A first-year communications student is also a three-time Broadway dancer and the winner of a Food Network cooking show.
Steve Konopelski, 46, danced in the Broadway productions of “Hot Feet” in 2006, “Beauty and the Beast” in 2007 and “Gypsy,” which closed in 2009.
“I just really enjoyed my performing life,” said Konopelski, who went on to appear in a handful of TV shows and movies.
Konopelski closed his stage career after “Gypsy,” saying, “I got tired of not really being able to have a life.”
Konopelski said actors are always waiting to see what their next show is, so job security is hard to find.
“It’s always this sort of like a limbo kind of situation,” Konopelski said.
Konopelski, who teaches non-credit cooking classes at AACC, went on to study at the French Culinary Institute, where he graduated in 2012. Later, he appeared as a contestant in three Food Network cooking shows.
He won “Haunted Gingerbread Showdown” in 2018 and was the runner up for “Holiday Baking Championship” in 2015. He went back to compete in “Holiday Baking Championship: Runners Up Redemption” in 2017.
Konopelski had watch parties for the 2015 episodes at a pub in Denton, Md., which drew a standing room-only audience.
“It was so wonderful to be adopted by this community that, like, welcomed us with open arms,” said Konopelski, who had opened a bed and breakfast in Denton before the season aired.
Still, Konopelski said his proudest accomplishment was opening his own bakery in Easton in 2020.
“I think having my own business was probably one of the real big highlights of my professional career all across the board,” Konopelski said. “And that was so fulfilling to me as a business owner, as a chef, as a human being that I could appreciate my hard work and how it was impacting somebody else’s life in the moment in the experience.”
Konopelski is one semester away from getting his associate degree. He decided to combine his love of food with his desire to become a food writer and major in communications.
“I think coming to school later in life is one of the best decisions that I’ve ever made,” Konopelski said.
His professor, Jessica Mattingly, agreed.
“He’s a great student,” Mattingly, academic chair for communications, said. “He has great life experience that showcases that he’s successful and driven and I think he kind of ups the responses of the other students.”
Konopelski offered some advice for his younger classmates: “Be honest and true to who you are right now.”