Purchase College Commencement Honors Leaders from Various Fields

From SUNY Purchase College:

Purchase, NY, - Purchase College-SUNY will hold its 44th annual commencement ceremony on Friday, May 13, 2016 at 12:30 p.m. at the Westchester County Center in White Plains, NY.

Degrees will be conferred upon the class of more than 1,100 graduating scholars and artists representing dozens of majors and several countries. The graduates will be joined by thousands of family members, friends, college faculty, and staff members who will come together to celebrate their achievements. The day will also feature the lively music of Purchase faculty member Joe Ferry and the Big Ska Band, creating a festive experience in keeping with the school’s unique culture.

As a center for creative growth and academic excellence, Purchase marks the annual event by honoring dynamic leaders from various fields. This year’s honorees include Katherine L. Vockins, Executive Director of Rehabilitation Through The Arts and its parent organization, Prison Communities International Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to criminal justice issues.Choreographer Kyle Abraham (’00), whose powerful portraits of urban life speak to a new generation of audiences,will receive the Distinguished Alumni Award. Raaisha Castro, a mom of three who has gone back to school for her bachelor’s degree, will represent the senior class.

Purchase College President Thomas J. Schwarz said, “Though many look at graduation as an end, the word commencement itself refers to a beginning. I have no doubt that this year’s graduating class will continue in the Purchase tradition of Thinking Wide Open as they forge new pathways in the liberal arts, humanities, natural and social sciences, and performing and visual arts.” He continued, “This year, we’re pleased to honor visionaries Katherine L. Vockins and Kyle Abraham who exemplify how the arts can be a catalyst for social change. We hope our graduating class will find the honorees’ words meaningful and strive for serving the public good in their own chosen fields.”

About the Honorees

Katherine Vockins founded Rehabilitation Through The Arts (RTA) as a theatre group in 1996 at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Today, RTA works in five maximum and medium security prisons including Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, New York State’s only maximum-security prison for women. The program uses theatre, dance music, voice, writing and visual arts as tools to shift cognitive and behavioral patterns. RTA also operates an alumni program that is developing a play about the challenges prisoners face when released. She is currently working on plans to disseminate the RTA model nationwide.

Vockins has produced over 50 classic, contemporary, original and musical performances in prison gyms, auditoriums, school rooms, and chapels. She also co-produced Dramatic Escape, a documentary feature film that follows RTA’s production of A Few Good Men at Sing Sing, which will be released this year.

Kyle Abraham, artistic and executive director of the Abraham.In.Motion dance company, received a BFA from SUNY Purchase and an MFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Among his many prestigious awards, Abraham received the MacArthur Fellowship, the Doris Duke Artist Award, United States Artists Ford Fellowship, the Bessie Award for Outstanding Performance in Dance, and the Princess Grace Award for Choreography.

His work, which blends traditional, modern, and classical techniques with hip-hop, has been performed around the United States and abroad to great acclaim. In addition to performing and developing new works for his company, Abraham recently finished touring a new pas de deux for himself and former New York City Ballet Principal Dancer Wendy Whelan, and choreographed a new commissioned work for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and the Chicago Dancing Festival. In December 2015, Abraham premiered a new work for the Juilliard School and his second commission for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. OUT Magazine labeled Abraham as the “best and brightest creative talent to emerge in New York City in the age of Obama.”

About Purchase College–SUNY

Purchase College, part of the State University of New York (SUNY) network of 64 universities and colleges, was founded in 1967 by Governor Nelson Rockefeller. His aspiration for Purchase was to create a dynamic campus that combined conservatory training in the visual and performing arts with programs in the liberal arts and sciences, in order to inspire an appreciation for both intellectual and artistic talents in all students. Today, Purchase College–SUNY is a community of students, faculty, and friends where open-minded engagement with the creative process leads to a lifetime of intellectual growth and professional opportunity. For more information about the College, visit www.purchase.edu.