Academic Year 2024-5
We are excited to introduce twelve Faculty-Led Initiative (FLI) projects for the 2024-2025 academic year. These projects leverage academic expertise to create meaningful, real-world impact and are designed to generate innovative solutions to complex issues while strengthening our university's connection with the communities we serve.
Total funded: $70,400
Faculty: Dr. Andrew Albin
Fordham Medieval Dramatists PLS York 2025
Project Overview: In recognition of the Medieval Dramatists’ work, Fordham has been invited to participate in the PLS York 2025 project, a highly anticipated, once-in-a-decade undertaking at the University of Toronto The PLS York 2025 project seeks to emulate historical performance practices and stage in a single day all 47 biblical plays crafted for annual presentation in the streets of medieval York. Past projects of similar size and ambition hosted by the University of Toronto have proven watershed events in the field of premodern drama studies, yielding a range of outputs: conferences, scholarly books and articles, websites, playscripts, educational videos, university courses, theater initiatives, etc.
Faculty: Professor Catalina Alvarez and Dr. Fadi Skeiker
Engaged Arts Series: Invisible Performances
Project Overview: The Theatre and Visual Arts programs at Fordham, while part of the same department, currently operate independently but aim to foster deeper collaboration by developing an engaged art series. This FLI initiative will involve equal input from both programs and expand to include broader community engagement. Titled “Invisible Performances,” the series will feature lectures, workshops, and multimedia presentations addressing social issues through the arts. National artists will lead workshops with students and community participants, with events co-presented by departments such as Urban Studies and Peace and Justice Studies, as well as community partners and internationally recognized arts organizations.
Faculty: Dr. Juntao Chen
Uncovering Root Causes of Blood Lead Level Disparities Among Children in NYC Using Data Science relevant factors to understand their correlation with high BLLs.
Project Overview: The project will analyze factors such as foreign-born population distribution, focusing on populations that are more likely to use products with higher lead concentrations, such as certain spices and Ayurvedic medicine, primarily with patients who are Bronx residents. It will also analyze environmental factors such as water and air quality across the city, in addition to the age of buildings and other potential. The project will support strategic efforts to reduce BLLs and protect vulnerable children, ultimately promoting healthier living environments across NYC.
Faculty: Dr. Crystal Colombini
Composing for Environmental Justice:
Project Overview: This project aims to support the prompt expansion of Environmental Justice (EJ) focused courses at Fordham by designating 6-8 first-year writing (ENGL 1102: Composition II) courses, taught by a target 6 instructors in Fall 2024 and Spring 2025. Participating courses will carry the CCEL designation and be tagged as “Comp II: Environmental Justice” sections pending technical possibilities.
Faculty: Drs. Gregory Donovan, Annika Hinze, Alma Rodenas-Ruano, Jemel Aguilar
The Urban Migration Accompaniment Project
Project Overview: The proposed Urban Migration Accompaniment Project (UMAP) will entail community engaged research with advocates from migrant-serving organizations over the course of the 24-25 academic year. The project prioritizes listening to and learning from migration advocates working at the southern border and in New York City. Through this project, we aim to develop a community-driven research and service agenda that can better assist urban-based organizations in their mission of immigrant accompaniment.
Faculty: Dr. Ayala Fader
The Demystifying Language Project
Project Overview: The Demystifying Language Project (DLP) aims to make scholarship on the politics of language accessible in public high schools, which typically teach only standard language. The DLP contends that standard language is not inherently superior but reflects the language of powerful institutions. To achieve this, anthropologists must learn to communicate effectively with high school students, teachers, and undergraduates. The DLP provides tools for critiquing standard language and researching the diverse languages in students' lives, fostering mutual learning and collaboration to create impactful scholarship.
Faculty: Drs. Jeannine Hill Fletcher and Karina Martin Hogan
Interreligious NYC
Project Overview: This project focuses on building networks of relationships between Fordham’s undergraduate program and local faith-based communities and organizations. It is envisioned as a project that would have its initial stages in 2024-2025, with hopes to build organic relationships over the next three years (to include requests for funding in a future grant in 2025-2026 and 2026-2027) with a re-evaluation each year. The long-term goal would be to enable Fordham to be a location for nurturing relationships across religious institutions in our neighborhoods.
Faculty: Professor Gregory Jost
Inside the Red Lines: Race, Place and Grace in the Bronx and America
Project Overview: Book project - Inside the Red Lines simultaneously tells the history of redlining through the experience of the Bronx and the history of the Bronx through the lens of redlining: the practice by which banks and insurance companies – aided and abetted by all levels of government – assigned levels of risk to neighborhoods based on the racial and ethnic composition of those neighborhoods.
Faculty: Dr. Julie Kleinman
Promoting African Migrant Rights in New York through Transnational Partnerships
Project Overview: This project will promote transnational community collaborations between Fordham and African migrant rights organizations in New York, Mali, and Senegal through the creation of a dual-language website and related book publication, community engaged research and learning opportunities for students in Senegal, and one workshop bringing together Fordham students and faculty with representatives from African-focused migrant rights organizations.
Faculty: Drs. Brenna Moore and Rachel Annunziato
Spirituality, Health, and Healing: An Interdisciplinary Community Engaged Learning Course and Research Project
Project Overview: This project seeks to advance this intersection between spirituality and justice that is at the heart of Jesuit education. By centering student learningaround wellness, spirituality and health psychology in conversations about vulnerable, low-income residents receiving end-of-life care at Calvary, we bring students right at the intersection of spirituality and justice. Collaborating with Calvary Care Center at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx; and finally, presenting research at Boston College's Psychological Humanities and Ethics conference, scheduled in September 2025.
Faculty: Dr. Elizabeth Raposa
Creating Pipelines of Culturally Sensitive Mental Healthcare in the Bronx
Project Overview: The project seeks to train Fordham graduate students to provide culturally sensitive mental health support, while also better addressing the unmet mental health needs of Bronx residents. In collaboration with community partners, we have three broad aims: (1) to develop a set of evidence-informed procedures for training Fordham graduate students in culturally sensitive mental health treatments through the study of anti-racist counseling practices and decolonial theories; (2) to create specific, intentional pipelines to support the mental health of targeted underserved populations in the Bronx (e.g., Spanish-speaking families); and (3) to assess the current state of Fordham doctoral students’ multicultural competencies and exposure to culturally-informed training while in our program.
Faculty: Dr. Clara Rodriguez
Puerto Rico Environmental Justice CEL iGO! Trip
Project Overview: Early in the semester, a list of organizations in southwest Puerto Rico working on social and environmental justice issues will be distributed. Students will choose one to research, make a short class presentation, and receive feedback. They will then work with the professor to contact their chosen organization to explore ways to assist during the semester and their trip to Puerto Rico. During the trip, students will present their findings to the organization, receive feedback, and incorporate this into their final paper. If time allows, students will share their experiences with the class. Multiple students can collaborate with the same organization, enhancing community-engaged learning and research. Outputs may include contributions to environmental organizations in Puerto Rico, co-authored articles, open papers, website content, and conference presentations.
Faculty: Drs. Guillermo Severiche, Jacqueline Herranz-Brooks
Social Justice and Language Learning for Specific Purposes
Project Overview: This proposal aims to provide tools and encourage colleagues at Fordham, more particularly in the Languages and Cultures Department, to define new lines of teaching practices and approaches based on LSP (Language for Specific Purposes) and Community-Engaged Learning (CEL) for current and new classes. According to linguist Henry Widdowson, LSP courses are those in which the methodology, the content, the objectives, the materials, the teaching, and the assessment practices all stem from specific, target language uses based on an identified set of specialized needs and in contact with specific communities. Common examples of LSP include courses like Japanese for Business, Spanish for Medicine, Chinese for Tourism, or German for Law and Government. In each of these cases, the content and focus of the language instruction is narrowed to a specific and local context or even a particular subset of tasks and skills. This proposal consists of a series of roundtables with educators and community leaders to discuss possible ways to integrate LSP with CEL and how these approaches can enrich Fordham language courses.
Faculty: Dr. Phillip Smith
Black Education: Faith, Race and Educational Equity (BE: FREE)
Project Overview: This project examines how Fordham Graduate School of Education (GSE) faculty and student participation in one or more BE: FREE Black Educational Leader Speaker Programs affects how they describe and experience the nature of Black educational leadership, community engaged learning, and community. This Faculty-led Initiative project, programmed from July 2024 to July 2025, makes a pathway for critical conversations, community engaged learning, nuanced understanding, and further research on Black educational leadership and the intersection of faith, race, and educational equity in the community.