Art students not only learn how to paint, draw and sculpt—they also learn to think. “The art department prepares students to be creative problem solvers, and we give our art students a wide range of skills based in the studio arts as well as in design, digital art and technology,” said Kellyann Monaghan, professor and chair of the Department of Art and Art History.

Adelphi offers degrees to appeal to different areas of interest, including Studio Art, Graphic Design, Art and Design Education, and Art History. Students benefit from small classes led by successful artists, branding experts and seasoned educators, along with real-world experiences like internships, collaborative mural projects and career preparation courses. “We function like a small art and design school within the larger University,” Monaghan said. Students can develop skills in complementary fields like psychology, business and communications. This flexibility helps them tailor their career paths to their interests.

Those paths are broader than many people assume. Adelphi art alumni work as photographers, art directors, school educators, art therapists, and in many other fields. “Students don’t have to be starving artists,” Monaghan said. “There are lots of different ways for them to make a living in the world.”

Case in point: Meet several Adelphi alums who built a thriving career with their art degree.

Turn a Creative Vision Into a Thriving Agency

Carl Timpone ’08, Portrait, Editorial and Commercial Photographer and Partner at Visual Natives

Photographer graduated at the start of an economic recession. Jobs were scarce, but the creativity and independence Adelphi fostered helped prepare him to think outside the box. He began sneaking backstage at concerts to take photos of musicians, which quickly led to creating album artwork. “My job was just to listen to the music, listen to their lyrics and translate that into a visual form,” Timpone said.

As he gained experience and became more successful, he partnered with a graphic design graduate he met through the music scene and launched an agency——that is still in operation today. Their clients span record labels, the fashion industry, enterprise companies, and legacy artists like Stevie Nicks and Def Leppard. “What I enjoy most about my career at this point is the ability to think quickly and creatively and the human connections that I make with the subjects, even if it’s brief,” he said. And those subjects happen to be Hollywood’s biggest stars, from Cynthia Erivo to Timothée Chalamet, and music industry icons like Post Malone and Chappell Roan.

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Here’s a look at her latest projects.

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“I always had a decent way of explaining,” Wosleger says of his 2023 epiphany. “I had the light bulb moment of thinking art and education would be a great path forward.”

Now completing his second year in the online at the ������Ƶ Ruth S. Ammon College of Education and Health Sciences, Wosleger has officially abandoned the life of assessing risk for insurance applicants by taking a risk of his own. He’s halfway toward reinvention from insurance underwriter to art teacher.

“Ryan is a model student in our program,” said Courtney Weida, EdD, professor and director of the MA in Art Education Program, “engaging deeply with parenting and art making.”

The Decision to Chart a New Course

While art had always played a role in Wosleger’s world, the Massapequa Park, New York, resident began to elevate its rank in the fall of 2021 when Briar was feeling homesick at nursery school. To cheer her up, Wosleger began drawing bubble letters, cartoons and whimsical creatures on the plain brown bags that held her daily snack. To his surprise, Briar started bringing the artsy sacks home, crumpled and crumb-filled, but cherished, nonetheless. As Briar’s days brightened, the bags also began to fill the blank canvas of Wosleger’s artistic potential.

“If my daughter didn’t throw them out,” Wosleger reasoned, “that meant something.”

As Briar eagerly anticipated what magical design would materialize on the next bag, her dad began to question whether he was happy outside of his life as a father and husband. The grind of corporate America was weighing on him, and the daily drawings became Wosleger’s refuge. Lifted by the reaction to his flourishes of personified fruit, dancing french fries, goofy dinosaurs and more, Wosleger publicly launched his art in September 2023 under the Instagram handle “.”

Wosleger’s story and his brown-bag artistry have captured the attention of the media. In the fall of 2025, he was featured in segments on and .

In addition to bridging home and school, the snack bags began to commemorate family milestones. When Ryan and his wife, Brittany, surprised Briar with tickets to Radio City Music Hall, her bag featured a Rockette. When the surprise was a trip to Disney World, Mickey Mouse and friends served as harbingers. And when Briar asked her dad how to draw the enchanted images, Wosleger’s reinvention took further shape. Within a week of teaching her the crosshatching technique, the underside of finished art that suggests form, Briar began to grasp the skill.

The idea of a mid-career transition was familiar to Wosleger, whose mother became a math educator at age 38. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t scary. Pushing 40, Wosleger feared putting his family in financial jeopardy, but also recognized he had to make a change.

“What I was most scared of was, ‘Will I leave a legacy? Will I leave this planet happy?’” he recalls.

Finding a Fit at Adelphi

With Brittany’s support and his it’s-never-too-late attitude, Wosleger discovered the online art education graduate program at Adelphi and assembled his portfolio. He soon embraced the flexible schedule, which allows him to balance his infant daughter’s nap routine with completing his courses at a pace that makes sense for his family. His professors even reached out when Wosleger was in the hospital for his daughter Cambell’s birth to offer congratulations—and extended deadlines.

“Adelphi,” he says, “has given me the tools and the resources to push myself into the world of education.”

Recently, Wosleger got his first taste of full-time teaching at shortly after resigning from his insurance job in June. His newfound confidence has been transformational. As an undergraduate at Virginia Tech, Wosleger studied graphic design but convinced himself it wasn’t a viable path. He’s proud of the courage it took to finally trade his insurance cohort for Spider-Man, Moana and boba-drinking axolotls. This fall, Wosleger is completing his slate of online classes in preparation for his student teaching. And he’s launched a series of “Art of SnackBagN” events at local libraries, where he shows children the basics of his craft.

Wosleger also has discovered a community of like-minded paper bag creatives. There’s the husband-wife duo “,” who introduced him to the group, and “,” to whom Wosleger refers as the “Yoda of snack bag dads.” That fellow artist reminded him what’s at the heart of his artistic renaissance.

“He said, ‘Focus on what’s really meaningful—making your kids happy.’”

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Samuel Abrams: A Ninja With a BFA

Abrams always knew he wanted to work in the arts. But a trip to when he was 15 years old gave him a clear goal.

“I knew I wanted to work there as soon as I saw it,” he said. “My mom joked, ‘I am going to lose you to this place. You’ll be working here.’”

His mom was right. Abrams is now in the craft department at Universal repairing the elaborate, hand-sculpted fixtures around the theme park. He works nights at various areas in the park, making sure everything is perfect for the next day’s guests.

“We’re like ninjas,” he said. “You can’t work on the cool sculpture stuff in the day when the people are there.”

Abrams works on fixtures in Universal Orlando’s newest theme park, Universal Epic Adventure, which opened last year. He’s worked on sculptures for rides like The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Ministry of Magic, How To Train Your Dragon: Isle of Berk, Dark Universe, and Super Nintendo World, just to name a few. “I work all over,” he said. “Craft workers cover the entire park.”

Abrams earned a BFA in Studio Art at Adelphi. He credits the University for putting him on the path to the Universal job.

“My professors gave me the space to grow as an artist,” he said. “They let me work in whatever medium I wanted, even unconventional media.”

He said his professors initially encouraged him to be a fine artist. “I explained that I like the idea of gallery art, but I really wanted to make stuff for film and TV,” he said. “I wanted people to be able to touch my work and enjoy it.” His professors supported his goal and helped him do more applied work, he said. “Once they understood what I wanted, they helped me develop the skills I needed to get there.”

With his professors’ support, his senior thesis was a collection of sculptures of imaginary creatures that won the University’s Thomas McNulty Award for Excellence in Sculpture. After graduation, Abrams did gig work for two years, making store displays and props for TV shows and movies around New York. He landed a staff position at Universal last fall, and he loves his work.

“This is my dream job,” he said. “If Adelphi didn’t let me have the freedom to do what I wanted, I wouldn’t have gotten the position I have now,” Abrams said.

His mom doesn’t mind that, as she predicted, her son went to Florida to work at Universal. “I get her free tickets to the park whenever she comes down to visit, so she forgives me,” Abrams explained.

Daniel Hickey: “Learning to be independent and teach myself”

Hickey is a technical designer for , where he works on the Zombies and Warzone modes of the popular video game Call of Duty. His mission there includes general programming and design work on quests in the game’s Zombies mode and on the seasonal updates of the Warzone mode.

“This is the job I always wanted,” he said. “I always wanted to be in the game industry, and I always wanted to be at the center of it all.”

High Moon Studios wasn’t the first step in his career, though. Graduating from Adelphi at the height of the pandemic, he got together with two friends to work on games and build their résumés. It paid off, helping him land a contract to work as a programmer and designer on Postal 4: No Regrets, the first-shooter game from Running With Scissors.

“That was a fun time, because I’m very, very locked in and focused on the action of video games,” Hickey said. “Anything to do with player combat is where I want to be in the driver’s seat of design and programming-wise.” Then he spent 10 months working for Mob Games on its Poppy Playtime game. All the indie work gave him a résumé that helped him land the job at High Moon, he said.

That same energy and drive had pushed Hickey to transfer to Adelphi from the New York City College of Technology to take advantage of the University’s new minor in video game design. Hickey majored in information systems, and said the program was solid preparation for being a game developer. “It’s a blend of business operation and computer science,” he said.

The skills he learned in the program have made him better able to work in the highly collaborative atmosphere of game development, where programmers, artists, sound designers and other teams work together to create the final product. “I learned to communicate with everybody, which helps us work smoothly,” he said.

Hickey said he was able to get the personal attention at Adelphi that he needed to succeed. “The school let me get close to all of my professors,” he said. “Honestly, I wasn’t the best student. I only saw school as a formality; I just wanted to make games.” His professors helped him channel his desire for hands-on experience and encouraged his entrepreneurial streak by pointing him toward clubs and independent studies.

Taking his professor’s advice, he dove into extracurricular activities. He got an internship with the , which runs esports tournaments, and founded Adelphi’s Esports club. He did so well in the internship that his boss recommended him for a position as a student ambassador for Unity Technologies, which connected him with game creators around the world. He became president of the campus chapter of the , turning the club into a group where students could work together on projects in the game development lab on campus. And he was a teaching assistant for Professor Lee Stemkoski, PhD’s video game course in Adelphi’s Pre-College Program.

One of the most important lessons he learned at Adelphi? “Dr. Stemkoski encouraged me to be independent and teach myself,” he said. “That’s a skill that keeps you learning for your entire life, even when you are out of school.”

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Located inside Swirbul Library, the Center doesn’t feel like your usual classroom—it’s a flexible space designed to meet the needs of all students. The Center supports hands-on projects, research and creative work while offering opportunities to engage with leading-edge technologies in its key focus areas: artificial intelligence, extended reality and digital studies. Some students come to experiment with cutting-edge technology, while others arrive seeking a space to think differently and connect across disciplines.

“The mission of the Innovation Center is to empower the University community via interdisciplinary thinking and leading-edge technology in order to take on the challenges of our ever-changing world,” said Lee Stemkoski, PhD, director of the Innovation Center and professor and associate chair of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. “We inspire, support and showcase innovative and interdisciplinary activities within the University and in cooperation with industry and community partners.”

That mission comes to life every day—making the Innovation Center one of the most dynamic spots on campus.

A Place for All Majors to Gather

For Katelyn Schwab ’25, who majored in psychology and minored in social work, the Innovation Center wasn’t an obvious destination. She first walked in while reporting a story for The Delphian, Adelphi’s student newspaper. That one assignment led her to a campus job and eventually a deeper connection to the Center.

“As a psychology major, I wasn’t sure if I’d feel like I fit in at a space that seemed focused on tech and innovation. But when I got there, I immediately felt accepted,” Schwab said. It was one of the few places on campus where your major didn’t matter. That sense of inclusion and creative freedom really drew me in.”

Schwab said the Center gave her confidence and leadership skills she plans to carry into her future career in counseling. “It felt alive and personal in a way that traditional classroom learning rarely does,” she said.

A “Third Space” for Big Ideas

Ovundah Okene Jr., an interdisciplinary major in mathematics, art and computer science, describes the Center as a “third space”—somewhere between home and the classroom.

“It’s an ambient space like a coffee shop,” Okene said. “Ultimately the atmosphere is calm and inviting for all regardless of majors.”

One moment in particular that stuck with him was watching high school students tackle wildfire prediction during a hackathon in which they came up with a database model to track vegetation and forecast fire paths. “The determination in their eyes to complete their work in the time crunch, high-pressure event was inspiring,” Okune said.

That same spirit of exploration and persistence pushed Okune to rethink his own path. What began as curiosity soon became transformation. “I was following the will of my parents and was going to be a doctor,” he said. “My time at the Innovation Center made me see that one day I could also make a fine professor or a game developer … I’m glad I stumbled into Professor Stemkoski’s office that day.”

Turning Passion into Action

For Christopher Sciortino ’25, a computer science major now pursuing his master’s degree at Adelphi, the Innovation Center became the perfect place to share his passion for video game design.

“I hosted an interactive video game design workshop at the Innovation Center. It went so well, I ended up hosting part two of the workshop,” Sciortino said. “The Innovation Center provided the support and community to help me share my knowledge.

Those workshops not only connected him with other students who share his interest in gaming and artificial intelligence, but also improved his own skills. “The Center has opened my eyes to how many different disciplines utilize the different technologies we showcase at the Center,” Sciortino said.

Preparing for Future Careers

What makes the Innovation Center stand out, students say, is that it prepares them for more than just the next exam. Whether it’s learning how to collaborate or finding the courage to chase a new career path—the lessons go beyond the classroom.

“The Innovation Center is a special place,” Sciortino said. “I see it as the hub for innovation, collaboration and growth for both students and professors.”

Okene put it simply: “It’s my home away from home.”

And for Schwab, it’s proof that innovation isn’t just about technology—it’s about people. “It’s one of the few places on campus that breaks down barriers between majors and encourages everyone to work together. It makes Adelphi feel more connected, more creative and more human,” she said. “If you’re curious, creative or just looking for somewhere to belong, you’ll find your place here.”

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Theater Tech With the Pros

Riley Oberting

Riley Oberting, now a senior double majoring in theatre technology and design and graphic design, got the opportunity to learn about sound design and lighting from professionals at the , the O’Neill is the country’s preeminent organization dedicated to the development of new works and new voices for the stage. He attended workshops and master classes and job shadowed sound designers.

The opportunity came about as a result of his work for Adelphi’s Department of Theatre. For 2023 and 2024, Oberting was awarded first place for his sound design at the . His win this year for his sound design for the Adelphi production of Men on Boats earned him a fellowship at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.

Oberting said his experience at the O’Neill “has allowed me to expand my knowledge past what is taught at Adelphi [as well as] my professional network before I’ve even graduated … [and] has truly changed my perspective on theatrical and live sound and made me love it even more.”

Getting Political in D.C.

Vanessa Desrosiers

Vanessa Desrosiers, now an Adelphi senior, is majoring in political science and minoring in cybersecurity. She is on the pre-law studies track and is planning to take the LSAT and apply to law schools. This summer, she got an inside look at the workings of a public relations defense lobbying firm, , in Arlington, Virginia.

Her day as a research analyst intern at The Potomac Advocates consisted of calling and drafting emails to congressional offices, collecting National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and appropriations forms for clients, cyber reports, going to congressional hearings and drafting reports, working on the federal defense budget, and attending networking events, where she met a lot of people in the defense industry.

She said she had always hoped for an opportunity such as this one to come around. “This was a period of growth that I never expected but [was] so happy I got to experience,” Desrosiers said. Her long-term goal is to become a lawyer and then start her own nonprofit for immigrant kids.

Houston, We Have a Competition

Christopher Sciortino

Christopher Sciortino is an Adelphi senior studying computer science with a minor in mathematics. He has a passion for game development and a love of programming. When Kevin Liang, PhD, assistant professor of physics, put forth the idea of competing in a NASA competition presented to university students in the United States, Sciortino and six other students accepted the challenge. The students were asked to take one of NASA’s IPs (intellectual property) and come up with some type of invention with it. Not only does this require a business and marketing plan, but also writing skills, technical skills and teamwork. After presenting in front of NASA-appointed judges, they would determine a winning team and runner-up to be sent to California to the AMES Research Center to further continue their business.

Sciortino’s team came up with a mobile carbon capture device to reduce emissions from trucks. They were accepted and invited to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, to present their idea.

“When I said success stems from a good team, I meant it,” Sciortino said. “Not only did I work with amazing friends, but Dr. Liang was a crucial part of our success.” Although they didn’t win, Sciortino says he and his team learned a lot and made many great connections.

To Poland and Back

Faria Rahman Oyshi

Faria Rahman Oyshi is an international student and senior majoring in biochemistry Her love for cooking and baking led her into the field, where she now works in the stockroom and as a laboratory teaching assistant in the chemistry department. Recently, she had the opportunity to go abroad to Poland for her second consecutive summer, thanks to professor of chemistry Justyna Widera-Kalinoska, PhD’s and support from the College of Arts and Sciences Student Excellence Fund. During this trip, Oyshi conducted research at the University of Warsaw. This program allowed her not only to learn and execute research projects, but to learn about the scientific heritage of Poland. “For me, research has always been fun whilst also allowing me to contribute to the wellness of society and the environment,” Oyshi said.

The research project she joined focused on developing semiconductor electrode materials for photo-electrochemical water splitting, a field promising groundbreaking advancements in hydrogen fuel production. She had the opportunity to collaborate and strengthen her skills, allowing her to flourish and think outside the box.

“Conducting research in Poland for two consecutive summers not only allowed me to have hands-on experiences with advanced instrumentations and techniques, but also to shape and strengthen my research skills, building me as a competitive candidate for PhD programs and future research positions as a scientist.”

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We asked Cooper about her art and her inspiration for this meaningful project.

Tell us a bit about yourself as an artist and an art educator

I earned my Master of Fine Arts from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2012 and I’m actually an ������Ƶ alum! I earned my Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2009. I have been teaching for more than 10 years across Long Island and have been teaching at Adelphi in the Department of Art and Art History since 2014. In 2022, I started Protégé Art Studio, where I teach classes and workshops to adults. My goal is to make art more accessible to everyone. I am a painter and have experience working in acrylic, oil and gouache paint, in addition to drawing and digital media. I don’t think I can pick a favorite medium as it truly depends on what I’m working on at the moment. In my personal work, I am interested in exploring: family, relationships, the idea of home, community, love, loneliness, isolation, humor, sadness, happiness, food and gathering around the table.

What gave you the idea to start the To Robyn With Love project?

is a collaborative project that was derived from my need to feel more connected to those around me after the loss of my grandfather in 2015. Each postcard has an original pattern I designed that serves as a starting point for inspiration. Once complete, I ask for the piece to be titled, their connection to me recorded and then mailed back to me. When I receive each postcard, it reminds me that I’m never truly alone.

How do you decide on the pattern you will draw to begin each postcard project?

I took a lot of inspiration from coloring books, wallpaper designs, architecture and nature. I wanted them to each feel unique so participants could simply follow the pattern by coloring it in or create a completely new design right on top of the existing pattern.

Who was the first person you sent a postcard to and when? How many have you sent since that time and how do you choose who to send them to?

I think my family was the first to participate. They are the source of inspiration for what I do so it feels only right they get to be the ones to experience something first. I don’t have an exact number of how many I have sent but I would estimate hundreds. Anyone can participate! Some are from family and friends, others from friends of friends, people on social media and even an entire fourth-grade class. Participants’ ages range from 4 to 90 years old.

Do you have any favorite finished projects?

The ones my family did, especially my grandparents, are special to me but I honestly love all of them. It makes me realize how much community and love and support I have. You share your love with me by participating; I share mine back by painting a rock on top.

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What is The Green House exhibit all about?

A greenhouse is a structure designed to nurture and cultivate. These paintings tell the story of a house that was green, that nurtured and cultivated me.

There is always an autobiographical component in my paintings. I often use objects as stand-ins for people. I believe objects tell stories, and spaces hold memories. With this body of work, I wanted to create a dialogue between spaces and objects. I wanted to bring the viewer up close. I wanted to see how and if our stories could intersect.

My childhood home or, as I fondly call it, The Vortex, was the source of many memories, joys and traumas. An outsider would call the green house a hoarder’s house, but to me it was a treasure chest that was filled with unsorted objects, collectibles and detritus.

After the death of my parents, I began the arduous task of emptying my family home and putting their life stories back in context. As I prepared to sell the house they lived in for 45 years, I decided to revisit this microcosmic universe in order to better understand small fragments of its complicated, tense beauty and power.

Do you have a favorite piece from this exhibit? What makes it your favorite?

This body of work was made during my semester-long sabbatical. All of these paintings are important to me and I love seeing them all together in the gallery. To me, they are in dialogue with one another. If I had to pick a favorite, I’d be torn between two paintings: Her Room With a View and Self Portrait.

Her Room With a View is a painting of a stained glass window in my childhood home. I made the panel to the exact dimensions of the window. I feel as if I get to keep that part of the house and take it with me wherever I go.

Self Portrait is a painting of a deflating balloon. I think this work is simultaneously humorous and melancholy. It speaks to how I felt in that green house. I was always positive and optimistic. I was a motivating force in the house. When tasked with emptying and selling the house, I felt heavy and burdened. I felt as if I was floating just above the floor hoping I wouldn’t crash to the ground.

What is your background as an artist, and how long have you taught at Adelphi?

I have been painting for almost 30 years. I am primarily a still life painter with an interest/obsession with trompe l’oeil painting—French for “deceives the eye,” this painting style creates a highly realistic illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface.

I’ve been on the faculty of ������Ƶ’s Department of Art and Art History for 22 years. I specialize in teaching Foundations courses, Color Theory, and Painting, and I have led our study abroad program since 2008.

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Now the 57-year-old museum is refreshing the way it represents itself—and it has hired David Pierce, assistant professor of art and art history at Adelphi, to help lead the process.

“I am consulting with them on creating a new brand guideline book and brand identity,” Pierce said.

Pierce spent this past summer in Hanoi working directly with the museum’s director of communications and staff members to develop designs for a new logo, signage, floor map, brochure and gift packaging.

New signage puts a smile on an imposing building

Housed in an 86-year-old colonial structure built as a boarding school for the daughters of French officials, the museum blends in with government buildings in its neighborhood. One

A design for the new museum brochure.

of Pierce’s first tasks was to help it stand out by designing colorful banners to hang on the building’s facade.

“They’re like the banners you see when you walk by MoMA [Museum of Modern Art] in New York City on any given day,” he said. “They keep the museum from looking like an office building. The banners make it look like a welcoming place you want to come to.”

He is also revising the museum’s red and gray palette, adding a range of playful colors to make everything from signs to gift shop tote bags feel more modern and lively.

“Red is the national color of Vietnam, so we kept that as the primary color,” he said. “But since color plays a massive role in communicating identity and mood, we’ll be adding colors like oranges and greens. The new branding will say, ‘This is a vibrant place where you can bring your family, or you can just wander in and feel welcome.’ ”

Pierce isn’t stopping there. He’s adding a second font to the museum’s style book to give signage and brochures a more contemporary appearance, and he’s proposed incorporating a pattern from the museum building’s traditional Vietnamese woodwork as a visual motif for use on signs, tote bags and the institution’s website. He is also redesigning the floor maps inside the museum to make it easier for visitors to find their way through the rambling building.

Pierce returned to the United States at the end of the summer and is continuing to work with the staff on many of the details. He will return to Hanoi to complete the project.

A history with Vietnam

Pierce’s stay in Vietnam this past summer was hardly his first. He had been there many times during his three years teaching graphic design in

The artist in his studio.

Hong Kong. A friend who works as a translator for the museum learned of the institution’s desire to redesign its signage and introduced Pierce to the museum’s director of design.

“I went to Hanoi to visit the museum and say hello,” Pierce said. “We sat down and started talking design. Then the conversation led to collaboration and this partnership grew from there.”

Pierce’s work with the museum is just one of his many projects. A designer, painter, filmmaker and animator, he has exhibited in Taiwan, Thailand, England, Italy and Israel, as well as extensively in galleries in New York City. His films, most recently the animated short Plausible Audio, have been selected for numerous festivals.

He is very satisfied with his collaboration with the Vietnam National Fine Arts Museum.

“It’s been an amazing project,” he said, “and I’m excited that it’s going to help bring even more people into this gorgeous old building to see the incredible stuff the museum is doing.”

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Paul Moravec, DMA, is the recipient of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Music, a Grammy Award nominee and one of only three faculty members at Adelphi honored as a University Professor.

A Day on Ellis Island

In November 2022, Carnegie Hall presented the world premiere of a new oratorio, A Nation of Others, by Paul Moravec, DMA, University Professor of music, that dramatizes the stories of immigrants passing through Ellis Island on a single day in 1921. While Dr. Moravec and librettist Mark Campbell based their characters on real figures from the historical record, Dr. Moravec calls the piece “a work of imagination that offers a musically dramatic way of experiencing history.”

Dr. Moravec chose the oratorio form, which features an exceptionally large chorus and orchestra, because it has traditionally been used to tell epic stories of timeless themes (think Handel’s Messiah). “The story of American immigration is a big saga,” he said. It’s the story of most Americans at one point or another, but I also think of it as timeless and universal.”

The piece, Dr. Moravec’s fifth at Carnegie Hall, is part of his series of American historical oratorios, all of which spotlight the experiences of ordinary Americans involved in extraordinary events and circumstances.

Life as a Syrian Refugee

Joan Stein Schimke, professor of film and video production, is an Academy Award-nominated director and screenwriter whose work explores the effects of war, trauma and displacement on families, communities and relationship dynamics.

In 2015, Joan Stein Schimke, professor of communications, and her colleague John Drew, assistant professor of communications, were planning to make a film about migrants. “When we saw the image of the 2-year-old Syrian boy who washed ashore in Turkey, a boy who was trying to escape war-torn Syria with his mother and brother,” Schimke said, “we asked ourselves: Why aren’t we making a film about what’s happening with Syrian refugees?”

The result is Saeed, a short film that Schimke reports would not have been possible without the dedicated group of Adelphi students who helped with production. Saeed tells the story of a family separated by the Syrian civil war and the lengths to which they must go to be reunited on Long Island. Since its release in 2019, it has screened in more than a dozen festivals around the world.

“I think people get so caught up in the terminology of immigration that they don’t see immigrants as people anymore,” Schimke said. “But seeing their stories in a film like Saeed will help people remember to humanize immigrants and hopefully lead to changes in immigration policy.”

A still from Saeed, a short film by Joan Stein Schimke

The Promised Land No More

The film El Padrino, written and directed by Terrence Ross, professor of communications, captures the experience of immigrants being hunted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents—and shatters the myth of the American dream.

Ross turned to Adelphi alumnus Christopher Alvarez ’20, a bilingual disability activist, reporter.

Terrence Ross, professor of communications, is a longtime downtown New York City filmmaker whose focus is on no-budget films.

and filmmaker who was born with a rare form of thanatophoric dysplasia, to lead the cast. Alvarez plays Eduardo, a young disabled man who, after his parents are deported, helps a young woman evade ICE and flee to Canada for safety.

Faced with his own physical limitations as well as the lurking horror of immigration enforcement, Eduardo decides he is going to become “El Padrino,” “the Godfather.” Although he eventually wins the day, the moral of El Padrino is clear. “This movie shows that even though America used to take pride in being a nation of immigrants, we are no longer a refuge for them,” Ross said.

The poster for Terrence Ross’s El Padrino.

The Border: Reimagined

In her multimedia art installation, Borderlands, Hannah Allen, associate professor of art and art history, combines inkjet and screen prints, video captures, and sculpture form to reimagine the U.S.-Mexico border. “This photographic landscape project depicts the border as a site that exists as both a symbol and as a physical place,” Allen said. “The work invites audiences to question the nature of our borders and, in our increasingly digital and virtual reality, consider their relevance.”

Hannah Allen, associate professor of art and art history, has focused on ideas of history and nationhood in her artwork for the past decade.

When the national debate on immigration exploded during the 2016 presidential election, Allen began studying the California-Mexico border wall on Google Earth. After several physical trips to the border, she merged the photographs she took there with Google’s virtual images. This approach allows viewers to simultaneously confront the physicality and the abstraction of the border—and invites them to consider how it might look and function in the future. “It’s just a fact that more populations will migrate and, as a result, the United States will continue to change,” she said. “I hope viewers will embrace these changes.”

An image from Hannah Allen’s multimedia installation Borderlands.

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