Every Sunday around 8:30 a.m., while most students are still recovering from their weekends, Shannon Zipfel, FCRH ’21, boards the D train and heads to the Rubin Museum, where she helps run its Family Sunday program.

She helps plan crafts that teach kids about art, and let them have fun and be creative. Right now, in honor of Diwali, the Hindui festival of lights, the program is making Diyas out of model magic decorated with beads and markers. Zipfel’s is the model.

The Rubin internship started as a Sunday volunteer position when Zipfel was a sophomore and became a part time internship over the summer. She heads downtown to the museum on Tuesdays as well to help plan for Sundays, work on administrative tasks and plan workshops for school groups.

“It’s really exciting to work in a museum because that’s where I’ve always wanted to be,” said Zipfel. “I think working in the education center is a good way to start considering careers in the museum field because it’s engaging directly with people who come to the museum and you have to start thinking about ‘how am I going to teach these people about what art and culture mean in an accessible way.’”

As an art history major with a global concentration and a particular interest in Buddhist art, Zipfel is well situated for her career. However, the Rubin is not the only meaningful art-related opportunity Zipfel had this summer.

Funded by the Stark Family Prize, she traveled the south of Spain to Cordoba, Seville and Granada to see Islamic architecture in situ. Zipfel won the grant by submitting a proposal of the Mosques, palaces, alcazars and gardens she would visit.

She asked to study the history and architecture of the area while looking specifically at the time period where Muslims, Christians and Jews all lived together and collaborated, making significant advances in science, technology and architecture. She visited places like Alhambra, Alcazar de Los Reyes, Mezquita de Cordoba, Catedral de Sevilla and Madinat al-Zahra.

“It was very unexpected and I was very honored to have this chance,” said Zipfel. “I had never traveled out of the country before, so this was one of the most exciting things that could happen to me, and I feel like it will impact my future career in art history.”

Back at school, Zipfel serves as the editor in chief of The Ampersand, Fordham’s literary magazine. She said she served on the board of her high school’s literary magazine and wanted to keep writing.

“It’s a good way to process what you’re thinking in a creative fashion,” said Zipfel. “It gets more of your emotions out than writing them down straight forward. It’s more specific to you than a universal approach.”

The Ampersand meets as a club on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. and gives students the opportunity to practice writing through exercises and critiques of their work. The club also publishes spring and fall magazines filled with student work produced both at and outside the club. Zipfel said she encourages anyone who is thinking about submitting to do so.

“I think The Ampersand is really exciting,” said Zipfel. “There’s not a lot of places that will publish student work and it can be intimidating to send things in and I think The Ampersand is a very accessible way to publish your writing. I think it’s a great thing to have at Fordham.”

Zipfel’s creative and academic pursuits are not all she does. She is also a member of the Pedro Arupe Volunteer Council that puts together one-time volunteer opportunities that connect students to the Bronx and New York.

Events she has helped plan include weekend opportunities to volunteer at a soup kitchen, Midnight Run (to hand out food to people experiencing homelessness), the Health and Resource Fair (which is coming up on Nov. 3) and Ignatian Family Teach In for Justice, which is Nov. 16–18 this year.

Zipfel will tell her story at Our Story on Nov. 21. She said she has been going since the group started, and the stories have always been impactful. After she was nominated this year, she realized she had a story she wanted to tell.