Richard Brad Medoff is a product of the region having been born and raised in The Bronx. His aptitude in math was nurtured at Bronx High School of Science and he discovered his love for acting at State University of New York at Stony Brook from which he graduated with a BA in Theatre. After numerous years of pursuing a career in acting he return to school earning a MFA in Creative Writing: Playwriting from Brooklyn College. Having discovered how education changed his writing he decided to back-track and then continue on for a PhD in Theatre at CUNY Graduate Center where he wrote his dissertation on “The Dramatization of Paintings.” After graduating he was hired to teach in a program for at risk students at LaGuardia Community College called New Student House. New Student House consisted of four inter-related courses that reinforced each subject matter and a counselor. After two years he was hired to teach in the Speech Program at Mercy College. At Mercy College he has been the faculty advisor for the Drama Club and Creative Minds Poetry Club and was on the General Education Committee which created the template for our most recent changes and adaptations. Dr. Medoff’s research focus has been on the meeting points and overlapping of media especially in stories that have gone through a trans-mediation or “ekphrasis.” He is a specialist in Edward Albee and works with a translator of Contemporary Spanish and Catalan Theatre.
Majoring in Theatre did not prepare me for the multitude of jobs I would need to survive being “between engagements;” however, my General Education did. I found that it wasn’t the topics you studied in school that were important but rather the cognitive patterns that you learned. Through General Education one finds the pattern in one discipline and allows you to apply it to a phenominum in another discipline. The finding of pattern in numbers, in words, and in thoughts helps you find the connections in music, art, history, politics, history, philosophy and math and ultimate leads to learning to teach oneself. With out any specific courses and armed with the skills and cognitive patterning I had received through General Education I even taught myself the language of Landlord/Tenant legalese and became the supervisor of a department of paralegals involved with Warrants and Evictions. Through General Education one finds the pathway to free oneself, to free one’s thoughts, in order to be able to take the reigns of responsibility and rule over one’s own destiny.
