Creative Expressions: The All College Sessions - The Art in All About Mentoring

David Fullard - Retired Senior Correctional Captain (Supervisor) with extensive training and experience in Investigative Techniques; Penology; Analysis of Conditions of Confinement in Local, State & Federal Correctional Facilities; Forensic/Clinical Psychology; Clinical Criminology/Treatment of the Offender; Criminal Psychology; and Substance Abuse/Chemical Dependency & Mental Health Treatment (assessment, diagnosis, and prevention). Extensive experience in supervision and management of inmate population and uniformed/civilian staff. I have taught numerous courses in the field of Community and Human Services (e.g., Multicultural Issues in Counseling and Psychotherapy; Social Work: Theory & Practice; Pharmacological Aspects of Substance Abuse; Theoretical Concepts of Psychoanalytic & Neo-Analytic Psychology; Issues in Criminal Justice Systems; The AfricanAmerican Experience in the Criminal Justice System; Women & Crime; Issues in Terrorism; Juvenile Delinquency; and Issues in Theoretical Criminology). Most of my mentoring has involved Criminal Justice, Community & Human Services, Substance and Alcohol Abuse, and the Social & Behavioral Sciences. My education and practice in the latter field has enabled me to embrace and utilize a Scholar-Practitioner Model in which scholarship and theoretical concepts are connected and used "out in the real world."

Donna Gaines has written for Rolling Stone, MS, the Village Voice, Spin, Newsday and Salon. Her work has been published in underground fanzines, numerous trade and scholarly collections, professional journals and textbooks. Subjects have included music, tattoos, youth, guns, pornography, TV talk shows, suburbia, spirituality, gender culture, technology and intergenerational love. Her photographs, liner notes, lyrics and poetry have been published or shown as well. A sociologist, journalist and New York State Master Licensed Social Worker, Dr. Gaines grew up in Rockaway Beach, Queens, a surf town made famous by the Ramones. With a Ph.D. in Sociology, and a Masters degree in Social Work Gaines is also a Reiki Master Teacher and garage artist with an interest in community, music, body-surfing, gardening, holistic healing, spirituality, creativity and recovery. An established scholar and expert on youth violence, suicide and subculture, Dr. Gaines has been interviewed extensively in newspapers, for documentaries, on radio and television. She has provided consulting services to attorneys defending young people in death penalty trials, to community leaders, school administrators, clergy, to producers and reporters in the print and broadcast media in the United States, Canada and Europe. Gaines has taught sociology at Barnard College of Columbia University and the Graduate Faculty of New School University. Since 2013, Gaines has mentored students in social science and human services at SUNY Empire State College. In 2017 the College awarded Dr. Gaines the Altes Prize for Exceptional Community Service. In 2019 she was named as one of the ”Women in the Arts” honorees by the Board of Directors of Artists in Partnership, Inc. “In recognition of creative contributions to our community.”  Gaines is the author of Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia's Dead End Kids, A Misfit’s Manifesto: The Sociological Memoir of a Rock & Roll Heart, and Why The Ramones Matter.

Betty Wilde-Biasiny is a painter and a printmaker and a Professor in visual arts at SUNY Empire State College. She is a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award for Individual Artists, earned an MFA from Columbia University and a BFA from Ohio University. 

Public collections include the United States Library of Congress, Print Collection, Washington, D.C., and a commission for Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, New York. Exhibitions include SACI Gallery, Florence, Italy; Usdan Gallery/Bennington College, Vermont; and John Jay College, 55 Mercer Gallery, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and the Painting Center, all in New York City. 

Before beginning her work at Empire State College, Betty taught and founded a community arts center-- Bronx River Restoration-Environmental Art Center--then became a curator at the Bronx Museum of the Arts.  She was also the Associate Director for En Foco, Inc., an organization dedicated to publishing and exhibiting photographs by artists of color.

"Throughout these past months, given the pandemic shutdown, engaging with my artwork has been paramount in keeping faith amongst such sadness and despair. I found the language of color, form, and light to be healing."