Claudia Rivera always shares the same advice with the staff she supervises.
“‘Please take advantage of the tuition remission benefit,’ I say. ‘It’ll do wonders for elevating you moving forward.’”
Many employees use the benefit for graduate school, but Rivera, director of administration in Arts and Sciences and lead coordinator for the Serving the City internship program, is among a smaller cohort who earned their bachelor’s degrees while working at Fordham. Below, she and other bachelor’s recipients described how their undergraduate degrees opened doors for them and their families.
Starting a Fordham Family
Rivera wanted to go to college after attending the Bronx High School of Science, but it was financially out of reach. She remembers being amazed when a friend went to NYU for free through her dad, a custodial employee. “That never left me,” Rivera said.
She worked in the New Jersey court system as an executive secretary, knowing at some point she would need a degree to advance. When she and her husband moved back to the Bronx, she encouraged him to find work at Fordham, hoping it would allow them both to earn their bachelor’s degrees. When he was hired, “I was like, ‘There it is. We’re a Fordham family for life now,’” said Rivera.
Her husband, Ralph—currently director of facilities at the Westchester campus and the Calder Center—was nearly finished with his undergrad degree when Rivera joined Fordham’s communications and media studies department as an executive secretary in 2014. Within five years, she earned a bachelor’s in economics and organizational leadership from the School of Professional and Continuing Studies.
The program taught Rivera that there is “no universal way” to lead, and provided “terms and names and models” to explain the work methods she had already been using. By the time her current position opened up, she thought to herself, “This is what I’ve been working for. This is what I’ve been learning how to do.”
It also taught her how to see Fordham from a student’s perspective. “It made me understand the anxieties that the students have on the other side of the table.”
True to her words, the Riveras became the ultimate Fordham family: both she and Ralph earned bachelor’s degrees and MBAs; their daughter graduated in 2022 and is now studying at the Graduate School of Education, and their son is entering his senior year at Rose Hill.
Breaking the Cycle of Limited Opportunity
Eliane Victoria credits Rivera with being a guiding light as she pursued her bachelor’s degree. “Our majors were the same,” said Victoria, who supports multiple academic departments at Lincoln Center in her role as senior department associate of natural sciences. “She would say, ‘Take this professor’ or ‘I think you’re going to enjoy this class.’”
Growing up the youngest of nine in rural Brazil, Victoria began working at age 14 to support her family, juggling work and night school. When she was studying at Fordham, she also had family responsibilities; this time, she had a young son she didn’t always get to tuck in after a 12-hour day of work and classes.
She made the sacrifice because she wanted to inspire him and show him the difficulties she was able to overcome. In Brazil, she said, merit doesn’t determine your destiny, and opportunities are limited to people in certain classes. “In America, if you have an education, you can actually break that cycle,” she said.
Victoria graduated with her master’s in ethics and society this year, one year after earning her bachelor’s from PCS. “He’s very proud,” she said of her son, now a rising high school senior. She and her husband are hoping he’ll become a Fordham graduate, too.
Doing Better for Herself
Adiaha Foglino, office manager at Fordham Law School’s Public Interest Resource Center, had a BA when she arrived at Fordham. But she yearned for a better undergraduate experience. She had dropped out of Delaware State to support herself and her mother after 9/11. She later earned a bachelor’s online at the encouragement of her aunt, a Brooklyn College professor, but was unhappy with her grades.
“I wanted the opportunity to strengthen my academic record,” she said. “And Fordham is more prestigious—I wanted that on my resume.”
Though her mother and her aunt have since passed, “I know that they would have been proud,” said Foglino, a 2025 PCS grad. And she hasn’t stopped at her bachelor’s: next year she expects to graduate with her MBA from the Gabelli School.
