader Speaker Programs affects how they describe, and experience the nature of Black educational leadership, community engaged learning, and community.
Community Innovation Lab (CIL)
Shellae Versey, Associate Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology
Mark Naison, Professor, African American Studies and History, Department of History
The Lab will serve two main aims: research and translation. Both large-scale policy and community-led initiatives will be examined to address the effects of climate change on urban food systems through a variety of large-scale analytic strategies (e.g., program evaluation, GIS mapping). At the same time, qualitative methods (e.g., interviewing, first person accounts) will be utilized alongside communities to translate and evaluate pilot projects for addressing ongoing issues amidst these changes.
Shellae Versey, Associate Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology
Mark Naison, Professor, African American Studies and History, Department of History
The Lab will serve two main aims: research and translation. Both large-scale policy and community-led initiatives will be examined to address the effects of climate change on urban food systems through a variety of large-scale analytic strategies (e.g., program evaluation, GIS mapping). At the same time, qualitative methods (e.g., interviewing, first person accounts) will be utilized alongside communities to translate and evaluate pilot projects for addressing ongoing issues amidst these changes.
Oral History SAGE Project
Diana Kamin, Advanced Lecturer, Communication and Media Studies
Casey Ruble, Associate Clinical Professor, Visual Arts
This initiative will allow Fordham students in the CEL class: Photography, Identity, Power, to interview SAGE residents about their personal photography collections in order to produce a digital exhibition of photography with an oral history component. Students will write and edit detailed narrative captions to be paired with scanned photographs for publication on dedication a dedicated website.
Diana Kamin, Advanced Lecturer, Communication and Media Studies
Casey Ruble, Associate Clinical Professor, Visual Arts
This initiative will allow Fordham students in the CEL class: Photography, Identity, Power, to interview SAGE residents about their personal photography collections in order to produce a digital exhibition of photography with an oral history component. Students will write and edit detailed narrative captions to be paired with scanned photographs for publication on dedication a dedicated website.
Policing Queerness in US Popular Television
Jeniffer Moorman, Assistant Professor, Communication and Media Studies
This interdisciplinary project will contextualize televisual depictions of policing with the realities of how the carceral state intersects with the lives of LGBTQI+ individuals, and in particular queer and transgender people of color... This project will also allow students to interview individuals affiliated with the Gay Officers Action League (GOAL) and the LGBTQ Outreach Unit of the NYPD.
Jeniffer Moorman, Assistant Professor, Communication and Media Studies
This interdisciplinary project will contextualize televisual depictions of policing with the realities of how the carceral state intersects with the lives of LGBTQI+ individuals, and in particular queer and transgender people of color... This project will also allow students to interview individuals affiliated with the Gay Officers Action League (GOAL) and the LGBTQ Outreach Unit of the NYPD.
Safe Hotlines
Emily Krebs, Assistant Professor of Health and Culture housed, Communication and Media Studies
This project is in partnership with Trans Lifeline, an organization that provides peer-support and micro-grants for trans people in crisis. The goal of Safe Hotlines is to end nonconsensual interventions on crisis hotlines and shift hotlines to a model based on informed consent.
The Air Quality Partnership for NYC Schools
Marc Conte, Associate Professor of Economics, Department of Economics
Stephen Holler, Associate Professor of Physics, Physics and Engineering Physics
This project aims to address the challenges associated with causal identification of air pollution’s impact on education outcomes through several actions: 1) development of a hyper-local air quality monitoring and weather-station network across the city (the weather stations record wind speed and wind direction data that can be used to identify the variation in ambient air quality that is uncorrelated with community demographics, allowing for causal inference about air pollution’s effects on students); 2) design and implementation of an online building survey to be conducted weekly by students at our partner schools that record information about building function that can impact indoor air quality; 3) collection of anonymized student-level data on academic performance, including absences and test performance.
The Harvard Business Simulation Technology Initiative
Anthony DeFrancesco, Lecturer, Marketing, Gabelli School of Business
This project will provide an opportunity for students at All Hallows, Cardinal Hayes, and Mount Saint Ursula to run a business virtually in team environments and learn by doing.
Advanced Leadership Preparation for Bronx Educational Leaders
Will create a community gathering space this fall with Fordham students in the Ed.D. in Educational Leadership, Administration, and Policy (ELAP) program, Bronx educators and educational leaders, NYC DOE executive leaders, local policymakers, and foundations. The first goal is to share the learning and impact of the work of the Bronx cohort members with the broader community in order to benefit the larger Bronx educational community. The second goal is to garner support for our ongoing partnership in the Bronx. Ongoing political and leadership shifts and the disbanding of the Bronx Borough Office have made sustaining our partnership challenging. This event is essential to maintain existing support and increase community and system support for the Bronx-Fordham GSE partnership.
Marc Conte, Associate Professor of Economics, Department of Economics
Stephen Holler, Associate Professor of Physics, Physics and Engineering Physics
This project aims to address the challenges associated with causal identification of air pollution’s impact on education outcomes through several actions: 1) development of a hyper-local air quality monitoring and weather-station network across the city (the weather stations record wind speed and wind direction data that can be used to identify the variation in ambient air quality that is uncorrelated with community demographics, allowing for causal inference about air pollution’s effects on students); 2) design and implementation of an online building survey to be conducted weekly by students at our partner schools that record information about building function that can impact indoor air quality; 3) collection of anonymized student-level data on academic performance, including absences and test performance.
The Harvard Business Simulation Technology Initiative
Anthony DeFrancesco, Lecturer, Marketing, Gabelli School of Business
This project will provide an opportunity for students at All Hallows, Cardinal Hayes, and Mount Saint Ursula to run a business virtually in team environments and learn by doing.
Advanced Leadership Preparation for Bronx Educational Leaders
Will create a community gathering space this fall with Fordham students in the Ed.D. in Educational Leadership, Administration, and Policy (ELAP) program, Bronx educators and educational leaders, NYC DOE executive leaders, local policymakers, and foundations. The first goal is to share the learning and impact of the work of the Bronx cohort members with the broader community in order to benefit the larger Bronx educational community. The second goal is to garner support for our ongoing partnership in the Bronx. Ongoing political and leadership shifts and the disbanding of the Bronx Borough Office have made sustaining our partnership challenging. This event is essential to maintain existing support and increase community and system support for the Bronx-Fordham GSE partnership.
Transfeminist Cultures in Latin American and US Latinx Communities
Carl Fischer, Professor of Spanish, Department Chair, Modern Languages and Literature
Elizabeth Ramírez-Soto, Assistant Professor, Communication and Media Studies
This project will promote community based, trans feminist thinking in Latin American and broader Latinx communities... Speakers will be invited as part of a larger, semester-long series of initiatives at Fordham to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the coup in Chile, on September 11, 1973, that led to the 17-year dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The series will comprise short film programs in which queer, trans, and feminist subjects reckon with the dictatorship’s particular impact on sexual minorities and women, as well as these subjects’ resistance to the dictatorship."
Youth-Led Participatory Action Research
Lindsay Hoyt, Associate Professor/Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies at Rose Hill, Department of Psychology
Christopher A. Curtis, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Social Service
This project includes two key components: (1) a youth-led research paper on school climate and allyship for LGBTQ+ youth to be presented at an academic conference and submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal and, (2) the creation and launch of a new LGBTQ+ Network of support for local youth.