As she holds her falconry glove in the air, releasing a red-tailed hawk into the woods, Sasha Truax ’25 watches from a distance as the bird learns to hunt for the first time.
A licensed falconry apprentice since the age of 15, Sasha has been making a positive impact in the world of conservationism as she supports young birds dealing with the harsh winter conditions in the Northeast.
“When these birds are out in the wild, they have to learn how to fly and hunt while they’re starving in the winter. What a falconry handler does is give these birds a chance to have a stable place to live, and they’ll get a meal even if they don’t catch something. It lets them learn how to hunt in a place where they have a safety net and then we release them back into the wild population,” she said.
The unique hobby, with the inherent caretaking responsibilities of a parent, has many parallels to her academic path at SUNY Potsdam where she’s pursuing a dual degree in psychology and music education at The Crane School of Music. Sasha is on course to be a dynamic classroom teacher after she receives her degree this spring. In the same way that she has been assisting hawks to develop into self-sufficient adults, she has also been helping music students build the foundational skills to succeed in life.
After completing three years of coursework in the music education program—which included hands-on practicums in local elementary and middle school classrooms—Sasha began her student teaching placements at Lynnwood Elementary, in Guilderland, and Algonquin Middle School, in Avril Park in the Fall of 2024.
“My mentors, Michelle Jantson and Lauren Jurcyznski were incredibly supportive and gave me access to countless resources and supported me through the whole placement. I got to learn strategies for classroom management, create a lot of lesson plans, and it just really helped to make me feel more comfortable and prepared for going into the field,” she said.
Now in her final semester at SUNY Potsdam, Sasha is looking ahead to a career as a music teacher, with a focus on special education. “I've taken a lot of classes in preparation for that. Crane is intense, but I've been able to succeed and be involved in everything because of the flexibility of the staff and professors here, and their willingness to work with me on solving different issues,” she said.
The classes she’s taken have been carefully curated to support her future role as a music educator, with courses geared toward band instrument repair, and instrument techniques focused on specific instruments.
“Many institutions have general instrument family courses, like winds or brass, but Crane gives its students a big advantage with classes specific to each instrument like saxophone, oboe, trumpet, or trombone. This really helped me during student teaching, to go in, pick up an instrument, and play with students. If I hadn't had that experience, I would have been severely struggling in that position,” she said. “My repair tech class had prepared me the most. I repaired so many instruments while I was at my placement.”
Her interdisciplinary approach—dovetailing music education and psychology—has allowed her to improve her classroom teaching skills, and use the knowledge from her psychology classes to better understand her students during her practicums and student teaching placements.
“Psychology is an incredibly effective addition to my teaching toolbox, for supporting education and knowing how students’ minds may be working,” she said. “I want to bring practices from special education and music therapy into the standard music education classroom, and use practices that I've learned from psychology to be able to support each one of my students.”
Over the past four years, she has taken advantage of numerous opportunities at SUNY Potsdam, including joining the Potsdam Bears’ swim team—which has been a perfect balance for her busy academic schedule. “Swimming has been great for my mental and physical health at college. I'm doing so much, my brain is constantly working, and then I go to practice and I have to stop thinking about a million things and just focus on the yards. It helps give my brain a rest and clears my head, as well as just being a good physical workout,” she said.
Another way that she has been able to decompress, is through her involvement in the Esports club on campus. What started as club with just a few members her freshman year, has continued to expand over the years, at one point reaching more than 50 members. Now, with her involvement as president of the club, a more permanent gaming lab has been established on campus.
“Esports was never my thing before college. I had only just started playing video games, and I had no experience with competitions, so I learned from everyone around me, and shared my excitement, and the club grew. The advisors and I kept pushing for a permanent space, and eventually, we got to design a new gaming lab for the campus. I have learned so much about administration, recruitment, and retention from this position. It's been a lot of hard work, but it's been very fun and it helped me get the idea and support for my Presidential Scholars Project,” she said.
Bridging her passion for esports and education, Truax applied for and was accepted into the prestigious Presidential Scholars program during her sophomore year. Her project, Supporting Esports in High Schools, has allowed her to create a framework for high school Esports teams to focus on health and wellness. Over the past two years, she has put together resource materials for high school teams targeting best practices for fitness and training, ergonomics, team building, and ways for the Esports teams to promote their programs.
“Many high schools already have Esports clubs, but it’s not an officially recognized high school sport and there are no formal guidelines for athlete wellness, or how to best facilitate improvement. I'm in the stage of my project where I'm visiting schools right now, so I'm connecting with them and going to share the resources that I made,” she said.
To help offset the cost of college, Sasha has also held a job at the Lougheed Center for Applied Learning since her freshman year. Working as a concierge for the library she helps students with a range of concerns and questions, assists them with printing or scanning documents, and acts as a point person to interface students with faculty at the Learning Commons.
Back at Crane, where she spends a significant amount of time mastering her skills as a percussionist and music educator, she formed one of the most valuable relationships of her life over the past four years, by meeting her future husband.
“We are very happy, and glad we found each other at this point in our lives. I wasn't at all looking for a relationship when I came to college, so it was a surprise to both Elijah and me when we initially hit it off. We're both percussionists in Crane and working closely together allowed us to become friends and fostered our relationship," she said.
As she wraps up her final semester and makes plans for her wedding and career, SUNY Potsdam continues to help build a solid foundation for her future.
“I chose Potsdam for the opportunities it provided me. I knew I wanted to go to school for music education, but I didn't want to sacrifice being able to participate in my other hobbies/activities. At most colleges, if you are a music student it’s very hard to do anything else. I knew I wanted to be involved on campus, and Potsdam encouraged that,” she said. “Though, my decision was made on the drive up to visit. I had done a few college visits already, but on each one, I got too tired to drive the whole way and had to switch with my mom. The drive to Potsdam was significantly longer, but I was excited enough that I drove the whole way here on my own, and that’s how I really knew—being that excited already helped me know I would enjoy going here for the next four years of my life.”
Article and Photos by Jason Hunter