Elise was a teaching artist in the New York City Public Schools for over twenty-five years with programs including Studio in a School. She is currently a teaching artist with the Battery Park City Parks Conservancy. In addition to the Antarctica grant she is a recipient of a 2012 Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Individual Support Grant, and residency fellowships at Civitella Rainieri in Italy and at the MacDowell Colony, in the USA. She has also received a New York Foundation for the Arts grant for her drawings in 2001. She has shown her work extensively throughout the USA and in Europe.