Class of 2023 Report

Stephen Pastore – 

This past semester, my main focus was my work on the Gabelli School of Business Dean’s Council. Part of my senate platform included an initiative that focused on bringing more representation to marketing majors in the Gabelli School of Business. As a marketing major myself, I felt like I was not getting proper exposure to marketing professionals nor the same level of attention as accounting and finance majors. Therefore, in the initial planning of the Gabelli Speaks event hosted by the GSB Dean’s Council, I advocated for more marketing representation. I, along with another committee member, advised the committee to include one speaker on social media marketing and a second speaker on fashion marketing. We wanted to introduce students to more unconventional and creative sides to the marketing field, something I also included in my senate platform. The Gabelli Speaks event was held over zoom in November and proved to be a huge success. The Gabelli Speaks committee head ended up choosing an excellent marketing speaker named Alyssa Amoroso. She is a social media influencer and talked about social media marketing in the fashion and beauty industries. I learned incredible insights from her and was thrilled to see a marketing speaker representing my future career aspirations. I hope other marketing students heard her words and reaffirmed their interest in marketing and their career path. Moreover, I will continue advocating to bring more marketing professionals to speak at GSB events in the future,

Another main focus of mine was the academic committee within the Gabelli School of Business Dean’s Council. This semester, my fellow sophomores voiced significant concerns over the cohort curriculum, specifically within the Principles of Management course. I sympathized with them as I, too, experienced hardship in that course. On the academic committee, I drafted a proposal to fix management with a few other committee members. Then, in a special Dean’s Council meeting with the deans in late October, I got the opportunity to voice students’ concerns to Dean Rapaccioli and Dean Villani. It felt so amazing to speak to the deans directly and advocate for my fellow students. In addition, I provided the deans with several ways of improving the Principles of Management course in the future. Then, in November, Dean Villani came to one of our last academic committee meetings where we got to share our final proposal. Dean Villani reassured us that our feedback was extremely helpful, and the deans will take it into account when reworking the management course for the upcoming semester. Moreover, I am extremely excited to continue working with the deans through the academic committee to resolve students’ concerns in the upcoming semester.

While I hoped to accomplish more this past semester, I truly feel like I made a difference. With virtual learning causing many concerns among students, it was essential to address those first before starting any personal initiatives. However, in the upcoming semester, I hope to devote much more time to USG. I want to spend more time getting to know my peers and focus on initiatives that benefit both GSB and FCRH students. I am so excited and cannot wait to get started.

Jonathan Eng – 

Senator Eng worked on an initiative with Vice President Bentovim to introduce winter inter-session courses available for students. The initiative contained gathered testimony from Fordham students concerning interest in the proposal and was meant to provide transition and security into the spring semester as well as connecting the community during the long break. This initiative passed the Senate but was rejected by administration. Senator Eng has also been working on an online expansion of his previous Fordham Flea initiative. By opening channels of communication with other colleges the initiative aims to create and shift from the Instagram platform to an online marketplace interface. This expansion would allow easier access and navigation to a larger variety of goods than currently offered 

Teresa Jacob – 

During this last semester, I have been able to work on pursuing a number of initiatives under USG. Being part of the Diversity Action Coalition, I was elected to chair the Land Acknowledgement and Indigenous Peoples’ Day subcommittee this semester which overall was a success. I was able to work with a number of amazing and diligent peers to ultimately pass this proposal under USG. This proposal is a statement that would work towards promoting Indigenous affirmation and recognition across Fordham’s campuses. In this proposal, we outlined the background of a Land Acknowledgement, the logistics behind its university-wide implementation, as well as why its implementation is necessary to universally reaffirm racial equity at Fordham. Simultaneously, I was able to work within the Native American History Month Committee under OMA this semester, so I was able to get a statement of support from the Cultural Programming Coordinator of that committee, Vivianna Vera. Since this proposal was passed, I have been able to work with my subcommittee members as well as DAC’s co-chairs to organize a working group made up of faculty senate members, graduate students, Juan Carlos, and Rafael Zapata that would all jointly be able to facilitate in successfully implementing these long-term changes at Fordham. Another initiative I have been working on is a formal resolution to review and revise the current demonstration policy at Fordham. I am currently working on this initiative with VP Felton. We have been organizing meetings with members of ASILI and OSI as well as simultaneously continuing to work on this proposal together, so we could hopefully propose what we have to USG soon during the upcoming semester!

Alex Chavez – 

Diversity EDU for Incoming Freshmen

Senator Chavez has worked on this initiative with the Gabelli School of Business Deans Council. There is a lack of education in Fordham University regarding diversity sensitivity when students enter Fordham University first-year students do not receive diversity or inclusion education, despite being a predominantly white university within a predominantly Brown and Black community. The main goal of this initiative is to have an online diversity learning and management tool aimed to help Fordham University build inclusive cultures on campus. This initiative was proposed to the Gabelli Deans in late fall semester 2020 and is currently being further analyzed by the school.

More flexibility in GSB Cohort Curriculum

Senator Chavez has worked on an initiative to promote more flexibility in the assignments being required in the Gabelli Cohort. Many sophomores currently taking the Principles of Management course have voiced overwhelming concern with the immense amount of work and asynchronous materials that are embedded within the Talent LMS modules.With the help of the Gabelli Deans Council, I wrote a Proposal to Reevaluate Management Course. This initiative will be presented to the Gabelli deans this Spring semester.

Phillip Krehbiel – 

  Over the last semester as a second-year senator on USG, I have been fortunate enough to work alongside Vice President  Anna Lazzaro and the Fordham College Rose Hill Dean’s Council. Serving as the Dean’s Council Co-chair for two years now, Vice President Lazzaro and I have continued to put on the yearly FCRH and Gabelli Joint Town Hall (despite this year’s circumstances) as well as put on an FCRH exclusive Registration Q&A. Zoom has allowed us to easily have the entire FCRH administration of professors in one place to ask them commonly-asked questions regarding registration. We also put on our yearly “How to Write a Cover Letter” with Dr. Beskin, which attracted an outstanding attendance of students on Zoom. For personal initiatives, I have currently been working in accordance with Dean Mast to establish a “2-Minute Grace Period” that enables students on Zoom relief when dealing with various technical and organizational reasons that inhibit the students to log onto class at its precise start time.