News
Faculty Retirements
Charles Cave, associate professor of art, retired in June 2006 after 19 years at Penn State.
Cave came to Penn State in 1987 as a printmaker and papermaker, and in the course of his work, developed an interest in artist’s books, installation and sculpture. He later developed and taught a series of courses on artist’s books. His books and prints are in collections at the British Museum, Library of Congress, Chicago Art Institute, Victoria and Albert Museum and Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Cave’s research addressing the intersection of art forms and media in experimental combinations of books, prints and sculpture provided him with many opportunities to collaborate with other artists and writers at Penn State. He says he is grateful to the School of Visual Arts and its skilled and generous staff. “My work over the past 19 years, both as a teacher and as an artist, owes much to them, to my students and to my colleagues.”
Cave received his B.F.A. from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and Post Graduate Certificate with Merit from Croydon College of Art and Design, London, England. Cave taught at the University of Alabama, Wright State University, University of Dayton and College of the Dayton Art Institute before joining the Penn State faculty. He was the director and founder of Sugerlift Press.
Cave recently completed building a studio in Julian, Pa., where he has begun to paint after a hiatus of 20 years. He intends to continue his work in sculpture and artist’s books, several of which are near completion, including Rust Belt Romance (a block book) and Peckerwood (a digital photo book). He says he’ll miss his interactions with students and faculty, but is “looking forward to a productive stage of my life as a full-time artist.”
Leslie Leupp, professor of art, retired in June 2006 after 18 years at Penn State.
Leupp directed the metal arts program in the Penn State School of Visual Arts since 1988 with his emphasis on metalsmithing and jewelry design. Elaborately rigged and physically involving, Leupp’s works transform the wearers into users, increasing their active role in the artistic relationship. Wielding nontraditional materials such as linoleum, Formica, vinyl, knitting needles, coils and twigs, he explores the possibilities of suspension and tension, both within the piece and upon the wearer’s body.
Leupp has an extensive exhibition record including national and international venues. A recent exhibition, Sculptural Concerns: Contemporary American Metalworking, was curated and shown by the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, and the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, Ind. A recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts grant, Leupp received his A.A. from Hesston Junior College, Hesston, Kan.; his B.A. from Bethel College, North Newton, Kan.; and M.F.A. in metalsmithing and jewelry design from Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind. Leupp taught at Indiana University and Ball State University before coming to Penn State.
Raymon Masters (’71 B.S. Architecture, ’75 M.S. Architectural Engineering), affiliate associate professor of architecture and senior research programmer in Academic Services and Emerging Technologies, retired in June 2006 after 35 years at Penn State.
Masters started working at Penn State in 1970 as an undergraduate student after Raniero Corbelletti, head of the Department of Architecture, asked him to teach the computer-aided design (CAD) option in architecture. Upon graduation, he was hired as a full-time instructor. Masters received his master’s degree in 1975 and was promoted to assistant professor. He had a joint appointment with the Department of Landscape Architecture for a number of years, where he team-taught the landscape construction sequence with Don Leslie and Jim DeTuerk.
A Fulbright-Hayes Senior Scholar and Gulbenkian Fellow, Masters’ experience is in computer graphics, computer-aided design and scientific visualization, including teaching, research and professional programming responsibilities at the University of Cincinnati, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Penn State. He is the author of more than 45 articles on art, design, planning, user-interface design and scientific visualization. He was a principal with Miller and Masters, a landscape architecture and land planning firm in Bellefonte, until 1997. One project of special interest was the zoning for Midtown Manhattan, for which his firm received a Progressive Architecture award. This work was significant because a computer analysis focused on the pedestrian expectation for daylighting on the street and how a proposed building would impact this expectation. His current interests include the visual display of quantitative information and stereoscopic computer graphics and other true 3-D technologies.
During the 1980s, when Masters was simultaneously employed at both Rensselaer and Penn State, he discovered a way to shorten the eight-hour commute—he earned his pilot’s license and condensed the trip to two hours. During his retirement, he plans to finish building an experimental aircraft and spend more time flying. He also plans to continue his research in the realm of digital fabrication, utilizing laser-cut and water-jet-cut designs in his projects, and maintain his expertise in modeling and visualization software with the intent of finding new venues for their application.
Richard A. Nichols, professor of theatre, will retire in December 2006 after 17 years at Penn State.
Nichols’ accomplishments span the classroom, the stage and an international field of research and publication. He is a widely known teacher of the Alexander Technique, which aligns the body and physically centers the actor in preparation for taking on the life of the scripted character. He has also taught acting, movement, introduction to graduate research, Asian theatre and Western dramatic literature. Nichols has directed more than 60 stage productions and continues to direct and act in University Resident Theatre Company and Pennsylvania Centre Stage productions. In addition, his international reputation continues to expand as a scholar and practicing artist of the Korean theatrical tradition. He recently served as a Fulbright visiting professor at the Korean National University of the Arts and Sungkyunkwan University (Korea’s oldest), and adjunct professor at Korea University in Seoul.
Nichols says he, like many teachers, often wonders “if the journey has left any imprint at all on students.” “My hope is that some students have seen me as a role model who felt always that my passion for the art of theatre would repay me many times over, and it did,” he adds.
A recipient of the College of Arts and Architecture Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching in 2006, Nichols received his B.A. from Michigan State University, M.F.A. from Ohio University and Ph.D. from the University of Washington. He taught at Clemson University, National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology, DePaul University, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Eastern New Mexico University, Ohio State University and Hiram College before joining the Penn State faculty.
Following his retirement, he and his wife, Sharleen, will be going on their first cruise and hope to revisit Australia if he is teaching in Korea. He also will focus on the completion of a large anthology of modern Korean plays. “I can look back on a career in which there were many mistakes, but few regrets. I shall miss Penn State, my theatre colleagues and the students, but it is time, not to retire, but to refocus my energies.”–FWM
eisenhower auditorium renovation
Summers at Penn State’s Eisenhower Auditorium are usually abuzz with the sounds of 4-H conventioneers, prospective students at Spend a Summer Day, and dozens of other activities. Not this year. The only buzz at University Park’s largest theatre was the noise from drills, saws and screwdrivers. The auditorium, home to the Center for the Performing Arts and its 28 full-time employees, was closed to the public while undergoing a $2 million renovation project.
The renovations, funded by the Pennsylvania Department of General Services, include refurbished seats on all three levels and upgraded aisle illumination in the seating areas. All of the approximately 2,600 seats were removed, repainted, restored with new cushions and fabric, and reinstalled.
Additional improvements include:
• lighting added under existing handrails for the steps in the side lobbies;
• new carpeting in all public spaces;
• four additional stalls in the lounge-level women’s restroom;
• connection to the University’s chilled water system allowing for use of air conditioning on demand;
• upgraded electrical and emergency power systems;
• a new fire alarm system.
Replacement of the auditorium’s hydraulic stage lift system with a spiral lift mechanism, a safety improvement funded separately by Penn State’s Office of Physical Plant, was done in conjunction with the renovations.
The 32-year-old auditorium, at the corner of Shortlidge and Eisenhower roads, was closed from just after spring 2006 commencement to early September. The Arts Ticket Center and Center for the Performing Arts staff offices remained open during the project. Events normally located in the auditorium during the summer were relocated to other venues. G.M. McCrossin Inc., of Bellefonte, was the general contractor. –JMR
