In Brief

Historic Applicant Pool Shows Fordham Ahead of Schedule
Once again, Fordham’s applicant pool has reached a new high. The Office of Undergraduate Admission has received more than 12,800 applications from potential members of the Class of 2007, which is an increase of 1,500 from last year’s total. Fordham has admitted 52 percent of the applicants, bringing the University’s acceptance rate down 3 percent from last year, said Karen Pellegrino, director of undergraduate admission.

In the spring of 2001, The Wall Street Journal called Fordham a “hard-charging” institution, one that has become increasingly selective and competitive. In the article, the Journal predicted that Fordham's acceptance rate would drop to 50 percent in the next five years. Based on this year’s figures and the University’s increasing selectivity, Fordham seems well ahead of the Journal’s prediction.

This year, applications were received from 49 out of the 50 states, the only holdout being South Dakota. As of May 1, students from 38, states including Hawaii and Alaska, had enrolled. According to Pellegrino, Fordham expects to enroll an incoming freshman class of approximately 1,630 students, down from 1,686 last year.

Despite the fact that deposits are still rolling in and final data is not yet available, Pellegrino noted that the Class of 2007 looks very promising academically. Over the past few years, the average SAT score of Fordham’s incoming students has increased considerably, and Pellegrino expects that the same will hold true for the enrolled members of the Class of 2007.

Cardinal Dulles’ Newman Is Volume Number 2,000,000 for Fordham Libraries

This semester, Avery Cardinal Dulles’ Newman (Continuum, 2002), a book chronicling the life and works of John Henry Cardinal Newman, became the two-millionth volume added to the University libraries’ collection.
“Although the mark was close, the merge with Marymount this year increased the total quicker than had been expected,” said James McCabe, Ph.D., university librarian, who noted that each year the library collects some 35,000 to 40,000 volumes. “I had a feeling this would happen so I had my eye out and picked this one on purpose.”

The book was chosen in honor of Cardinal Dulles, Fordham’s Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society, and in honor of the sesquicentennial of Cardinal Newman’s The Idea of a University. This past fall semester, 15 Newman Fellows led University-wide discussions of Newman’s classic text on the scope and purposes of the liberal arts education.

An autographed copy of Newman featuring a commemorative bookplate will be kept in the special collections section of the William D. Walsh Family Library.

Luce Scholars Present Research and Learn from a Former Fellow
Jill Carton, Ph.D., a senior research scientist at Centocor, Inc., and a former Clare Boothe Luce Fellow at Fordham, knows all too well the challenges of managing a demanding career as a scientist and being a devoted mother. In a recent talk titled “Juggling Genes and a Baby: My Life as a Woman Scientist,” Carton shared her insight and experiences with a group of Fordham students, emphasizing that such a juggling act is not only possible, but also can be quite fulfilling.

Carton, who studied in Fordham’s Department of Biological Sciences from 1992 until 1996 and is currently expecting her second child, spoke during the annual Clare Boothe Luce Symposium held on April 9 in the William D. Walsh Family Library’s Flom Auditorium. The annual event commemorated the 100th anniversary of the birth of Luce who, as a playwright, journalist, ambassador and congresswoman, was one of the most accomplished women of the 20th century.

Fordham is one of 13 institutions in the United States designated by Clare Boothe Luce to benefit from the Clare Boothe Luce Fund in perpetuity. In its financial support of both undergraduate scholars and graduate fellows, the fund encourages women to enter, study, graduate and teach in fields where there have been barriers to female advancement, namely physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, meteorology, engineering and mathematics.

Prior to the formal presentation of awards to this year’s seven Luce scholars and seven Luce graduate fellows, three of the scholars gave presentations on scientific research endeavors made possible by the Luce program. Senior chemistry major Jasmine Constanzo discussed dioxanes; senior biological sciences major Lauretta LeVoci spoke about the identification and characterization of a new gene mutation that causes Bloom Syndrome, a genetic disorder leaving individuals, primarily those of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, predisposed to cancer and infections; and senior physics and chemistry double major Eve Stenson shared her experience in multidisciplinary internships at NASA’s Microgravity Fluids Division.

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