Tarika Cefkin ’09 feels right at home in the Noble Center, St. Lawrence’s facility for the performing arts.  Perhaps that’s why she finally settled on speech and theatre (performance and communication arts beginning with the Class of 2010) as her major. Typical of the liberal arts, “It was always changing,” she says. “For a while I thought I wanted to do international relations and go into the foreign service, and I actually studied abroad in Shanghai, China. But I also thought about pre-med. And since I play the oboe, I briefly considered music.”

But once “Tari,” a Presidential Diversity Scholar from Denver, CO, and a Denver School of the Arts graduate, began taking acting classes, her decision was clear. “I joke with my friends that I get to go to class and play, because it’s so much fun. In my acting styles class, we covered Greek tragedies, Elizabethan plays, and we even did the Restoration period with costumes,” she says. “During my musical theatre class, we had a workshop with an assistant director who works on Broadway, and after he spoke about auditioning techniques, he taught us a dance from ‘Hairspray.’ ”

Tari, a Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority sister, is also involved with the Laurentian Singers and has participated in the group’s Spring Break tours to California and Puerto Rico, performing both choral pieces and some pop pieces. She’s been a new-student orientation leader, and has been a member of the Student Alumni Association.