Expressive Therapies

Dr. Mitchell Kossak, LMHC, REAT is a professor in the Department of Graduate Expressive Therapies at Lesley University. He served as Department Chair from 2006 to 2013. He was the President and Executive Co-Chair for the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association (IEATA) 2010-2016. He has been a licensed mental health counselor, since 1994, and is a Registered Expressive Arts Therapist (REAT).

He is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Applied Arts and Health and Co-Chair of the Institute for Arts and Health at Lesley University. His clinical work combines expressive arts therapies with body-centered approaches with a variety of populations addressing issues such as chronic pain, recovery from trauma, depression, anxiety, life transitions and relationships. In addition he has worked extensively with autistic children and adults.

Mitchell has trained in a variety of mind body modalities including Polarity Therapy, Craniosacral Therapy, Deep Tissue Massage and Bioenergetics. In Expressive Arts Therapies he has training in music therapy, experimental theater, psychodrama, and authentic movement. He studied Sound Healing with innovators in the field of sacred sound and transformation of consciousness, such as Dr. John Beaulieu author of Music and Sound in the Healing Arts and Silvia Nakkach director of the Vox Mundi Project. In addition to this training, he has studied and practiced energy based healing forms such as Tai Chi, Chi Kung, Vipassana meditation, and Iyengar yoga for over 30 years.

He earned his doctorate from the Union Institute and University in interdisciplinary studies with a concentration in Expressive Arts Therapy and transpersonal psychology. He has written about and presented his research on rhythmic attunement, improvisation, psychospiritual and community-based approaches to working with trauma and embodied states of consciousness at conferences nationally and internationally. He is the author of Attunement in Expressive Arts Therapy:  Toward an Understanding of Embodied Empathy. He is the Associate Editor of The Journal of Applied Arts and Health and Co-Chair of the Institute for Arts and Health at Lesley University. 

Mitchell Kossak is also a professional musician, performing for the past 30 years in the Boston area.

Dr. Robyn Cruz’s clinical work has spanned populations such as adults with serious and persistent mental illnesses and children and adolescents with trauma and substance abuse issues. Her doctoral degree is in Educational Psychology with a specialization in Measurement and Methodology. She has worked as a research methodologist and research consultant, taught doctoral students since 1995, and has taught graduate courses in dance therapy, research methods, and statistics to students from many disciplines in the US, Europe, and South America.

Her courses reflect her interests in creative arts therapies research that uses the broad range of available methods and particularly, incorporating research thinking and resources into creative arts therapies clinical practices. Her teaching philosophy and practice are grounded in a professional collaboration model that reflects skills honed by teaching statistics to doctoral students from many disciplines at the University of Arizona. She uses a model based on the fact that students learn least from an instructor's oral recitation of information and most from engaging the subject matter themselves.

Robyn believes that policy and leadership go hand-in-hand with creative arts therapies and are important for the continued development and viability of these professions. She has devoted years of service to the University and to the Creative Arts Therapies community at large. She served as Co-Chair for the Lesley University Institutional Review Board from 2012-2021, and as IRB member from 2005 to the present. She was featured in the Lesley University 2012 Annual Report.

She is a past President of the American Dance Therapy Association (ADTA), serving four years as Vice President and four years as President of the organization. In these capacities she regularly visited Washington, DC to speak with lawmakers about creative arts therapies with respect to access for clients and licensing. As ADTA President, she introduced the Multicultural and Diversity Committee to the ADTA Board of Directors. This was the first new standing committee created in the organization in over 25 years.

Robyn also brought the Dance/Movement Therapy Certification Board, a separate credentialing body for dance therapy, and new credentials (R-DMT and BC-DMT) into existence during her presidency, creating new professional opportunities and oversight for professional dance therapists.

She is a former editor of American Journal of Dance Therapy, and served as Editor-in-Chief of The Arts in Psychotherapy from 2002 to 2015. She is past Chairperson of the National Coalition for Creative Arts Therapies Associations.  

Dr. Karen Estrella, LMHC, REAT, MT-BC, ATR-BC, is a professor in the Department of Graduate Expressive Therapies at Lesley University. As a Registered Expressive Arts Therapist (REAT), Karen's work focuses on developing expressive arts therapy theory and practice. Her work includes an integrated arts approach to counseling and psychotherapy, and she has spent much of the past 20 years developing competencies and integrating theory in Expressive Arts Therapy.

In addition to being a Registered Expressive Arts Therapist, Karen is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and an active music therapist and art therapist, practicing community-based mental health counseling.

In addition to Expressive Arts Therapy as a unique specialization and discipline, Karen's research interests include issues of professional development and cultural identity for Counselors and Expressive Therapists. Karen has an interest in training, clinical practice, and supervision of Expressive Therapies; multicultural approaches to Expressive Therapies; arts-based and narrative research; psychodynamic psychotherapy and supervision and its applications to Expressive Therapies; and social action and activism through the arts, particularly when integrated with therapeutic practice.

Dr. Kelvin Ramirez is a Board Certified Registered Art Therapist (ATR-BC) and core faculty member of the Department of Graduate Expressive Therapies. Kelvin is a Board Member of FNE International, a 501(c)3 organization that partners with communities in developing nations to identify opportunities to advance housing, health and education. With that international experience, Kelvin continues to collaborate and develops programs with educators, clinicians, and community leaders in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and India. He has developed academic curriculum that build and reinforce initiatives in Nicaragua, The Dominican Republic, Haiti and India.

Prior to joining Lesley, Kelvin was the vice principal of a high school in the South Bronx where he developed and incorporated art therapy within educational systems to enhance student’s personal and academic growth. During his 9-year tenure as vice principal, art therapy was infused throughout the academic and therapeutic approaches of the school, increasing retention and shifting behavioral approaches to enhance students' socio-emotional development.

Kelvin has taught for the Counseling Division at the College of New Rochelle and the Clinical Art Therapy Program at Long Island University C.W. Post.

His current areas of interest and research include:

• The development of international art therapy initiatives that conform to the specific needs of communities
• Contemporary social justice issues
• How art therapy addresses or ignores systemic oppression
• The underrepresentation of people of color within the field of art therapy and the implications of this on theory and practice
• The connections between horticultural therapy and art therapy to transform communities

Teaching is important to Kelvin, because it is through this act of service that people are prepared to direct their destinies and author their own stories. It is a profession that entrusts educators with the malleable minds of the future. Kelvin holds fast to the unwavering ideals that brought him to education, including that social injustices can only be remedied by an educated populous, that an educated mind is a mind called into action for the betterment of all human kind, and that through educating our future generations, our positive influence on the world will continue long after we expire.

Dr. Deb Spragg, Associate Professor in the Department of Graduate Expressive Therapies, has been teaching at Lesley since 2005 when she began as a clinical instructor in supervision. A core faculty member since 2009, Deb has long had a keen interest in the teaching and supervision of Lesley students.

Deb's clinical focus was working with people with psychotic disorders. She championed the use of non-verbal and artistic means for facilitating contact with self and connection to others for hospitalized clients. She worked full-time for 15 years in clinical settings with individuals and groups in hospitals, residential treatment, and private practice.

Deb was also involved in hospice and attending the bereaved. Since joining the Lesley Community on a full-time basis in 2012, Deb has been a mentor to the clinical instructor community in her role as Director of Field Training in the Graduate Expressive Therapies Department.

Her focus is on the role of mindfulness and arts-based inquiry in reducing implicit bias, and she has been heavily involved in cross-university social justice initiatives, including the Lesley University Diversity Council. In her teaching and in her clinical work, Deb has drawn inspiration from her meditation practice. The role of difference in relationships and a relational view of health wellness are her life-long interests.

Dr. Raquel Stephenson is a board-certified, registered art therapist (ATR-BC) and a licensed creative arts therapist (LCAT). She joined Lesley in 2013 as a core faculty member of the Department of Graduate Expressive Therapies, in the Art Therapy Program. 
 
Prior to joining Lesley, Raquel was a 2010/2011 Fulbright Scholar to Estonia, where she taught in the Department of Applied Creativity at Tallinn University and continues to teach as a visiting guest lecturer. Raquel was on the faculty of the graduate art therapy programs New York University and the School of Visual Arts, and frequently is a visiting instructor at other institutions worldwide.   
 
Committed to improving the lives of older adults through the arts, Dr. Stephenson’s work has focused on a wide spectrum of older populations. She was co-founder and teaching artist for the Teaching Artist, Creative Approaches to Healthy Aging program, funded by two National Endowment for the Arts ArtWorks Grants, and founder, clinical supervisor, and program director of New York University’s Creative Aging Therapeutic Services. Raquel consults with emerging clinical art therapy programs worldwide and designed and implemented the first creative arts therapy program for older adults with dementia in Estonia.  

Raquel serves on the National Advisory Council and Program Advisory Committee of Arts for the Aging in Rockville, MD, and the Advisory Council of the Art Therapy Project in New York City. She also serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Creativity and Human Development.  

She is a Faculty Fellow of the Institute for Arts and Health here at Lesley University, and a member of the UNESCO-UNITWIN Chair on Life Design, Decent Work, and Sustainable Development. 

Raquel loves to be outdoors in any way possible, especially sailing, skiing, whitewater kayaking, hiking, and spending time with her family. While she loves New England, Raquel is an enthusiastic explorer and thrives on a journey anywhere.