Take a Bow: Five Professors Transformed Music, Theater, Art and Architecture at Lehigh

218 years. That’s the astounding number of years that arts professors Paul Salerni, Steven Sametz, Augustine Ripa, Lucy Gans and Christine Ussler ’81 have spent cumulatively in the consequential task of teaching, mentoring and shaping the futures of Lehigh students over more than four decades.

As individuals, each has made a significant impact in their discipline and, together, on Lehigh.

The university was at a crossroads in 1979 when Salerni, Sametz and Ripa arrived looking for a place to share their artistic passions—Salerni and Sametz in music and Ripa in theater. Gans arrived a couple years later and Ussler soon after that, both in art and architecture.

To put it into historical context, this was five years after Lehigh went co-educational and the university was figuring out how to evolve from a male school seen as focused on engineering and business to one more broadly concerned with shaping well-rounded students of both sexes.

They seized the moment.

Says Sametz: “The then-dean who hired me told me Lehigh was an ‘infertile field for the arts,’ and he did not expect me to stay. I don’t know if that was a challenge, but I think we might have shown there was a lot here waiting to happen.”

The number of choral groups quadrupled, providing abundant opportunities for students to perform and have their creations performed. A new Department of Theatre was created. The art department expanded to the Department of Art, Architecture and Design.

And Lehigh’s commitment to the arts became engraved in stone in 1997 with the opening of Zoellner Arts Center, which gave the music and theater departments a beautiful home with abundant rehearsal and performance spaces, and included a first-class art gallery and repository for Lehigh’s art collection.

Music, theater and visual art were always part of Lehigh’s tradition, but during the decades dominated by these professors, the arts became a draw for students of all disciplines and a powerful recruiting tool. Students soaked up opportunities and took their passion out into the world as Future Makers themselves. Some have become architects, artists, composers, directors or professors; others, engineers, lawyers and scientists with a rich engagement in their creative side.

The five also found Lehigh to be a supportive laboratory to create their own art—operas, sculptures, choral works.

As they prepare to retire—officially at the end of 2024 and spring of 2025—there’s talk of traveling, spending time with grandchildren and another chapter of artistic creation. There has been much reflection on, and much praise, for their contributions in both private and public demonstrations—concerts, dinners, exhibitions, video tributes and more.

Here are snapshots of the careers of these influential professors.

MUSIC

Paul Salerni and Steven Sametz

Former students surprised Paul Salerni, the NEH Distinguished Chair in the Humanities and professor of music, with a life-affirming tribute concert at Zoellner Arts Center Sept. 24, 2023. They performed original works and offered testimonials of affection and gratitude.

Salerni—“Coach” to his students—was celebrated as a champion of the arts at Lehigh, as well as an indefatigable mentor and friend. The concert was organized by a team that included Sametz, who will be feted in spring, and Salerni’s sons—Domenic, a violinist with the Attacca Quartet, and Miles, a percussionist with the Philadelphia Ballet Orchestra.

Salerni and Sametz arrived at Lehigh at the same time, embracing the challenge to build something lasting. With Salerni leading the instrumental activities and Sametz the choral, they guided the music department through an unprecedented period of growth. The basic facts tell much of the story.

“I can think of nothing else this world needs more than for someone to care, to encourage and to coach them, and then to release them out into the world and begin the cycle anew,” says Laberge, who has led an effort to raise money for an endowed scholarship in Salerni’s honor.

Sametz’s journey mirrors that of Salerni, but in the choral arts. Fresh from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Yale, he took over as director of Choral Arts, only the fifth director in 155 years. Sametz directs Lehigh University Choral Arts—an umbrella term for the Lehigh University Choir, Lehigh Choral Union, the tenor-bass Glee Club and Dolce, the treble choir. He founded the Lehigh Summer Choral Composers Forum, which brings aspiring composers from around the world to Lehigh every summer.

“The program seemed like there was a lot of room for growth,” says Sametz. “I don’t know that the university anticipated the growth that would happen. It was a wide-open playing field. Nobody had any expectations, and we could dream big.”

As founding director of the Lehigh Choral Union in 1985, Sametz created a successful community outreach program that brings students, faculty, staff and community members together for several concerts a year. Over a hundred community members come to campus every Monday for rehearsal.

An Annual Gift to the Community by Lehigh University on Exposure

One is Peter Stinson ’91 ‘01G, who is now serving as manager of the Choral Union. An engineering and management student who is now a semi-conductor design manager, he knows firsthand the opportunities Sametz provided for those interested in music.

“All of us were majoring in something else,” he recalled, “but we enjoyed singing as a group and doing these incredibly challenging pieces that we wouldn’t have gotten the chance to do if we had gone somewhere else.”

Sametz is the Ronald J. Ulrich Professor of Music, one of two endowed chairs in music. He was instrumental in establishing the Cutler-Sametz Choral Arts Scholarships for students, as well as garnering important support for the choral program from Robert Teufel '59; Peter Finkel '81; the Sebastian family in memory of their son, Bear Sebastian '92; Dan Franceski '64; Robert Shabaker '59; and the Pervall family in memory of Stephanie Pervall '85.

Affectionately known as “Doc” to his students, Sametz has taken the choir around the world. He has led choral arts in performances at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall and Geffen Hall in New York. The final hurrah will be in May, when he leads Lehigh choral participants and alumni on a nine-day concert tour of Portugal.

“It’s always great to see alumni who want to come back and sing with us and share the gift of Lehigh University with audiences everywhere,” he says. “The choral alumni list is second only to the athletic department. It’s one of our lasting legacies.”

Outside of Lehigh, Sametz has been the director of the elite a cappella chamber choir The Princeton Singers for 25 of its 40 years. The choir has been artist-in-residence at Lehigh. Sametz is a renowned choral composer with commissions from around the world.

THEATER

AUGUSTINE RIPA

It’s not an overstatement to call Gus Ripa the founder of Lehigh’s Department of Theatre.

Lehigh had theater classes and performance opportunities when Ripa arrived in 1979 as an assistant professor in the Department of English, division of speech and theater. But his goal was to create a theater department and bring the joy of theater to a wider group of students.

The Department of Theatre was officially established in 1989. And Ripa took it one step further, securing accreditation in 1990 by the National Association of Schools of Theatre (NAST). Over the years the department has grown from three to seven tenured faculty, with many more staff and adjuncts. Ripa was department chair for 18 years.

After earning his MFA in directing at Northwestern, Ripa spent three years teaching students at Illinois Wesleyan. He came to Lehigh, he says, “in search of a good school with bright students, accomplished faculty and the dedication to ‘going to college’ as a major undergraduate goal.”

Ripa’s style and vision led to prestigious positions outside the theater department. He was associate dean of undergraduate programs for four years and director of the Eckhardt Scholars program, the arts and sciences flagship honors program, also for four years. Ripa says those positions made him feel like a full “citizen of the college and of Lehigh.”

VISUAL ARTS

LUCY GANS

Gans was the first woman hired as a tenure-track professor in the Department of Art and Architecture. It was 1981, and after working at other institutions, the young art school grad came to teach and create. At Lehigh, she wasn’t pigeonholed—she could teach both 2-D and 3-D and direct her own art studio practice, creating sculpture and drawings. She could pursue her interest in women’s studies and feminist issues.

Gans became an advocate for the importance of art in a liberal arts education, which was the title of the graduation address she gave in 1988 in Packer Chapel at the invitation of former Lehigh President Peter Likins.

“I love introducing students to art marking. I think of art as a lifelong skill that one can always fall back on regardless of what their profession is,” she says. “I think the way I’ve shaped art education has been to put everyone in front of a diverse array of ideas and modalities. To show students there isn’t just one way to solve a problem and that we can learn so much from things that can go wrong and how to push through and keep going.”

Gans’ optimism and passion influenced Stacie Brennan ‘03, now is the inaugural curator of education at Lehigh University Art Galleries, after spending five years as senior director of visual arts at ArtsQuest in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Her job at Lehigh is to create opportunities for both campus and community to engage with the collection and build visibility for the museum.

ARCHITECTURE

CHRISTINE USSLER ’81

After graduating in 1981 from Lehigh with a Bachelor of Art in Architecture and Urban Studies, Ussler found her way back three years later. She had just received a Master of Architecture from Columbia University when an assistant professor of architecture, Paul Felder, invited her to work with him at his Easton architectural practice, The Architectural Studio, and assist him with teaching. It was the beginning of a 40-year career as a teacher and also as the owner of her own architectural practice.

As Ussler worked her way from adjunct to professor of practice, she also grew a South Bethlehem architectural practice, Artefact, which specializes in historic buildings, major adaptive reuse projects of historic complexes and new buildings.

Her professional work has been a boon for students studying architecture. She has been committed to providing experiential learning opportunities and connecting students with the community.

“The practice experience has been an important part of my teaching pedagogy at Lehigh,” says Ussler. “I enjoyed bringing real community problems and opportunities into the classroom for students to study, analyze and design for.”

Projects include one in the Fall 2023 semester, in which students designed prototypes for art display panels for the South Bethlehem Greenway (under construction in Spring 2024 semester) and another involving the design and construction of the Harmony Pavilion on the Greenway in 2012 with University Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Norman Girardot. The New York Times wrote a story in the late 1990s about a student project addressing the reuse of the Bethlehem Steel site.