Before Fordham students arrive on campus for a new academic year, the University’s operations and facilities crews spend months making Rose Hill and Lincoln Center look and feel brand-new. Every tradesperson, groundskeeper, and custodial staff member takes part in this summer-long tuneup, repainting walls, replacing locks, mulching flower beds, and making upgrades until every dorm, classroom, and common space is refreshed and ready for fall.
John McDonagh describes the three-week stretch before Opening Day as “controlled panic.” The Lincoln Center director of facilities operations said his staff work in three round-the-clock shifts to get the Manhattan campus and its two dorms ready for more than 1,500 undergrads.
At Rose Hill, there is much more ground to cover. The 85-acre campus has 11 residence halls that house nearly 3,500 undergraduate students. “We go through each individual building once everyone leaves to get it clean and ready,” said Director of Campus Operations Garrett Barker, who manages Rose Hill’s roughly 130 custodial workers and groundskeepers.
His counterpart Fred Signore, director of facilities operations, oversees roughly 50 carpenters, engineers, and mechanics who keep the Bronx campus humming. “We have a responsibility to give Fordham students the best product we can,” said Signore. “So we’ll go back into some of those rooms two or three times to do a little sprucing up.”
Below, see the behind-the-scenes work, indoors and out, that Fordham’s employees do to welcome students home to Fordham.
Rose Hill’s groundspersons make sure everything is mowed, watered, weed-whacked, and mulched all summer long. But in the final weeks before students move in, “it’s crunch time,” said Will Schneider, head of grounds and transportation at Rose Hill. “Because of the heat and rain, the weeds are coming back fast, so we want to make sure it’s clean.”
Schneider says parents and visitors often comment on the landscaping. “They’ll say, you guys keep this campus looking so good. And I say, thank you, I’ll let my guys know.”
Those “guys” include Saul Morales, mechanic, mowing Eddies Parade (at top), and Groundsperson Alexander Dourthe (above), maintaining the shrubbery near Cunniffe Fountain, as well as a dozen others who work hard to get the grounds ready for the students, said Schneider.
Restoring the grounds around University Church before move-in was also a priority for Schneider (above). After its recent restoration, “everything was torn up,” he said. He had the flower beds beside the church replanted and the grass reseeded. “It turned out great,” he said.
Neale Brodlieb’s punch list includes repairing and tightening furniture and cabinetry in the dorms.
“If anybody can wear things out, it’s college kids,” the carpenter and Fordham employee of 14 years said with a good-natured smile. Here, he is replacing a torn blind in Loyola Hall.
“We go through every chain and shade in the whole campus because they’re easily damaged—and privacy is important,” he said.
One of the summer upgrades that students will enjoy this fall is a new mail system at Lincoln Center. Mail Clerk John Borrelli Jr. shows off the new lockers that students can use to retrieve packages and mail anytime, even when the mail room is closed.
Head Locksmith Mike Smith works inside his shop in the basement of Faculty Memorial Hall. After 36 years at Fordham, it’s become “my home away from home,” he said. Smith estimates he cut at least 1,000 new dorm room keys for this fall. “That lock change list is huge because kids sometimes forget to hand in their keys at the end of the year or they lose their keys and they need replacements,” he said.
The centralized HVAC system in McMahon residence hall at Lincoln Center keeps dorm rooms cool in summer, but requires air filter changes every three months. Mechanic Jonathan Saez (front) is changing them with fellow mechanic Boris Vasquez.
“We want the students and everyone to breathe proper air,” said Vasquez. “Especially with the smoke [from fires in Canada] that we had recently,” he said.
The same work happens at Rose Hill, room by room—which can mean upwards of 400 filter changes before move-in for a dorm like O’Hare. “We give each AC unit a deep cleaning and do a full testing of all the equipment before the students come in,” said Joe Rossi, assistant chief engineer.
Lincoln Center Foreperson Frankie Myers said his team’s “lifeline is in the ceiling,” referring to shut-off valves hidden in McMahon’s drop ceilings to make them accessible for repairs. Here, Mechanics Taurean Corbin (on the ground) and Dennis Bassi (on the ladder) check the HVAC piping. “What makes this job interesting is that it’s not repetitive,” said Corbin. “Every day it could be something different—a pipe leaking, something in the bathroom, electrical, we do it all.”
Fordham’s custodial staff cleans every inch of the residence halls and buildings before Opening Day. Above, Doris Cardenas cleans a room in Rose Hill’s Loschert Hall. The mom of three—including a ’24 Fordham graduate and Fulbright scholar—said she feels like a mom to Fordham students, too. For eight months out of the year, “this is their house,” she said, and the deep cleaning she does before their arrival and during the school year is part of making them feel safe and comfortable. “The most important thing is that the students are healthy,” she said.
Additional reporting by Taylor Ha
