Alfred University News

Alumna returns to campus as visiting artist for Summer Arts at Alfred University 2022

Alfred Summer Arts 2022 kicked off this week at Alfred University, offering a wide variety of arts workshops to campus visitors.


ALFRED, NY – Alfred Summer Arts 2022 kicked off this week at Alfred University, offering a wide variety of arts workshops to campus visitors.

Visiting artists include Patsy Rausch ‘92, an Alfred University alumna and elementary art teacher at Kincaid Elementary School in Atlanta, GA. Rausch is teaching papermaking in her workshop “From Rag to Relevance, Hand Papermaking.”

A collaborator with the Peace Paper Project, an international community-arts initiative that utilizes traditional papermaking as a form of trauma therapy, social engagement and community activism, Rausch has been teaching students in her workshop to use a manually-driven Hollander beater to convert cotton rag into pulp, Once the pulp is beaten into a slurry, the class pours the slurry into a form, allows it to dry, then peels away a sheet of artisan paper.

Rausch also is a member of a larger Alfred University family. Her father, Paul Culley '60, is an alumnus who worked at Scholes Library. She is married to Jeff Rausch '92, son of Joyce '79 and James Rausch, who served respectively as Vice President of Business and Finance and Professor of Biology at Alfred University

“I grew up here,” she says. “I pretty much come back here every year, but I’ve never been here in a teaching capacity.”

Rausch teaches kindergarten through fifth-grade students at Kincaid Elementary School. “I love working with them,” she says. “I’ve also loved teaching this week….My (adult) students clean up after themselves and there aren’t so many shenanigans.”

She plans to stay in the area through July 4.

Summer Arts at Alfred University will continue through July with three more one-week sessions. For more information on programs, visit Summer Arts. 

In photo above, Patsy Rausch '92 leads students in a Summer Arts workshop on papermaking. She is pictured with, from left, Anita Vaubel and Zihao Chen.