Fordham University

Fordham University is a private Jesuit research university in New York City, United States. Established in 1841, it is named after the Fordham neighborhood of the Bronx, in which its original campus is located. Fordham is the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university in the northeastern United States and the third-oldest university in New York City.

Founded as St. John's College by John Hughes, then a coadjutor bishop of New York, the college was placed in the care of the Society of Jesus shortly thereafter, and has since become a Jesuit-affiliated independent school under a lay board of trustees. While governed independently of the church since 1969, every president of Fordham University between 1846 and 2022 was a Jesuit priest and the curriculum remains influenced by Jesuit educational principles.

Fordham enrolls over 16,000 students, making Fordham the sixth largest Catholic university in terms of enrollment in the United States. The university is organized into ten constituent colleges, four of which are undergraduate and six of which are postgraduate, across three campuses in southern New York State: the Rose Hill campus in the Bronx, the Lincoln Center campus in Manhattan's Upper West Side, and the Westchester campus in West Harrison, New York. The university also maintains a study abroad center in London and field offices in Spain and South Africa. The university offers degrees in over 60 disciplines.

The university's athletic teams, the Rams, include a football team that boasted a win in the Sugar Bowl, two Pro Football Hall of Famers, two All-Americans, two Canadian Football League All-Stars, and numerous NFL players; the Rams also participated in history's first televised college football game in 1939 and history's first televised college basketball game in 1940. Fordham's baseball team played the first collegiate baseball game under modern rules in 1859, has fielded 56 major league players, and holds the record for the most NCAA Division I baseball victories in history.

Fordham's alumni and faculty include a president of the United States, U.S. Senators and representatives, four cardinals of the Catholic Church, several U.S. governors and ambassadors, a number of billionaires, two directors of the CIA, Academy Award and Emmy-winning actors, royalty, a foreign head of state, a White House Counsel, a vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, a U.S. Postmaster General, a U.S. Attorney General, a President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the first female vice presidential candidate of a major political party in the United States.

History

1841–1900: Establishment and early years

Fordham was founded as St. John's College in 1841 by the Irish-born coadjutor bishop (later archbishop) of the Diocese of New York, John Hughes. It is the third-oldest university in the state of New York, and the first Catholic institution of higher education in the northeastern United States. In 1839, Hughes, then 42 years old, had purchased the 106-acre Rose Hill Manor farm in the village of Fordham, New York, for $29,750. His intent was to establish St. Joseph's Seminary following the model of Mount Saint Mary's University, of which he was an alumnus. "Rose Hill" was the name originally given to the site in 1787 by its owner, Robert Watts, a wealthy New York merchant, in honor of his family's ancestral home in Scotland.

In 1840, St. Joseph's Seminary opened at Rose Hill. The seminary was paired with St. John's College, which opened at Rose Hill with a student body of six on June 24, 1841, the feast day of Saint John the Baptist. John McCloskey (later archbishop of New York and eventually the first American cardinal) was the school's first president, and the faculty were secular priests and lay instructors. The college presidency went through a succession of four diocesan priests in five years, including James Roosevelt Bayley, a distant cousin of Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt and a nephew of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. In 1845, the seminary church, Our Lady of Mercy, was built. The same year, Hughes convinced several Jesuit priests from the St. Mary's College in Kentucky to staff St. John's.

The college received its charter from the New York State Legislature in 1846, and the first Jesuits began to arrive about three months later. In the same year Hughes sold St. John's College to the Jesuits for $40,000. Hughes deeded the college over but retained title to the seminary property, which totaled about nine acres. In 1847, Fordham's first school in Manhattan opened. The school became the independently chartered College of St. Francis Xavier in 1861. It was also in 1847 that the American poet Edgar Allan Poe arrived in the village of Fordham and began a friendship with the college Jesuits that would last throughout his life. In 1849, he published his famed work The Bells. Some traditions credit the college's church bells as the inspiration for this poem. Poe also spent considerable time in the college's library, and even occasionally stayed overnight.

St. John's curriculum consisted of a junior division (which would become Fordham Prep), requiring four years of study in Latin, Greek, grammar, literature, history, geography, mathematics, and religion; and a senior division (i.e. the college), requiring three years study in "poetry" (humanities), rhetoric, and philosophy. Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, famed commander of the all-black 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry American Civil War regiment, attended the junior division. An Artium Baccalaureus degree was earned for completion of both curricula, and an additional year of philosophy would earn a Magister Artium degree. There was also a "commercial" track similar to a modern business school, offered as an alternative to the Classical curriculum and resulting in a certificate instead of a degree. In 1855, the first student stage production, Henry IV, was presented by the St. John's Dramatic Society. The seminary was closed in 1859.

Campuses

Fordham has three main campuses, which are in and around New York City: Rose Hill in the Fordham neighborhood, the Bronx, adjacent to Bronx Park on Fordham Road; Lincoln Center in Manhattan, one block from Central Park; and Westchester in West Harrison, New York. In addition, it maintains and utilizes various academic, extracurricular, and residential facilities throughout New York City and New York State and around the world. In addition to its three main campuses, the university also operates the Louis Calder Center, a biological field station 25 miles (40 km) north of New York City in Armonk, New York. It consists of 114 acres (0.46 km2) forested with a 10-acre (4.0 ha) lake and 13 buildings. The structures house laboratories and classrooms, offices for faculty and administrators, a library, and residences.

Outside the United States, the university maintains a small campus in London, known as the London Centre. In addition, Fordham operates field offices in Granada, Spain, and Pretoria, South Africa; these house undergraduate study abroad programs. Finally, the university provides faculty for the Beijing International MBA at Peking University at Peking University in China. The program, established in 1998, has been ranked No. 1 in China by Fortune and Forbes Magazines.

Rose Hill

The Rose Hill campus, established in 1841 by Bishop John Hughes, is home to Fordham College at Rose Hill, the Gabelli School of Business, and a division of the School of Professional and Continuing Studies, as well as the Graduate Schools of Arts and Sciences and Religion and Religious Education. Situated on 85 acres (34.4 ha) in the central Bronx, it is among the largest privately owned green spaces in New York City. At one time spanning over 100 acres, much of the land for adjacent Bronx Park was acquired from the university with funds authorized by the 1884 New Parks Act intended to preserve lands that would soon become part of New York City, on the condition that it be used as a zoo and botanical garden. Fordham students and staff have free admission to the garden grounds. Rose Hill is on Fordham Road, just north of the Belmont neighborhood, described as the "real Little Italy of New York", and immediately west of the Bronx Zoo and the New York Botanical Garden. The campus's Collegiate Gothic architecture, expansive lawns, ivy-covered buildings, and cobblestone streets were featured by NBC News.

Rose Hill is largely made up of nineteenth-century architecture, with some contemporary buildings. The campus is home to several structures on the National Register of Historic Places, such as the University Church built in 1845 as a seminary chapel and parish church for the surrounding community. It contains the old altar from the current St. Patrick's Cathedral, as well as stained glass windows given to the university by King Louis Philippe I of France. The windows are particularly notable for their connection to a workshop in Sevres, France, locus of the earliest stages of the Gothic Revival. Adjacent to the church is a 138-plot cemetery where the university's nineteenth-century Jesuits, diocesan seminarians, students, and workers are interred, relocated in 1890 from its original location at today's New York Botanical Garden.

Academics

Fordham University is composed of four undergraduate and six graduate schools, and its academic ethos is heavily drawn from its Jesuit origins. The university promotes the Jesuit principles of cura personalis, which fosters a faculty and administrative respect for the individual student and all of his or her gifts and abilities; magis, which encourages students to challenge themselves and strive for excellence in their lives; and homines pro aliis, which intends to inspire service, a universal charity, among members of the Fordham community.

Through its International and Study Abroad Programs (ISAP) Office, Fordham provides its students with over 130 different study abroad opportunities. The programs range in duration from six weeks to a full academic year and vary in focus from cultural and language immersion to internship and service learning. Some of the programs are organized by Fordham itself, such as those in London, United Kingdom; Granada, Spain; and Pretoria, South Africa; while others are operated by partner institutions like Georgetown University, the University of Oxford, and the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE). In addition to the ISAP programs, the university's constituent schools offer a range of study abroad programs that cater to their specific areas of study. Fordham has produced 168 Fulbright scholars since 2003.

Admissions

According to U.S. News & World Report, Fordham is considered a "more selective" university, while a 2013 Barron's survey published in the New York Times classed the university as "highly competitive". In its 2018 edition, admissions selectivity to Fordham's undergraduate schools received a reclassification by Barron's Profiles of American Colleges to "Most Competitive" after being "Highly Competitive+" in its 2017 edition, and reported 74% of enrolled freshmen as ranking in the top 20% of their high school class.

In 2016, the university accepted approximately 43% of all applicants across both its undergraduate and graduate programs. For the undergraduate class of 2019, Fordham accepted 20,366 of the 42,811 applicants (47.6%) and enrolled 2,211. The middle 50% range of SAT scores for enrolled freshmen was 580–670 for critical reading, 590–680 for math, and 590–680 for writing, while the ACT Composite middle 50% range was 28–33. The average high school GPA of incoming freshmen was 3.64.

Undergraduate curriculum

All undergraduates pursuing bachelor's degrees at Fordham are required to complete the Core curriculum, a distribution of 17 courses in nine disciplines: English, mathematical/computational reasoning, social science, philosophy and ethics, history, fine arts, religious studies, natural science, and modern or Classical languages. Based on the curriculum established by the Society of Jesus in the sixteenth century, the Core is shared by Jesuit schools all over the world and emphasizes the liberal arts as a basis of education.

Athletics

The university supports 21 men's and women's varsity athletic teams, as well as various club and intramural sports. The Fordham colors are maroon and white and its mascot is the ram. In most varsity sports, the Rams compete in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association and are a member of the Atlantic 10 Conference. The football team, however, plays in NCAA Division I FCS and is an associate member of the Patriot League, reported to be the most academically selective NCAA conference after the Ivy League.

The Ram's football team ended the 1929 season as title holders according to college football's fictitious national championship, boasts two bowl game appearances (1941 and 1942), two Patriot League championships (2002 and 2007) and corresponding NCAA Division I Football Championship appearances. It is best known, however, for the "Seven Blocks of Granite," a name given to the team's 1928 and 1936 offensive lines. The 1936 team was coached by "Sleepy" Jim Crowley, one of the University of Notre Dame's famed "Four Horsemen," and included Vince Lombardi, the legendary Green Bay Packers coach. The team provoked the term "Ivy League" after New York Herald Tribune sportswriter Caswell Adams called then powerhouses Princeton and Yale "only Ivy League" compared to this Fordham team. Moreover, the Los Angeles Rams NFL franchise was named in honor of Fordham's football heritage.

The Fordham men's basketball program has made four NCAA Tournament appearances and 16 National Invitational Tournament appearances. During the 1971 season, the program enjoyed its best campaign ever, compiling a 26–3 record and earning a No. 9 national ranking. That team was coached by Digger Phelps, who accepted an offer to coach Notre Dame after the 1971 season ended. Peter "PJ" Carlesimo was a reserve on Fordham's 1971 team; he later became the head coach of the Brooklyn Nets NBA franchise and was involved in a famous choking incident with Latrell Sprewell. Fordham basketball plays in the Rose Hill Gymnasium (also known as "The Prairie"), the oldest on-campus venue in use by an NCAA Division I basketball team.

The Rams baseball program is among the oldest in the nation and was the first college baseball team to play the game according to modern rules. The program has launched the careers of 57 Major League Baseball players, including National Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Frankie Frisch (also known as the "Fordham Flash"). In April 2010, a Fordham baserunner made national headlines when he somersaulted over an opposing team's catcher to score a run during a game. The incident was dubbed the "Fordham Flip." The Rams baseball team holds the record for most NCAA Division I baseball victories in history.

Student life

Groups and activities

Clubs and organizations for undergraduate and graduate students number over 130 at the Rose Hill campus and 50 at Lincoln Center.

Fordham College at Rose Hill has a long history of college theater. The university maintains a number of theater groups at both Lincoln Center and Rose Hill (e.g. the Mimes and Mummers, Fordham Experimental Theater, the Theatrical Outreach Group, Splinter Group). There are also choirs (University Choir, Schola Cantorum, Gloria Dei Choir) and a cappella groups spanning both campuses (Fordham Ramblers, Satin Dolls, b-Sides, Hot Notes, F-sharps). The Mimes and Mummers, the oldest entirely student-run club at Fordham University and among the oldest college theater groups in the United States, was founded in 1855 as the Saint John's Dramatic Society. The Mimes put on two musicals, a drama, and a comedy each year – all non-student-written shows – as well as workshops designed to help students at Fordham learn about theater. The club receives from the school a budget which allows the hiring of professional directors, music directors, and choreographers but the shows are student produced, with all elements of technical design run by the club's executive board.

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