Patrick Angiolillo is a historian of religion and the ancient world, specializing in the history and literature of early Judaism, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Greco-Roman world.

Prior to arriving at Purchase 11 years ago, she was the Director of Media Relations and a member of the senior staff at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust for more than 9 years where she engaged in strategic planning and oversaw and implemented comprehensive media strategies for exhibits, programs, and educational initiatives.

In the previous years, she was an arts journalist, having spent time as associate editor of Museums Magazine and assistant editor of Opera News Magazine.

In her free time, she volunteers with a dog rescue organization and is a young adult novelist. Her debut, Sasquatch, Love, and Other Imaginary Things, was published by Simon & Schuster in August 2017. Her latest book is Eight Dates and Nights, was published by Penguin Random House in October 2023.

She holds a BFA in Drama from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and a Graduate Certificate in Strategic Communications from the University at Albany.

Gregory Perri is an actor and teacher based in New York City. He graduated from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University with his MFA in Acting and has since worked on stage in New York and regionally, and on film and television. Broadway: Good People (MTC), Off-Broadway: King James (MTC), The Signature, The Cherry Lane Theater, TACT and more. Regionally he has worked at Arena Stage, Barrington Stage Company, Round House Theater, Syracuse Stage, TheaterWorks Hartford, and Shakespeare on the Sound along with others. On film he can be seen in Not Fade Away (Dir. David Chase), The Wolf of Wall Street (Dir. Martin Scorsese) All is Bright (Dir. Phil Morrison) and as the lead in the independent films Bastards of Young and Thinking with Richard among others. On TV, he can be seen in guest starring roles on The Other Two, New Amsterdam, FBI: Most Wanted, and The Good Wife and more. 

Aya Tucker is a healthcare clown, Lecoq-trained physical theatre artist, and certified Lucid Body instructor. Aya holds an MFA in Lecoq-Based Actor Created Theatre from Naropa University, hosted at the London International School of Performing Arts. She is a graduate of the Michael Howard Studio's One-Year Conservatory, where she studied with Fay Simpson, founder of the Lucid Body technique.

Maurice D. Nelson (he/him/his) is Chief Diversity Officer at Purchase College, where he provides executive leadership for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging efforts that advance institutional excellence, accountability, and access. A proud native of Savannah, Georgia, Nelson identifies as Black and Mexican, and his lived experiences continue to inform his purpose-driven, equity-centered leadership in higher education.

Nelson brings extensive experience leading DEIB strategy, organizational transformation, and civil-rights compliance. Most recently, he served as Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at Sacred Heart University, where his portfolio encompassed culture strategy, workforce planning, employee and student engagement, organizational learning and development, and civil rights compliance. He served as a senior advisor to the President and Cabinet, leading initiatives that strengthened community, retention, and institutional accountability while overseeing discrimination and harassment response, conflict resolution, and equity-centered compliance operations. His work consistently aligned inclusive excellence with institutional risk management, operational integrity, and sustainable organizational change.

Earlier in his career, Nelson served in Multicultural Affairs at Georgia Southern University, where he co-authored the institution's Inclusive Excellence Action Plan, facilitated campus-wide equity education, and partnered across academic and student affairs to advance student success, belonging, and well-being. His work included leadership in mentoring initiatives, suicide-prevention education as a Certified QPR Trainer, and cross-divisional collaboration to embed equity into student experience and support systems.

Deeply connected to the performing arts, Nelson brings lived experience as both an artist and advocate. He played alto and tenor saxophone from elementary school through college, participating in concert, jazz, and marching bands, and sang in concert and gospel choirs throughout high school and college. He has also trained and studied in dance, including jazz, modern, ballet, and hip hop. This artistic foundation informs his understanding of creativity, expression, and discipline, and strengthens his ability to lead equity work within an arts-centered academic community.

Nelson holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from Savannah State University, a Master of Education in Higher Education Administration from Georgia Southern University, and a Doctor of Education in Higher Education Leadership from Valdosta State University. His doctoral research examined the organizational positioning and challenges of Chief Diversity Officers, further grounding his leadership in evidence-informed practice and institutional change.

Sara Duell is a Swedish designer in New York. She uses rehearsal as a method for making printed matter to stage and practice radical political imaginations.

Currently, she's working on Exit Strategies: Rehearsing the Future Through Design, exploring the intersection of choreography and graphic design. Which she also wrote about in Times of Global Injustice: Temporalities of Power and Community Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries, forthcoming from Routledge 2026. She publishes the publication WMN-lesbian art and poetry, awarded the Queen's Art Fund Grant (2021, 2023).

She earned her MFA in graphic design at Yale University School of Art, where she received the Phelps Berdan Memorial Award and the Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies Research Award.

Deena So Oteh is an award winning illustrator whose work explores the emotional and psychological dimensions of visual storytelling. Through her considered use of light, composition, and negative space, she creates images that balance bold graphic clarity with layered atmospheres, inviting reflection on identity, memory, and human connection.

Her interest in personal narratives, the human psyche, and how environments shape our inner worlds drives her to experiment with form and visual tone, always seeking solutions that resonate both viscerally and conceptually. While grounded in realistic rendering, Deena bends form, structure, and exaggerates color to amplify mood and convey surreal, internal landscapes.

Her illustrations have been recognized by the Society of Illustrators, Art Directors Club, American Illustration, and 3x3 Magazine, appearing in editorial features, book covers, and children's books. She holds an MFA in Illustration as Visual Essay from the School of Visual Arts, teaches Professional Practices at SVA's Summer Illustration Residency and is a tenure-track professor at Purchase College.

Ezra is currently the Research Assistant at the Career Development Center at Purchase. Ezra says that this position has changed his career outcome and his life, because he's doing work that is valuable in the work world and for applying to graduate school. You can hear more about Ezra's internship experience at this Instagram post. 

Annette Davies PhD is a performance studies researcher, professional speaker, and corporate communications consultant.

She has partnered with local and national profit and for-profit sectors to develop effective branding, marketing, and communication strategies. Her scholarly interests include the areas of celebrities, performing artists, and media ecology. She has taught various communication classes at numerous colleges throughout New York and Connecticut. Prior to her work in academia, she was an award-winning writer/producer in short films. She holds a PhD in communications from Regent University.

Adam Resnick, a writer and researcher, earned his M.Phil. in Comparative Literature from the City University of New York Graduate Center.
His scholarship explores the intersections of media, literature, and cultural history, with a particular focus on television. His current book project examines the evolution of the mockumentary comedy form—from its satirical origins to its influence on contemporary storytelling.
Resnick's research and teaching interests span television history, Latin American testimonio, and the relationship between narrative form and social experience. He has taught courses in media studies, transhumanism, and the literary imagination. He currently teaches Catholic Studies and Literature at Sacred Heart University, and continues to enjoy teaching at Purchase College in its summer and winter sessions .

Tom Kelly has over 28 years' energy and sustainability experience creating and managing institutional change for several organizations. Tom is Purchase College's Senior Energy Manager, responsible for a variety of strategic decisions focused on policy, energy, waste, transportation, land use and green purchasing. Purchase College is part of the State University of New York, the largest comprehensive university system in the United States. The college is consistently recognized by the Princeton Review Green Colleges edition. Tom and his team are working to achieve a variety of state mandates most notably Executive Order 22 to transition to a net zero campus.

Isabella Gerace is recognized by the State University of New York (SUNY) system as Purchase College's Sustainability Coordinator where she upholds dual responsibility channels. As part Facilities Management's department, she is responsible for supporting strategic decisions focused on green purchasing and operations. Simultaneously, Isabella engages with the Purchase College community day to day, incorporating eco-minded behaviors and sustainability education across different mediums.
She is eager to share her personal sustainability journey with the campus community as well as advocate and champion sustainability in a collaborative, equitable, and inclusive way.

Jack Schatz is a versatile and accomplished trombone player and currently Professor of Trombone and Brass at Purchase Conservatory of Music, Purchase College SUNY.

At Purchase, Jack has commissioned four works for Brass Quintet, Brass Ensemble and Trombone Ensemble by Composers David Heckendorn and Warren Wernick. The Purchase Faculty Brass has recorded the Brass Quintet.Jack has also served as Assistant Professor of Trombone at Hofstra University, and at Queens College. 

Jack has enjoyed a freelance career performing in every facet of the music industry from commercial jingles to recording studios to national tours and symphony halls.  

He has performed with The New York Philharmonic, The Metropolitan Opera where he recorded Wagner's Ring Cycle, National Grand Opera, Houston Opera, New York Choral Society, Orchestra of St. Lukes, and New Jersey Symphony.   

Jack has performed and toured with the Big Bands of Bob Mintzer, Tom Pierson, Louie Bellson, and Bobby Watson. Jack has recorded with The Ed Palermo Big Band, James Moody, Alan Pasqua, and Ted Nash.  

Jack has been a member of the Grand Teton Music Festival for four years, and has been on staff at Westbury Music Fair.

Jack's recording credits include cast recordings of My Favorite Year and Broadway productions of Damn Yankees, Hello Dolly, A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum, Side Show, Little Me, The Phantom of the Opera, Flower Drum Song, Wonderful Town, A Chorus Line, and Billy Elliot, Hugh Jackman Back On Broadway, and Nice Work If You Can Get It, The Music Man.

Jack has been a featured soloist and conductor with the Nassau-Suffolk All County Music Festival.

Jack Schatz is a native New Yorker who upon graduating from The High School of Music and Art, attended Queens College CUNY where he received his BM and BA degrees in Performance and Education.  At Queens College he  studied with Erwin Price and Simon Karasickwas, and was the recipient of the Karol Rathaus Family Award for excellence in performance.  Jack also received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for further study towards a Masters Degree.

Jack earned his Masters Degree from The Juilliard School of Music, which he attended on a full scholarship.   Jack was a student of Don Harwood, Steve Norrell and Arnold Jacobs.

Jack has also published articles for the International Trombone Association.

To render the experience of Otherness, Wei works with print media, objects, video, sound, design, and movement. Mapping Queerness and Foreignness are the matters they often research and express. Wei investigates the "betwixt and between" within the homogenous timeline and ephemeral togetherness, tracing imprints by contextualizing one's and one's collective presence. 

Bryan Murray has graced stages around the world from New York to Tokyo.

He has won numerous awards including third prize in Melodie at Concours de Montreal in 2022 and first prize at the Mildred Miller, Talents of the World, and Premiere Opera competitions. His recent notable performances include portraying Ford in Falstaff and Danilo in Die lustige Witwe at Geneva Light Opera, Tonio in Pagliacci at New Rochelle Opera, Jupiter in Orpheus in the Underworld with Opera Ithaca, and the priest and fisherman in Kaija Saariaho’s Only the Sound Remains at renowned venues such as The Biennale in Venice, the Strasbourg Festival, and Tokyo Bunka Kaikan.

During the 2018/2019 season Bryan performed with Deutsche Oper Berlin, where he performed comprimario roles in 12 different productions during the . His memorable portrayals included Fiorello in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Moralès in Carmen, and Marullo in Rigoletto.

On the concert stage, Bryan recently debuted in China with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the iSING! Festival for their Echoes of Ancient Tang Poems concert. He had his Carnegie Hall debut as the baritone soloist in the world premiere of Everyone, Everywhere by Daron Hagen in 2023. Bryan has also performed alongside esteemed ensembles such as NY Baroque Inc. and Teatro Grattacielo in Manhattan, as well as the Deutsche Oper Berlin Orchestra, the Yale Philharmonia, the Jacksonville Symphony, the New Haven Symphony, and the Yale Camerata. You can hear Bryan on two records: The Crucible by Robert Ward on Albany Records and Everyone, Everywhere by Daron Hagen on Naxos.

Bryan received a Bachelor of Arts from Stony Brook University, a Master of Music and Artist Diploma from Purchase College, and a Master of Musical Arts from Yale University.

Alexander Davis (he/him) is a New York City-based bassoonist who has been known for his ability to play "with poise and élan"- Cleveland Classical.

Alexander is a musician whose artistic intentions center on space-making, connection, and community-building within classical music. An advocate for creating equity in the arts, Alexander is the founder and Artistic Director of the Sugar Hill Salon, a chamber music series showcasing black and brown wind artistry based in the culturally robust community of Harlem, NY, and on the traditional territory of the Lenapehoking Nation (www.sugarhillsalon.com). Bridging classical and modern musical landscapes, Alexander has worked to foster a larger appreciation for the bassoon while advocating for a more inclusive musical environment. His drive to perform works by living composers and his passion for uplifting diverse voices in the music community have led him to become a sought-after artist and member of the International Contemporary Ensemble and Quintet of the Americas.

In April of 2022, Alexander performed in the first all-black orchestra to ever hold a concert in the history of Carnegie Hall's existence with the Gateways Music Festival Orchestra. He has played with the American Composer Orchestra, St Paul Chamber Orchestra, Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra, The Knights, Fort Worth Symphony, Harlem Chamber Players, Tertulia Chamber Music, Alarm Will Sound, American Modern Opera Company, Wet Ink, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and more. Alexander has been featured as a soloist with orchestras performing works such as Phenomenal Women alongside Valerie Coleman with the National Symphony Orchestra led by Jeri Lynne Johnson and Carl Maria von Weber's Andante e Rondo with the Fredonia Chamber Orchestra. Apart from playing in orchestras, he has been heard on Broadway playing in the pits for Phantom of the Opera, Sweeney Todd, and Lincoln Center's production of Camelot.

Alexander has performed in summer festivals such as Tanglewood, Ensemble Evolution, Banff Music Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Maine Chamber Music Seminar, and the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival. In addition to performing, Alexander is the Administrative Director of the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival where he works alongside the Imani Winds to cultivate a new generation of innovative chamber musicians at The Juilliard School. He has also been part of the "Armory Artists Corps Teaching Artists" in conjunction with the Park Avenue Armory since 2018.

Alexander is adjunct bassoon faculty at Montclair State University, SUNY Purchase, Manhattan School of Music Pre-College, and Mannes School of Music Prep. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Music Education and Performance from SUNY Fredonia, a Masters in Performance from Stony Brook University, a Performers Certificate in Orchestral Performance from Manhattan School of Music, and is currently a Doctoral Candidate of Music at Stony Brook University. He has studied with bassoonists Frank Morelli, Bob Williams, and Laura Koepke.

Tori Sexsmith is the Production Manager for the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College, where they also teach the Dance Production course. They previously served as Production Supervisor at Penn State Harrisburg, managing over 200 events annually and overseeing the Dance program at the Capital Area School for the Arts. Their professional experience includes work as a lighting designer, stage manager, production manager, and technical consultant throughout Central Pennsylvania, with a focus on technical arts education for high school students.

Dr. Saba holds a bachelor's degree in athletic training with double minors in theater and dance from West Chester University of Pennsylvania, a performing arts medicine master's certificate from Shenandoah University, and a doctorate in athletic training from Moravian University. She is also a certified Graston Technique specialist. Prior to joining the Harkness Center for Dance Injury team, Dr. Saba worked at Moravian University as a graduate teaching assistant for the master of athletic training program and practiced as an athletic trainer working with dancers, musicians, and cheer athletes.

Edward O'Blenis teaches Acting II in the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Purchase College, where he guides second-year BFA Acting students through the plays of Anton Chekhov and contemporary performance using the Stanislavski System and related practices.

Lisa McGinn is an Equity Stage Manager based in NYC. Lisa has worked Off-Broadway, Regionally, and Internationally, and has toured theatre projects all around the world. Working in both large- and small-scale, she specializes in devising, collaboration and new work. Lisa brings an emphasis of values work to traditional stage management, focusing on the process over the product. In addition to theatremaking, Lisa also stage manages Commercial and Corporate projects.

Purva loves sharing her passion for the craft of acting with students and inviting them to discover for themselves what they love about it.

Tracey is a Learning Specialist for Cornerstone Connect. Prior to joining the Office of Disability Resources, Tracey worked as an in-class resource teacher at the middle school level and later, as a Learning Disability Teacher Consultant/Child Study Team Member at the high school level, in New Jersey. She loves working collaboratively with students to help them achieve their goals and embark on their path towards realizing their dreams. Outside of work, Tracey likes to spend time with her family, friends, and two pups. she enjoys kayaking, hiking, skiing, playing pickleball, reading, watching sports, especially the NY Red Bulls, NYNJ Gotham FC, NY Liberty, and the Buffalo Bills.

Ralph Dickinson has worked extensively in higher education, career development, social services and the arts. He has directed programs and provided instruction in a variety of subjects including technology, visual arts, health education, independent living, disability justice, writing and math. He comes to Purchase from CUNY's Lehman College, where he directed a program that provided training and employment services for people at risk for homelessness. He previously managed the studio and editing lab at the School of Animation & Visual Effects at Academy of Art University. He holds an MA in Education with a Concentration in Instructional Technologies from San Francisco State University and a BA in Humanities with an Emphasis in Film and Culture from the University of California at Berkeley.

David Seabrook is interested in applied microeconomics and business. His teaching follows a long career in management consulting. David's research focuses on the economics of information and learning– in particular, on the question "How do you learn what is most valuable to learn?"

Edward Perez resides in the cultural crossroads of Queens, New York, where he leads parallel careers as a composer, arranger, and bassist.

His works have been performed by the likes of The Silkroad Ensemble, Yo-Yo Ma, Alan Gilbert, Galician gaita powerhouse Cristina Pato, Latin-jazz legend Ignacio Berroa, Latin-grammy nominated Peruvian singer Jorge Pardo, and oud phenom Kenan Adnawi. His music has been played in venues ranging from the smallest nightclubs in New York to the Kennedy Center, David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, Massey Hall, Chicago Symphony Center, El Gran Teatro Nacional de Lima, Damascus Opera House, and Boston Symphony Hall.

Perez began his career as a jazz bassist, but quickly branched out to Latin-Jazz and traditional styles from Peru, Colombia, Brazil, and other parts of South America. He spent his collegiate years at Harvard University, earning a math degree while cutting his teeth in the local jazz clubs in Boston. Afterwards, Perez enjoyed a two year stint in Lima, Peru where he performed with the foremost Afro-Pervuian musicians including Grammy winners Eva Ayllón and Juan Medrano Cotito as well as venerated greats of the older generation such as Oscar Avilés and Julio "Chocolate" Algendones.

Perez later returned to the US in order to establish a home base in New York and pursue his interests in modern jazz. Hailed by Jazz Times for his "great dexterity," Perez has toured through more than 20 countries sharing the stage with jazz luminaries such as Lee Konitz, Greg Osby, Seamus Blake, Lionel Loueke, Kenny Werner, Jason Palmer, and also Latin jazz powerhouses Paquito D'Rivera, Ignacio Berroa, and Arturo O'Farrill. His numerous recording credits on bass include the Grammy-nominated Latin jazz album "Second Chance" by Hector Martignon.

Also active as an educator, Perez has taught privately for The New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music and has held ongoing teaching positions for the Queens College Center for Preparatory Studies in Music as well as the Symphony Space Curriculum Arts Project. In the summers he teaches at Silkroad's Global Musician Workshop and has given masterclasses to bassists and improvisors on all instruments in a host of countries around the globe.

Currently, Perez co-leads the Terraza Big Band, an 18 piece jazz group which some of the strongest up-and-coming players on the New York scene gather together to play original works by co-leaders Edward Perez and Michael Thomas, which run the gamut from modern jazz to styles from Latin America. As a bassist, Perez still remains firmly rooted in jazz improvisation, but continues to play a myriad of musical styles with a variety of groups, always remaining open to allowing the influences from these collaborations to influence his compositional style.

Bill Owens is currently the associate principal trumpet with the West Point Band. After receiving his bachelor's degree from the Juilliard School in 2005, Bill moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a freelance chamber and orchestral musician. He quickly established himself by performing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Diego Symphony, and the Santa Barbara Symphony, as well as numerous other Southern California orchestras. For six years, he was a member of the national touring ensemble, Presidio Brass. In addition to regular performances with the West Point Band, Bill performs brass quintet recitals with the Collective Brass with whom he has recorded three albums. His newest project is a collaboration with piano soloist Yalin Chi. Their duo performs recitals in the tristate area and have recently released an album of French songs.

New York City–based Venezuelan violist Ramón Carrero-Martínez is the newly appointed Principal Viola of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, as well as an internationally recognized chamber musician and dedicated educator.

Carrero-Martínez recently completed the prestigious Ensemble Connect Fellowship at Carnegie Hall (2023–2025), a program that combines world-class performance with community engagement throughout New York City public schools.

Carrero-Martínez has earned international acclaim as a prizewinner in major competitions as a former member of the award-winning Terra String Quartet, including the Grand Prize at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, Second Prize at the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, and Third Prize at the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition and Festa. He has appeared as soloist with The Orchestra San Antonio and the New York Classical Players, and is a member of the Exponential Ensemble and New Haven Symphony, showcasing his expressive versatility across a wide range of repertoire and styles.

A versatile chamber and orchestral musician, Carrero-Martínez has toured and performed extensively across North America, Europe, and Asia, with leading ensembles such as the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, New York City Ballet, Twelfth Night, Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, Experiential Orchestra, and the Metropolis Ensemble, among many others. His recent festival appearances include the San Antonio 210 Festival, Concordia Chamber Players, Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival, Valley of the Moon Music Festival, Nexus Chamber Music Festival, North Country Chamber Players, and The Cultural Caravan.

A passionate educator, Carrero-Martínez serves on the faculties of the San Antonio Classical Music Institute, UpBeat NYC, and Orchestrating Dreams, and has also taught with the Youth Orchestra of St. Luke's. He works closely with young musicians from diverse backgrounds, guiding them to discover their artistic voices, and prepare for the multifaceted realities of a professional music career.

Ramón is a proud alum of the Manhattan School of Music, where he earned his B.A. and M.M. under the mentorship of violist Daniel Avshalomov.

With over two decades of experience as an accomplished professional musician based in New York City, Australian-born Will de Vos has built a distinguished career across a wide spectrum of musical genres, including classical orchestra, chamber music, musical theater, and recording.

Widely regarded as one of the top players in his field, Will is celebrated for his versatility, artistry, and dedication to excellence.

Will is currently engaged with New York City Ballet Orchestra, where his performances contribute to the ensemble's world-class reputation. He frequently collaborates with esteemed organizations such as the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Pops Orchestra, the American Symphony Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony, the Vermont Symphony, and the Harrisburg Symphony, among others. His talents have taken him to prominent stages across the Northeast and beyond, including Carnegie Hall, where he had the distinct honor of performing with Vienna Philharmonic during their 2023 US tour - a proud milestone in his career.

In addition to his orchestral work, Will has made significant contributions to the world of musical theater. For over 20 years, he performed in the orchestra for The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway until its historic run concluded in 2023. His other Broadway credits include acclaimed productions such as Follies, On the Town, Ragtime, and Into the Woods, showcasing his adaptability and commitment to excellence in live performance. As a sought-after studio musician, Will's artistry has been featured in numerous film, television, and commercial recording projects, solidifying his reputation as a highly skilled and versatile horn player. Some recent film credits include blockbuster scores such as Barbie, Maestro, The Greatest Showman, Joker, White Noise, Madam Web, Gemini Man, Collateral Beauty and many more.

Will began his musical journey at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music in Brisbane, Australia, where he earned a Bachelor of Music in French Horn Performance. He later completed his Master of Music at SUNY Purchase College Conservatory of Music in New York.

Violinist Abi Fayette is passionate about chamber music.

Ms. Fayette has performed with renowned artists such as Jonathan Biss, Brett Dean, Kim Kashkashian, and others. As an active touring musician, Ms. Fayette's performances have taken her all over the world with appearances spanning across the United States, Europe, and Asia. She has toured with Musicians from Marlboro, The Knights, Curtis Chamber Orchestra, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Currently, she is a member of the Grammy Nominated Catalyst Quartet and serves as Artistic Director of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for which she is also a prforming musician.

Ms. Fayette performs on a violin made in 1860 by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume generously on loan from Marlboro Music.

The youngest of four children in a musical family, Ms. Fayette started her violin studies at age three with her mother. She earned degrees from The Curtis Institute of Music and New England Conservatory, studying under Ida Kavafian and Soovin Kim respectively. Other principal teachers include Ann Setzer, Kyung-Wha Chung, and Joseph Silverstein. 

Ben Rice has consistently proven himself to be one of the most skilled Jazz pianists of his generation.

Since graduating from SUNY Purchase (BMus '15), he has worked with some of the top names in Jazz in NYC performing at venues such as Smalls, Mezzrow, Dizzy's Club, Birdland, The Blue Note, and many more. In addition to regular stints in Rodney Green's and Don Hahn's Groups, he has worked with such names as Eric Alexander, Steve Davis, Jon Faddis, Doug Weiss, Ralph Lalama and others. Currently, he leads the Ben Rice Trio, which performs regularly in New York City, as well as working as sidemen for other instrumentalists and vocalists. Recent performances of note include the Jon Faddis Big Band at Dizzy's Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center, a solo feature for the Mezzrow 'Round Midnight Solo Hour, and a residency in his hometown of San Francisco at the Black Cat with the Ben Rice Quartet. Ben is also a skilled arranger and composer, who is fluent in orchestration ranging from big band to symphony orchestra

Michael E. Steiper, PhD became the seventh president of Purchase College in August 2025.

Dr. Steiper is a mission-driven academic leader dedicated to faculty and student success who previously served as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at CUNY's College of Staten Island (CSI).

At CSI, Dr. Steiper coordinated the campus' vision for student success, contributing to strong increases in student retention and growth in enrollment. He oversaw the development and implementation of academic programs and policies and represented the campus on CUNY system-wide initiatives.

Dr. Steiper spent over two decades at CUNY, first at Hunter College then at CSI. At Hunter College, Dr. Steiper had roles as a faculty member and administrator, most recently as Associate Provost for Academic Success, Institutional Effectiveness and Strategic Analytics. During his time at Hunter, he served as the inaugural director of Hunter's Human Biology Program, now the college's second largest major. He led an active research lab that explored key questions in primate evolution and mentored students at all levels, many of whom have gone on to careers in academia and STEM fields.

As a biological anthropologist, Dr. Steiper's research centers on human and primate evolution, with particular emphasis on primate molecular evolution, the relationship between genetic and fossil records, and the interplay between skeletal and genetic variation. His work primarily utilizes genetic and bioinformatic techniques, and he has participated in paleontological fieldwork across three continents.

Born and raised in New York, Dr. Steiper is a current Westchester resident who earned his PhD and MA from Harvard University and his bachelor's from New York University.
 

Meredith Mowder is an art historian specializing in the lifecycles of artist communities, performance, and modes of artistic exchange. Her writing has been featured in PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, The Brooklyn Rail, and in numerous other publications. She is currently working on a book about the economics of performance in downtown New York City during the late 1970s and 1980s.

Chuyu received her B.A. at Northwestern, focusing on a comparison between Aristotle and Confucianism for her senior thesis. Her interest is broadly situated in the intersection between Ancient Greek Philosophy and Meta-ethics, as well as Comparative Philosophy.

Loretta Violante is a New York City based artist who works in intersections between printmaking, sculpture, and installation. Violante received an MFA from The City College of New York, CUNY, and has attended residencies at Guttenberg Arts in New Jersey, Monson Arts in Maine, Brashnar Creative Collective in Skopje, Macedonia, and Manhattan Graphics Center in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Her work has recently been shown at Marc Straus Gallery, Below Grand, and Essex Flowers, among other spaces.

A native of Buffalo, New York, Dr. John Hasselback III is an award winning lyrical trumpet soloist, composer, educator, and music-industry professional. His vibrant sound bridges the rich tradition of jazz with a forward-looking creative vision.

Rose is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the State University of New York at Purchase. Before SUNY Purchase, she was the Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Theory at The New School for Social Research.

SUNITA PRASAD is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker and video artist. Films Sunita has edited have garnered a Peabody Award, multiple Emmy nominations, screened theatrically and in major festivals including Sundance, SXSW, and Tribeca, and been distributed on HBO, Hulu, PBS, and Arte. Sunita's work as a director has exhibited internationally at film festivals and venues such as the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Centre Clark in Montreal, and Flux Factory in New York City. 

Dr. Williams-Gant's research examines questions within the area of cognitive development. She is interested in how children identify who or what in their lives is a good source of information and how this preference might change depending on the domain and information provided. Her research program addresses these issues by examining 1) how children select sources of information, 2) how children's beliefs in testimony differ depending on the type of informant, and 3) whether children's judgments of that informant depend on the content of the informant's testimony. She is also interested in exploring domains where testimony may be particularly necessary (e.g., science and religion).

Dr. Caroline Arout is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Neurobiology (in Psychiatry) in the Division on Substance Use Disorders at the New York State Psychiatric Institute of Columbia University Irving Medical Center. There, Dr. Arout co-directs the Cannabis Research Laboratory, where her research focuses on the intersection of pain and substance use, emphasized by two main lines of human laboratory research: 1) the potential therapeutic utility of cannabinoids, in isolation or in combination with opioids, for pain in the context of abuse liability; 2) the study of medications to treat cannabis use disorder. Dr. Arout has authored over 30 publications in this area and has successfully obtained NIH and industry funding to study these important questions. She is also an active member of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence, serving on numerous committees and as a Board of Director At-Large.

Attilio Rigotti is a Chilean performer, theatremaker, technology artist and videogame designer. His work explores the intersection between game design, interactive technologies, and live performance, creating unique, user-centered experiences where audiences can fundamentally shape and transform a performance as it happens. He has performed, trained, taught, and developed productions around the world, including countries such as Poland, China, Egypt, Lebanon, India, Indonesia, Japan, Italy, Cuba, the U.A.E. and the U.S. He was an Associate Artist with Theater Mitu, performing on the international tour of Juárez, their sold-out run of Death of a Salesman at BAM, and co-creating, performing and designing their productions of Hamlet/UR-Hamlet and Remnant.

Wayne Tucker is a Grammy-Nominated trumpeter, composer, arranger, violinist, vocalist, actor, model and educator based in New York City.  He has released 5 albums under his name and performs regularly with his band, The Bad Mothas in New York City.

Wayne has toured and recorded with a diverse array of notables such as jazz musicians Kurt Elling, Dee Dee Bridgewater and Cyrille Aimée; pop acts Taylor Swift, David Crosby, Elvis Costello; r&b singers Ne-Yo and Gabriel Garzon-Montano; hip hop artists Jidenna and Ryan Leslie; and with the rock band Brass Against. 

This diversity is represented in The Bad Mothas energetic sound where the American Songbook gets a welcome update, including selections by Michael Jackson or Earth Wind & Fire. Tenor saxophonist Miles Tucker (Wayne's brother) holds a lean mean counterpoint to Wayne's gentle affability on trumpet. The group was featured in the New York Times for its steady schedule of street performances during the 2020 shutdown, representatives of New York City's infamous grit.

Wayne continues to maintain a dedicated presence in the small clubs of New York City alongside a career which makes occasional forays into venues like Madison Square Garden, The Hollywood Bowl, and The Tonight Show, to name a few. As an actor/model he has been featured in ads and commercials for companies like Dove, Mastercard, Bonobos and GMC, and appeared on television shows like Succession and Blacklist. Tucker wrote the soundtrack and co-stars in the short film Hotel Bleu.

Emily first discovered her passion for guiding and supporting students in exploring and navigating careers as a Career Counseling Graduate Intern and Career Center Administrative Assistant at SUNY New Paltz. Emily assists students in assessing their interests, exploring career possibilities, and achieving their career and educational goals. Emily also supports both internship development and facilitating grant awards including the Purchase Academic Internship Stipend (PAIS) and Travel Grant.

Emily's educational background in social justice has equipped her to assist college students in navigating the job market and overcoming disparities and barriers. Emily's former experience connecting patients to resources, as a Care Navigator, has granted her knowledge on how to assess and assist individuals in defining barriers and working together to find avenues of support that can help them meet their goals. Emily has used her past experience to help students find the right resources and develop the proper skills to help them navigate finding internships, jobs, graduate programs, and other career opportunities.

Katherine is an alumnus of Purchase College and maintains a strong connection to the vibrant community. She is always available to offer support, whether by phone or email. As an artist, Katherine is passionate about sharing her creative work with others. In her free time, she enjoys painting and spending time with her beloved cats.

Megan Corkrum is the director of production at the performing arts center at SUNY purchase. Prior to her current position she worked extensively in concert and event production in the tri-state area. Artists she has worked with include: Joshua Bell, Paquito D'Rivera, John Oliver, Kris Kristofferson, Andrew Bird, Lorretta Lynn, The Lone Bellow, The Lumineers, Brandi Carlile, Melissa Etheridge, Ben Folds, Norah Jones, Mandy Patinkin, Citizen Cope, and Weird al Yankovic to name a few.

Michael Angelis is a visual artist based in Port Chester, NY. His work deals with themes of cultural ideas and constructs that are in flux, and the connection/disconnection of communication and technology through those periods of flux. His paintings and prints capture concepts that are not intended to be preserved or memorialized, and attempt to provide a lens onto images and ideas which are temporal and transitory, as a means to understand the factors that are the catalyst for change and flux.

Ricardo J. Varona is an award-winning Puerto Rican writer and director based in New York City. His films have screened and won awards at Academy Award, Goya Award, and BAFTA Qualifying Festivals, and have been featured by the curation teams at Vimeo Staff Picks and Short of the Week. His MFA thesis film, Primos, received the "Best U.S. Student Short" award at the 2024 Palm Springs International ShortFest.

Gretchen Hildebran, a director, producer and editor, is a graduate of Stanford University's Documentary Film Program.

Amy Hargreaves is a New York City based actress who has worked in film,television, theater since she was a child. She's a fixture on the independant film scene with projects that have premiered at Cannes, Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, Hamptons, LA and Palm Springs Film Festivals. She has worked with some of the most accomplished directors working today - Todd Haynes, Steve McQueen, Tony Gilroy, Tom McCarthy, and starred in Jeremy Saulnier's Cannes Fipresci Prize winning film "Blue Ruin".

 Jesus earned an MFA from Rutgers University and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Recent exhibitions and performances include Whitney Museum, New York, NY; Queens Museum, Queens, NY; LTD Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; Performa 13, NY; Acre Projects, Chicago, IL; Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX; Neuberger Museum of Art, NY; Shin Museum of Art, South Korea; Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA; Socrates Sculpture Park, NY and Austin Museum of Art, TX. Born in San Antonio, TX, Jesus Benavente lives/works in Brooklyn, NY. San Anto es donde está mi corazón.

Brigitte Robin Bürgler is an educator and consultant with over a decade of experience in science education and international development.

Her graduate studies span Education, International Development, and Science. Brigitte has designed and implemented inquiry-based science curricula for more than a thousand diverse learners, ranging from New York City public schools to college-level courses, including forensic science at Purchase College. She was awarded NYU's Astor International

Fellowship for "Exemplary Commitment and Innovation in Science Education" and Math for America's Master Teacher Fellowship.

Josh Tonsfeldt (born 1979, Independence, Missouri) received an M.F.A. from Columbia University in 2007 and a BA from Purchase College in 2004. Since then, his work has been shown widely in the United States and Europe, most recently at international institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), the DeCordova Museum (Boston), Mass MoCA (North Adams, Massachusetts), Gamec (Bergamo, Italy), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Toronto). His work is in the collection of public and private institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Thoma Foundation, the Parrish Museum, and the Perez Museum in Miami.

Associate Professor Paula Halperin has been a member of both the History and Cinema Studies programs, and has contributed to Latin American Studies and Global Black Studies. Her scholarly work lies at the intersection of visual culture and nationalism in Brazil and Argentina from roughly 1960 to 1980, an era of political instability marked by dictatorships. She was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend 2019 for the project, "Dancing Days: Nationalism, Soap Operas, and Dreams of Modernization in Authoritarian Brazil. 1978-1979."

Greg Lisi is a New Jersey born screenwriter. After graduating from the University of Delaware with a BA in English, he attended the American Film Institute Conservatory, graduating with an MFA in Screenwriting in 2010.

Marianne Eggler is an art and design historian, critic and scholar specializing in modern European and American architecture, design, and urbanism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A native New Yorker, she began her career in the NYC art gallery and auction house field, and has taught at numerous public and private colleges and universities in the NYC area and beyond. Marianne also holds the position of Adjunct Associate Professor at SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, where she has taught since 2009. In addition, Marianne has served as gallery lecturer at The Museum of Modern Art since 1998.

Daniel is a scholar of medieval art history, studying Gothic art (book/panel painting and sculpture) ca. 1250-1400 CE, and focusing on the development of non-narrative relic-like images of Christ's body, blood, and wounds. His work seeks to expand the traditional boundaries defining medieval Latin Christian relics to include a small group of image-types which, starting in the thirteenth century, came to be understood as capable of embodying Christ's active miracle-working presence, which had previously been exclusive to relics and the Eucharist.

Dr. Sophia Ward-Alston has been an administrator in higher education for the past seventeen years where she created and managed student success programs, built partnerships, and managed grants. In addition, she has over ten years of teaching experience in higher education focusing on education, race and ethnicity. She also serves as a consultant to organizations and individuals around student success programming, career and technical education, equity issues, and leadership development.

Ager Gondra's scholarly interests reflect three general areas of investigation related to bilingualism: 1) linguistic variability and change in bilingual settings; 2) second language acquisition and teaching; and 3) attitudes and ideologies of languages in contact. He teaches courses in linguistics, and Second Language Teaching. He collects his research data in the Basque Country, his homeland.

Sam Marine Borowiec is an award-winning writer/director whose debut feature film, MAN UNDERGROUND, won "Best First Feature" at the Fantasia Film Festival and was distributed by Lionsgate/Indican Pictures. Her pilot I ADORE DOLORES was named one of Vulture's "must-watch comedy shorts" and was selected for The Gotham TV Series Lab. She has participated in the Frontières Financing & Packaging Forum with her screenplay DESERT WITCH, and the Frontières International Co-Production Market with her newest feature in development, SURGAT. She frequently collaborates with her husband, Michael Borowiec, as a writer-director team. Currently, she teaches directing and screenwriting at University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

Abby Ahmad is a singer, guitarist, songwriter, actor, and multi-disciplinary educator. She has recorded & toured internationally as a solo artist and with her band Fife & Drom. Her original music has been lauded critically and is featured in numerous films, including the major motion picture, The Guardian. Her work as a backing vocalist has been sought after by countless songwriters and artists both in live performance and in the studio setting. Abby has been a featured jingle singer for international and regional commercial ads (Maybelline, Sephora).

Michael Philip Mossman has been active on the international scene since the age of 17. And has recorded with his own groups and with a virtual "who's who" of the music industry.

Michael was nominated for a 2013 Grammy Award for "Best Instrumental Arrangement" for his "Afro-Latin Ellington Suite." Michael has composed and arranged music for the films "Bossa Nova" and "Chico and Rita," which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2012. His ballet "Beneath the Mask" was performed by Jon Faddis and the Chicago Jazz Orchestra with the Deeply Rooted Dance Company. His ballet, La Cova do Rey Cintolo was premiered in 2010 in Mondoñedo, Spain. 

Kate Baker's inimitable voice resonates with her love of diverse musical inspirations — from jazz to Brazilian music to Americana-inflected jazz, purveyed at sold-out shows and festivals the world over.

A vocal producer in New York and Los Angeles, Baker also teaches privately and is on the faculty of the New School University of Jazz and Contemporary Music. She has conducted master classes at major institutions throughout the United States and Europe, including co-leading many master classes with singing legends Sheila Jordan and Mark Murphy.

Flutist Isabel Lepanto Gleicher has been called "excellent" by The New York Times. Isabel is an artist member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Wild Up, new music sinfonietta, Ensemble Échappé, conductorless orchestra, One Found Sound, and the band ShoutHouse. She is also a founding member of Song Sessions Collective: a collective of improvisers who create an ever-changing work based on the structure of whale songs through the use of flutes, clarinets, sine-tones, and an LED light installation. Isabel has had the opportunity to premiere works by Steve Reich, Missy Mazzoli, Du Yun, Dai Fujikura, Jon Batiste, and Augusta Read Thomas, among many others. Isabel has curated solo sets of original music for the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival, Experimental Sound Studio, ChamberQUEERantine Virtual Festival, and George Mason University's Mason Arts at Home, as well as contributing to Metropolis Ensemble's live-streaming perpetual sonic installation Flame Keepers.

Adolfo Monterroso is one of New York City's most in-demand young tuba players. Born in Brooklyn, NY, he studied with Earl Mcintyre before entering Dan Peck's studio at Purchase College, SUNY. Graduating with a BM in 2022, he embarked on graduate studies with Alan Baer at The Juilliard School and graduated with a MM in 2024.

Mr. Monterroso's musical interests are eclectic; an avid chamber musician and member of Times Square Brass, he has also performed with the New York City Ballet, Second Ending Ensemble, New England Symphonic Ensemble, and the Corbin Jones Big Band at Dizzy's Club.

In addition to his busy performance and teaching schedule, Mr. Monterroso also enjoys weightlifting, and volleyball, and is an enthusiastic Barista. His musical spiritual home, is the orchestral repertoire of the Late Romantic Era, in particular, the tone poems of Richard Strauss.

Sequoia Sellinger is a composer, educator, and collaborative theater artist based in New York City.

She aims to create work that is accessible, relatable, funny, and reimagines the possibilities of what the world could be. She challenges traditional storytelling expectations by writing through a feminist and anti-racist lens. Her work in community-building echoes in her work as an artist and educator because she believes collaboration is practice for living and allows us to create the world we want to live in (and sing in) together.

Sequoia holds an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU Tisch (ASCAP Max Dreyfus Award & Schubert Scholarship), as well as a BM in Composition from Purchase Conservatory of Music. She studied composition at Nadia Boulanger's Conservatoire in Paris.

Sequoia's work has been performed at Ars Nova, Joe's Pub, 54 Below, Green Room 42, College of the Atlantic, Dartmouth, The York Theatre, Musical Theatre Factory, MacDowell Arts Colony, and American Opera Projects. She is in the 2025 Prospect Musical Theater Lab Cohort. Original musicals include: "Next Year in Connecticut!" (Joe's Pub, 54 Below, Sold Out Green Room 42 Show, NYU Tisch, 2024 Anna Sosenko Assist Trust Grant, 2024 Finalist for Syracuse New Works New Voices, 2024 finalist for Northwestern University's AMTP, & 2024 Finalist for Newport NewWorks Festival), "Earth First!" (Macdowell Fellowship, College of the Atlantic, Dartmouth), "Silent Springs" (BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop), and "Impossible Green" (The York Theatre, Musical Theatre Factory), "Gravity of Me Gone" (Ars Nova ANT Fest). Her micro-opera "It's Noon, Do You Know Where Your House Plants Are?" was premiered by American Opera Projects this past May 2024. She was a composer in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop as well as New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio.  She is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and Maestra. 

Zhanna Glazenburg has been teaching Physics and other STEM courses for nearly 25 years. She is a member of the New York State Master Teacher Academy and a founding member of STEMteachersNYC. Her professional interests are curriculum development and STEM research and pedagogy: specifically Physics pedagogy and integrated course design - courses integrating multiple academic disciplines.

Virginia Wagner is a Full-time Lecturer of Painting and Drawing at SUNY Purchase. She earned her MFA from the Hoffberger School of Painting at Maryland Institute College of Art, and her BA in Studio Art and Creative Writing from Oberlin College. She has been granted residencies with Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, Bridge Street Theater, Guggenheim Peter B Lewis Theater, Mount Tremper Arts, Brush Creek, Byrdcliffe, VCCA, the Edward Albee Foundation, Ucross, Jentel, Vermont Studio Center, and Yale Norfolk.

For over 20 years Goldie E. Patrick has been passionately working, living, and building artistic collaborations in theatre. A graduate of Howard University (BFA) and Columbia University (MFA-Playwriting) she has been working thoughtfully as a playwright and television writer, and director to create works that illuminate the Black experience while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of form, style, and aesthetic. The unique intersection of her work as an award winning writer, director and a cultural worker is indicative of her holistic approach to her theatre-making. 

Jeesun Choi is a transnational Korean playwright who also writes for the screen and opera. Select plays: 1305 Mortmain Lane, BUST, To the Ends of the Earth / 땅끝까지, Lost Coast, and The Seekers. Her work has been presented and developed at Soho Rep, JACK, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Realm, Bushwick Starr, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, American Opera Project, Prelude Festival, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Nashville Rep, and more. 

Dr. Alessandra Galassi's research highlights the overlooked figures of Italian cinema, particularly during the post-WWII economic boom. Her work focuses on forgotten directors and the portrayal of women's lives and socio-economic challenges, calling for a reassessment of the contributions of this lost cinema to Italian film history.

Dr. Galassi's research focuses on Italian director Antonio Pietrangeli, emphasizing his prioritization of female protagonists and their environments. She argues that his films, even the unpublished ones, offered a unique perspective on the "commedia all'italiana" genre by centering on women's experiences and resilience in a changing society. Pietrangeli's depiction of gender dynamics not only reflected but also critically examined societal transformations, contributing significantly to cinematic realism and female representation, a theme aligned with Dr. Galassi's broader interest in Italian literature, film studies, and cultural analysis.

Brendan Williams is a producer and songwriter above all else, and his mixes are some of the most powerful and emotionally captivating that you'll find amongst today's releases.

Brendan's recording sessions tend to be unconventional with an emphasis on psychology, often evolving into therapeutic conversations with the artists that helps to strike musical gold.  Brendan brings the same passion with him to his teaching at the Conservatory of Music, aiming to inspire the up-and-coming music professionals he is so fortunate to instruct.

In his spare time, Brendan enjoys Eurorack synthesizers, cycling and backpacking.

Laura Esposito teaches speech in the BFA Acting Program at SUNY Purchase. She is also a private dialect and audition coach fully trained in Knight-Thompson Speechwork. Recent coaching projects include the Off-Broadway production of FIVE! The Parody Musical at Theater 555. In addition to teaching, Laura is an actor who has worked regionally, Off-Broadway, and in several films and commercials. She has won two Connecticut Critics Circle Awards and is a member of the National Alliance of Acting Teachers.

Abbi Kenny was born in Boston, MA, and is an artist and painter living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA in painting from Boston University College of Fine Arts (2024) and her BFA with honors in painting and a minor in the Theory and History of Art and Design from the Rhode Island School of Design (2020). At RISD, she participated in the European Honors Program in Rome, Italy. Kenny was a recipient of the Royal Drawing School's Dumfries House Estate drawing residency and grant near Cumnock, Scotland (2019) and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant in painting (2022). She was a resident at Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild Artist Residency (2024). Her work has been exhibited across the United States and abroad.

Georgina Arroyo is an artist primarily working in sculpture and based in Brooklyn, NY. Her artwork is informed by her experience growing up on the Brooklyn/Queens border in a Caribbean household. She received a BFA at Lesley University College of Art & Design in Cambridge, MA and an MFA from Purchase College. She has been an artist in residence at the ACE Hotel, Arts, Letters and Numbers and Camp Stomping Ground. Recent group shows include "In Absentia" at the New York Studio School Project Space and "Speedo International" at Parent Company Gallery.

The primary goal of my research is to contribute to the scientific understanding of interpersonal victimization and its sequelae, with a focus on the impact of trauma, trauma recovery, and substance use disparities among sexual and gender minority (SGM) populations. An overarching theme of my research is the exploration of traumatic experiences that are underrepresented in the extant literature and excluded from socially constructed narratives of victimization, as these may be subject to stigmas that complicate the process of recovery. More specifically, this includes victimizations experienced by SGM individuals and individuals who were sexually victimized by women. Related, my work focuses on alcohol-related health disparities faced by SGM individuals.

Danielle George-Lucas is a part-time Lecturer at Purchase College, SUNY. Her research interests are families and social demography. Her dissertation explores nonparticipation in federal nutrition assistance programs among eligible households. 

Sean Michael Muller is an anthropologist whose research focuses on addiction and late industrialism in the United States. He is interested in the affective and material connections between landscapes, politics, and expectations that shape America as a nation and idea. His current research traces how the synthetic opioid fentanyl becomes an object of political anxiety and part of everyday life in the rural United States.

Rebecca Rich (Becca, she/her) - joined the Conservatory of Theatre Arts in the summer of 2024! Previous to Purchase, she held academic leadership positions with Elmira College as the Division Chairperson for the Humanities & Creative Arts, Director of the Theatre Program, and Associate Professor, and with The University of Northern Colorado as the Interim Associate Director of the School of Theatre Arts and Dance, and an Associate Professor of Acting; additional positions include work with Rider, Temple, West Chester, and Rowan Universities.

Combining figuration and abstraction, Max Ferro sequences ideas of place, memories, sentiments and the mysteries of self-realization. His fascination with the concept and experience of creativity and self-expression informs his artmaking approach through pieces made from observation, memory and imagination. Working with such analog materials as graphite, charcoal, inks, acrylic or oil, he flows between them using digital tools and writing to create images and animations sequenced together to present a multitude of stories. The results display the psychological effects of space, the power of stories to transport us through our imaginations and ultimately, the infinite energy generated by love. As an educator, he sees teaching as a social extension of what he explores in his art: mainly, that we are all unique individuals with a voice worth sharing. As a musician, he enjoys creating improvised compositions to experience and share the wonderful decisions one can make when engaged with one's intuition. Through his art, he aspires to reach for the ever-shifting total expression of self; always new and at its core, always present.

Eh-den Perlove (she, her) is a Ph.D. candidate in Arts and Cultural Management at the University of Manchester. Her research examines theater's role in generating sociopolitical change in the contemporary United States, particularly exploring how to restructure the infrastructure of the theater industry, from rehearsal room to boardroom, to support the work of marginalized theater-makers.

Katherine (Kathy) Palmer is a Learning Specialist for Cornerstone Connect through the Office of Disability Resources.  Kathy provides individualized executive functioning coaching to students enrolled in Cornerstone Connect to assist in their transition to Purchase College. Kathy also collaborates with her fellow Learning Specialists in Cornerstone Connect to facilitate a weekly workshop and study sessions, as well as social events for students in the program. Prior to joining the Office of Disability Resources, Kathy had a long career in student affairs in higher education, primarily advising international students as they moved from acclimation to graduation at Manhattanville College. 

Outside of work, Kathy enjoys travel, hiking, cooking, and spending time with family and friends including her cat, Leo. 

Lee Conell is the author of the novel The Party Upstairs (Penguin Press), awarded the Wallant Award, and the story collection Subcortical (Johns Hopkins University Press), awarded The Story Prize's Spotlight Award. 

Dr. Paul Boyd, Director of the Conservatory of Music, was previously Chair of the Fine Arts Department and Director of Piano Studies at College of the Mainland in the Houston area. He was also President of the Faculty Senate during 2012-14. Many of his students now enjoy successful careers in performance, composition, music education, and arts leadership. He served as President of the Houston Area Suzuki Piano Association from 1999-2001 and President of Houston Music Teachers Association 2006-2008. Last year, he joined the board of Pan American Musical Art Research (PAMAR), which hosts Latin American Cultural Week in New York City. As a grant writer, his portfolio has long surpassed $1,000,000.

MaKenzie Copp teaches College Writing at Purchase College. She is originally from Maine, where she received a dual BA in English and Writing/Publishing from Saint Joseph's College of Maine, graduating summa cum laude. She now lives in New York, where received her MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, concentrating in poetry.

Nicole Colwell is a new instructor in the College Writing program this year. She received an undergraduate degree in Political Science from Vassar College and a law degree from the University of Michigan. She was a litigator for several years at a large New York law firm, and after a brief hiatus, returned to practice as a nonprofit lawyer. More recently, Nicole satisfied a life-long passion for poetry and creative writing by pursuing an MFA at Sarah Lawrence College. She is thrilled that her decision to do so has led her to the College Writing program at Purchase.

Kevin Czerwinski has spent nearly four decades working as a professional journalist in the New York and Philadelphia markets as well as serving as a national writer for publications such as MLB.com and USA Today. He has written about everything from prep sports to the pros, including spending eight years with MLB.com, first as the beat writer covering the New York Mets and then serving as a senior writer and staff historian.

Czerwinski has also spent 17 years teaching at the collegiate level. In addition to teaching at SUNY Purchase, he teaches at Pace University in Pleasantville and Mercy University in Dobbs Ferry while also having spent time and Manhattanville College. His courses include journalism, sports journalism, profile writing, film studies and public speaking.

Megan is a scholar of digital cultures and community studying trust in the context of platformization. Her research investigates how the identity construction affordances of platforms enable online communities to mainstream outsider political messages and build trust with one another as well as the broader public. Megan has worked across a range of vernacular communities and institutional actors seeking to strengthen relationships online, including influencers and content creators, professional journalists, religious groups, and conspiracy theorists.

Dave Walsh is a painter who lives in New York City. He received his B.F.A from Tyler School of Art and his M.F.A from Yale School of Art. He was a 2015-16 fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He is the recipient of two Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grants and the F. Lammot Belin Scholarship. Prior to teaching at SUNY Purchase, he was an adjunct faculty member at Tyler School of Art & Architecture, Swarthmore College, University of the Arts and Villanova University.

Prior to teaching at Purchase he taught at Auburn University where he received his Master's degree in Hispanic Studies and Stony Brook University where he is completing his PhD in the department of Hispanic Languages and Literature. His dissertation, a comparative project, is currently entitled, From Harlem to Havana and Back Again: Ruin, the 'Performance of Survival', and the Ambivalent Detective in Chester Himes' Harlem Cycle and Leonardo Padura's Cuatro Estaciones. He has studied abroad at the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain and the Universidad de las Américas in Mexico. In addition, he has lived in or traveled to Spanish-speaking countries as varied as Venezuela, Argentina, Cuba, Costa Rica and Dominican Republic. When he's not taking his 3 children to and from school and attempting to pass on his love of language and literature to them, he likes to spend time in beautiful (and quiet) libraries or visit museums and cinema art houses. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Kerry Manzo ⚧️ (he, él, 他) is an Assistant Professor of Global Studies and Chair of General Studies.

In his research, he is interested in decolonial methods for thinking about sex/ual and gender diversity in 20^th and 21^st century African literature, including its institutions and histories. Building on established work in Global South feminisms, queer and trans theory, and postcolonial criticism, Dr. Manzo seeks to discern the effects of the cisheteronormativity implicit within coloniality on literary expression, publication, and reception of Anglophone African literature, while also seeking within that literature the signs of resistance that emerge when patriarchy, heterosexualism, and cisgenderism are denaturalized.

His forthcoming book, Queer Contiguities of Nigerian Literature, is expected from Michigan State UP in 2026. His published articles have appeared in Research in African Literatures and African Literature Today, and he is currently preparing a chapter for Cambridge UP's forthcoming Achebe in Context, titled "Achebe: Sex and Gender."

Dr. Manzo is the recipient of the American Council of Learned Societies' Pauline Yu Fellow in Comparative Literature, as well as the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship and the Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Manzo is a member of the Queer African Studies Association, a coordinate organization of the African Studies Association. He contributes annually to the research and writing for the Africa "New Literatures: Eastern Africa" section of The Year's Work in English Studies.

He earned his doctorate in Comparative Literature, Globalization, and Translation at Texas Tech University. 

Praise for Queer Contiguities of Nigerian Literature:

"Queer Contiguities of Nigerian Literature is an exciting milestone in the field, disrupting the cloying orthodoxies of African literary history in rigorous, culturally nuanced ways, keeping us spellbound as we compulsively turn pages filled with exhilarating discoveries and fascinating re-readings."

—Terri Ochiagha, lecturer, the University of Edinburgh, McMillan-Stewart Fellow at the Hutchins Center of African African American Research at Harvard University, and author of Achebe and Friends at Umuahia: The Making of a Literary Elite

"Queer Contiguities of Nigerian Literature offers a fresh account of Nigerian literary modernism, disentangling the operations of heteronormativity in both the history of the movement and texts themselves, as well as demonstrating the complexity of the signifier 'woman' between indigenous, colonial, and postcolonial nationalist models of gender, sexuality, the self, and the body. "

—Brenna M. Munro, associate professor of English at the University of Miami, and author of South Africa and the Dream of Love to Come: Queer Sexuality and the Struggle for Freedom

Yasmine is the Advisor for our Advancing Completion through Engagement (ACE) program. This program aims to remove many of the barriers that students face in order to help them graduate on time. Enhanced advising, career workshops, community building activities and financial support are just some of the ways in which ACE can help students succeed at Purchase.

Ruben considers himself a big foody. Ruben likes spending time with his family and playing with his dog, going swimming, going out in nature, reading novels, listening to music, trying different cuisines, and traveling. "To me it is important to create a place for students to feel safe and welcome, and to find their passion."-Ruben

Jeff Berner is a producer, engineer, mixer, and multi-instrumentalist based in Brooklyn, NY.

Jeff has worked with many artists in New York over the past nineteen years,  making records of all sizes and scopes, from indie to major label.   Depending on the project, he can be found engineering, producing, mixing, contributing instrumentation and background vocals - or, very likely, a combination of all the preceding.  (However, he will not play drums on your record, and rest assured, that's a good thing.)

Jeff's recorded work has also appeared in several movies: Paper Towns, The Ballad Of Genesis And Lady Jaye, and Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliche. For the past three years, Jeff has worked closely with Trondertun folkehøgskole in Norway, hosting recording clinics to visting music production students stateside, eventually traveling to the school in early 2020 as a guest lecturer. Recently, he has designed presets for Eventide's Instant Flanger and Instant Phaser mkII, 949 Harmonizer, and Physion II plugins. Jeff is a DR Strings and Recovery Effects artist. 

Patricia E. Szobonya is a graduate of New York Law School and licensed to practice law in New York and New Jersey. She teaches in the areas of Legal Studies, Criminal Justice, Business and Multi-Cultural Studies. 

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

All About Jenny

Jenny graduated from Purchase with a BA in Playwriting and Screenwriting in 2023. She came to love and understand Purchase during her time as a student and is excited to be working in Admissions to help others achieve their higher education goals!

Fun Fact:

Jenny has a little frog trinket collection! She loves all things frogs, and often comes home with little frog themed oddities from the thrift store.

Make an Appointment with Jenny

Jonathan (Jon) Salamon teaches College Writing and courses in music history within the Humanities and Jewish Studies departments. A former Fulbright scholar, he received his bachelor's degree from NYU and master's and doctorate degrees from Yale with a focus on early music and harpsichord performance. Jon began teaching at Purchase in 2023 and is passionate about helping students develop their craft as writers, critical thinkers, and communicators.

Kelly Jackson joined Purchase College in 2008 as Director of Continuing Education. Her current portfolio includes Summer and Winter Sessions, intergenerational programming at Broadview at Purchase College, adult and youth noncredit programs in the arts, and Government Relations Liaison responsibilities.

A strong advocate for intergenerational and lifelong learning, Kelly collaborates across campus - with academic directors, the Career Development Center, Multicultural Center, Office for Global Education, Neuberger Museum, Performing Arts Center, and others - to design programs that support student success, encourage lifelong learning, and foster meaningful cross-generational engagement in both formal and informal settings.

Originally from Ann Arbor, MI, Kelly holds a BA in Economics from Simmons University and an MS in Adult Education from SUNY Buffalo State. She began her career at Mutual of New York (MONY) through its Management Development Program, completed executive training at the University of Michigan Business School, passed the Series 7 exam, and later served as Director of Pensions. She also served as Director of Community Arts & Education at ArtsWestchester. In her free time, she enjoys reading, walking, music, travel, and cheering for both the Michigan Wolverines and Purchase Panthers.

Jason has over 20 years of experience in fundraising, alumni engagement, board development, marketing, and working with volunteers. Prior to joining the Institutional Advancement team at Purchase College, Jason served as the Director of Development and Alumni Relations at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

He has successfully led advancement efforts for national nonprofits, including serving as Vice President, Advancement for Catholic Charities USA, where his award-winning teams consistently exceeded goals through multi-channel marketing and fundraising strategies - all while infusing a culture of philanthropy and fun among colleagues and constituent groups alike.

Leslie is an ACE Advisor in the Advising Center. ACE Purchase aims to remove many of the barriers that students face, to help them graduate on time. Enhanced advising, career workshops, community building activities and financial support are just some of the ways in which ACE helps students succeed at Purchase College.

Brooklyn-based Mark Marshall is a multi-instrumentalist with years of experience and expertise as a touring and recording artist. 

His composition projects wield instruments, tape machines, samplers, and microphones in the same way an artist uses paint, charcoal and ink. For Marshall, composition is an experimental adventure.

Marshall has played major music festivals, including Mountain Jam and New Orleans Jazz Fest; toured internationally and recorded on the BBC; performed at both Lincoln Center Outdoors and Lincoln Center Jazz; shared the stage with Phil Lesh and Levon Helm; toured with Sister Sparrow and Amy Helm; and performs regularly as one-half of Fife and Drom, a political blues project. In the studio, he produced Jenna Nicholls Radio Parade record; was both producer/session musician on Jenna Torres' Thinking with my Heart; stepped in seamlessly to sessions with pop icon Sara Bareillies; and most recently produced, recorded and mixed Abby Ahmad's Tea with Shadows, a long awaited follow-up to Curriculum, the album which bonded the two in work and in life.

With the support of numerous corporate music endorsements, Marshall spent years writing for Premier Guitar Magazine on guitar technique and philosophy; authored a book on music theory, Practice Makes Progress; created a video series for The Pro Audio Files on recording, mixing, and producing electric guitar; and managed a guitar blog called Anatomy of Guitar Tone.

The vast majority of music Marshall makes is with real instruments, not sample libraries, which includes everything from grand piano, actual mellotrons, analog synths, amplified guitars, and traditional drum kits, which means everything he makes has its own character and doesn't feel canned or clinical.
Some of Marshall's compositions time travel by referencing a specific era to evoke feelings of nostalgia or forge place-based associations. He has a deep understanding of compositional and sonic choices: "It's essential for an 80's-style song to not only use 80's motifs but also feel like it was recorded in the '80s."

Along with this ability came a broad taste of musical styles: "Instead of mimicking a musical style, my goal is to embody it – similar to, say, method acting. When I'm composing a minimalist piece, I'm not the person who also has a deep knowledge of delta blues (unless, for instance, I want to combine the styles). I live in character. This is what has allowed me to write in a range of genres with an expert's flair."
This kind of range in composition allows Marshall, with his abilities and sensibilities, to jump through genres, convincingly, like a chameleon or a speaker of several languages. His "feeling before theory" approach makes room for collaborators to express the needs of a project with either concrete or abstract descriptors ("make it sound more green" or "can it sound like the desert?") from which Marshall is able to make meaning and music.

Marshall is wildly creative and experimental, but is also a skillful collaborator, meeting strict deadlines, taking direction where appropriate and is wholly organized – down to the expansive sound library he's recently created called Future Relics.

Jamie Leonhart is a certified instructor of Somatic Voicework™ whose clients range in skill from touring artists to karaoke novices and range in age from 9 to 81.

She works with private middle and high schools in New York, coaching jazz and contemporary band singers and private students, as well as college-level singers at the New School in NYC. Leonhart is on Faculty for the Somatic Voicework™ Institute, a multi-leveled pedagogical approach to functional singing.

She has directed, written for, and performed as a soloist and ensemble member of vocal jazz ensembles, a cappella groups, gospel choirs, and Off-Broadway musicals. She is an accomplished vocal arranger and songwriter.

Leonhart leads performance and creative workshops and works with theater groups, choruses and small vocal groups. She works in collaboration with body workers and Speech Language Pathologists to serve her students holistically.

Leonhart is employed as both a commercial voiceover artist and vocalist (Kohl's, Betty Crocker, Neutrogena brand, Tresemme, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On and more) and also works extensively as a touring and recording background and session singer (Steely Dan, Donald Fagen, St.Vincent, Judy Kuhn, Paul Brill.) She was a soloist in the Metro Mass Gospel Choir and has performed in the 92nd Street Y Lyrics and Lyricists series.

Her debut record, The Truth About Suffering was released on Sunnyside Records. Leonhart is a 2015 commissioned NEW YORK VOICES artist of The Public Theater/Joe's Pub, under which she created her one-­woman musical narrative, Estuary: an artist I mother story. Leonhart's sophomore recording, The Illusion of Blue, was released in 2022.

Marián is a Latin Grammy nominated studio/FOH engineer, producer, musician and sound designer based in Astoria, New York and a native of Madrid, Spain.

​Marian is a graduate of Berklee College of Music (Magna Cum Laude) with a dual major in Music Production & Engineering and Contemporary Writing. During her time in Boston, Marian had the opportunity to record a number of projects with ten-time Grammy winner Javier Limón.

​Marian performed at The Latin Grammy Ceremony 2013, playing percussion with renowned singer-songwriter Alejandro Sanz. In 2014, she was nominated for a Latin Grammy of her own in the category of 'Best Engineered Album' for her work as a recording engineer on the flamenco/world fusion album, "Promesas De Tierra" by Javier Limón.

​Marián continued her professional journey in New York as the head engineer at Shapeshifter Lab, where she had the opportunity to work with and record some major figures of the jazz world including: Jack Dejohnette, Ravi Coltrane, Matthew Garrison, Arturo O'farrill, Donny McCaslin, Mark Guiliana, Shai Maestro, among others.

​In addition to her FOH and studio work, Marián works in the theater realm as a sound engineer and sound designer. After mixing the Off-Broadway Musical The Hello Girls (59e59), Marián began to collaborate with sound designer Kevin Heard. This partnership led her to work as Associate Sound Designer for the Off-Broadway productions of Safeword (ATA), #DateMe: An OK Cupid Experiment (Westside Theatre, dir. by Lorin Latarro) and Neal Brennan: Unnaceptable (Cherry Lane Theatre). She also worked with the acclaimed writer Candace Bushnell in her staged play Is There Still Sex in The City ( Daryl Roth Theatre, by Lorin Latarro). Most recently Marián worked as Ass.Designer, Programmer and Mixer in Taylor Mac's jazz opera The Hang, and A1 for the masterful Heather Christian's Oratorio for Living Things (Ars Nova, dir. by Lee Sunday Evans).

​Today, Marián is a versatile freelance who works in a variety of fields. She is the co-founder of (Fill the Blank) Productions - a mobile audiovisual recording company. She is a producer/engineer at Podfly (Podcast Production), and producer/engineer with artists including Javier Limón, Nella Rojas, Yonit Spiegelman, Tali Rubinstein, The Broadway Sinfonietta, El Pájaro Azul and Juana Luna.

Matthew Noble is an Emmy Award-winning audio engineer, music producer, and educator across multiple genres with a portfolio that includes platinum records for Rihanna, Rod Stewart, and Diana King.

As a staff songwriter and musician, Noble worked for nine years at three publishing houses—Chrysalis Music, Sony Music, and W & R Music. During these years, he collaborated with legendary producers including Eddie Kramer, David Z, Shep Pettibone, and Keith Thomas, serving as keyboardist, guitarist, and arranger while honing his production skills. His songwriting collaborations included Steve Cropper, Desmond Child and Keith Reid.

His engineering credits include Michael Jackson, The Beastie Boys, Anthrax, Run DMC, Dave Koz ,Kandace Springs, Procol Harum, Southside Johnny, Akynele and many more.

On the commercial front, he has composed and produced music for major national brands including Amtrak, McDonald's, Mobil, The Learning Channel, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and The Washington Post.

As Director of Audio at Visual Radio in NYC, Noble was at the forefront of the early internet audio revolution, composing music for websites and multimedia presentations while developing the infrastructure for 52 online radio stations.

As road and stage manager for R&B group "D Train,",he was also either front-of-house or monitor engineer at venues ranging from Radio City Music Hall to giant indoor arenas throughout the US.

Beyond his production and engineering work, Noble has contributed to the development of music technology itself. He served as a Beta Tester for Roger Linn's MPC-60 II software development, helping shape one of the most influential pieces of music production hardware in hip-hop and electronic music history.

Yael Levitin Saban was born in Haifa, Israel and began her journey in dance with the Haifa Ballet, where her passion and talent were nurtured from an early age. Her dedication and skill led her to become a principal dancer with the renowned Bat-Dor Dance Company in 1991, marking the start of a distinguished professional dance career.

Caroline Copeland-Nizam is a leading specialist in early ballet and performance practice. Her extensive career has brought her to theatres, palaces, and universities across the United States and Europe. As a solo performer, Caroline has collaborated with many early music groups including Merz Trio, The New Dutch Academy, Cantata Profana, and Juilliard415. She is an Associate Director of The New York Baroque Dance Company. Caroline is also a featured artist with the Boston Early Music Festival and has performed with the Metropolitan Opera, The Bronx Opera, and with the Nordic Baroque Dancers at the Innsbruck Early Music Festival in Austria.

Colyn is a New York based stage manager for Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Dance, as well as a show caller for Corporate Events. 

Tania Chelnov-Snitow is a New York City based Actor, Vocal Coach and Teacher.

Stephanie Prugh is a NYC based producer and dramaturg. She produces the celebrated Lyrics and Lyricists Series at the 92nd Street Y, New York. Recent dramaturgical works include the award-winning newly revised The Unsinkable Molly Brown (Transport Group, The Muny, Denver Center Theatre Company, Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best Revival), and the award-winning new musical, Renascence (Transport Group, Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best Musical). Regional Credits include The Glass Menagerie, The Secret Garden and The Twelve (Denver Center Theatre Company), Blueprints to Freedom, Indecent, and Guards at the Taj (La Jolla Playhouse). 

Dr. Bice joined Purchase in 2002 as the College Registrar and has served in a variety of leadership roles during her time at the college. Dr. Bice's focus on student success lead to the development of several student success initiatives, including a summer fellows program for first-generation freshman and a SophomoreQuest program for rising sophomores. She loves meeting students and helping them attain their goal of a Purchase degree.

Originally, from Kansas City, MO, Dr. Bice is a proud alumna of Purchase College receiving a BFA in Dance. She also holds a MA in Dance from UCLA and an EdD from Northeastern University in Higher Education Administration. Her dissertation research is on organizational behaviors and student persistence. In her spare time, she enjoys gardening, sailing, dance and watching films.

Mike Kopas joined Purchase in 2017 as the Senior Director of Facilities and Capital Planning. During the six years he served in that role, he was responsible for facilities operations, capital planning and budgeting, environmental health and safety, energy management, campus sustainability and mailroom operations. Prior to his arrival at Purchase College, Mike spent 13 years at Drew University in New Jersey where he last served as Associate Vice President of Facilities and Campus Operations. His responsibilities at Drew included facilities management, university relations, capital planning, and auxiliary services.

As Vice President for Administration at Purchase College, Mike's responsibilities include Business Affairs, Facilities Management, Capital Planning, Human Resources and the Purchase College Association.

As a certified arborist and longterm advocate of sustainability, Mike graduated from Rutgers University with a BA in Environmental Planning and Design. Known for his collaborative leadership style and commitment to fostering teamwork within and across campus divisions, Mike also participated in the SAIL Summer Leadership Academy in 2022.

Tom Burckhardt was born in New York City in 1964 and has spent his entire life living there. He graduated with a BFA in painting from SUNY Purchase in 1986 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture that same year. He has been exhibiting since1992 at various NYC galleries such as George Adams Gallery, Tibor De Nagy Gallery, Pierogi and Caren Golden Fine Art, and the Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco CA.

Cezar Williams is an award-winning actor, director, and producer. 

ZHU Yi is a New York-based playwright from Shanghai. Her work has been produced and published in various languages around the world. She received the First Prize at 2015 World Sinophone Drama Competition, and Shanghai Drama Valley's 2015 Outstanding Playwright of the Year Award. She is an alumni of Ensemble Studio Theatre's Obie Award-winning playwrights group Youngblood, Emerging Artist Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop, the Royal Court Theatre's International Playwrights Programme, and Clubbed Thumb's Emerging Writers Group, and a member of Ma-Yi Writers Lab.

T. ADAMSON is an Texas-raised writer and theater artist of Anglo/Mexican ancestry. His works have been performed in Colorado, California, Texas, Ohio, Nebraska, DC, Australia, Canada, and all over New York. Favorites include The Natural Horse (Alleyway Theatre, O'Neill finalist), No Nothing (Great Plains Theater Commons), Usus (Clubbed Thumb Winterworks), The Straights (JACK, BAPF finalist), and Endless Summer (Hunter College). 

Tessa Rossi teaches College Writing. She earned her undergraduate degree from Long Island University, her law degree from New York University, and her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Tessa writes across genres and serves as Associate Managing Editor for Prose at Variant Literature. Her interests range from the esoteric to martial arts and world cultures. Her ongoing writing workshops in the Lower Hudson Valley and classes as an Arts Westchester Teaching Artist Grant recipient confirmed her passion for sharing the craft of writing. She joined the College Writing Faculty at Purchase in the fall of 2023.

Alexandra Dos Santos ​teaches two sections of College Writing at SUNY Purchase and English Comp at CUNY Lehman. She is a Purchase alum, having earned her B.A. in Journalism and Screenwriting in 2019. After graduation, she interned at Writers House Literary Agency and entered the book publishing industry at Vintage Anchor, where she was Associate Publicist. In 2023 she received her MFA from The Writer's Foundry at St. Joseph's University, Brooklyn. She lives in Queens with her black cat, Junji.

Carlos Amado was born and raised in Guatemala, where he attended the French School sponsored by the French embassy from pre-Kinder to High school. A native Spanish speaker, he began learning English in the 6^th grade. In college, he studied and earned degrees in a diversity of subjects, from International Development and Business Management to French Film and Literature.

As a professional screenwriter, Beau Thorne has written for major studios (Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox) and top producers in the international film industry (Dan Lin, Michael London, Neal Moritz), as well as developing television pilots for Academy Award-winner Oliver Stone's company and the former head of HBO dramatic series programing. 

Elizabeth Flood is Assistant Professor and Chair of Painting + Drawing at SUNY Purchase. She earned her MFA in Painting from Boston University, and her BA in History and Religious Studies from the University of Virginia. Flood was awarded two Visual Arts Fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center in 2021 and 2022. In 2019, Flood was a participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and was an artist-in-residence at the Studios at MASS MoCA, The Owner's Cabin Residency, and the Macedonia Institute. 

Sunny is a New York City–based sound designer for theatre originally from South Korea. A graduate of the College-Conservatory of Music at University of Cincinnati (class of 2009), she holds a MFA in Sound Design. In Korea, she studied BA in Theatre & Film at Hanyang University (class of 1999) and BA in English Language & Literature at Ewha Womans University (class of 2003).

He has successfully led advancement efforts for national nonprofits, including serving as Vice President, Advancement for Catholic Charities USA, where his award-winning teams consistently exceeded goals through multi-channel marketing and fundraising strategies - all while infusing a culture of philanthropy and fun among colleagues and constituent groups alike.

Yoga Nidra Certification, Tracee Stanley - Empowered Life Network

Yin Yoga Certification, Biff Mithoefer - Jamaste School of Yin Yoga

Howie Kenty is a Brooklyn-based composer and performer, occasionally known by his musical alter-ego, Hwarg. His music, called "remarkable" with "astonishing poetic power" by the International Compendium Prix Ars Electronica, is stylistically diverse, encompassing ideas from contemporary classical, electronic, rock, and ambient genres, and well as sound art, political issues, visual and theatrical elements, and much in between. Throughout all of his creations runs the idea that the experience of a piece is more than listening to the music; there is a wholeness of vision and an awareness of environment that attempts to fully draw the audience into his works.

Noriko Ueda is originally from Hyogo, Japan. Her interest in music began early in her life, studying classical piano at the age of 4. At 16, she began playing the electric bass. At age 18, she began her career with the upright bass.

New York City-based, JUNO-nominated composer Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis hails from Montreal. "Dreamy yet rhythmic" (NY Times), with a "terrible luminosity" and "ferociously expressive" (Times Colonist), his concert music is "an amalgamation of the classical music tradition and the soul and grime of heavy metal" (I Care If You Listen), "favoring doomsday chords and jackhammer rhythms" (The New Yorker).

Praised for his "entrancing" performances (National Sawdust Log), cellist Caleb van der Swaagh is a versatile chamber musician and soloist. He is an alumnus of Ensemble ACJW (now known as Ensemble Connect) – a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education. Caleb is the recipient of the Tanglewood Karl Zeise Memorial Cello Prize and the Manhattan School of Music Pablo Casals Award, and was also a grant recipient from the Virtu Foundation.

A classically trained musician with over 30 years of professional experience in performing, composing, arranging, and orchestrating music, Agim brings a deep passion for both artistry and craftsmanship. Trained at the Juilliard School of Music and Manhattan School of Music, he gained extensive expertise in piano tuning, regulation, voicing, and rebuilding, combining technical precision with a musician's ear.

Jenna Schultz is an early modern European historian who specializes in 16^th and 17^th century Anglo-Scottish borderlands, British national identity, and social and cultural history.

Kayle Nochomovitz teaches College Writing at Purchase College and Creative Writing and Composition at The City College of New York. She earned a BFA in European History from Brown University and an MFA in Creative Writing from The City College of New York. She is thrilled to meet Purchase students after joining the Purchase Faculty in the Spring of 2023.

Award-winning jazz composer, arranger, and saxophonist Andy Farber has worked extensively with legendary jazz singer Jon Hendricks and with Jazz at Lincoln Center Director Wynton Marsalis. He met Hendricks in 1993 and collaborated on his CD Boppin' at the Blue Note, writing arrangements featuring Hendricks and guests Al Grey, Marsalis, Benny Golson, Red Holloway, and Clark Terry. He has written arrangements for numerous artists and ensembles including Shirley Horn, Ray Charles, Bobby Short, Regina Carter, Lee Konitz, Willie Nelson, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, B.B. King, Bob Dylan, Frankie Laine, Robert Downey Jr., Fantasia Barrino, Vanessa Williams, The Count Basie Orchestra, the Boston Pops Orchestra, Philly Pops Orchestra, and several symphony orchestras throughout Europe.

Stella Kristensen is a proud alum of Purchase College where she completed her Bachelor of Arts in Literature. She subsequently earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College, where she also worked intently on printmaking.  Stella is dedicated to supporting the continued excellence of Purchase College and its vibrant community.

She/Her/Hers

Academic Areas:

Jane organizes all on and off-campus events in support of the Office of Admissions, including open houses, info sessions, conservatory-specific events, group visits, accepted student days, and more! She also oversees the amazing team of student Admissions Ambassadors here at Purchase.

All about Jane!

Jane has an extensive administrative background in higher education and the performing arts. Before coming to Purchase, Jane served as the Program Coordinator for Duke in New York: Arts and Media, an immersive NYC-based study away program through Duke University focused on careers in the creative industries. Additionally, Jane spent many years in NYC as a theatre producer, director and performer. As someone who thrives in creative environments, Jane is thrilled to join the Purchase community and connect with prospective students seeking a truly unique and inspiring college experience.

Fun Fact

Jane has been in many, many television commercials! If you're a TV watcher, chances are you've spotted her selling burgers, cable, cars, banks, vitamins, pancakes… the list goes on!

She/Her/Hers

Territories:

• New York State
  • Western New York
  • North of Dutchess County
• Idaho
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• Montana
• Utah

All about Emma

Emma Steen is a native New Yorker with a background in early childhood music education. She feels strongly about providing equitable, forward-looking education to everyone, and believes Purchase is the place to be to make that happen.

Emma received both her Bachelor's and her Master's in Music Composition from Purchase, and has since written music for several films and performed at venues and festivals all over the country.

Fun Fact:

Emma plays eight instruments, and can wiggle her ears.

Register for an appointment with Emma 

Education
MLIS, University of South Florida

BA, Florida Atlantic University

Bridget Vissar - a 2013 graduate of the Dramatic Writing program, went on from Purchase to UCLA's Masters program in screenwriting where she won the Milton Sperling Award and an L.A. Women In Film award. Bridget has taught SW II and mentors PWSW Senior Projects.

John Young is an American director, producer, and writer. His most recent feature, bwoy, starring Anthony Rapp, premiered in 2016 and was released theatrically in 2017.

Patrice Giasson is the Alex Gordon Curator of Art of the Americas at the Neuberger Museum of Art. He has taught in the Department of Art History at SUNY Purchase College since 2009, and specializes in Modern and Contemporary Latin American art. He has curated several exhibitions and edited for the Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase College, SUNY), the following titles: Rosalie D. Gagné: A Contemporary Alchemist (2024); A Matter of Discovery: The Art of Luis Perelman (2023); Nicolás De Jesús: A Mexican Artist for Global Justice (co published with Hirmer­­, 2022); "Art Got into Me" The Work of Engels the Artist (2020); Pier Paolo Pasolini: Subversive Prophet (2020); Destination Latin America. Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art from the Collection (2018); A Studio in the Museum: The Playful Universe of Ignacio Iturria (2017); Leandro Erlich: Port of Reflections (co-edited with Helaine Posner, 2017); Teresa Margolles: We Have a Common Thread (2015); Pre-Columbian Remix: The Art of Enrique Chagoya, Demián Flores, Rubén Ortiz-Torres, and Nadín Ospina (2013).

LINDA CELESTE SIMS (Bronx, NY) began training at Ballet Hispanico School of Dance and graduated from LaGuardia High School of the Performing Arts. 

She has been featured on the cover of Dance Magazine, New York Amsterdam News, Refinery29 and on So You Think You Can Dance, Dancing with the Stars, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Mo'Nique Show, LIVE with Kelly and Michael, and The Today Show. Mrs. Sims has appeared at the White House Series, Youth America Grand Prix,
Vail International Dance Festival, and Evidence Dance Company. She was also a Principal Dancer with the Ailey Company. 

Billy started his professional career as a principal with the Amy Marshall Dance Company before joining Les Ballets Grandiva. His credits include; principal guest artist with Mobile Ballet, CoDa 21 of San Juan, Catherine Gallant Dance, Atlantic City Ballet, Northwest Florida Ballet, Ajkun Ballet Theatre, the East Village Dance Project, Northeastern Ballet Theatre, isadoraNOW, Project in Motion, Ballet Mink Colbert, and many others. 

John Delate PhD, is a Student Affairs administrator, training facilitator, and organizational consultant.

He has coached athletic teams, developed communication strategies for various organizations, and serves in a leadership capacity in higher education. His scholarly interests include social and political history and labor-management relations. He has taught various classes and workshops on communication, emotional intelligence, and group dynamics. He holds a PhD in American history from Clark University.

Michelle Weinberg is an artist who primarily draws and paints and also creates art for interiors, architecture and public spaces. She received a BFA from School of Visual Arts and an MFA from Tyler School of Art. She is the recipient of awards, fellowships and residencies including  an Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation Award, a NYSCA Grant to Individual Artists, a NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship, residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell and Millay colonies, two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Awards (2016, 2025), a Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Residency, SouthArts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Joseph Robert Foundation, South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship, National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts,  Studios at MASS MoCA, 100West Corsicana in TX, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, homesession and Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain and Altos de Chavon in Dominican Republic. 

Roni Gross is a book artist who trained first as a musician and then as a choreographer. She is interested in the theater of the book, it's pacing, the music of language, and the resonance of color. Creating an environment in which to experience language, is the aim of her work. She publishes limited edition letterpress printed books which are collaborations with the sculptor Peter Schell under the press name Z'roah.

She is a 2020 AIGA award winner for 50 Book Covers competition. Roni co-published (with Barbara Henry), The Vandercook Book, in honor of the 100th Anniversary of the Vandercook Press, which traveled around the United States for 2 years. She has produced limited edition chapbooks and broadsides for numerous poets including LaTasha Nevada Diggs, Marie Ponsot, Edwin Torres, Jean Valentine and C.K. Williams,

In 2019 she started and continues to produce Book Talk, an online series to engage in critical dialogue about artist books, which is sponsored by The Center for Book Arts.
She currently teaches at The Center for Book Arts in NYC, and has taught at Penland, The New School, Pratt and Hot Bed Press. Her work is in the collections of The New York Public Library, The Library of Congress, Harvard, Yale, the Bodleian and many other public and private collections.

David Woolard, Costume Designer, has worked on costumes for major theaters all over the world. Some of his work can be seen in Broadway shows such as Dames at Sea, First Date, Lysistrata Jones, West Side Story, 33 Variations (Jane Fonda's clothing), Dividing the Estate, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Who's Tommy, Bells Are Ringing, Wait Until Dark, The Young Man From Atlanta, Damn Yankees, A Few Good Men.

Visit David's website for more information: http://davidcwoolard.com/ 

Janene knew she wanted to live backstage since she was in high school. She obtained a BFA in Technical Direction Production from Ithaca College and then started her career as a carpenter Off-Broadway working mainly for The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival. She eventually worked her way up and became the first female Technical Director for the The Public Theater. After that, she moved into commercial scenery construction and spent 8 years at Hudson Scenic Studio as an Estimator and Project Manager for Broadway Shows, Cruise line productions, theme parks, and anywhere you can find scenery.

Pulling from a broad array of life experiences, both personal and professional, Troy becomes more focused and centered when the pressure is on.

Troy has a BFA in Technical Direction and Production Management from Purchase College. He has been a Project Manager for Broadway Shows, Corporate Events and Concert Tours. He has also lead a team of Technical Designers and Professional Engineers to create some of the most sophisticated Automation on Broadway. 

Emily Stout teaches College Writing and is originally from Washington State. She studied Journalism in college, but quickly realized her passion for creative writing and teaching. She writes poetry in her free time and enjoys exploring Queens where she lives now.

Genevieve Mills received a Bachelor's in English and French from the University of Louisville and an MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Speculative Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. She also teaches English as a Second Language at Westchester Community College. She joined the Purchase College Writing faculty in 2022.

Katherine Dye teaches College Writing. She received an undergraduate degree in Comparative Literature from Oberlin College and a MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She is also a short story writer and novelist. Katherine joined the Purchase College Writing faculty in 2022.​

Nicky Barbato is a guitarist, bandleader, composer, and educator based in New York. His latest album, the Nicky Barbato Project's Every Day is a Bad Hair Day (produced by Jon Irabagon) was recognized by The New York City Jazz Record as a "Best Debut of 2019" alongside releases from Larry Grenadier and Nick Dunston. The album was called "eclectic…hard driving NYC style guitar noir" and a "modern day essential for adventurous guitar fans" by Roots Music Report. The Vinyl Anachronist wrote about Nicky's original compositions, "Nicky's vision cuts through surf rock, jazz, '70s prog rock, funk and rockabilly–and that's just in the first song and a half."

James Burton has preformed in groups around the world such as the Black Art Jazz Collective, Cristian McBride Big Band, Dizzy Gillespie All Star Big Band, and Ron Carter's Great Big Band.

Trombonist, composer, arranger James Burton III has lent his sound to multiple Grammy Award-winning albums and Tony Award-winning Broadway productions. Born in Queens, now a resident of Harlem, Burton III is a Summa Cum Laude graduate of the Jackie McLean Institute at the Hartt School of Music. While earning his Master's Degree and Artist Diploma from the Juilliard School, Burton held both the Morse and Gluck Fellowships and received the Schuman Prize, an award named for Juilliard's founding president and given to one graduating Masters Degree candidate annually.

Burton got his professional start playing with many of the great large ensembles; the Illinois Jacquet Big Band, the Dizzy Gillespie All Stars, the Lincoln Center and Vanguard Jazz Orchestras etc. Additionally, the opportunity to perform/record with legends Jimmy Heath, Slide Hampton, Ron Carter and Christian McBride inspired Burton to co-found a 10-piece ensemble called the Uptown Jazz Tentet, which celebrated the release of a second album in late 2020, to much critical acclaim.

 Currently, Burton's playing and original compositions can be heard alongside band mates Jeremy Pelt and Wayne Escoffery in a dynamic new ensemble; Black Art Jazz Collective. BAJC has released three albums since its inception, the latest two reaching the #1 position on the JazzWeek Charts for international radio play.

In the model of jazz education pioneer Jackie McLean, Burton is an avid educator and has been a full time associate professor at both the Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music as well as Director of Jazz Education at New Jersey Performing Arts Center. Burton continues to pass on the legacy of the music via master classes, ensemble coachings and workshops for arts education institutions across the globe.

Tina serves as the Director for our Advancing Completion through Engagement (ACE) program. This program aims to remove many of the barriers that students face in order to help them graduate on time. Enhanced advising, career workshops, community building activities and financial support are just some of the ways in which ACE can help students succeed at Purchase.

williambryantmiles (WBM) is a multi-hyphenate creative professional with a commitment to provocative storytelling, innovation and Black voices. His career includes artistic and managerial roles with artists and organizations throughout the USA and London.

As an artist, WBM created and led Show: UP!, a unique performance concept presented in non-traditional spaces. Works in development include the film and series I Heart Furaha and a new performance The Incredible Drunkertons. As an independent producer WBM has brought to life over 50 projects in a wide range of spaces and locales.

WBM also created #BlackGayandonScreen, an online exploration of depictions of Black gay men in film and TV. As a strategy consultant, WBM has advised executive leadership, and designed programs and operating models at renowned institutions including The World Famous Apollo Theater, August Wilson House, and The Flea Theater, among others.

Donnie Mather is an actor who specializes in physical and collaborative approaches to actor training and devised theatre. Donnie has over 25 years experience with Suzuki & Viewpoints—training with Anne Bogart, SITI, Tina Landau, and Mary Overlie. He has taught at the Atlantic Acting School, NYU, Columbia, Harvard, Wesleyan, NYCDA, Bard, Fordham, New School, Marymount, Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, and The National Theatre Institute at the O'Neill Theatre Center. Internationally, Donnie has worked with artists throughout Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Germany, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Thailand, and Turkey. Donnie has performed with SITI Company (Associate Artist for 6 years), Our Voices Theater, WeildWorks, Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, NYC Opera, LA Opera, International WOW Company, and En Garde Arts. His original work includes A SHOW OF FORCE. He is the founder of The Adaptations Project performing in KADDISH (OR THE KEY IN THE WINDOW) based on the poem by Allen Ginsberg. Currently, he is building and launching Winwick Studio—an artist residency in upstate New York.

Joseph Sannicandro is a writer and artist based in Montreal. He studies creative labor and (un)popular culture, with a particular attention to sound. His dissertation explores the nature of doing things together through a cultural history of aesthetics and politics in post-1968 Italy. His work has appeared in publications including eContact, dpi., Carceral Notebooks, The Journal for Sonic Studies, Cultural Critique, and in edited book collections. He is co- founder of the music blog A Closer Listen, and producer of the Sound Propositions podcast.

Tatiana Kouguell-Hoell is a recent MFA Playwriting graduate of Columbia University. She previously studied at Purchase College, the University of Amsterdam and Prague Film School. Her original plays have been performed at The Tank Theater, Lenfest Center for the Arts, Studio Theater, the Stella Adler Studio for Acting, Purchase College and Chateau Orquevaux in France, where she was awarded the Denis Diderot (A-I-R) Grant as an Artist-In-Residence.

Le'Asha Julius is an actress from Washington D.C. She attended Duke Ellington School of the Arts and went on to receive her BFA from SUNY Purchase College. She is known for her role as Wendy in HBO's Random Acts of Flyness and Jasmine in Still Here which premiered at Sundance Film Festival. Le'Asha has worked with The Public Theater, The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, Howard University, and Carnegie Hall among many other endeavors. In her free time she's a songwriter and has performed at Black Thought's "School of Thought " and has opened for several artists including Kendrick Lamar, Salt 'n' Peppa, Noname, and Talib Kweli. ​

Sharon Zechowski holds a doctorate in Communications and has been a teacher, scholar, and student advocate for over twenty years. Her academic interests include critical theory, intersectional analyses of popular culture and radical pedagogy. She teaches a wide variety of courses within communications and media studies which emphasize the production, circulation and consumption of cultural texts and practices. A Climate Reality Leader since 2017, she also works to promote public education and activism related to climate change and environmental justice issues.

Peter Dearing joined the Purchase Community in the Fall of 2015 and taught College Writing as well as the EOP Writing Lab. In the Fall of 2022 he became the Director of the Learning Center. He is thrilled to help students achieve academic success by developing lifelong learning strategies.

Peter holds a BA in Creative Writing from Hunter College, an MFA in Creative Nonfiction writing from Sarah Lawrence College, and a post-MFA certificate in the Teaching of Creative Writing from Antioch University. He has also taught Introduction to Composition II at Fordham University, and Oral Communications at Mercy College.

Outside of work, he enjoys playing with his one-year-old son, going to Broadway shows with his wife, an actress, and he is also excited to meet students and see their pictures of any and all dogs, cats, hedgehogs, etc. He has a Havanese named Hobbes.

Earnest L. Lamb joined the college leadership team in June 2022.

Before joining Purchase, Dr. Lamb (he/him/his) served as the Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at Minnesota State University Moorhead (MSUM). Before joining MSUM as Dean, he served as Chair of the Department of Performing and Fine Arts at Fayetteville State University and Chair of the Department of Music at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.

In addition to his administrative duties, Provost Lamb continues his performing and scholarly activities. As a cellist, he is an active chamber musician and a former member of the Fayetteville, Memphis, and Arkansas Symphony orchestras. His interest in leadership in the arts has been shared at conferences, in print, and on various social media platforms. Additionally, Dean Lamb wrote and produced two programs for public radio: Blacks in Classical Music and From Spiritual to Symphony: A Portrait of Florence Smith Price. The latter has won numerous awards, including first-place honors in the portrait division from the prestigious Foundation for Women in Radio and Television.

Dr. Lamb holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Musicology from the University of North Texas, with a specialization in American music, a Master of Music degree in Cello Performance from Indiana University, and a Bachelor of Music degree in Cello Performance from the University of Memphis (formerly Memphis State University).​

David N Wilson is a transdisciplinary designer, educator, and researcher. His practice focuses on emergent digital technologies that create, maintain, and change culture in public, virtual, and hybrid spaces. David has helped to establish design research labs at Purchase College,  The University of Texas at Dallas, and The New School that investigate an emergent digital communications form called Public Interactives. He has previously served as a research fellow at UT Dallas and The New School. While at The New School he also served in the University TransDisciplinary Laboratory hosted by Parsons School of Design, conducting technocultural research in collaboration with Microsoft New York.  Prior to higher education David worked in the Television, Music, and Video Game industries.

Alana Sanko is an award-winning creator and producer, who has written and developed for comedy, drama and animated series, as well as TV movie and network and cable pilots across multiple platforms. Her Nickelodeon series, Just for Kicks, which she developed with Executive Producer Whoopi Goldberg, won her a WGA Award and the animated MTV series Spy Groove, that she was Head Writer on, received an Annie Nomination. Alana has written on numerous writing staffs. Her credits include the produced ABC comedy pilot, See Jayne Run, the Disney Channel Original Movie Get a Clue and the acclaimed CBS television series Murphy Brown, which was named on the WGA's list of 101 Best TV Series. Alana has also written for many children's series and is currently an executive producer on an independent feature that is in development.

Katie Murray is a photographer and video artist living in New York City. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions to include: Fish Island Gallery, TOPS Gallery.

Having worked for a number of years in education, as both a teacher and an advisor at the college-level, Jane truly believes that a good education can level the playing field. She works directly with EOP students to guide and support them during their college journey. When she's not at SUNY – Purchase College, she enjoys spending time with her family and chasing after her dog, Landry.

Alyssa has been in the field of Disability Services for a decade, and has served in the capacity of Director, both within a private and public college setting. With advocacy and student empowerment at the forefront of Alyssa's educational philosophy, she has, throughout her career, supported the development, implementation, and expansion of a number of fee-based programs. These efforts have resulted in the ability to serve students above and beyond what is legally mandated under the Americans with Disabilities Act. With a passion to create equal access to education and to foster a welcoming learning environment for all, Alyssa partnered with students to create the first disability awareness club at Manhattanville College, as well as the first exclusively transgender-centered club. Alyssa was acknowledged as Student Organization Advisor of the Year at her previous institution, and after completing her first year at Purchase College, she was recognized for the 2023 Student Engagement Award.

Ahmaya Knoelle Higginson, is the Director of the Purchase Soul Voices Ensemble, an award winning teaching artist and global performer, and Co-Founder and Artistic Director of The Mama Foundation for The Arts

Ahmaya attended The Manhattan School of Music for Jazz Vocal Studies and graduated from the American Musical And Dramatic Academy (AMDA) for Musical Theater studies. Ahmaya has toured world stages singing in various productions including Porgy and Bess and starring in Mama I Want To Sing!

Ahmaya and her mother Vy Higginsen, creator of the musical Mama I Want To Sing!, built The Mama Foundation forthe Arts, a 501(c) 3) Non-Profit music and arts institution, to pass on their knowledge and history of the music and theater industry. They have built curriculums which have served thousands of youth and adults by providing free music and performance education for the past 20 years.

With the continuing mission to preserve African American music as an art form through future generations, Ahmaya gathered students from her Harlem institution and founded Sing Harlem, the award winning commercial traveling ensemble and choir in which Ahmaya currently serves as Artistic and Musical Director. Ahmaya has booked, curated and musically directed opportunities for the group including: with SZA on Saturday Night Live and the 60th Annual Grammy Awards, with Chance The Rapper on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and with Ariana Grandeat the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting and more.  Additionally Sing Harlem has performance credits with Pharrell Williams, Alesia Cara, Likke Li, Madonna, headlining Brooklyn's AFROPUNK, Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the APOLLO theater and Chicago's Ravinia Festival.

Margaret Peot teaches Dyeing for the Theater as part of the Costume Construction II class at Purchase College. Margaret has been a costume painter and dyer for over thirty years. She has worked on many Broadway and tour shows, including The Lion King, Moulin Rouge, Hadestown, Frozen, Wicked, Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, Will Rogers Follies and more. Dance costume work includes Peter and the Wolf and Sleeping Beauty for ABT, various Nutcrackers nationwide, and the premier of the new ballet King Arthur at Cincinnati Ballet. She has painted costumes for arena shows, circuses, ice shows and concerts including Marvel Universe Live, Siegfried and Roy Live at the Mirage Hotel, and the Radio City Rockettes Christmas Spectacular. She is a member of USA 829.

Danielle Clowe is an Access Counselor at the Office of Disability Resources. Danielle meets with and coordinates access plans primarily for students who identify with mental health diagnoses and Autism Spectrum Disorders. She determines appropriate academic accommodations and support services and oversees and participates in the delivery of services to students with disabilities. 

Before joining the Office of Disability Resources, Danielle worked for agencies and schools throughout Westchester County, specializing in therapeutic and transitional services for adolescents and young adults with disabilities. Within her last program, she facilitated a college-based program to assist students with disabilities in navigating the college environment focusing on strengthening and building their executive functioning and adaptive coping skills in response to school-based stressors.

Outside of work when she is not supporting students, Danielle is an avid animal lover, having been a vegetarian/vegan spanning over a decade. In her spare time, she enjoys spending quality time with her two rescue Bengal cats and supporting the efforts of local/city animal shelters/rescue foundations.

Kristyan Rose Gilmore is an attorney from Houston, Texas with a diverse background in politics, philanthropy, entertainment, and the arts. She encourages growth through self awareness, use of technology, strategic staffing and developing a social justice acumen.  

Sabrina Charney Hull has been a practicing planner for over 25 years. Since gaining her Master's degree in Urban and Regional Planning Sabrina has been working in Westchester at county as well as local government level. 

Harrison graduated from SUNY Purchase in 2019 with a Bachelor's of Science in Communications. He has taken on the role of Office Administrator in the School of Natural and Social Sciences here at Purchase. He has worked in the Offices of Accommodation Services at both SUNY Rockland and SUNY Dutchess. His goal is to ensure all students, faculty and staff have as much assistance as they need to make their experience at Purchase a positive and memorable one. 

Liz handles emails, processing documents, and is the person you meet in our welcome office.

Lizz (she/they) brings a wealth of experience to the position having worked in higher education and nonprofits for over 15 years. Her experience on stage, in the classroom, leading professional development trainings, and in the School of Humanities has prepared her to coordinate programming, lead trainings and workshops and create relationships with stakeholders on campus and in the community. In all of Lizz's past positions, she has championed creating opportunities and giving a voice to underrepresented students, faculty, and staff. Her personal philosophy about the importance of equity, inclusion, and social justice took her to Stony Brook University where she obtained her Master's in Higher Education Administration with a concentration on DEI and serving students from oppressed and marginalized backgrounds. Her Master's thesis focused on the important work of chief diversity officers and, specifically, the importance of a campus culture that fosters and advocates for multicultural education, training, events, and programming.

She/Her/Hers

About Kellie:

Kellie is the Assistant Director of Admissions and oversees the counselor staff as well as film, transfer students and graduate programming for the office. As a double SUNY alum herself, she chose to work at Purchase because of the value of a hands on public education.

Register for an appointment with Kellie

Fun Fact:

Kellie accidentally attended the London Olympics cycling event through the city in 2012 and has been an Olympic enthusiast ever since.

She/Her/Hers

Territories:

• New York State Counties:
  • Nassau
  • Suffolk
• Arizona
• California
• Colorado
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Wyoming
• Texas

All about Victoria!

Victoria is a proud SUNY grad who started her college journey as a transfer student and found her place at Binghamton University, where she earned her degree in Geography in 2018. She kept going and finished two master's degrees—one in Public Administration and the other in Student Affairs Administration—by 2020. Having transferred herself and worked with other transfer students during college, she's especially passionate about helping students navigate their own paths.

She's a big fan of the SUNY system and all the great experiences that come with it. These days, Victoria loves being part of the community at Purchase College. The students are one-of-a-kind, the opportunities are exciting, and being so close to Manhattan definitely adds to the fun!

Register for an appointment with Victoria

Fun Fact:

Victoria has been to New York Comic Con more than 10 times and is considered the "Pokémon Master" in the office.

The director of Student Advising and Academic Support oversees the Academic Advising Center, The Testing Center and the Learning Center with the overarching goal of supporting student success.  The director also serves as the administrator for the Starfish student success digital platform.

Jason is an experimental cognitive psychologist working on uncovering the psychological and neural processes underpinning conscious and unconscious processes. In his research research, he explores the role that attention and expectation play in conscious and unconscious perception, the capacity, duration, and fidelity of visual sensory and short-term memories, and, more recently, illusions of time and what they can teach us about how perception of time is represented in the central nervous system. He is also interested in the so-called hard problem of consciousness, or how brains and conscious experience are related.

James Madejski received his Dramatic Writing BFA from SUNY Purchase in 2011. Since then, he's worn many hats in the entertainment industry, including Development Coordinator for Constantin Film and Writers'/Showrunners' Assistant on the Freeform show SHADOWHUNTERS. As a writer, he's contributed to Universal Pictures' DOLITTLE starring Robert Downey Jr and MGM's ADDAMS FAMILY animated films. He's currently developing a feature with Artists First to produce.

Michi Barall is a New York City-based actor, playwright and academic. As an actor, Michi has appeared in new plays by Julia Cho, Philip Kan Gotanda, A.R. Gurney, John Guare, Naomi Iizuka, Han Ong, Jose Rivera, Paul Rudnick, Charles Mee, Sarah Schulman, Anna Deavere Smith, Diana Son, Lloyd Suh, Regina Taylor, Doug Wright and Chay Yew, among others. Michi's dance-theatre piece, Rescue Me, was produced at the Ohio Theatre by Ma-Yi in 2010. Her adaptation of Peer Gynt, entitled Peer Gynt and The Norwegian Hapa Band, premiered in 2107, at the ART/NY Theatre. With Sung Rno, Michi co-wrote the short films Sophocles in Staten Island and its follow up Odets in Staten Island, directed by Jack Tamburri and produced by Ma-Yi Studio. Her play for multigenerational audiences about comic artists premiered at the Children's Theatre Centre in Minneapolis in 2025. Her academic work focuses on commercial and theme park performance. She teaches courses in acting, playwriting and theatre history.

Alexandra (Alex) Stamson is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Connecticut. She also holds an M.A. in Women's and Gender Studies from the Graduate Center CUNY, as well as a B.A. in Philosophy from SUNY Purchase, and a B.A. in Media and Communication from the University of Southern Maine. She is the co-founder and co-chair of the Pop Culture Interest Group at the National Women's Studies Association.

For more than 30 years, David Srebnik was the Program Director at Public Radio Stations across the country and an Associate Producer at National Public Radio's Performance Today.

Most recently, he directed the classical music programming at SiriusXM for its two classical music channels. While at SiriusXM, he also hosted and produced special programs with Yannick Nezet-Seguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philip Glass, John Adams, Yo-Yo Ma, Yuja Wang, Anthony McGill, the Kronos Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, the Imani Winds, Emanuel Ax, Simone Dinnerstein, Sir James Galway and many others.

Melissa Rodriguez is a Director / Producer from Westchester, NY. After graduating from SUNY Purchase '13 Melissa developed a strong passion for film and social justice. She received her MFA from Brooklyn College in film and television production and launched her full-service video production company, Riot Girl Productions. RGP puts a focus on marginalized stories dedicated to social justice. Her work has been featured in various film festivals across the country. Most recently, Melissa worked closely with Apple Music in Los Angeles producing radio and video content for the Travis Mills show. Currently, Melissa is in production on a documentary exploring the cat abandonment crisis in Yonkers, NY. Melissa offers 10 years of industry experience in docu-style branded content, documentary, music video, and narrative storytelling.

E. Diana Cassells specializes in International Relations and Comparative Politics. She is interested in how Global South countries function in the international system. Her current research explores the identity-foreign policy nexus in Cuba after 1959. Her work also examines the imprint of colonialism on public health systems in Black spaces. Her teaching focuses on international relations theories, international organizations and human rights; contending perspective of Development; transitional and reparatory justice; Caribbean, Latin America, and wider Global South state-society relations. She has published on Cuban Medical Diplomacy and Cuba-US foreign relations, and has presented her academic work in proceedings of professional associations and meetings, including International Studies Association, Latin American Studies Association, Caribbean Studies Association and the Catedra del Caribe (University of Habana).

Aviva Taubenfeld, Director, is Associate Professor of Literature at Purchase College. She received a PhD in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in 2003 and has been on the faculty of Purchase ever since.

A scholar of US literature specializing in immigration and ethnicity, Aviva is author of Rough Writing: Ethnic Authorship in Theodore Roosevelt's America (NYU, 2008) as well as numerous essays on immigrant history, ethnic and diasporic literatures, translingualism, and national and transnational identity.

In 2009, Aviva was appointed Director of Writing. In this capacity, she supervised the College Writing program, recruited and trained faculty, created and taught writing support programs, and led Purchase's writing pedagogy internship.

Aviva teaches popular courses, including Childhood in US Literature, the Roaring Twenties, and Immigration and Ethnicity in US Literature. For the past two years she has also been teaching incarcerated women at the Bedford Hills College Program. In 2013, Aviva was awarded the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching.

A first generation college graduate, Aviva has experienced both the challenges and joys of academic life. She is dedicated to helping all students find their own path to fulfillment, learning, and success.

Jessica Ann Levy is a historian of modern America with interests in racism, capitalism, and politics at the local, national, and global level. My work explores how dynamic movements, including those demanding racial justice and an end to global apartheid, challenged and were ultimately incorporated into institutions representing the U.S. government and multinational corporations.

Dr. Gregory Taylor is the author of Artists in the Audience: Cults, Camp, and American Film Criticism (Princeton University Press), a landmark study of American film criticism, along with articles addressing subjects such as taste, modernism, the avant-garde, and arts education. A Purchase College faculty member since 1993, Dr. Taylor has taught a wide variety of courses in cinema studies and related fields, and has served as Coordinator of the Cinema Studies program, Interim Dean of the Conservatory of Theatre Arts & Film, and Director of the Conservatory of Theatre Arts.

Dr. Taylor holds a BA from the University of Toronto, and an MA and PhD in Communication Arts-Film from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Kathleen Farrell (she/her) joined Purchase College in 2007 as the Assistant Director of Human Resources.

In 2008, she was promoted to the Director of Human Resources. In 2018, her title changed to Chief Human Resources Officer.

Kathleen participated in the SAIL Summer Leadership Academy in 2015 and TIAA's Emerging Leaders Network in 2017–2018. She also served as the President of the State University Human Resources Association (SUHRA).

Prior to joining Purchase, Kathleen worked in non-profit healthcare.

Kathleen graduated from Binghamton University with a BA in Psychology and a MS in Human Resource Management from Mercy College.

Jeana Scotti is a playwright, producer, and educator. She is a co-founder of Ugly Face, a theatre collective focused on community driven experiences. She is a 2026 Creative Capital awardee, a member of the Public's 2025-2027 Emerging Writers Group, a 2025 MacDowell fellow, and a 2025 New Georges Audrey recipient. She was a member of Clubbed Thumb's Early Career Writers' Group and is a New Georges affiliated artist. Recent: oh, Honey (Ugly Face) and  A Necessary Killing (Clubbed Thumbs's Winterworks) jeanascotti.com

Emily Blumenfeld, co-founder of Via Partnership, is a public art consultant, curator and art historian with expertise in strategic planning, program development, artist selection, exhibition production, media relations, and working with artists and community partners to ensure the maximum impact of their work. Emily curated and managed Inspiring Community Healing after Gun Violence: the Power of Art in Coral Springs and Parkland, Florida with a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies written by Via Partnership with the City of Coral Springs and Parkland, FL and has co-authored public art master plans in Providence, RI, Washington, DC, and Calgary, AB. Emily is also co-founder of Works on Water and serves on the community advisory committees for the Climate Museum and The Trust for Governors Island.

Ugonna Okegwo is one of the most distinctive and sought-after jazz bassists in the world. Critics across the globe have praised him for his rich tone, supple sense of swing, stylistic range and inventiveness. These qualities have not only earned him a place on the bandstand with jazz legends as diverse as Clark Terry, Benny Golson, Pharoah Sanders and Joseph Jarman – they have established him as one of the leading lights of a younger generation redefining jazz for the new century.

"He is very individualistic, both in his soloing and accompanying. I love the way he plays in the ensemble," says Tom Harrell, with whom Okegwo has worked for many years. "Ugonna does some really creative things that I haven't heard anyone do with his articulation and timing."

Born March 15, 1962 in London to a German mother and Nigerian father, Okegwo was raised in Germany and grew up listening to African-American music – James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and, eventually, the great Charles Mingus.

"What I always heard first in funk and rock 'n roll were the bass lines, the ostinato, and later, in jazz, the walking bass," he recalls. "That's what first got me playing bass." The fusing of funk and jazz bass conceptions is a foundation of Okegwo's unique approach, making his sound instantly recognizable.

In 1986, he moved to Berlin to study with the American expatriates, bassist Jay Oliver, and pianist Walter Norris. There Okegwo caught the attention of many prominent jazz musicians, most notably the trombonist and Mingus alum, Lou Blackburn, who invited Okegwo to tour Europe with his Afro-Jazz group "Mombasa". While working with Blackburn, Okegwo met and played with trumpeter Joe Newman, drummer Oliver Jackson, and the bassist Major Holley, who encouraged him to move to New York.

In 1989, Okegwo made the leap to Manhattan and began playing with musicians like saxophone legends Big Nick Nicholas, Junior Cook, and James Spaulding. In 1992, a call from legendary vocalist Jon Hendricks led to steady work as a sideman - on stage and in recording studios. In 1994 Hendricks even took Okegwo to the White House to perform for the President. During this time, Okegwo's artistry attracted two other gifted young musicians – pianist Jacky Terrason and drummer Leon Parker. The trio joined forces and at famous clubs like the Village Gate and Bradley's, developing one of the most creative and explosive group sounds of the nineties.

Okegwo is also a bandleader in his own right. In 2002 he took his quartet to Europe and documented the group with a recording entitled "UOniverse" [Satchmo Jazz]. The material, which consists of his compositions and brilliantly arranged standards, draws from a wide range of influences, including jazz, African, funk, and classical music.

He keeps working with his group, mostly in a Quartet, or Quintet format, when opportunities present themselves.

As a sideman he has been freelancing with a number of very diverse groups, including stints with the Wallace Roney Quintet, Kurt Rosenwinkel Quartet/and Standards Trio, Steve Wilson's "Wilsonian's Grain", and the Wayne Escoffery Quartet.

He's also been very engaged as an integral part of numerous projects lead by trumpeter/composer Tom Harrell. His collaboration with Harrell began in 1997 and continues through this day.

I am the Resource Sharing Librarian at Purchase College Library, where I lead the Interlibrary Loan Department, facilitating access to a wide array of scholarly resources for our patrons. Serving as the subject liaison for General Studies, Global Studies, and Law and Justice Studies, I forge connections between students, faculty, and the resources essential to their academic pursuits.

One of my key responsibilities is overseeing the collection development for the Popular Collection, which includes novels, graphic novels, and manga. By staying up-to-date with emerging trends and engaging with the diverse interests of our college community, I ensure that our collection remains vibrant and responsive to the evolving tastes of our readers.

In my role, I am dedicated to fostering collaboration and promoting information accessibility. Whether assisting patrons in locating materials through interlibrary loan services, reference, instruction, or curating collections that cater to their interests, I am committed to enhancing the academic experience at Purchase College Library.

Jeffrey has a growing background at the Purchase College Career Development Center from an undergraduate Career Liaison, graduate level Career Counseling Intern, Career Coach, and currently as Experiential Learning Coordinator and a Career Counselor. In addition to his experience working with college students, Jeffrey has worked as a counselor with students in high school and middle school where he was involved in curricular program development and counseling for academic/college/career preparation. As a Purchase College alumnus and having earned an MSEd in Bilingual School Counseling at LIU, Jeffrey can further support the Purchase College community. As the Experiential Learning Coordinator, Jeffrey oversees our Academic Internship program and helps Purchase students gain hands-on and practical skills and career learning opportunities in a broad scope of career fields. Jeffrey also works with the CDC team to deliver and lead classroom and group presentations, and provide individual student career counseling.

Els van den Bosch is a Student Services Coordinator in the School of Liberal Studies and Continuing Education, after having served initially as the secretary to the Vice President for Academic Affairs. Her favorite part of the job is helping students to navigate their way through college life. She was a first generation college student and gained an MA in Linguistics from the University of Amsterdam in her native Holland. Els is a graduate of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and loves everything food related, from growing it (in the Dobbs Ferry Community garden), helping with the food pantry at Purchase College, and trying out new recipes at home. She is also into meditation and energy healing.

Andrew Saito is a playwright, dramaturg, and teaching artist who has practiced community-engaged theater making and education internationally.

Erika Ebbs received her B.S. in Biology from California State University, Fresno in 2011 and a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of New Mexico in 2018. She is an Evolutionary Parasitologist who uses population genetic, phylogenetic and ecological tools to understand host-parasite relationships across time and space. Specifically, her work focuses on a group of trematode parasites of medical and veterinary importance known as Schistosomes.

She is primarily interested in species of zoonotic importance, which are known to cause Human Cercarial Dermatitis (a.k.a. Swimmer's Itch) globally. Her Ph.D. work focused on the Evolutionary Ecology of schistosomes of waterfowl and their aquatic snail intermediate hosts, and addressed how host specific traits may influence parasite microevolutionary patterns. She is also interested in the population genetics, distribution and invasion of aquatic snails.

New York-based percussionist Russell Greenberg enjoys exploring creative and unclassifiable music. Internationally sought-after for his singular approach and interpretation, he strives to share his passion for the musical experience with a wide variety of audiences.

As a founding member of the piano and percussion quartet, Yarn/Wire, Russell has collaborated with many of today's leading composers to craft a body of new, wide-reaching and vital repertoire. At the vanguard of contemporary music, Russell frequently tours the world, having appeared at the Ultima (Oslo), Tectonics (Glasgow), Lincoln Center (NY), Barbican (UK), and Rainy Days (Luxembourg) festivals among others, and is a regular visiting artist at universities including UC Berkeley, Columbia, Brown, and others.

Russell is also member of Either/OR and the Wet Ink Large Ensemble, and has appeared with other prominent groups as well such as the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Argento, and sfSound, with performances having been labeled as "fearless" (TimeOutNY), and "intrepid/engrossing" (The New York Times). He has worked with a many leading composers and conductors including Pierre Boulez, Peter Eötvös, Susanna Mälkki, Enno Poppe, Beat Furrer, and others. In addition to his work with contemporary music ensembles, Russell has toured and recorded with the bands Seaven Teares, Kayo Dot, and Hi Red Center.

Kate Scorza Ingram is the founder of Create Today, a certified minority and woman-owned business enterprise serving museums, performing and visual arts centers, producers, presenters, and service agencies across North America and around the world. She has over 20 years of experience successfully preparing strategic plans and operations analyses, working with industry service organizations and foundations, supporting project and operational planning efforts for major arts facility projects, conducting community cultural planning and developing public policy, and performing industry and consumer research. She also has experience working in the field, from the six years she worked at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Website: www.createtoday.net

Lachell Workman is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York. She received a BFA in Photography from the University of Connecticut in 2011, and an MFA from Purchase College, SUNY in 2015. Her interdisciplinary practice investigates the cultural iconography of the R.I.P. T-shirt and ritualistic practices of mourning within inner-city landscapes as sites for theorizing the visualization of the black ineffable body. Workman's recent exhibitions include the 10th Berlin Biennale, Dineo Seshee Bopape, "Untitled (of the occult instability) [Feelings]" at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art (2018) and In Practice: Another Echo at Sculpture Center (2018). She has exhibited work at The Knockdown Center (2018), We Buy Gold (2017), The Union for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE (2017) and has participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Lighthouse Works, The Shandaken Project at Storm King Art Center, Ox-Bow School of Art, and the Vermont Studio Center.

Kyle Sitzman received a Bachelor of Science in Geography: Urban and Regional Planning from SUNY Oneonta, and Master of Landscape Architecture from Cornell University.  He is currently a Planner in the Urban Design Division of the Westchester County Planning Department. His work incorporates ecological principles into community design.  He teaches about resource-waste cycles through the lens of urban systems.  Kyle also serves as Chair of the Wallkill River Watershed Alliance, a non-profit whose mission is to protect and restore the Wallkill River, a major tributary of the Hudson River.

Dr. Carmona received her B.A from Manhattanville College in Biology and went on receive her PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in Neuroscience. Her research focused on morphological alterations in the prefrontal cortex and thalamus associated with schizophrenia. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in physiology/pharmacology at the CUNY School of Medicine, where she investigated the effects of cocaine abuse in early brain development. Originally trained in neuroscience, she shifted to investigate Rhomboids, the largest family of enzymes hydrolyzing peptide bonds within the membrane.  These intramembrane proteases are highly conserved across life and have been implicated in several human diseases.

Dr. Carmona teaches a wide range of courses including General Biology I & II, as well as Anatomy & Physiology for majors and non-majors.

Sam Galloway, Ph. D. (they/them) is a political theorist whose scholarship operates at the intersection of contemporary protest, law, biopolitics, and affect. They explore how democratic citizens exercise conditional political agency amidst our crisis ordinary. 

Originally from California, Michelle Thompson Ulerich trained at San Francisco Ballet for nine years. She also received training from the Kirov Academy of Ballet, American Ballet Theater, and Tisch School of the Arts. She moved to Texas and joined Ballet Austin in 2001. During her 14 years with Ballet Austin, she performed in works by Stephen Mills, George Balanchine, Twyla Tharp, Ulysses Dove, Nelly van Bommel, KT Nelson, James Gregg, Thang Dao, Greg Dolbashian, Jimmy Orrante, Amy Seiwert, Gina Patterson, Thaddeus Davis, Jennifer Hart, and Sidra Bell. Also during her time in Austin she completed a Dance and Humanities degree from St. Edward's University. Columbia Ballet Collaborative, Ballet Austin II, Ballet Spartanburg, Blanton Museum, Motion Dance Theater, Prelude Projects, CounterPointe, SUNY Purchase, Ballet Hartford, Hartt School, Harvard Ballet, New England Ballet Collective, and Spark Movement Collective have commissioned Michelle for choreography. Michelle's Illusory Impressions collaboration and co-directorship with composer Catherine Davis was given an award by the Austin Critics'Table for excellence in a Site-Specific work as well as Robert Faires' Top 10 Classical Music/Dance Treasures of 2016. She was featured in Pointe magazine as the 2017 winner of the Women's Choreography Project, spearheaded by Dallas-based Avant Chamber Ballet. In the summer of 2019 she was announced as the CORE Choreography Winner by J Chen Project, and her new work for the company premiered at the Ailey Citigroup Theater in November 2019. During her time in New York she has also self produced her choreography, created movement for film and music video projects, and performed with XAOC Contemporary Ballet and Spark Movement Collective. Michelle is a professor of ballet, pointe, and yoga at SUNY Purchase, and a mother of two boys. She is the newly appointed Artistic Director for Spark Movement Collective as of April of 2020 and is excited to take this 10 year old company into its next decade.

I'm a dancer, choreographer, drummer, actor and teacher.
I studied Traditional west African Dance and Drum from Senegal, Guinee, and Mali.

I've traveled around the world performing, teaching, and choreographing Traditional West African Dance, Drum and songs!  It is an honor teaching Traditional West African Dance at Purchase!

Gail is a costume designer in NYC since 1994. She works in theatre, dance, opera, tv and film.

Member of the design union local 829 and the wardrobe union 764 and United University Professions union.

Choreographer, performer, educator, essayist Kimberly Bartosik creates viscerally provocative, ferociously intimate choreographic projects that are built upon the development of a virtuosic movement language, rigorous conceptual explorations, and the creation of highly theatricalized environments. Her work, which is deeply informed by literature and cinema, dramatically illuminates the ephemeral nature of performance.

Kimberly is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in Choreography. She is a 2020 Virginia B. Toulmin Women Leaders in Dance Fellow at Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU where she will create The Encounter, a project for 12-15 year old dancers aspiring toward careers in ballet. I hunger for you, was commissioned and presented by BAM Next Wave Festival 2018 and LUMBERYARD Center for Film & Performing Arts, through an inaugural year BAM/LUMBERYARD partnership. She was a 2017-20 New York Live Arts Live Feed Residency Artist, where she premiered through the mirror of their eyes in March 2020. Her 2020 quarantine project, The Game, was commissioned by the Onassis Foundation and presented as part of Fusebox Festival. In NYC Kimberly's work has also been commissioned and presented by American Realness, FIAF's Crossing the Line Festival, Abrons Art Center, Gibney, Danspace Project, The Kitchen, La Mama, and BEAT Festival. Kimberly has toured to Supersense: Festival of the Ecstatic (Melbourne, Australia), Wexner Arts Center, Dance Place, American Dance Festival, The Yard, MASS MoCA/Jacob's Pillow, The Flynn, Bates Dance Festival, Church, Columbia College , Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, Mount Tremper Arts, Festival Rencontres Chorégraphique Internationales de Seine-Saint Denis, Artdanthe Festival, and others. Kimberly is currently collaborating with Visual Artist Matthew Ritchie to create The First Argument, a performance project involving Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Gaming. In 2021 she will create a new work in partnership with Torn Space Theater and Lafayette High School for children of refugee immigrants.

Kimberly is a 2019-20 Harkness Dance Center Artist-in-Residence @ the 92nd St Y and a 2019 Exploring the Metropolis (EtM) recipient with Composer Sivan Jacobovitz. In 2017 she received a National Dance Project (NDP) Production & Touring Grant and Community Engagement Fund awards, supported by the New England Foundation for the Arts. Kimberly is a 2010 and 2017 MAP Fund grantee. She has also received support from the Jerome Foundation; FUSED (French-US Exchange in Dance), a program of the New England Foundation for the Arts in partnership with The Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the French American Cultural Exchange; Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, USArtists International; Creative Arts Initiative (CAI); New York Foundation for the Arts, Building Up Infrastructure Levels for Dance (BUILD); American Dance Abroad; New Music USA, Live Music for Dance; and Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grants to Artists and Emergency Grants.

In 2017 Kimberly was a Dancing Laboratory Residency Artist at the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron and a Bogliasco Foundation Fellow. She is a 2019 and 2015 Merce Cunningham Fellow; a 2016 Gibney Dance DiP Residence Artist; and a recipient of an ART, a Capacity-Building grant through Pentacle. In 2018, Kimberly made her curatorial debut as part of DoublePlus at Gibney.

Kimberly has been in creative residence at New York Live Arts, Live Feed and Studio Series; Marble House Project; National Choreographic Center at Akron/NCCAkron; Centre Chorégraphique National-Ballet de Lorraine; LUMBERYARD Center for Film & Performing Arts; Gibney Dance Center's DiP Residency; Centre Chorégraphique National de Franche-Comté à Belfort, France; Governor's Island through Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Swing Space Program; Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University; Joyce Soho Artist Residency Program; University of Buffalo, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center; Jacob's Pillow; Kaatsbaan International Dance Center; Mount Tremper Arts; White Oak Plantation; and Movement Research.

Kimberly was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for 9 years and received a Bessie Award for Exceptional Artistry in his work. She received her BFA in Dance from North Carolina School of the Arts, and MA in 20th Century Art and Art Criticism from The Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Research of the New School University. Kimberly has been a guest artist/faculty at Hollins University, Princeton University, The Juilliard School, Rutgers University, Bates College, The Playground, University of North Carolina School for the Arts, Arizona State University's Hergberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Colorado College, and University of Buffalo. She currently teaches at SUNY/Purchase Conservatory of Dance and the Merce Cunningham Trust. www.daela.org

Marisa Scheinfeld is a Jewish-American photographer and author who was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1980 and raised in the Catskills. She received her B.A. from the State University at Albany in 2002, and her MFA from San Diego State University in 2011. Her work is motivated by an interest in regional landscape and its myriad histories, both apparent and hidden, and a drive to use the medium of photography as an act of preservation.

Marisa's photographic projects and books are among the collections of the Library of Congress, The New York Public Library, The Center for Jewish History, The National Yiddish Book Center, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art & Life at UC Berkeley, The Simon Wiesenthal Center, The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and The Edmund and Nancy K. Dubois Library at the Museum of Photographic Arts. Her work has appeared in publications such as National Geographic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Forbes, Paper Magazine, Village Voice, the American Historical Association and American Photography.

In the fall of 2016, Cornell University Press released her first book The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America's Jewish Vacationland.  In late 2022, Marisa founded the Borscht Belt Historical Marker Project, a non-profit historic preservation initiative that marks and interpret places important to the Catskill's Borscht Belt era, which had a tremendous impact on American Jewish life and American culture. The project involves the creation of a large-scale historic marker trail, curated public programming, and a self-guided audio driving tour that spans two-counties in the Catskills.

Marisa is also working on her second book which explores hidden, alternative and fringe histories of the Catskills and Hudson Valley, to be published by Cornell University Press in 2026. 

Adam Pape is a photographer based in New York City. Born in Smithfield Virginia, he earned his MFA from Yale University in 2016. His first monograph Dyckman Haze was published by MACK Books in 2018 and was featured in Feature Shoot, Le Monde Magazine, Photo District News, Paper Journal, DAZED, GUP Magazine, and Bookforum. Dyckman Haze went on to be selected a shortlist winner for the Paris Photo -Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards and was included in the traveling exhibition.

His work has been recently included in group exhibitions at Danziger Gallery in New York City, Ashes/Ashes Gallery Los Angeles, Alice Austen House Triennial Deliberate Acts, and Aperture Gallery exhibition Delirious Cities.

He continues to work as an editorial photographer with commissions from The New Yorker Magazine, The Fader, Art in America, and Harper's Magazine.

Jack Tamburri makes theatre.

His work includes the recent world premiere of Drawing Lessons at Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis, the short films Sophocles in Staten Island and Clifford Odets in Staten Island produced by Ma-Yi Studio, queer clown solo I Was Confused From the Beginning with performer Jenson Titus, feminist comedy trio A Hard Time for Pig Iron Theater Co, community-based glam musical Twelfth Night for Shakespeare in Clark Park, and the rock music adaptation PEER GYNT & the Norwegian Hapa Band for Ma-Yi Theater Co. Jack co-created and produced fringe comedies Not For Profit and GAYZE with writer MJ Kaufman, directed the experimental play Parrot Talk for writer/producer Julius Ferraro, and is co-creator (with Terry Brennan) of School Play, a physical theatre solo for young audiences which was showcased at the 2018 IPAY conference. He has developed new plays with playwrights R. Eric Thomas, David Jacobi, MK Tuamanen, and more.

Jack served as the Director of the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Purchase from 2019 to 2024. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago and the Yale School of Drama, and is a 2018 alumnus of ArtEquity's national facilitator training for anti-racist activists in the performing arts.

Maria is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist based in Brooklyn, NY, and has worked in film, television, journalism, theater and arts management.

Lily Akerman is a playwright whose work has appeared most recently at 59E59, Cork Opera House, and on the Playing-On-Air Podcast. She has written several libretti, two of which have been nominated for Best Opera by the Irish Times. Her plays have been developed with Clubbed Thumb's Writer's Group, the Hearth, the Bechdel Project, and the New Theatre in Dublin. She was a winner of Playing-On-Air's 2018 James Stevenson Prize, a Finalist for the Leah Ryan Prize, and a Fulbright awardee. M.F.A. in Playwriting, Hunter College. B.A. Princeton University. M.F.A. in Playwriting from Hunter College, under Annie Baker and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.

Mitchell McCoy is a Fight Director, Intimacy Director with Intimacy Directors and Choreographers, Certified Teacher with the Society of American Fight Directors, actor, and Reiki Master based in New York City. He has most recently assisted with the violence for Pretty Woman (Broadway), Therese Raquin (Broadway), Aladdin (Broadway), Aladdin (Japan), the first U.S. national tour of Newsies, and Cleveland Playhouse's Sherwood: The Adventures of Robinhood, and made his Off-Broadway Intimacy Direction debut with Camp Morningwood.

Benjamin Santiago is an artist and designer from New York, NY. His work has been shown with artists such as Jaime Warren, DJ Rupture, and The Fall of Troy. He has spoken about his work at Wayne State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Künstlerhaus Bethanien. Benjamin Santiago's work has been featured on Conan on TBS, The Village Voice, Animated Review, and been named a "Must See" artist in Art F City. He has a BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and has an MFA from The Cranbrook Academy of Art, in the 2D Design department under Elliott Earls.

Oren Fader is highly regarded as a performer of classical and electric guitar repertoire, solo and chamber, traditional and contemporary. He has performed in Asia, Europe, and North and South America. Concerto performances include the Villa-Lobos Guitar Concerto with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez with the New Jersey Symphony and Omaha Symphony, David Del Puerto's new concerto, Zephyr, with the New Paths in Music Ensemble, and the Vivaldi D Major Concerto, with the Manchester Music Festival.

In addition to performing as a soloist, Mr. Fader is much in demand as a New York City chamber musician. He has performed hundreds of concerts with a wide range of classical and new music groups, including the Met Chamber Ensemble (directed by James Levine), New York City Opera, New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, Talea Ensemble, Mark Morris Dance Group, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Walden Chamber Players, New World Symphony, International Contemporary Ensemble, Absolute Ensemble, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, American Composers Orchestra, Argento Ensemble, Brooklyn Philharmonic, North Country Chamber Players, Music from Japan, New Amsterdam Singers, New York Festival of Song, Da Capo Chamber Players, Festival Chamber Music, North Country Chamber Players, and Speculum Musicae. Festival performances include Aspen, Tanglewood, Bach Oregon Festival, Yellow Barn, Istanbul Festival, Deer Valley Festival (Utah), Bard Music Festival, and Morelia, Mexico.

Well known for his performances of contemporary music, Mr. Fader has premiered or recorded over 200 solo and chamber works with guitar, many as a member of the award-winning new music group Cygnus Ensemble, including compositions by Babbitt, Wuorinen, Machover, Biscardi, Currier, Naito, and many others. He has worked closely with composers such as Babbitt, Boulez, Carter, Davidovsky, and David Lang. Recent performance highlights include two seasons at the Tanglewood Music Festival, performing works of Carter, Davidovsky, and Chin, and tours around the globe with his chamber group Poetica Musica, performing in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Copenhagen, Iceland, Israel, Guyana, Jordan, and Tajikistan.

Mr. Fader can be heard on over 45 commercial recordings, in repertoire ranging from the 16th century (Dowland) to the 21st (Carter). Recent solo releases include First Flight, ten premiere solo guitar pieces written for Mr. Fader, and Another's Fandango,featuring solo works from Bach to Bogdanovic, produced by Grammy award-winner Adam Abeshouse. Mr. Fader is active in commercial film as well, recording the classical guitar parts for the film "Everything Is Illuminated," directed by Liev Schreiber.

Mr. Fader received his undergraduate degree from SUNY Purchase and his Master of Music degree from Florida State University. His major teachers include David Starobin and Bruce Holzman. Since 1994 Mr. Fader has been on the guitar and chamber music faculty of Manhattan School of Music.

Liam Joynt is the Associate Chair of the BFA Acting Program at the Conservatory of Theater Arts at Purchase College where he teaches voice and speech. He is a longstanding faculty member at the Graduate Acting Program of NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where he teaches voice and vocal coaches. He also teaches accents at Pace University's Musical Theater BFA program. He co-founded the Miller Voice Method Studio and is a Master Trainer and additionally a Certified Teacher of Knight-Thompson Speech and Accent Work. Previous faculties include Marymount Manhattan College, Fairleigh Dickinson University and Maggie Flanigan Studio. He taught in the BA program at Rutgers University, where he also received his MFA in acting from Mason Gross School of the Arts. As an actor he's worked in mega-budget and no-budget films, daytime and primetime TV, Off-Broadway and Regional Theater. He's produced world premiere productions for many playwrights, including Pulitzer Prize finalist Lee Blessing and Lia Romeo, in addition to various film projects.

Timothy Briner (b. 1981 - Chesterton, IN) is an American artist and educator living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Briner's work is in numerous private and public collections in the United States. Along with SUNY Purchase, he teaches at Rhode Island School of Design, College of Staten Island and New Jersey City University. He lives with his partner and their daughter and a fluffy dog in Brooklyn, NY.

Select exhibitions include "In Waves," Susan Inglett Gallery, New York, NY; "Inner Landscapes," Galleria Anna Marra, Rome, IT; "Painting as a Radical Form," Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, IT; and "Greater New York," MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC; The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, IT; The Nerman MoCA, Overland Park, KS.

Degen has lectured and taught at The Cooper Union, Rhode Island School of Design, Yale University School of Art Norfolk, Brooklyn College, Fashion Institute of Technology. Maryland Institute of Contemporary Art, Brandeis University, Pioneer Works, The Brooklyn Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Djordje Stevan Nesic's performances have been described as artful, assertive, sensitive and quietly virtuosic. 

His career is highlighted by recital, concerto, chamber, and collaborative performances both in the U.S. and internationally. He strives to promote music addressing contemporary, social justice, and human rights issues.

Current and recent projects include: conducting Hande's Alcina for Opera Seme in Arezzo, Italy, Jack Perla and Jessica Murphy Moo's An American Dream, Mozart's La finta giardiniera and Ullmann/Kien's Der Kaiser von Atlantis, Ana Sokolovic's Svadba at both MSM and the Peabody Conservatory.

Other recent engagements include: a world premiere of She Who Dared by Jasmine Barnes and Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton with American Lyric Theaer, recitals in Belgrade, Serbia, and a return to Opera Saratoga. Recently, he appeared with the Berkshire Opera Festival, Carnegie Hall Joyce DiDonato masterclasses in NYC, Kolarac Hall in Belgrade, the Prototype Festival in NYC, the KotorArt Festival in Montenegro, the Serbian Cultural Center in Paris, and the Caixa Cultural in Brasilia. With a group of his students from Carnegie Mellon University, he presented four concerts in Belgrade, Serbia, including the staged premiere of the opera Svadba by Ana Sokolovic.

Recordings include Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock on Bridge Records, Ricky Ian Gordon's Ellen West on Bright Shiny Things records, and the Opera America Songbook. 

Djordje has performed at venues including Lincoln Center, the United Nations General Assembly Hall, the Mann Performing Arts Center in Philadelphia, FUJI TV in Japan, the Aspen Music Festival, Tanglewood Festival, Glimmerglass Opera, Houston Grand Opera, the Greenwich Music Festival, and the Phoenicia Voice Festival.

Djordje is a dual citizen of the U.S.A. and Serbia. Formerly a faculty member of Carnegie Mellon University School of Music, he currently teaches at Manhattan School of Music and SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music.

Adam Birnbaum is emerging as one of the top young voices in jazz piano. Since receiving a graduate Artist's Diploma in jazz studies from The Julliard School in 2003, he has become a presence on the New York City scene as a leader and sideman, performing in such venues as the Village Vanguard, the Blue Note, Birdland, the Jazz Standard and Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola. He has also performed on many national and world stages, including the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, the Kennedy Center, the Montreal Jazz Festival, The Spoleto Festival, The Red Sea Jazz Festival, The Rockport Chamber Festival, NPR Jazz Christmas, and the Capetown Jazz Festival.

As a leader, Birnbaum has released four albums under his name in Japan and the U.S. His first release, Ballade Pour Adeline, received a Gold Disk award from As a leader, Birnbaum has released four albums under his name in Japan and the U.S. His first release, Ballade Pour Adeline, received a Gold Disk award from Swing Journal as one of the top albums of 2006. Adam's U.S. debut Travels, released in 2009 under the Smalls record label, received enthusiastic reviews in Allmusic.com, All About Jazz and JazzTimes. Birnbaum's recent release Three of A Mind, featuring bassist Doug Weiss and drummer Al Foster, was hailed as "an eloquent dispatch from the heart of the contemporary piano trio tradition" by the New York Times, and received an Editor's Pick and four star review in Downbeat magazine.

As a sideman, Birnbaum's wide-ranging versatility and artistry have made him a first call for a wide variety of ensembles. He has performed or toured with established jazz artists such as Al Foster, Greg Osby, Regina Carter, The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, and Jazz at Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis, as well as with young artists such as Darcy James Argue's Secret Society and Cecile Mclorin Salvant. Birnbaum has appeared as a sideman more than 25 albums.

Birnbaum is also recognized as a composer and arranger. Allmusic.com reviewer Ken Dryden said "Birnbaum's compositions prove immediately infectious, each with a hook that draws the listener along for the ride. "A review of Travels in JazzTimes praised the album's "stellar originals." In 2009 Birnbaum premiered Dream Songs, a trio suite based on the poetry of John Berryman. The work was commissioned by Chamber Music America. Since 2012 Birnbaum has worked with Chelsea Music Festival each year to arrange Bach, Debussy, Beethoven, etc, for his own trio featuring strings and other guests musicians.

Born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, Birnbaum studied at the New England Conservatory of Music before moving to New York City in 2001, one of two pianists selected to participate in the Julliard School's inaugural jazz studies program. In 2004 he won the American Jazz Piano Competition and became the American Pianists Association's Cole Porter fellow in Jazz. That same year, he became the first jazz pianist to present a recital at the prestigious Gilmore Rising Stars Recital Series. In 2006, he received the first-ever "special mention" prize at the Martial Solal Jazz Piano Competition in Paris. He has toured West Africa and Asia sponsored by Jazz at Lincoln Center and the U.S. State Department. Adam has studied with Danilo Perez, Kenny Barron, and Fred Hersch.

Adam Birnbaum is currently an Associate Professor of Jazz at SUNY Purchase. He is also a Steinway Artist.

Paul Megna is an Assistant Professor in the Literature department at Purchase College. His research interests include medieval and Early Modern literature and culture, the history of emotions, and existential philosophy.

Mariana's plays include The Red Gene, Miss 744890 (2014 Winner, MetLife Nuestras Voces, Repertorio Español, 2016; picked for publication in Italian as part of the American Playwrights Project); Patience, Fortitude and Other Antidepressants, (commissioned by Intar Theatre and produced as part of Encuentro 2014, at the LATC); Dance for a Dollar (a dance-theatre collaboration, Miracle Theatre, Portland, OR); Ofelia's Lovers (Mabou Mines Residencies); Rare Encounters, Darkroom, The Wake and Fool's Journey  (Intar's NewWorksLabs); and Adela (Autonomous University of Queretaro, Mexico), among others.

In 2015, Corinne graduated from SUNY Purchase with her bachelor's degree in journalism. With the goal of returning to Purchase with an MFA in order to teach, she went on to get h

Anna Ozbek is a multimedia producer, filmmaker, and educator with a decade of experience in broadcast journalism. Her video work has appeared on CNN, Global Post, NY1, National Geographic, and Democracy Now!. Anna was formerly based in Istanbul where she covered regional political issues. She is now a member of the media arts collectives Chinatown Art Brigade and The Illuminator, where she explores new media approaches to social issue storytelling.

Anna has previously taught media production and media studies at Hunter College, Brooklyn College, and Marymount Manhattan College. She also currently works on the independent daily news hour Democracy Now!. She holds a BA from the University of Washington and has recently completed thesis work for an MFA at Hunter College.

Dr. John Christopher is an interdisciplinary scholar who has lectured and taught in New York and New England for the past twenty years. John received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research. Dr. Carney received his B.A. from Brooklyn College after serving in the U.S. Navy. 

Humans evolved via natural selection. Just as our bodies consist of adaptations that evolved because they increased fitness among our ancestors, so do our minds. Evolutionary psychologists consider the problems that human ancestors had to solve, and then measure human cognition and behavior to see if they are well-designed to solve these problems.

Iuliia Chikish is an applied microeconomist. Her research focuses on urban, sports and behavioral economics. Her main interests involve studying the effects of monetary and non-monetary incentives on effort provision. 

Adam Pietrykowski (also billed as Van Tilburg) is a JUNO nominated producer, engineer, composer, and performer.

A graduate of University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Johnny's Broadway credits include Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Shuffle Along, Kinky Boots, Gigi, Holler If Ya Hear Me, The Heiress, Bring It On: The Musical, Harvey, Nice Work If You Can Get It, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, and Hair. He has also enjoyed working off Broadway at the Atlantic, Second Stage, Manhattan Theatre Club, and the Public as well as regionally at the 5^th Avenue, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Bay Street, Jacob's Pillow, and the Kennedy Center.

Allison is a writer and communications and marketing leader with more than 15 years' experience at Fortune 500 and non-profit brands. She has published work in the Washington Post, Slate, New York Magazine, Vice, Conde Nast Traveler, Refinery29, among other outlets. She has ghost written pieces that were published in The New York Times, CNN, Time, Newsweek, NBC, among many others. She has worked in communications and marketing at iconic brands including JetBlue, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), JPMorgan Chase, and Mastercard. Prior to teaching at Purchase, Allison was an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Hunter College.

Mtume Gant is a New York City born Filmmaker whose films include the Hip Hop sonata SPIT which screened at Aspen Shortfest, Woodstock and Cucalorus, the politically charged WHITE FACE which won awards at half a dozen film festivals and most recently MOLD OF MALACHI a scathing indictment of the racial politics of the entertainment industry.

Mtume is currently awaiting the release of his feature length film THE HAND THAT FEEDS and is already in development for his next film which deals with the Black Power Movement of the 60's and 70's.

Mtume is an alumnus of the BFA Acting program at Purchase and went on to have a productive acting career upon graduating becoming a featured cast member on TV shows like HBO's Oz and films like Carlito's Way's: Rise to Power. Mtume also had a decade long career as a touring musician in the world of Hip hop and Jazz Fusion. He has performed on stages in 5 continents. Post his work in the Hollywood and the music industry Mtume has dedicated himself to developing art that is in opposition to culture industry product demands.

As an educator Mtume worked for a decade as a teaching artist in New York City before becoming full time faculty at Purchase in 2019. He was elevated to Assistant Professor of Film in 2020.

Dan Hanessian has been a professional theatre technician and professor for over a quarter century.  His work has included Broadway, Film, Television, Opera, Dance, Themed Entertainment, Las Vegas spectaculars, Live Events, and a host of other productions.  

This range of experience provides Dan with a unique perspective on problem solving and how to work collaboratively.  These skills, combined with a deep understanding of how the industry works, allows him to train up-and-coming technical directors and production managers in a way that prepares them for careers in all areas of the entertainment industry.

Christopher Williams

Adjunct Associate Professor

Dr. Williams is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the State University of New York at Purchase College. He is also the Director and a Senior Research Scientist at National Health Promotion Associates (NHPA), a research firm that evaluates and disseminates evidence-based interventions that target behavioral risk factors associated with major chronic disease, violence, and preventable injuries. His research interests focus on risk behavior etiology; vulnerable minority youth; and, the examination of public health policy and practice to reduce racial health disparities.

Before joining Purchase and NHPA, Dr. Williams served as Deputy Director for Research Administration at the Department of Health and Human Services' (DHHS) Center for Substance Abuse Prevention. He continues to serve on a number of DHHS advisory panels and ad hoc review committees at the National Institutes of Health's Center for Scientific Review.

Phil Joly is a producer, songwriter, mixer, and engineer who has spent his career working with incredible artists like Common, Daft Punk, Lana Del Rey, The Strokes, Residente, Kanye West and Mark Ronson. His work on Latin star Residente's self-titled album earned him a Grammy Award for Best Urban Album and a Latin Grammy Award for Best Latin Rock, Alternative or Urban Album. Phil also recorded guitars for Nile Rodgers for Daft Punk's Random Access Memories, which won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The record included the hits "Get Lucky," "Lose Yourself to Dance," and "Give Life Back to Music".

Phil has also recorded and mixed Maggie Rogers, Dan Auerbach, The War on Drugs, Courtney Barnett, Brandi Carlile, Violent Femmes, Hozier, Lord Huron, Martin Sexton, Aimee Mann, Bear's Den, Josh Ritter, Steve Earle, Ryan Adams and The Tallest Man on Earth for WFUV. Additional live mixes include Darryl Hall and John Oates Night at the Judo Arena, Drive by Truckers Live in Studio, and Lucius for The Wild Honey Pie Buzzsessions.

Jeffrey has a growing background at the Purchase College Career Development Center as an undergraduate Career Liaison, graduate-level Career Counseling Intern, Career Coach, and currently as Assistant Director of Experiential Education.  In addition to his experience working with college students, Jeffrey has worked as a counselor with students in high school and middle school where he was involved in curricular program development and counseling for academic/college/ career preparation. As a Purchase College alumnus and having earned an MSEd in Bilingual School Counseling at LIU, Jeffrey can further support the Purchase College community.  As the Assistant Director of Experiential Education, Jeffrey oversees our Academic Internship program and helps Purchase students gain hands-on and practical skills and career learning opportunities in a broad scope of career fields. Jeffrey also works with the Career Center team to deliver and lead classroom and group presentations and provide individual student career counseling.

Megan Rossman is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and Associate Professor and Chair of Communication at Purchase College.

Her work has aired on PBS and screened internationally at festivals including Outfest, DOC NYC, BFI Flare and Iris Prize. Rossman's new short documentary Their Voice follows performer Kristyn Michele as they transition from mezzo-soprano to tenor.

Her feature-length debut, The Archivettes has screened as an official selection at over 75 film festivals. The Hollywood Reporter called the documentary a "warm tribute to second-wave feminism." The Queer Review called it "a gift to the future." It has won various awards, including the audience award at Reeling and the jury award at Centro Niemeyer International Festival de Cine.

Her short, Naomi Replansky at 100, won the audience award at Paris International Lesbian & Feminist Film Festival in 2020. Her film Love Letter Rescue Squad won best student documentary in the Emerging Filmmakers Showcase at the Cannes Film Festival American Pavilion in 2017. She is a recipient of the Princess Grace Award.

Kemp Jernigan performs extensively in and around New York City in ensembles varying in size and style.

A graduate of the Yale School of Music, Kemp is a frequent guest performer with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Mark Morris Dance Group Ensemble, as well as a founding member of the ensemble SoundMind. He has been a guest artist at festivals such as Bridgehampton, White Mountains Music Festival, Martha's Vineyard Chamber Music Society, Ocean Reef, Washington Friends of Music, Black Hills Chamber Music Society, Millbrook Music Assembly, and Musical Bridges over San Antonio. Performing with these ensembles and festivals has led him to meet and play with many incredible people and live a life of sharing his love for music with others. Kemp is on the faculties of The Hartt School and The State University of New York at Purchase.

Kemp received his Bachelor of Music degree from The Hartt School at The University of Hartford, Performers Certificate from SUNY Purchase and Master of Music degree from The Yale School of Music.

One of the most strikingly unique artists of his generation, Pasquale Grasso has undoubtedly changed the way the world views jazz guitar.

Born in Ariano Irpino, Pasquale began playing guitar at a very young age. By the summer of 1997, his parents, who recognized the depth of their young son's talent, sought out the instruction of jazz innovator, Agostino Di Giorgio. A former pupil of Chuck Wayne, Di Giorgio immediately took interest in Pasquale, whose prodigious aptitude for the instrument flourished as the young guitarist quickly became his closest pupil. From that point, it wouldn't be long before news of this talent spread.

 Barry Harris, the world-renowned jazz educator and bebop piano master, became an extraordinary influence when Pasquale attended his jazz workshop in Switzerland during the summer of 1998. Harris, contemporary of Miles Davis, Sonny Stitt, and Cannonball Adderley, took Pasquale and his brother, Luigi, under his wing. Over the span of the next 5 years, the Grasso brothers became pillars of Harris' international workshops and were quickly promoted from mere attendees to instructors for the other students. Pasquale was named Harris' guitar teaching assistant and for the last ten years he has conducted workshops in Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain, Holland, and Slovenia.

In 2008, Pasquale pursued classical guitar studies in the Music Conservatory of Bologna under Professor Walter Zanetti. During his time at the conservatory, Grasso developed a new approach to the guitar, combining classical tradition with Chuck Wayne's modern technique.

In 2012, he moved to New York City and quickly made a name for himself in the city's vibrant jazz scene. Grasso became part of the Ari Roland Quartet and the Chris Byars Quartet, performing in clubs, music festivals, and recording in the studio regularly. Later that year, Pasquale was named a Jazz Ambassador with the US Embassy, going on to tour extensively across Europe, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Cyprus, Lithuania, and Ukraine, among others.

Despite his young age, Grasso has performed with many leading musicians of the international jazz scene such as: Barry Harris, Charles Davis, Freddie Redd, Frank Wess, Leroy Williams, Ray Drummond, Murray Wall, Steve Grossman, Tardo Hammer, Jimmy Wormworth, John Mosca, Sacha Perry, Ari Roland, Luigi Grasso, Chris Byars, Zaid Nasser, Bucky Pizzarelli, China Moses, Harry Allen Quartet, Grant Stewart, Stepko Gut, Nicolas Dary, Dado Moroni, Agostino di Giorgio, Michel Pastre Big Band, Gianni Basso Big Band, Joe Cohn, Oscar Zenari, and Luca Pisani.

Pasquale's guitar was expertly crafted for him by long time friend and luthier, Bryant Trenier. Trenier Guitars is located in Suffern, New York.

Kristen Robinson is a New York based set designer. Her work ranges from experimental opera, to regional theatre, and everything in between. Trained both in theatre and painting she constantly looking to re-imagine her own visual narrative of design, and the story of the human spirit. Selected design credits include: A flea In Her Ear (Westport Country Playhouse), Ethel, (Alliance Theater), Love's Labour's Lost  (Great Lakes Theatre/Idaho Shakespeare Festival/Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival) Porto (WP Theater), Company (Barrington Stage Company), Heart of Darkness (Baryshnikov Arts Center), Minor Character (Under the Radar Festival).  She has taught at City College of New York, Fordham University, and The Ira Brind School of Theatre Arts in Philadelphia. In 2015 She has was commissioned to redesign the Façade of the Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia, which was completed successfully in 2018. Her design for Westport Country Playhouse's Nora has been featured in Chance Magazine issue 4, and her design for Rapture Blister Burn at The Wilma Theatre won the 2015 Barrymore Award for Best Set Design. A multiple award winning Princess Grace Fellow, she holds her MFA from Yale and is a proud member of  USA 829.

Jovon Outlaw is the Equipment Manager for the Film and Media Studies department. 

A multi-disciplined artist from New York. Mainly focusing on cinematography, directing, and improvising. He is a graduate of the Purchase College Film Conservatory '14. He has been part of the camera department on projects for CollegeHumor, NBC, Juilliard, Microsoft, Complex, Assembly.com, Josh Ruben, Micheal Almerayda, Celia-Rolwson-Hall, Kassia Miller, Chris Osborn, Eigil Bryld, and Anu Valia. Jovon has worked for a wide range of features, shorts, television, music videos, and digital content.  Has worked as Rental Technician for Abel Cine, where he was able to combine his creative love with technical knowledge.

Also, he has immersed in another form of storytelling - Improv. He has studied at both the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater and Reckless Theatre under Matt Dennie, Caroline Martin, Keisha Zollar, Frank Garcia Heji, and Michael Delaney. As well as a recipient of the James Conklin Memorial Scholarship from IO Chicago. Where he has studied under Rance Rizzutto, Gretchen Eng, Matt Higbee, Katie Klein, & Adal Rifai. Improv has strengthened his shooting and directing skills by enabling him to become more flexible and adaptable to new ideas on set while keeping calm under the bright lights.

Dr. McKenna did her undergraduate work at Antioch College and received her PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center. She is co-author of Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach, as well as articles on the social construction of gender and sexuality. Her teaching career was devoted to helping students understand that critical thinking and not taking the everyday world for granted leads to asking some very interesting questions.

Anne M. Kern is Dean for Global Strategy and International Programs, Director of the Center for Engagement, Associate Professor of Cinema Studies and Founder and former Director of the transnational collaborative filmmaking program at Purchase College.

A native of Waukesha, WI, she received her Honors B.A. at University of Wisconsin, Madison, her M.A. at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and her M. Phil. and Ph.D. in Film Studies and Comparative Literature from Yale University. She has published work on cinema, surrealism and psychoanalysis in venues ranging from Cinema Journal to Le Monde.

She is also the former Director of Programming of the Focus on French Cinema Film Festival. In 2018, the French government awarded Dr. Kern the rank of Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters for her contributions to French cinema and culture.

Amina Henry is a Brooklyn-based playwright and educator. Productions include: Hunter John and Jane at JACK, Cindy with Project Y Theater, Ducklings at JACK, The Animals at JACK, Happily Ever at Brooklyn College, An American Family Takes a Lover at Theater for the New City, Water produced by Drama of Works and The Minstrel Show, produced as part of the 2013 Bring a Weasel and a Pint of Your Own Blood Festival at 13th Street Theater/CSC (NYC). Her work has been developed by and/or presented at: The New Group, The Flea, Clubbed Thumb, National Black Theater, Barefoot Theater, Little Theater at Dixon Place, HERE Arts Center, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Ashland, OR), Kitchen Dog Theater (Dallas, TX) and Interrobang Theatre (Baltimore, MD), among others. She has been in Clubbed Thumb's Early Career Writers and is a member of Page 73's Interstate 73 writers group and Ars Nova's emerging writers group. She is a 2017-2018 recipient of an Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) Space Grant and is currently working on commissions for Clubbed Thumb, The New Group, and Hero Theater. She is a graduate of Yale University, holds an MA in Performance Studies from New York University, and an MFA in Playwriting from Brooklyn College. Her work focuses on the weirdness of life in all of its iterations.

My writing and research takes up cinema's interactions with urban history and culture, film and media theory, Frankfurt School critical theory and the political imagination of mass culture.

In 2018, I published Welcome to Fear City: Crime Film, Crisis, and the Urban Imagination (SUNY Press). This book examines how location-shot American crime films of the 1970s expressively engaged with urban decline, deindustrialization, and racial division, ultimately producing new ways of seeing and understanding cities.

I have also written articles related to race and the American suburbs, ciné-genres, and chase sequences, and contributed essays to recent Blu-ray releases of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Heavenly Bodies for Fun City Editions. 

Currently, I'm working on topics in Canadian cinema and film archiving and preservation. Along with students I run the Purchase Film Archive, which is dedicated to preserving and programming 16mm film on campus. 

Rachel Fabian is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies. She is a graduate of the doctoral program in Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she also received her M.A. in 2013. Her areas of research and teaching specialization include feminist film and media history, transnational media activism, and documentary studies. Her dissertation examines unaccounted for interrelations among independent and activist film and video collectives that proliferated in the US, UK, India, Latin America, and elsewhere during the 1970s–80s from a transnational feminist perspective. It moves beyond studying collectives in terms of the political imaginaries of discrete social movements, drawing attention to moments in which collectives forged "social sites" that mobilized a wide array of transnational relationalities.

Dr. Cates' research is focused on understanding the role of early language and play experiences in the development of language, literacy, and social cognition and translating this knowledge to programs which address disparities in child development. As part of her research, she has designed, implemented, and evaluated narrative-and play-based intervention strategies to promote language, emergent literacy, and social cognition for young children in preschool settings. Over the past several years she has also applied developmental principles to and researched programs aiming to enhance parent-child interactions and early child development beginning at birth for linguistically and socio-economically diverse families in pediatric primary care settings. 

Silke started working in the School of Natural and Social Sciences after graduating from the Biology program in 2013. She also holds a Master's Degree in Higher Education Administration from Stony Brook University. Silke works closely with and advises our post-baccalaureate premedical students. She has a strong commitment to the campus community and helping students succeed is her highest priority.

Outside of work Silke likes to be creative and spends as much time as possible outside.

Athar Abdul-Quader is interested in mathematical logic, and, in particular, model theory, the branch of mathematics focused on studying classes of mathematical structures from the perspective of first order logic. He focuses mostly on studying models of a particular set of axioms, known as Peano Arithmetic, which arose in the 19th century from an attempt to formalize number theory. This research is deeply connected to notions arising in philosophy of mathematics as well as in computer science, including the notions of truth, provability, and computability.

Aviva Taubenfeld is associate professor of literature and writing and director of the School of Humanities.

Aviva received her PhD in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in 2003 and has been on the faculty of Purchase ever since.

A scholar of US literature specializing in the literature and politics of immigration, Aviva's favorite courses to teach are Childhood in US Literature and Immigration and Ethnicity in US Literature, both of which she had taught at Purchase and in the Bedford Hills College Program for incarcerated women.

Aviva is a first-generation college graduate who has experienced both the challenges and joys of academic life; she loves helping students find their own path to success.

Lee Tusman is an artist, programmer, and curator interested in the application of the radical ethos of collectives and DIY culture to the creation of, aesthetics, and open-source distribution methods of digital culture. He creates interactive media, artwork, software, bots, websites, virtual assistants, games, sound and radio stations alone and in collaboration. Areas of research and work include: decentralized networks, generative processes, sonification of data, alternative interface and performance tools, Linux and open source software, bots and digital assistants. He studied at Brandeis University and received his MFA at UCLA in Design Media Arts. He is a mentor for the Processing Foundation, a co-founder of Processing Community Day NYC, and an organizer at Babycastles gallery. Lee is host of Artists and Hackers podcast.

As Dean of Enrollment Management, Caitlin oversees first-year, transfer, and graduate admissions as well as student financial services, the registrar's office, and the EOP/MAP programs.  

She enjoys interacting with students (particularly the passionate and creative students at Purchase College) and helping them and their families navigate the college search process and the path to graduation. 

She received her BA in English and Secondary Education from Providence College in Rhode Island, her MA in School Counseling from Manhattan College and her MFA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York. 

Representative Courses Taught at Purchase:

Practicum in Peer Advising; College Writing; Advanced Critical Writing Workshop; College Success Seminar; Culture and Society in the West; Religion, Science and Modernity; Counterculture Learning Community Seminar; Learning Community Seminar: Ritual and Transformational "Spaces" in Music.

Andrea Thome is a Chilean/Costa Rican-American playwright whose work navigates multiple languages and landscapes. Recent plays include PINKOLANDIA (INTAR, Two River Theater, Salvage Vanguard, 16th Street Theater; translated into Russian) and TROY (created with the Public Theater's ACTivate Ensemble in a year-long process, culminating in full production at the Public).

Andrea's playwriting often experiments with the nature of theatrical collaboration. She was commissioned by En Garde Arts to create UNDOCUMENTED, a musical work-in-progress created from her interviews and ongoing conversations with undocumented immigrants. Also in development:  PURGATORIO WONDERLAND (developed through SPACE on Ryder Farm and Keen Company) THE NECKLACE OF THE DOVE (Mabou Mines, New Georges), a 'translation' of Shakespeare's CYMBELINE (OSF-Play On!), and an EST/Sloan commission about an astronomer from Muslim Spain. She was a finalist for the 2019 Clubbed Thumb commission.

Thome's other plays include Undone (Queens College, Lark), Worm Girl (Cherry Red Productions), and various short plays and collaborative projects. Her play translations (Spanish to English) include Guillermo Calderón's Neva) and have been produced by the Public Theater, CTG, La Jolla Playhouse and more. Thome co-directs Latina satire collective FULANA (www.fulana.org) and has directed the Lark's Mexico-U.S. Playwright Exchange Program since 2006. Recent residencies include: MacDowell (Thornton Wilder Fellow), Keen Company, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and New Dramatists.

Chris Bisignano was hired as Director of Athletics in 2012. He is entering his 17th year as a member of the Purchase College athletic staff.

Bisignano's fundraising and revenue-boosting efforts have been instrumental in the department's growth. Those efforts include raising funds to offset the costs of two turf field projects, among many other important facility upgrades. He is also credited in raising the total number of student-athletes through the addition of new sports, including both men's and women's lacrosse.

Currently, the number of student-athletes at Purchase College is the highest the program has seen in its history. Not only does Purchase have a record number of student-athletes, they also hold a higher GPA than the national average for members of the NCAA. The graduation rate is also the third highest among any cohort of students at the institution.

Through his dedication and commitment to giving student-athletes the best possible experience at Purchase, Bisignano has led the department to unprecedented heights. He has been a key role in the development of the athletic program at Purchase, including a transition to NCAA Division III status in 2006. The college formerly was a member of the Hudson Valley Athletic Conference and the North Eastern Athletic Conference.

Bisignano began his career at Purchase as the program's first-ever softball coach, leading the Panthers to consistent playoff berths and a Hudson Valley Athletic Conference championship crown in 2003.

In addition to his coaching success, Bisignano served the department in many roles during his tenure, including Facilities Manager from 2000–06 and Associate Athletic Director from 2007–12. He now oversees the day-to-day operations of the department's 17 intercollegiate athletic teams, and is also the primary contact for Purchase's outside rentals and field usage, which provides a huge source of revenue for athletics. 

Before joining the Panther staff, Bisignano coached his high school alma mater, Port Chester, in football, wrestling and softball. He earned his undergraduate degree from Pace University and his M.S. in sports management from SUNY Cortland.

Bisignano, a Port Chester native, currently resides in Patterson, NY with his wife, Jackie, and sons, Zachary and Christopher. 

Alex Correia is a New York City–based freelance theatre director, educator, and actor. He served as resident director at INTAR Theatre in New York City from 2007 to 2009 and director of INTAR's Actors Collective from 2006 to 2009. He has developed new plays at INTAR, the Lark Play Development Center, the MFA dramatic writing program at New York University, and the MFA playwriting program at Hunter College.

Directing credits include:

• Song for the Disappeared by Tanya Saracho at the Passage Theater (N.J.)
• Where's My Money by John Patrick Shanley at the Cherry Lane Theatre
• Leak by Fernanda Coppel and Three to a Session by Desi Moreno-Penson at INTAR
• Thorny Bushes, a staged musical radio play, at the Daryl Roth Cabaret Theatre
• I Am Yours by Judith Thompson at Center Stage NY
• Othello by Shakespeare at the John Houseman Theatre

Assisting directing credits include:

• Robin Hood, directed by Joel Sass, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
• The Cherry Orchard, directed by Andrei Belgrader, at the Classic Stage Company (N.Y.)
• Design for Living, directed by Gregory Boyd, at the Williamstown Theatre Festival
• Lysistrata, directed by Andrei Serban, at A.R.T. (Boston)
• Scapin, directed by Chris Bayes at Intiman Theatre (Seattle) and the Court Theatre (Chicago)

Correia holds a BFA in acting from Marymount Manhattan College and is an alumnus of the graduate-level Juilliard School directing program, where he received the three-year Andrew W. Mellon Directing Fellowship.

Throughout his career, Tony Kadleck has been one of the most sought-after trumpet players in the New York area. While attending the New England Conservatory in Boston, he studied both classical and jazz music, and went on to perform and record with the Boston Pops Orchestra. In 1986, Tony was asked to join the trumpet section of the Buddy Rich Band, and later that year, decided to move to New York.

After graduating from the Manhattan School of Music in 1989, Toney toured with Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, and Blood, Sweat & Tears. He has since recorded with Luther Vandross, Michael Jackson, Elton John, and Celine Dion, and also performed live concerts with Stevie Wonder, Ella Fitzgerald, Issac Hayes, and Steely Dan.

In addition to playing on numerous jingles and films scores, Tony is a proficient composer and arranger. His recent CD, "Around the Horn" features ten of his arrangements for big band, about which Tony says: "There is nothing more gratifying than hearing these spectacular musicians navigate through these challenging charts."

Tony is currently a member of several organizations including the New York Pops, John Pizzarelli's "Swing Seven", the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra, John Fedchock's NY Big Band, and was a member of the Broadway orchestra for "Frozen".

Odile Delgado-Lamarre started working for the School of Humanities in January 2013, after graduating from Purchase College as a psychology major. She oversees the day to day operations of the School of Humanities office and building, as the operations and finance manager.  Odile works closely not only with students but with member of the campus community who stop by her office for help. In January of 2017, She was selected to be the EAP Coordinator , whose role is to provide resources to faculty, staff, and their families to provide early intervention or solutions to problems that may impact job performance. 

Howard A Stern studied at Earlham College, and received an Ed.M. from Harvard and an M.S.Ed. from Lehman College. Besides teaching at Purchase, he also teaches for Bard College. He was a Master Teaching Fellow at Math for America, and is a Regional Instructor with Texas Instruments Educational Products, helping math and science teachers learn to incorporate technology in their lessons. In his spare time he likes to dance NY Style Salsa (On 2).

Jessica has an extensive background in higher education as a counselor and career development professional, as well as managing employer relations.  She is well practiced in event coordination, career programming, and addressing the career needs of undergraduates, graduate students, and alumni.   Jessica oversees the Career Development Center's employer outreach, event and program management, and the center's on-line systems/resources, which includes managing the Purchase JobScore (Symplicity) CSM. 

Barbara has worked at Purchase College for over 23 years.  She came to the institution having spent several years in the Hospitality, Financial and Public Relations industries. Barbara served as Office Manager, Events Coordinator, Admissions Counselor, Assistant Director and Associate Director of Admissions before serving in her present position as Associate Director of Student Success.  When not working at the college, Barbara serves the community in her church's food pantry on Saturdays.  She also serves along with her husband as Pastor of Christian Builders Deliverance Ministries, Inc.

Lizz Elvira has been an administrator, educator and fight director for over 10 years. Born in the Hudson Valley, Lizz majored in Theatre Arts and English Literature at SUNY New Paltz. After graduation, she moved to Berkeley, California for an Education Administration Fellowship at Berkeley Repertory Theater. Following this life altering experience, Lizz stayed in California as an arts administrator, theater teacher, coach and fight director/stage combat instructor for organizations including Berkeley Repertory Theater, Berkeley Playhouse, Crowded Fire Theater and the American Conservatory Theater. When not at Purchase College, Lizz works at her family's restaurant, hikes the many trails of Orange County and plays the guitar. Lizz is pursuing her Master's degree in Higher Education Administration from Stony Brook University.

Cayla Salazar began at Purchase College in fall of 2017 as a residence coordinator. She served in this role for four years before stepping in as the interim assistant director for Residential Operations and logistics in Spring 2021. In Fall 2022, Cayla transitioned into the role of Associate Director for Residential Operations. Prior to joining the Office of Residential and Student Life at purchase, Cayla has served as a residence hall director for two years at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York and as a graduate hall director for Texas State University.

Cayla Salazar is a graduate of Texas State University's Student Affairs in Higher Education master's program where she worked with Residence Life, Student Conduct, and Parent and Family Relations. She has her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Hendrix College, a liberal arts institution in Conway, Arkansas.

Jessica is an Admissions Advisor in the Office of Admissions. She has been working in Admissions for about three years. Jessica graduated from Purchase College in 2014, with a BA in Liberal Studies and a minor in Psychology. As a student she was very active on campus. She played Varsity Women's Basketball for all four years, and was team captain during her junior and senior year. She also interned at both the Wellness Center and The Children's Center; and she worked in the Box Office at the Performing Arts Center. Her favorite part of her job is being able to counsel students as they start their college search! Jessica is very eager to assist students and help them stay on track to attaining their degrees.

Paul is the Director of the EOP/MAP programs at Purchase College and also serves as the college's Ombudsman.  He is looking forward to helping his success mentees  achieve and lead at Purchase.  Some of Paul's side interests are hiking, hanging out with his dog,  Dougal (who visits campus often), target shooting and gardening.

Jonah Westerman's research focuses on global histories of performance since the mid-20th century with an emphasis on how artists have sought to renew art's social role and critical capabilities. He is especially interested in practices that probe the boundary between art and life through experimental approaches to embodied and durational experience, intermedial processes of production, and audience participation. His work also explores the institutional components that create contexts of reception—from galleries and museums to the political expectations placed on artworks by official government bodies, academic and critical orthodoxies, and audiences. For the academic year 2016–17, he was the Chester Dale Senior Fellow in Art History at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; from 2014 to 2016, he was the Arts and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Researcher at Tate in London. 

Recent publications include "Crowd Control" in the Summer 2019 issue of Artforum, the co-edited book Histories of Performance Documentation: Museum, Artistic, and Scholarly Practices (Routledge, 2018), several essays in the Tate Research online publication Performance at Tate: Into the Space of Art (tate.org.uk, 2017), which he also co-designed and co-edited; as well as an essay about performance and museums to be published in the forthcoming edited volume, The Bloomsbury Companion to Performance Art. 

Stephen Harris received his BS in molecular genetics from Ohio State University in 2006. After graduating he spent two years teaching high school science through the NYC Teaching Fellows and received his MA in science education from the City College of New York in 2009.  He then went back into research and received his PhD in evolutionary biology from the Graduate Center, City University of New York in 2015. His research uses genomics and bioinformatics to study the evolution, ecology, and behavior of natural populations in response to environmental change. 

His PhD research focused on urban ecology and investigated the population genomics of urban white-footed mice in New York City. Following his graduate studies, he completed one postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University in the Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology Department, studying local extinction in eusocial snapping shrimp across the Caribbean. He moved on to a postdoctoral researcher position at Metabiota and a visiting scholar appointment at Stanford University, where he used metagenomics and unbiased deep RNA sequencing to identify and track novel viruses from bats and rodents in Africa and Asia.

He has performed field work in urban ecosystems in New York City, coral reefs in the Florida Keys and Belize, and tropical forests in Indonesia, which has led to a passion for democratizing science by using the latest innovations in biotechnology to build portable, low-cost, and user-friendly sequencing labs for research and education.  In pursuing this mission, he also co-founded and runs Science-Corps,  a non-profit which sends recent PhD graduates abroad to teach science and build science capacity globally.

New York–based drummer and Grammy nominee Matt Wilson is one of today's most celebrated jazz artists. He is universally recognized for his musical and melodic drumming style as well as being a gifted composer, bandleader, producer, and teaching artist. His positive energy, sense of humor, and ability to explore a broad range of musical settings keeps him in constant demand. In addition, Wilson's dedication to jazz has helped establish him as a beloved world ambassador for the music, on and off the bandstand.

Wilson leads the Matt Wilson Quartet, Arts and Crafts, Christmas Tree-O, and the Carl Sandburg Project. He is an integral part of bands led by Joe Lovano, John Scofield, Charlie Haden, Lee Konitz, Bob Stewart, Denny Zeitlin, Ron Miles, Marty Ehrlich, Ted Nash, Jane Ira Bloom, and Dena DeRose, among others. He has performed with many legends of music, including Herbie Hancock, Dewey Redman, Andrew Hill, Bobby Hutcherson, Elvis Costello, Cedar Walton, Kenny Barron, John Zorn, Marshall Allen, Wynton Marsalis, Michael Brecker, Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, and Hank Jones. Wilson has appeared on 250 CDs as a sideman, released nine as a leader for Palmetto Records, and been co-lead on five additional releases.

Cynthia has been member of the School of Liberal Studies & Continuing Education staff since 2005. She started working as a student services coordinator and was later promoted to academic advisor. She closely works with students from the first program inquiry meeting to their graduation application. Cynthia also manages the online arts management certificate program (credit and noncredit). In addition to her years of experience in advising traditional and nontraditional college students, she is fluent in Spanish and can assist students who are more comfortable with Spanish. She enjoys traveling and learning new things!

Els van den Bosch joined the School of Liberal Studies and Continuing Education in 2009, where she supports students, as well as staff and faculty. She also serves as academic advisor for General Studies and Law and Justice majors. Prior to that she was the secretary to the Provost. She studied Slavic Languages and Literature at Utrecht University and gained her MA in General Linguistics from the University of Amsterdam.

Els served as the Secretary of the Professional Staff Council (PSC) for four years and is the chair of the PSC's Professional Award Committee.

She has a keen interest in Sustainability, is a member of the Sustainability Advisory and Outreach Committee and functions as staff advisor to the college's Food Recovery Network chapter.

Enticed by the graceful, physical demands of Pilates, Lisa Frey initially pursued the method to cross-train and gain core strength. A former dance student and avid fitness buff, she trained with Simona Cipriani at the Art of Control to further her understanding of the classical Pilates system. Fully certified in 2015, Lisa teaches both private clients and group mat classes. To her, helping students and clients discover improved body mechanics and a greater sense of well-being is immensely gratifying.

Supervises all services pertaining to the Parking & Card Office including Parking and Transportation, More Cards, Meal Plans, vending, and laundry.

Oversees all functions of the Purchase College Association. Primary responsibilities include contract negotiation, executing RFPs, and supervising day to day operations of auxiliary services. 

Responsible for managing all Finance activities including Budgeting, Accounting, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, & Payroll. Working with external auditors in preparation of annual financial statements and tax returns. Informing and presenting all business activities to the Board of Directors. Monitoring cash flow with purpose of investing in the proper portfolios. Assisting in managing a team that provides auxiliary services to the college community. Implementing and maintaining strict policies, procedures and internal controls. Overseeing contract negotiations to acquire maximum services and highest commissions . Strategically planning & exploring various options to generate additional revenue to support the College in providing Scholarships.

Jenny Chuni is the Administrative Assistant for the Office of Disability Resources. Her primary role is to provide direct support for the operations of the office. Jenny is responsible for answering general inquiries, providing support for the delivery of academic adjustments, overseeing student workers, and coordinating note-taking services. 

Prior to joining the Office of Disability Resources at Purchase College, Jenny worked as a paralegal where she was responsible for assisting with family, criminal and real estate cases.

Outside of work, Jenny enjoys spending time with her dog, reading, and watching foreign films and television series. She is a fan of the Harry Potter book series, the Star Wars movie series, and speaks fluent Spanish.

Mary works directly with students so as to empower their intellectual and personal development.

Mary enjoys working in meeting the needs of a community, travel and a good joke!

Glory enjoys having an integral part in a student's development – seeing their growth from day of interview to graduation day. She enjoys spending time with her family, good food and painting by numbers.

As Director of Special Programs, Paul leads both the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) and the Merit Access Program (MAP).

Paul's side interests include long walks with his Labrador retriever, playing the drums, hiking and target shooting.

I'm the Assistant Director of the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Center at Purchase College, SUNY, located in the Purchase College Library. I administered Moodle, our previous learning management system, and now manage our tenant of D2L Brightspace.

She/Her/Hers 

All about Paddy

Paddy was a transfer student who graduated from Purchase College in 2020 with a Bachelors in Mathematics and Computer Science. Working full-time while studying, she found her time as a student to be nothing but remarkable. She attributes her success at Purchase to the individualized support and guidance she received from the faculty and staff across campus.

Paddy strongly believes in the mission of Purchase College to empower future generations in making meaningful contributions to society. She enjoys working with everyone in Admissions to achieve its goals for cultivating the dynamic representation that makes Purchase so special.

Fun Fact:

Paddy returned to Admissions as the Operations Coordinator in 2023 after a brief stint as a Data Consolidation Intern during her last semester before the COVID-19 shutdown in 2020.

As of March 2024, Paddy officially joined our team of Admissions Counselors. She loves being part of such a collaborative effort towards the continued success of Purchase College. She is enthusiastic to help anyone looking to learn more about the resources and opportunities available to all students here at Purchase.

Make an appointment with Paddy

She/Her/Hers 

Territories: 

• All of Westchester County New York 
• Alaska
• Hawaii

International Applicants  

Bea reviews all international applications, both graduate and undergraduate, for all majors. 

More About Bea

Bea's first job at Purchase was in the Conservatory of Music, where she did recruitment, enrollment, advising and teaching. Bea herself plays the harp and provides private lessons. The first thing that attracted Bea to Purchase was it's exceptional Conservatory of Music, because she wanted to be surrounded by creative people. She soon realized that creativity was widespread on the campus and not just limited to the arts. One of Bea's favorite things about Purchase is running the loop. "Its a perfect 5K with rolling hills in a really beautiful setting."

Fun Fact

Bea was an extra in a movie with Penelope Cruz, Alegre Ma Non Troppo, filmed in Spain in 1994 while she was the principal harpist of the Spanish Youth Orchestra. 

She/Her/Hers

Melissa Forstrom's research, teaching and practice focuses on the intersections of museums, cultural representation, heritage, and society. Her current and ongoing research project documents and analyzes the changing interpretation in Islamic art exhibition in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Melissa also researches:

• the development of experiential learning pedagogies in museum studies practicum and study abroad courses 
• the intersections of place/space theories in examining the increase of art museums and art exhibitions at international airports
• the use and properties of glass, as a building material in purpose-built art museums 
• recent migration from Muslim-majority nations to the Nordic countries and how this intersects with museum practices and exhibitions

Dr. Jenny Undercofler joined the Purchase faculty as Associate Professor of the Practice of Music in 2016. From 2004 until 2016, Jenny served as the Music Director of the Special Music School (PS 859), spearheading the development and opening of its high school division. During the same period. Jenny also founded and conducted Face the Music, a groundbreaking teen new music ensemble. Under her artistic and administrative leadership, Face the Music collaborated with professional groups including the JACK Quartet, Gutbucket, and the Kronos Quartet, performed at venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and the Bang On A Can Marathon, and received feature coverage in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications. Jenny has served on the faculties of Juilliard Pre-College, Queens College, the Mannes Preparatory Division, and Third Street Music School Settlement. She holds two degrees in piano performance from the Juilliard School and a Doctor of Musical Arts from the Eastman School of Music.

Prior to joining the Purchase College staff, he served as a night supervisor for CVS pharmacy. John started working at Purchase College in November of 2003 as an office manager and continued in that role for over 10 years before beginning working with housing assignments.

He received his Associates degree from Berkeley College in White Plains. His areas of interest outside of work are watching and playing sports, spending time with friends and family, and traveling as often as possible. He was born and raised in Port Chester, NY and  moved to Tarrytown a few years ago.

Functional Assignment: Office Management/Housing Assignments/CCN Building Manager

Silke Vigue started working in the School of Natural and Social Sciences after graduating from the biology program in 2013. Silke has a strong commitment to the campus community. She is part of our Student Success Network, and helping students succeed is her highest priority. Silke completed her master's degree in higher education administration from Stony Brook University in May 2017. 

Carolyn began her career at Purchase College in 2011 as Coordinator in the Continuing Education department. Currently, Carolyn enjoys her role as an ACE Advisor in the Advising Center and working closely with faculty, the Registrar's office, and various departments across campus.

Carolyn also manages the Testing Center to ensure smooth testing accommodations for students who are registered with the Office of Disability Resources.

JeanMarie works closely with the Associate Provost Gregory Taylor on curricular revisions and new program proposals as well as accreditation and institutional effectiveness. She values breaking down silos and working with faculty and staff in order to build a more collaborative culture of assessment.

She is a proud alum of Purchase College, and graduate of the Vocal Performance Program. She went on to receive her Masters in Vocal Performance from The Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. Prior to working in higher education, she traveled around the world and performed as an award-winning opera singer.

In her previous position at Purchase, she worked as the Assistant to the Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and was an active member of the Professional Staff Council, chairing the Professional Development Committee for three years where she worked to implement the first staff mentoring program, as well as the first Professional Staff Development Conference. She also served as a mentor for current Purchase College students in the Success Fellows program. 

David Jameson received his Ph.D. in computer science from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. He started his career at IBM Research where he worked on a variety of research projects including Screen Reader, a juggling robot and several programming languages before creating the Computer Music Center, a research group dedicated to developing better tools for musicians. Soon after, he was elected to the IBM Academy of Technology. After leaving IBM Research in 1999, Dr. Jameson created several startups that developed news aggregation tools and anti-spam products for consumers. He is co-founder of Deskew Technologies, LLC which develops Gig Performer (http://gigperformer.com), an audio plugin host for use by live musicians.

His main areas of interest are programming languages, debugging technology and interactive computer music systems. David is no stranger mixing art with technology. He tours with The Security Project (http://securityproject.band) and Beyond The Wall (http://beyondthewall.band) in both of which he plays keyboards and the Eigenharp, an alternative controller that leverages OSC for very fine grained musical control of synthesizers.

Barbara McMullen is lecturer at SUNY Purchase College and Westchester Community College who  teaches fully online, in a hybrid classroom, a flipped classroom, and on-site. As a past academic technology administrator, both at Marist College and Tufts University, responsible for online learning, Barbara and her team experimented with the new World Wide Web, bringing Marist College teachers a new and exciting environment as one of the first 1,000 servers on the Web. She also experimented with Second Life, an online virtual world for online educators at Marist and continued this exploration at Monroe College as Dean of Online Learning.

I received my Master of Fine Arts from Brooklyn College, where I studied with Albert Terris and Richard Navin. Earlier significant schooling came with Toshio Odate at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. I came to Purchase College in 1976 to teach Direct Carving. When Jeffrey Meizlik left to assist Willem DeKooning, I took over foundry duties; 40 years later I'm still at the helm.

My loves are to make art, teach, listen to jazz, fly-fish, laugh when I can and, also, to luxuriate in the nobility of teaching.

Editor's note: Although Phil Listengart officially retired on Sept. 1, 2017, he is still teaching one course each semester. Still at the helm!

Suzanne Kessler has been on the Purchase College faculty since 1972. In 2004, she was appointed dean of the School of Natural and Social Sciences and then dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences and vice provost for academic affairs in 2010. Dr. Kessler is the author of Lessons from the Intersexed and co-author of Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach as well as articles primarily on the social construction of gender.

On March 14, 2018, Dean Kessler gave a talk to the Purchase College community on Parallel Universes: Reflections on a Career Transition.

Dr. Kessler received her bachelor's degree in psychology from Carnegie Mellon University and her doctorate in social psychology from City University of New York. She has been a member of the board of directors of the Purchase College Children's Center since its founding in the 1970s and has been involved in criminal justice projects, most recently as chair of the board of Prison Communities International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rehabilitation in prison.

I spend my time supporting course design and faculty development programming, promoting the development of virtual and physical learning spaces for campus, and generally assisting faculty in their adoption of innovative instructional approaches.

In my faculty role, I hang out with the environmental studies program. My research background was in developmental neurobiology, plant-herbivore interactions, insect life-history evolution and clonal plant population ecology. I've taught a wide range of biology, environmental studies, honors, first-year and other courses in my past faculty positions.  For Purchase, I have taught "Science in the Modern World", "Search for Life in the Universe", "College Writing", "First Year Seminar", and now I principally teach the "Geology" course for Environment Studies, with lab.

I'm also a bit of a shared governance geek.  I was one of the architects for our current College Senate governance structure, I'm currently Parliamentarian, and have served on and been active with a number of campus committees: Instructional Technology and Advisory Committee; Strategic Planning and Assessment Committee; Student Learning and Success Committee; Shared Governance Review Committee; the plagiarism task force; accessibility task force; Middle States Steering Committee; and others.  I am also currently President of the SUNY University Faculty Senate, and member of the SUNY Board of Trustees.

I'm also a bit of a Mars aficionado. My personal library is filled with Mars textbooks, Mars nonfiction texts, Mars science fiction literature, and Mars films. Mars exploration, environmental studies, and evolutionary biology may seem a strange combination – or maybe not. In my mind, worlds are what interest me: how they are put together, how they function, how they have come to be the way they are. The two worlds I am most interested in are planet Earth, and planet Mars.

 
Keith Landa earned his BS in zoology at Iowa State University in 1977; his MS in neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego in 1980; and his PhD in biological sciences (ecology and evolutionary biology) at the University of Michigan in 1989.

Jennifer Uleman's Introduction to Kant's Moral Philosophy (Cambridge University Press) was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2010.  Her articles on Kant's moral and political thought have appeared in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Kantian Review, and the Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung; reviews, comments, and conference proceedings on art, politics, and other topics have appeared in other venues (see below for links).   She has received both research and teaching grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst.  Professor Uleman has taught at Purchase since 2004, received a SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2014, and was the 2018-2020 Doris and Carl Kempner Distinguished Professor.  

Janine Polak has exhibited throughout the U.S., including at Essex Flowers in New York, N.Y.; Brennan & Griffin, NYC; Scott Charmin in Houston, Texas; and Sardine in Brooklyn, N.Y.; and internationally in Beijing, China, and Australia. She currently lives and works in Queens, N.Y.

Polak received her BA in studio art and economics from the University of Virginia in 2005 and was awarded an Aunspaugh Fellowship the following year. In 2008, she earned her MFA in sculpture at the Yale University School of Art. She began teaching in the School of Art+Design at Purchase College as a part-time lecturer in 2011–12 and then as a part-time assistant professor from 2012–13 through 2014–15. She is currently a visiting assistant professor and the coordinator of the foundation program in the School of Art+Design.

Steve Lambert has worked alongside artists and activists in 21 countries on 6 continents helping them to effect power. Trained in the arts, he is known for large scale, public projects that engage new audiences on difficult topics through the social sciences, comedy, games, theater, and democratic participation. Lambert is also the co-founder and co-director of the Center for Artistic Activism, a research and training institute that helps people use their creativity and culture to effect power.

I teach courses on subject areas including aesthetics (especially the aesthetics of music and film), ethics, environmental philosophy, and nineteenth century German philosophy.  

Elliott Abrams received his BA in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Rutgers University and went on to receive his PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

During his graduate studies, he used the model system Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) to investigate organogenesis and organ function (Abrams and Andrew, 2005, Development; Abrams et al., 2006, Development). After receiving his PhD, he worked with Mary C. Mullins during his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, where he discovered Brambleberry, a novel protein essential for nuclear envelope fusion during early embryogenesis (Abrams et al., 2012, Cell).

Darrah Carr holds a PhD in Dance from Texas Woman's University. She received her MFA in Choreography & Performance from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan University with a double major in Dance and the College of Letters. Named one of the "Top 40 Under 40" by the Irish Echo, one of the "Top 100 Irish Americans of the Year" by Irish America Magazine, and one of the "Most Influential Women of 2010," by the Irish Voice, while being celebrated with the 2020 Artist Honoree Award by Irish Arts Center, Dr. Carr has been active for thirty years in both the Irish and modern dance communities as a choreographer, dancer, writer and educator.

BIOGRAPHY

Stephanie Brown has performed as a soloist at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Kennedy Center. She has had the honor of performing at the White House. She has appeared with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the New York String Orchestra and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra in Lincoln Center.

Stephanie Brown has performed as a soloist in Europe, Japan, and Central America.

Ms. Brown's teachers include the distinguished pianists Rudolf Serkin, Leon Fleisher, and Ania Dorfmann at The Juilliard School. She has coached with Alfred Brendel.

Stephanie Brown was on the piano faculty of the Mannes College of Music for ten years. She served as Chair of the Piano Department at Purchase College for ten years, and is currently an Associate Professor at Purchase.

Ms. Brown has judged numerous concerto competitions at The Juilliard School. She has served as a judge for the prestigious Gina Bachauer Competition at Juilliard. She has also judged the concerto competition for the Juilliard Pre-College Division.

In addition, Ms. Brown has judged competitions at Manhattan School of Music, the Mannes College of Music, and Bard College Conservatory of Music.

Ms. Brown made her New York debut as a winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions. 

The New York Times has called Ms. Brown's playing "transfixingly beautiful", and noted that "Ms. Brown is a wonderful pianist indeed, with a sound of her own and a distinctive artistic personality to match." Regarding a performance of Beethoven's 2nd Piano Concerto in Lincoln Center, the Times noted that Ms. Brown's "fluent finger work was technically flawless."

The New York Post called her playing "radiant", and noted that "the breadth, nobility and sparkle of her keyboard work are extraordinary." The Washington Post wrote that "Stephanie Brown is a pianist with big ideas and a technique to match."

Ms. Brown has also received praise for her work with fellow pianists. Regarding a performance of Mozart's Concerto for Two Pianos at Lincoln Center, the Times noted that "Yefim Bronfman and Stephanie Brown are both young, talented pianists … and their work together was enchanting." Concerning a performance of Bach's Concerto for Two Pianos in C Major, the Times noted that "the slow movement, with Stephanie Brown and Peter Serkin trading off their graceful lines, was a rare pleasure."

Ms. Brown has toured extensively as a recital soloist. In addition to appearances at the 92nd Street Y in New York City and the Kennedy Center, she has performed at the Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, Shriver Hall in Baltimore, the Phillips Collection and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, the Krannert Center in Illinois, the Gardner Museum in Boston, and Kilbourn Hall in Rochester. As part of Ms. Brown's extensive tours, she has given countless master classes to both piano soloists as well as chamber groups, and has given numerous lecture-demonstrations throughout the United States on various topics associated with the art and technique of piano playing.

Ms. Brown made her recording debut for MHS with solo works of Brahms and Franck. She recorded the complete Brahms Piano Quartets on Vanguard Classics with Alexander Schneider, Walter Trampler, and Leslie Parnas. Her recording with Jaime Laredo of the complete Schubert works for violin and piano was released on the Dorian label to wide critical acclaim.

Ms. Brown has had a distinguished career as a chamber artist. She has toured nationwide numerous times with Music from Marlboro. She has appeared at the Spoleto Festivals in Italy as well as Charleston, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Caramoor Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, the Seattle Festival and the Grand Teton Festival. She has performed with the Guarneri Quartet, the Galimir Quartet, the Concord Quartet, the Mendelssohn Quartet and the Ridge Quartet. In New York, she has appeared regularly at the Metropolitan Museum, Alice Tully Hall, Chamber Music at the Y, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Bargemusic. She has also performed at the Library of Congress in Washington, Dumbarton Oaks, the Boston Chamber Music Society, as well as with the St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble in New York.

For more information on Stephanie Brown and to hear audio clips of her performances, please visit her website at stephaniebrownpiano.com.

Shaka McGlotten is Professor of Media Studies and Anthropology at Purchase College-SUNY, where they also serve as Chair of the Gender Studies program and the Co-Chair of Media Studies. From 2017-2024, they also served as Chair of Global Black Studies.

An anthropologist and artist, McGlotten's interdisciplinary research explores the intersections of black study, queer theory, digital media, and contemporary art. Their work investigates emerging networked intimacies, messy computational entanglements, and their impacts on queer of color lifeworlds. 

They are the author of Dragging: Or, In the Drag of a Queer Life (Routledge, 2021) and Virtual Intimacies: Media, Affect, and Queer Sociality  (SUNY Press, 2013). They are also the co-editor of two edited collections, Black Genders and Sexualities (with Dana-ain Davis) and Zombies and Sexuality (with Steve Jones). Data & Society, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Akademie Schloss Solitude, and The Andy Warhol Foundation have supported their work.

With Helen V. Pritchard they co-edit the MIT/Goldsmiths Future Media book series, and with Sareeta Amrute, Alex Cho, and Rachel Kuo, the Critical Race and Digital Studies book series with New York University Press.

Dragging: Or, in the Drag of a Queer Life.
Credit: Cover concept and image by Raafat Hattab. Drawing by Jakob Lorenzo.

Ayako Oshima, winner of numerous international competitions, including the 55th Japan Music Competition in Tokyo, the Winds and Percussion Competition in Japan, and the 17th International Jeunesses Musicales Competition in Belgrade, where she also received the "Golden Harp" award given to the favorite of the audience and critics, is one of the most popular clarinet soloists in Japan.

She performs regularly in recital and concerto appearances with orchestra, highlights of which have included performances in Osaka, Nagoya, Kobe, Tanuma, at the Casals Hall, Keoi Hall, and Bunka Kaikan in Tokyo, and with the Hiroshima and Osaka Symphonies. She is quite active in chamber music festivals, including theKuhmo Festival in Finland, the Festival Consonances in France, the Sarasota Summer Music Festival, and Chamber Music Silicon Valley.

Oshima was a founding member of L'Art Respirant, one of the first new music ensembles in Japan, and also was a member of the noted ensemble Contrasts Quartet. She has been involved playing historical instruments since 1991 and, as a member of the acclaimed period instrument ensemble Mozzafiato, she has recorded several CDs for the SONY Vivarte label. Other labels for which she has recorded include Toshiba EMI, Victor Japan, Naxos, and Bridge. She recently released Bel Canto: music for two clarinets on the Aurora label.

In addition to her performing career, she maintains a high profile as a teacher and is on the faculties of Purchase College, the Juilliard School, and Hartt College. She has kept her connection with the Toho School and gives regular master classes there. She has also served on the juries of both the Japan Music Competition and the Japan Winds and Percussion International Competition. She has founded and is the director of the Kita Karuizawa Music Seminar, which attracts clarinet students from all over Asia. With her husband, Charles Neidich, she has written a book on the fundamentals of clarinet technique for the publisher Toa Ongaku Inc. and writes a monthly column on music and the clarinet for Pipers Magazine. 

In 2011, she founded the all-female clarinet ensemble, NYLicorice Ensemble. they have already has released two CDS and are in the process of releasing their third. They have performed throughout Japan and in New York and have been featured on NHK television.

Emily Sausen is the Director of College and Expository Writing and has been teaching College Writing at Purchase since 2015.  She received an undergraduate degree in English from Princeton and a law degree from New York University.   

Alexis Silver is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies at Purchase College, State University of New York. She completed her PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011. Her primary research focuses on membership and belonging for Latinx immigrant and second-generation youth in North Carolina, and return migrant and deportee youth and young adults in Mexico. In a second line of research, she examines transnational families in the United States and Mexico. She loves teaching the research methods / junior seminar core sequence every year, but she is especially passionate about her courses on immigration, human rights and law and society. Her book, entitled Shifting Boundaries: Immigrant Youth Negotiating National, State and Small Town Politics was published by Stanford University Press in 2018.

https://www.amazon.com/Shifting-Boundaries-Immigrant-Negotiating-Small-Town/dp/1503605744

http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=29710

Dr. Gregory Taylor is the author of Artists in the Audience: Cults, Camp, and American Film Criticism (Princeton University Press), a landmark study of American film criticism, along with articles addressing subjects such as taste, modernism, the avant-garde, and arts education.

A Purchase College faculty member since 1993, he has taught a wide variety of courses in cinema studies and related fields and has served as Director of the Conservatory of Theatre Arts, Interim Dean of both the Conservatory of Theatre Arts & Film and the Conservatory of Dance, and Chair of the Cinema Studies program.

Greg's interest in curriculum development, educational management, and college preparedness is also reflected in his close involvement with AP Research, a course currently offered to over 35,000 high school students around the globe as part of the College Board's AP Capstone program. From 2014 to 2024 he served on the AP Research Curriculum Development and Assessment Committee, and he recently concluded a five-year term as the course's Chief Reader.

Dr. Taylor holds a BA from the University of Toronto, and an MA and PhD in Communication Arts-Film from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Ragnhild Utheim holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from the Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York. Her research interests include the anthropology of mass incarceration, youth justice and prison studies, education anthropology and critical pedagogy, globalization and social inequality, and environmental anthropology. Her ethnographic research has focused on the use of restorative practices as an intervention alternative to zero-tolerance policies, particularly among court-involved youth in high school settings.

Utheim completed a writing fellowship in CUNY's Writing Across the Curriculum program, where she was trained in pedagogy and curriculum development, assisted faculty with course development, and conducted student workshops on writing in the disciplines. She has taught sociology and anthropology in the Bedford Hills College Program (at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility) since 2008, including a course that combines college students from inside and outside prison. She is currently working on a research project that explores the impact of such "combined classes" (sometimes referred to as "inside-out classes") on students, faculty, higher education institutions and prisons, as well as their potential influence on civic engagement and public opinion.

Evan Adamson is a New York City–based Scenic Designer and Art Director for live entertainment & television. A graduate of the Theatre Design/Technology conservatory program at SUNY Purchase, he holds a BFA in Scenic Design.

Evan's work spans a wide range of high-profile live events and performance venues, including the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall, the New Year's Eve Ball Drop in Times Square, and the Emmy Award–nominated Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. He has also contributed to productions at the Metropolitan Opera and currently serves as an Art Director for The Tonight Show at NBC.

A dedicated theater artist, Evan has built an extensive career on Broadway as an Associate Scenic Designer, contributing to more than 20 productions over the past two decades. In this role, he has played a key part in the development, execution, and realization of scenic designs for numerous productions, many of which have been recognized with Tony Awards for Best Scenic Design. In addition to his Broadway work, he has designed over 100 productions at leading regional theaters across the United States and has worked internationally throughout Europe and Asia.

Evan is a proud member of United Scenic Artists, Local 829.