Rachel Cellini Morris has spent her career making art and sharing her love of art with her students and community. Rachel spent more than 30 years teaching art as a professor at Notre Dame College in South Euclid, Ohio. During her tenure, she received three teaching awards, initiated a campus art gallery, and curated 80 exhibitions for both professional artists and students. She has been exhibiting her work in group shows for the past 20 years in addition to giving presentations, gallery talks, and workshops. 

Rachel is exceptionally proud of establishing the Tolerance Resource Center at Notre Dame College in 1997, renamed as the Abrahamic Center in 2008. The Center is a faculty initiative that sponsors humanities and creative arts programming to foster greater tolerance on campus and in the wider community to address issues related to social injustices. Rachel has maintained her Seton Hill connection for more than 50 years. 

In 2010, she worked with Sister Gemma Del Duca and received a National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education travel and tuition grant to participate in a three-week program for educators on the Holocaust at Yad Vashem in Israel. Since retiring from Notre Dame College in 2017, Rachel was named Associate Professor Emerita and began volunteering at Morgan Paper Conservatory in Cleveland, Ohio – the largest arts center in the United States dedicated to papermaking, book arts, and letterpress printing. 

She continues to serve on the Exhibition Committee of Art Books Cleveland and has worked with a public library for several years teaching children how to make their own books and tell their own stories. Beyond her professional accomplishments, Rachel is proud to celebrate 50 years of marriage in October and enjoys spending time with her two daughters and five grandchildren. 

The Distinguished Alumni Leadership Award is one of the highest honors given to a Seton Hill graduate. Since establishing the award in 1987, Seton Hill has honored more than 300 Setonians as distinguished alumni. The award recognizes leadership in education, business, science and technology, the arts, volunteerism and philanthropy.