Amherst makes it possible to attend without loans... I'd give Fordham more money if they could do this...

Link: {mikeoliver.org} » Blog Archive » Proud to be a Lord Jeff.

Amherst will be replacing the student loan portion of all students’ financial aid packages with a scholarship.

Pugsley's Kind of Empty Right Before Class

mmm...Chicken roll.

Fordham Library

This campus always feels like home....

Doing your best when you're ready to do your best

GothamGal has a though provoking post up about the insanity of carefully crafting over acheivers and getting kids into college today.  She says that we should drop the current system and look for a new way to screen students...  fewer tests, less pressure.

I do think that what is going on is insane, but anytime there's insanity, you don't have to get caught up in it.

When I was in high school, the average graduating SAT score for my class was 1350.  Now I hear its up over 1400...   average...  1400!   I was lucky because we all seemed to take a pretty healthy approach to it, but one could go nuts trying to test prep your way to a score like that.

If you need to take two test prep courses and hire a private tutor to get your kid to score a 1520, then, well, sorry, that kid just isn't a 1520 student.  I remember this guy in my freshmen year of college who used to study in the lounge about 10 hours a day to get a 3.7 and I just remember heading out the door with my baseball glove to have a catch and enjoy a nice day while he was studying.  If that was what it took to get the really high grades, well then I just wasn't going to be a great student... simple as that.

It was that kind of approach that I had in high school.  In hindsight, I probably could have worked harder, I admit, but it was where my head was at the time.  Pushing me wouldn't have helped.. .I had to push myself... which I did, big time, when I got to Fordham.   Yeah, so I went to Fordham, which was a good school, but it wasn't Harvard or Yale or Princeton.  However, I wouldn't be where I am today at another school.   Being at Fordham, close to the city, enabled me to intern at the GM pension fund during school.  It also meant that another Fordham grad who was at GM sort of took me under his wing, rather than the Harvard intern we had, because he felt like this guy would get everything he wanted anyway.  That led directly to my job in the private equity group, which led to Union Square Ventures, which led to Oddcast.   

If I was coming out of Harvard in '01, it wouldn't have been enough for me to just go to Harvard... I would have had to beat out all my own classmates for jobs.  When you go to a top school, you almost have to be the best there, too, because there will already be 5 or 6 Harvard resumes in for a job, and they're not going to interview all of you.

You don't have to go to a top ten school and you don't have to be a Goldman Sachs investment banker to be successful either.   Teach your kids to follow their own way at their own pace.  Of course, give them all the tools and encouragement to be their best, but don't push them to be more than they're mentally ready to handle.  I wasn't ready to take the lead in high school and I would have burned out very early had I tried.  I'm lucky that my parents were just happy I was in a good school and supportive of whatever I did.  They let me come around on my own terms.

Oh, and I wound up doing better than that kid who studied ten hours a day...  and I really do owe it mostly to my mental health.  In college, I really believe its really not about how hard you work, but more about how smart you work and how you handle stress.   Oh, and networking, too.  You'll never make good contacts in your field, which can take you a lot further than your GPA, if you're a big ball of stress that seems mentally unstable.

Best. Wedding. Ever.

We have a blog going for my 5 year Fordham reunion.   (Yeah, yeah, the template looks suspiciously similar...   I've been busy and didn't have time to do a new template.)

People have been updating the class with stories about what they've been up to.  One guy wrote about what it was like to be the Fordham Mascot.  That was pretty good, but I think it might just been topped by the best wedding story I've ever heard...

University identifies peer, aspirant institutions in Stragetic Plan - Fordham Observer - News

Link: University identifies peer, aspirant institutions in Stragetic Plan - Fordham Observer - News.

"Intellectual hub":

-Fordham will be a "hub" for intellectual exchange and discussion in the metropolitan area

hmm...   Sounds like blogging to me.

This is a really good article, and more proof that the newspaper of Fordham's Lincoln Center campus is eating the lunch of the University's oldest paper, the Ram, up at Rose Hill.  I think they clearly recognize that the future of the school hinges on what gets built at Fordham's Manhattan campus over the next 20 years, and given that, they're already establishing a platform to handle that shift in focus.  They've got a really clean looking, functional website and good articles.  The Ram, on the other hand, isn't even available on line.  (If they are, I can't find it.... what year is this??)

I like that the University is being so transparent about its goals, even identifying the schools it wants to be like....  very college 2.0.  However, the one thing they could use a little work on is the peer production aspect of College 2.0.  They need to find ways to get wider participation of the alumni and create an outward message that is promoted by more of the students.  Ideally, I'd love to see a school blog with posts from the University President all the way down to a freshman on his first day... athletes, coaches, etc.   A blogging alum can dream...

By the way, I was flipping through the channels last night and caught a few minutes of the Lakers game...   they had a nice interview with Laker fan and Fordham Grad Denzel Washington, who was excited about the emergence of Fordham's own Smush Parker, who is playing for LA.  Go FU!

Great Quote from Opening Day for the Class of '09

Link: Fordham University Welcomes Class of 2009.

“You will be challenged and nurtured to overcome limitations that you wrongly think you have,” Father McShane told a standing room-only crowd in the Leonard Theatre at Fordham Preparatory School on the Rose Hill campus. “Never be satisfied with mediocrity—be hungry for knowledge and bothered by injustice.”

Ram News

I'm fully intent on going to this...  who's in?

Link: Ram News.

Bronx, NY - (June 27, 2005) – The Fordham University men’s basketball Rams will open the 2005-06 season in paradise. The Paradise Jam, that is. Six Division I men’s basketball teams are gearing up for a trip to paradise at the sixth annual Paradise Jam Basketball Tournament hosted by the University of the Virgin Islands in St. Thomas.

Last Monday's Fordham Softball Recap

This post was written by David Murphy.  He was our shortstop and won our last two games on walkoff hits.  He was also a part of several championship Fordham intramural teams.  They even made a Geocities page about it.

Here's Dave:

The Rams Alumni softball team brought a successful finish to a dismal season last Monday night.  For the second time in as many games, the sons and daughters of Mother Fordham battled back in the final frames to finish the year on a victorious note with a 8-7 win over the vaunted Mizuno machine. 

“Regardless of the final win-loss record, I’m proud of this team,” manager Charlie O’Donnell said after the game.  “I don’t think we’ll ever be accused of having the most talent in the league, but there’s no question that, as a team, we have the heart of a champion.”

Fordham struggled throughout the season with spotty defense and a lack of timely hitting.  It wasn’t until the final stages of the season that Fordham seemed to find their groove.  All told Fordham went 5-8 missing a playoff birth by a significant margin.  Even still, O’Donnell saw seedlings of hope develop in the expansion franchise.

“When we came into the season we didn’t know what to expect,” O’Donnell said.  “There was a big learning curve with this club but I think we definitely came into our own.  You could see that, on both sides of the ball, we definitely began to gel as a unit throughout the last few games.”

Both of the final two contests in 2005 proved dramatic for the Rams.  After a thrilling walk-off home run victory in the previous game, Fordham showed no sign of a let down in the last game of the season.  Fordham went up by three going into the last inning when the same shoddy defense that had haunted them all season began to rear its ugly head.  Pitcher Patty Dickerson, the indisputable team co-MVP after logging countless innings on the mound, saw misplay after misplay result in four unearned runs for Mizhuno. 

That led to one final chance for a comeback by the Jesuit educated bunch. In the bottom of the fifth, the always selective Ron Zapata led off with a single.  He moved into scoring position on a hit by Jason Gianitti.  Two batters later, Pawtucket’s own Ryan St. Germain singled in the tying run and moved the winning run into scoring position for shortstop Dave Murphy.  Murphy, also a Pawtucket native, doubled home the game winner with a line drive to right ending Fordham’s inaugural season on a high note.

“I just got the pitch I was looking for,” Murphy said after the game.  “We’ve battled back before, and the guys just did a great job of getting on base and I was fortunate enough to get a pitch I could handle.”  Murphy’s six hits in his final six at bats for Fordham this season were a big change from his hitherto lack luster performance.  Many Rams’ observers lay the blame of Fordham’s largely unsuccessful campaign squarely on his shoulders.  The captain of two Fordham University intramural softball championships with Team Shame, struggled mightily throughout 2005.  Many believed he simply could not adjust to playing without the teammates that surrounded him from 2000-2004 at Fordham, capturing those two titles. 

For Fordham, it was the best of times and it was the worst of times in 2005.  Although the team chemistry seemed to mix well, particularly by the end of the season, a series of people moving to go along with inconsistent play on both offense and defense resulted in a sub-par performance. 

Second baseman Trevor Freeman seemed to sum up the season best when packing up his locker in the Fordham clubhouse saying, “Maybe it’s because I’m an Oakland fan, but my mentality is, hey – wait till next year!”

And that is just what Fordham plans to do. 

The New York Times Job Market: Marketing - New York, NY

Sounds like they should just set up a blog and get alumni and students blogging on it.  I mean, why hire just one personto "invent" their own version of Fordham's identity versus just setting up a blog and letting the community broadcast its own message on what Fordham is to them in a very honest and sincere way.  It would be a lot cheaper, too.

Link: The New York Times Job Market: Marketing - New York, NY.

ADVANCEMENT COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST A rare and rewarding challenge: play a central role in the transformation of an excellent university into a world-class university. The right person for this job will be able to understand and communicate what makes Fordham University so special and-crucially-be able to make others understand as well. In this role you will liaise with marketing, communications and advancement leaders to incorporate our institutional identity into every aspect of our advancement communications across print and online media, from collateral for the Office of Development to copy for University publications. You'll be able to do so in the voice appropriate to the varied audiences addressed. Finally, you'll need to be able to manage internal client and vendor relations to ensure a finished product on time, within budget and on target. You should have significant, direct experience as a strategic writer in advancement communications in an academic, marketing or non-profit environment. And you should be as strong and creative a thinker