Thursday, Jun 27, 2019
The Westminster College of the Arts (WCA) will welcome 10 new full-time faculty, administrators and staff for the coming academic year. Some have already started their new positions, and they already are helping a vibrant college to prepare for a busy performance and academic year. The new hires have extensive experience and will join faculty and staff on both the Lawrenceville and Princeton campuses in launching new academic programs, supporting numerous productions and working with the talented WCA students.
Faculty
New full-time faculty beginning their positions on September 1 are Dr. Jay Carter, assistant professor of Voice; Linda Lorence Critelli, assistant professor of Arts & Entertainment Industries Management; William “Wil” Lindsay, assistant professor of Game and Interactive Media Design; Eri Millrod, assistant professor of Dance Therapy and Dance Science; and Yoshinori Tanokura, Scenic Design.
Dr. Jay Carter served for 10 years as Artist-in-Residence at William Jewell College in Liberty, Mo. There, he maintained a vocal studio and taught courses in repertoire, pedagogy and diction. In the last year, he has performed with the Bach Collegium Japan, the Saint Louis Symphony, The Baldwin-Wallace Bach Festival, and The American Bach Soloists. Carter earned a Doctor of Musical Arts in Voice from the University of Missouri - Kansas City, and a Master of Music in Early Music, Voice, and Chamber Ensemble from Yale University.
Linda Lorence Critelli has taught as an adjunct at Rider University and the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She brings decades of professional experience as a music industry executive, consultant, and lecturer. Her elected board positions include the Songwriters Hall of Fame and national trustee and current president of the NY Chapter of the Recording Academy (The Grammy Awards). She has been professionally recognized as a vice president/writer/publisher relations for SESAC, the performing rights organization; one of the Leading Women in Performing Rights, Billboard Magazine, 2015; and as a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Berklee College of Music. She is an advisory board member and former president of Women in Music. Since 2016, she has operated a professional music services and consulting firm, serving a variety of clients seeking overviews of the music industry, information on pending legislation, advice on assessing talent and more. She brings to Rider extensive expertise in music publishing, industry relations and trends, artist development, and advocacy.
William “Wil” Lindsay comes to Rider after seven years as assistant and associate professor of Digital Media at Albright College. He earned the MFA in Integrated Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the BFA in Media Arts from the University of Arizona. Prior to Albright, Lindsay taught as an adjunct at Philadelphia University, Bucks County Community College and University of the Arts. He has exhibited in gallery shows in Brooklyn, the University of Delaware and at private galleries in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, among others. Lindsay has presented live media performances throughout the Northeast and received several grants and honors from universities and commissioning organizations. He has presented numerous workshops at colleges and galleries and authored software and microcontroller programs for commercial applications. He has been featured in numerous radio and television interviews throughout the greater Philadelphia region, and since 2008 he has operated his own company, Stray Technologies, which designs and markets D.I.Y game kits, electronics kits including music synthesizers, and alternative computer interface for musicians and performers
Eri Millrod has served as a clinical supervisor for 15 years, teaching graduate level Dance/Movement Therapy interns and mentoring DMT practitioners for board certification. She has taught as an adjunct for Rider University and for Drexel University's graduate Dance/Movement Therapy and Counseling program. Millrod expects to receive the Ph.D. in Creative Arts in Therapies from Drexel this September. She earned the Master of Arts in Dance Movement Analysis and Therapy from the NYU School of Education, Health, Nursing, and Arts Professions, and she holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Dance from Columbia University’s Barnard College. Millrod is a licensed professional counselor, a licensed creative arts therapist, a board-certified counselor/NCC, and a board-certified dance/movement therapist. For over a decade, she has served Penn Medicine Princeton House Behavioral Health as coordinator in the Allied Clinical Therapies Department. She was a member of the New Jersey Task Force for Licensure of Dance/Movement Therapists and Drama, and she has been an active member of the American Dance Therapy Association, including six years as president of the New Jersey Chapter. In 2017, she was given the ADTA Outstanding Achievement Award.
Yoshinori Tanokura, originally from Tokyo, has worked as a freelance designer in the United States for several years. For the past decade, he has taught at East Stroudsburg University, where he was associate professor of Scenic Design. Tanokura hold a master’s degree in Scenography from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design in London and an M.F.A. in Set Design from the University of Connecticut. He has designed sets for more than three dozen productions, and he is a member of United Scenic Artists. At East Stroudsburg, he co-created the Entertainment Technology track within the theatre area.
SFPA Leadership
There are several significant changes in the leadership of the School of Fine and Performing Arts at the Lawrenceville campus. Mr. David Sullivan will begin on August 1 as WCA associate dean. Dr. Ivan Fuller will be stepping back to chair of the Theatre and Dance Department, having served for the past eight years as FPA associate dean and chair of Theatre and Dance, and for the past two years as interim chair of the Fine Arts Department. On September 1, Dr. Vanita Neelakanta, associate professor of English, will become chair of the Fine Arts Department.
David Sullivan is the senior director of instruction at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where he supervises academic affairs across the institution’s New York City and Los Angeles campuses. His duties include curriculum, workload, student learning outcome assessment and regional and national accreditation. Prior to that position, he taught and administered at UNC-Greensboro, Lehman College of CUNY, and Rowan University. Sullivan has directed numerous university, regional, and off-Broadway shows, and he is producing artistic director of the Fat Violet Theater, a new play development company based in New York City. He earned the MFA in Theater Directing and the MAT in English Education from Boston University, a master’s degree in Theater Arts from Brown University, and a bachelor’s degree in Theater Arts from Providence College. Sullivan holds Teaching Certification in English (9-12) and Theater (K-12), and he is a member of the Stage Directors & Choreographers Society (SDC), the Association for Theater in Higher Education (ATHE), and the American Society for Theater Research (ASTR), among other affiliations.
Staff
The new members of the staff are Kimberly Apadula, assistant director of WCC admissions; Cole Capobianco, costume hop supervisor; Julia Marsh, art gallery director; and Justina Nicita, assistant registrar for the Princeton campus.
Kimberly Apadula has served for the past 10 years in the Rutgers-New Brunswick office of admissions. Earlier in her career, she served as a substitute teacher in in New Jersey public schools. She holds the master’s degree in education from the Rutgers Graduate School of Fine and Performing Arts, and a bachelor’s degree in English from Rutgers. She was initiated into Phi Beta Kappa, and is a graduate of the William Esper Studio Meisner Training Program. A member of Actors Equity, Apadula also is an actress who has appeared in several TV productions.
Cole Capobianco has served as costume shop supervisor and wardrobe supervisor at several regional and academic theaters. She has designed and produced costumes for children’s theatre, and supervised all aspects of costuming, including construction, fitting, alterations, and repairs. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Theatre and English from Washington College in Maryland.
Julia Marsh has served as curator of exhibitions and academic affairs for the Phillips Museum of Art, Franklin & Marshall College and as curator of community engagement for the Allentown Art Museum. From 2008-2012, she was a full-time lecturer at Seoul National University. She has curated and managed exhibitions and publications at several institutions, and she secured three large grants for the Allentown Art Museum. As an adjunct faculty member, she has taught a wide variety of courses, ranging from Women in Art to The Politics of Power: Gender and Space in Art and Cinema, and she has most recently held positions at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Tyler School of Art. She is an editor at “Art in ASIA,” where she helped to make that publication more accessible to a larger English-reading audience. Marsh earned a master’s degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a BFA from Rutgers.
Justina Nicita served Rowan College at Burlington County for 13 years. Her duties there included student academic transactions, course records, digital records imaging, and the Academic Calendar, and business and facilities operations. Nicita earned a bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. She is located in the associate dean’s suite at the Princeton campus.
New and Revised Programs
The School of Fine and Performing Arts will launch several new programs beginning in the fall. New degrees being offered are the B.A. in Game and Interactive Media Design and the B.A. in Dance Science. Significantly revised and renamed, the B.A. in Arts and Entertainment Industries Management now offers students the option to pursue an Entertainment/Commercial or an Arts/Institutional path. At the graduate level, the school will launch the M.A. in Arts Management and Executive Leadership and join with the Counseling Department to offer the Dance/Movement Therapy Concentration within the M.A. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.
Westminster Choir College Performances
The Westminster Choir College Symphonic Choir will perform on three occasions next year with the Philadelphia Orchestra, beginning with the Bach B Minor Mass in December. On October 11, the Westminster Jubilee Singers will celebrate the birthday of African-American composer R. Nathaniel Dett by joining with pianist Clipper Erickson to present an evening of Dett’s music. In partnership with Jacobs Music, WCC will offer the Rinaldi Steinway Alumni Concert series. In January, the Westminster Choir will tour the Northwest as part of the celebration of the centennial of its founding in Dayton, OH. In April, the Choir will travel to Ohio to perform the Bach St. Matthew Passion as part of the Baldwin-Wallace Bach Festival. While there, it will perform in Dayton at the Westminster Presbyterian Church, where it was founded in 1920.
Additional information about performances on both campuses will be posted on the web on our arts at Rider webpage over the summer.