Students who live in the 10 residence halls at Rose Hill and McMahon Hall at Lincoln Center will again compete against each other in RecycleMania, a nationwide recycling competition that began on Jan. 22.

The contest, which runs through March 31, measures the amount of paper, cardboard, glass, metal and plastic the residents of each building collect, as well as how little solid waste they generate. The event seeks to increase recycling on campuses and highlight the work done by universities’ sustainability programs.

Last year was the first year that Fordham participated in the contest, which began in 2001 and has grown to include 576 schools. As in the past, the University will be competing in the “benchmark” division of the competition. Although Fordham will not be directly competing with other schools, the individual dorms on campus will be ranked against each other.

Weekly updates will be issued by sustainability consultant Great Forest and sent to the residence halls weekly so students can track their progress. At the end of the competition, the winning dorm will receive a trophy, along with the satisfaction that they’re the greenest of all.

—Patrick Verel

MMM

New GSE Program Aims to Benefit Undergrads and Struggling Schools

The Graduate School of Education (GSE) started off 2012 by launching a new program to help struggling New York City public schools.

Last month, the school announced on its blog that the scholarship-funded program, Teacher Residency Scholars Program in Adolescence Education, will combine academic coursework with an ongoing residence in a classroom setting.

The scholars—undergraduates pursuing careers in teaching—will serve as student teachers in four Bronx schools, gaining hands-on experience in the classroom while assisting schools in their neighborhood. Following completion of the program, residency scholars will be required to teach in struggling New York state schools.

The program, funded by a $2.5 million grant from the state Education Department, will allow participants to pursue a master of science in teaching and become eligible for certification in New York.

The school also released its latest edition of “GSE: Facts & Figures,” which outlines its most recent statistics, including its ranking in U.S. News & World Report’s top 20 private schools of education and its participation in the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate.

—Joanna Klimaski

In February 1922 at Fordham, a young a Jesuit scholastic with a passion for theatre kicked off a new activity to train freshmen in the dramatic arts.

Impressed with the work of the students in his theatre workshop for freshmen, he arranged for them to stage a one-act play contest in the University auditorium.

The students wrote and directed the plays and staged them with the help of Fordham’s Mimes and Mummers. The contest—hailed by The Ram four years later as “one of the most important events of the year”—helped inaugurate a 40-year tradition of one-act plays at Fordham, culminating in the annual Jesuit Intercollegiate One-Act Play Festival, which ended in 1962.

The contest was but one part of the dramatics legacy established by that young Jesuit, Robert I. Gannon, S.J., who also wrote a manual for one-act plays. Later, as president of Fordham, he built a theatre in Keating Hall as part of his emphasis on dramatics, which had been fundamental to Jesuit education from its earliest days.