Dean of Athletics Joe Sterrett ’76 announced that after 48 years of working at Lehigh, he will be retiring this month. Sterrett attended Lehigh as an undergraduate student and was a student-athlete. The Brown and White sat down with him to reflect on his time at Lehigh and discuss his career leading Lehigh Athletics.
How did you get started here at Lehigh?
I was going to law school, but I eventually decided to defer my law school admission for a year and come back and help out, because I felt like I owed that to the university, and I fell in love with coaching. I took a Graduate Program in Educational Leadership and fell in love with graduate study, and so I stayed in coaching for seven years. I really enjoyed what I was learning and forgot about my career in law and decided to make a career in higher education.
What made you fall in love with coaching?
There’s something very special about the sense of team that occurs in sports. It’s all about the relationships and the people. I was fortunate to be a part of a coaching staff during a period of time when we won a national championship, finished second one year and we had an undefeated regular season.
What was it like transitioning from playing to coaching?
I think the natural tendency is to feel like I want to be out there doing it, but I always enjoyed the intellectual side of the game: the schematic and design aspects of what we were doing. I really did enjoy seeing people that I coached experience success and seeing them enjoy their experience as a result of it.
How did you become athletic director?
I went to grad school the entire time I was coaching, and then I was invited to help Lehigh start a National Student Recruitment Program. I spent three years developing and implementing a program that was intended, essentially, to diversify the geographic base for Lehigh. And we had a lot of success doing that in that period of time. One day they asked me if I would oversee an enrollment initiative, which was kind of a new terminology at that point, but what it really meant was taking on oversight responsibilities, supervisor responsibilities for admissions and financial aid. I did that for about three and a half years, and then, in a convoluted way, the invitation to step back into athletics and lead the athletics department ended up coming my way. It was just kind of indirect the way it happened. I was asked by the university president at that point to come back and take over athletics in 1989.
Have you always had a passion for sports and athletics?
I grew up like a lot of kids, loving sports, playing sports, and I’ve never lost that. I think what grew to be a parallel interest—and really became very much an integrated interest—is an interest in education and in the learning process. The personal growth and development process for young people, especially at this age—the college age—I think it’s something that I have a great passion for…People kind of figure out what it is that they love to do and what they might want to do with their life. I find that to be a really exciting and stimulating domain in which to work, and to do that with and through sports, I think is extra special. I mean, it’s kind of combining two things that I have great passion for: the value and the importance of education, and the joy and fun and the lessons that can be learned through sport.
What has been your favorite part about being at Lehigh or favorite memory?
It’s all people-oriented. I just feel like I have gotten to know and gotten to watch so many young people grow up and become really special and distinctive individuals. It’s a very special place that creates an environment where that kind of growth can occur in so many people, and to have been a part of that and to have been in a place where I can really watch it happen has been a gift.
What has been the biggest challenge you have faced?
Funding a college athletics program is a significant challenge. There’s a limit as to how much you can actually charge people and expect them to pay. And there’s a limit to how much you can generate from athletics activities or from philanthropic support. So finding the right balance that will provide the best experience at a cost, at a level, that we can afford is a constant challenge.
What are you hoping to leave behind?
The focus has been for this institution to embrace the value of competitive athletic experience as part of the educational and developmental process for young people. I think this is all part of the educational process, and I think we have worked really hard to have a program that lives into that mindset. I think we’ve been consistently convicted about ensuring that our athletes are good students, and good students can also be really good competitive athletes, and I’m most proud of that. I hope that sustains because that’s, at the end of the day, at the core of the process, that’s what matters the most.
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