Faculty & Staff

MFA, Radford University

Mary Beth Akre earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Loyola College, a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and a Master of Fine Arts from Radford University. Expressive landscape is her main area of interest and art heroes include Wolf Kahn, Helen Frankenthaler, and Jim Dine. Her paintings can be found in private, corporate, and public collections throughout the United States.

M.E. University of South Carolina, Educational Research; M.M.E. University of South Carolina, Music Education

Ph.D., Tufts University; M.A., Tufts University; B.A., Wellesley College
Natka Bianchini's Personal Website

Teaching Areas: Theatre History, Special Topics in Literature and Criticism, Directing, Experience of Theatre
Research Interests: Beckett and Theatre of the Absurd, Queer Theatre and Film

Ph.D., University of Chicago

Teaching Areas: Western Art, Medieval Art, Islamic Art, African American Art, and Museum Studies
Research Interests: Gothic manuscript illumination, gender, representations of royal and bureaucratic power

M.A., University of Kansas

Julia has worked in the area as an actor, teacher, and director for the last 15 years. Her work as an actor includes: Center Stage: As You Like It (Le Beau/Audrey), Pride and Prejudice (Mrs. Gardiner); Everyman Theatre: Blithe Spirit (Edith), The Beaux Stratagem (The Country Girl/The Fat Lady), Our Town (Mrs. Soames); Shakespeare Theatre Company: Henry IV Part 1 and 2 (Lady Northumberland/Ensemble); Taffety Punk: Phaeton (Clymene), Pericles (Dionyza), Romeo and Juliet (Paris); Profile Theatre: A Lesson From Aloes (Gladys); International Theatre/Vienna: Children of Lesser God (Sarah). Film/TV: Leverage (TNT); Unsolved Mysteries (Fox TV); Anoosh of the Airways (Front Pocket Films). Her work as a fight choreographer includes: Single Carrot: Peter Pan, Year of the Rooster, and A Beginners Guide to Deicide; Loyola University: Macbeth, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Baal, The Odyssey, Oedipus, and Peter Pan; assistant fight choreographer at Everyman Theatre: The Beaux Stratagem. Some of her directing credits include Loyola University: The Heidi Chronicles, and Carver Center for Arts and Technology: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Line, and Romeo and Juliet. Julia has worked as a Theatre instructor at Loyola University, University of Baltimore, and Carver Center for Arts and Technology.

MFA, Maryland Institute College of Art

Heather Braxton is a Baltimore-based artist, teacher, and activist. She is a full-time Teaching Assistant Professor of Photography at Loyola University Maryland. She earned her Bachelor of Art in Photography, Graphic Design, and Fine Arts from Western Connecticut State University. In 2016, she earned her Master of Fine Arts in Photographic and Electronic Media from Maryland Institute College of Art. Her work largely focuses on social, political, and/or personal boundaries, and takes form in photography, video, text, printmaking, book, and installation. She has worked with groups advocating equity, visibility, and equality in the arts over the past 8 years.

Ph.D., Bowling Green State University; MFA, University of Texas, Austin

Teaching Areas: Acting, Directing, New Works Creation
Research Interests: Solo Performance, Dramatic Adaptation

B.S., University of Phoenix

Barry Caudill is a 23-year veteran of the computer and video gaming industry, starting as a tester at the original Microprose studio in Hunt Valley, MD and culminating as Director of Gameplay Development at Firaxis Games. Throughout that time, he managed numerous departments including audio, testing, writing, game design, and production. He is also a lifetime recording and performing musician in jazz, pop, rock and funk. He is currently working with Crack the Sky, Technicolor Motor Home, The Speakers Of the House, Honest Lee Soul, and two big bands - The Melting Pot and The Don Arnold Big Band.

M.M., Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University

Teaching Areas: Class Piano
Research Interests: History of Piano, Classical Piano Music, Piano Fundamentals

M.A., University of Baltimore

After earning an undergraduate degree in Studio Arts and Photography, Noelle Dichiera pursued her passion for art, technology, and science through the Master of Arts in Integrated Design program at the University of Baltimore. Noelle has been teaching graphic design, graphic design history, web design, and digital media classes at Loyola University for over 20 years.

Lic. Phil., M.Ed., Fordham University; M.A., S.T.M., Woodstock College

M.M., Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University

MFA, Maryland Institute College of Art

MFA, Maryland Institute College of Art
Billy Friebele's Personal Website

Billy Friebele is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection between digital, kinetic, and sculptural forms. Billy was a Hamiltonian Artist Fellow and one of the first makers-in-residence at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. Central to his research and teaching are a concern for the tension between our mediated digital experience and the materiality of the environment. He has exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Orlando Museum of Art, the Art Museum of the Americas, the Katzen Center for the Arts, and the Kreeger Museum among other venues nationally and internationally. Billy earned a BA in Philosophy from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Billy Friebele is an Associate Professor of Art at Loyola University Maryland.

MFA, Maryland Institute College of Art

Teaching Areas: Two-Dimensional Art

M.A., Temple University

Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin

M.M., San Francisco Conservatory of Music

MFA, Mount Royal School of Art at Maryland Institute College of Art

M.M., Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University; BMED, Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University

Teaching Areas: Music Fundamentals, Class Piano

Ph.D., Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts

Christopher Lonegan studied painting, philosophy and art history at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the University of the Arts, earning a multidisciplinary BFA. He received an MFA from the Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art and a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Critical Theory from the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. His studio work involves narrative images, and he has written and presented papers on the philosophy of art, interdisciplinary curriculum design, and the philosophical history of anatomical Illustration. Dr. Lonegan teaches intertextual studio classes at Loyola University.

MFA, University of New Mexico

Janet Maher has been a prolific exhibiting artist for more than four decades. Her prints, drawings, artist books, collages, assemblages, digital images and works in clay are in many public and private collections. She is a member of the Artists' Cooperative Gallery of Westerly in Rhode Island, a Signature Member of the National Collage Society, and a member of the South County Art Association, Jamestown Arts Center, Warwick Center for the Arts and College Book Art Association.

MFA, American University
Jon Malis' Personal Website

Jon Malis is an interdisciplinary artist investigating the representation and display of visual content, focusing on how various methods of presentation and production can alter the viewer’s interpretation, and experience of visual culture. He has been recognized with the National Photography Award from the von Lebig Art Center, grants from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, semi-final nominations for the Lumen, Sondheim and the Trawick prizes and a Panavision New Filmmaker's Grant. He’s exhibited extensively in the Washington, DC region, nationally, and internationally; reviewed in the Washington Post and City Paper; and featured on Maryland Public TV and PBS.

MFA, St. Mary’s College of California

John McAfee is a dance lighting designer and production manager based in Baltimore. John received his MFA in Dance Design and Production from St. Mary's College of California in 2019. In addition to teaching at Loyola, John has recently lit Jayne Bernasconi's Air Lines, GRIDLOCK Dance's Veritas, and BlueShift Dance's The Male Gaze and Foodless Food.

B.A., Bard College

Teaching Areas: Video I, Video II, Animation & Motion Graphics, Multimedia Storytelling, Graphics I

Ph.D., Harvard University; M.A., Courtauld Institute of Art

Teaching Areas: Italian and Northern Renaissance Art, Michelangelo, Colonial Latin America, History of Prints, History of Posters
Research Interests: Michelangelo, Early Colonial Latin America Art, Scientific Perspective

M.M., Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University

Teaching Areas: Guitar Studies, Music History, Music Theory

MFA, Mount Royal School of Art at Maryland Institute College of Art

MFA, University of Maryland; B.A., Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Daniel Pinha's Personal Website

Teaching Areas: Introduction to Scenic Design, Introduction to Theatre Design, Experience of Theatre, Computer Rendering for Theatre Design, Costume Design

DMA, University of South Carolina; M.M., The University of North Carolina at Greensboro; B.M., Belmont University

Teaching Areas: Concert Choir, Cantorei, Conducting Methods, Orchestration and Arranging, Core Music Courses
Research Interests: Anglican Revival Period, Baroque Oratorio

DMA, Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University
Michael Rickelton's Personal Website

Michael Rickelton is a composer of “extremely attractive and thoughtfully shaped” music (Music Web International). Composer Lori Laitman described Michael as having “a great and clear gift for writing for the voice.” The inspiration for his work encompasses poetry, prose, visual arts, and diverse musical influences from Hässler to Nine Inch Nails. Recordings of Michael’s music have been released by Albany, Delos, and Petrichor Records. In addition to his faculties positions, he co-organizes Go Compose North America, an organization offering online workshops and opportunities for young composers.

M.A., University of Maryland, College Park
Megan Rook-Koepsel joined the Julio Fine Arts Gallery in August 2018 as Gallery Director. She has curated and organized numerous exhibitions throughout the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore region. Rook-Koepsel formerly served as graduate coordinator for the Stamp Gallery and Contemporary Art Purchasing Program at the University of Maryland College Park, and more recently as exhibitions manager at Arlington Arts Center. Rook-Koepsel holds a B.A. in art history from Brandeis University and an M.A. in art history with a focus on Contemporary Art and Theory from the University of Maryland, College Park.

MFA, Indiana University

Dan Schlapbach’s work has been exhibited locally and nationally. Mr. Schlapbach’s research interests include the history of photography, alternative photographic processes such as stereo photography and wet-plate collodion, and digital imaging. He received an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council in 2008 and 2011.

M.S., Towson University; B.S. Towson University

Mark St. Pierre has been a music educator for the past 34 years and a freelance percussionist for 39 years. He is an accomplished musician having played in many local groups covering many styles including symphonic, pop, rock, funk, jazz, and Latin. Mark has shared the stage with many notable musicians including Dennis Chambers, Gary Granger, and Scott Ambush, is a drum set/hand drums clinician and is currently the director of music ensembles at Loch Raven Technical Academy and Jazz Ensemble/Jazz Combo at Loyola University.

Ph.D., Stanford University

Teaching Areas: Greek and Roman Art and Architecture
Research Interests: Athenian History, Thucydides

DMA, University of Maryland
Anthony D. Villa's Personal Website

Dr. Anthony D. Villa is an active jazz musician performing regularly with his trio, the Anthony Villa Trio, and as the pianist with the Melting Pot Big Band, the Blue Big Band, and the Cold Spring Jazz Quartet. The Washington Post has praised his work as "the rare piece that sounds fresh while hinting at the near past" and as "deserv[ing] a lasting place in the musical firmament."

DMA, University of Maryland
M.M., Cleveland Institute of Music
B.M., Colburn Conservatory of Music