In November, Sarah Wigley closed Oklahoma at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Lyric Theatre. The production, which had been in rehearsal since September, featured her voice students along with dance and theater students.

Directing the musical also was an example of how her life has come full circle.

“Our whole family has done musical theater together since I was young,” says Wigley, a clinical associate professor/contemporary voice specialist in the U of I’s School of Music and resident director of the Lyric Opera program.

Her father, Paul Wigley, a U of M alumnus, works with community theater companies and was choral director at Lakeville North High School. Her mother, Rebecca Wigley, also a U of M graduate, has been in community theater productions. In 1998, Paul directed a production of Oklahoma that featured Rebecca as Aunt Eller and Sarah, their only child, as Ado Annie.

“They loved musicals. I grew up watching the VHS tapes of Carousel, The King and I, and Gypsy,” Sarah Wigley says. Her parents also took her to Minneapolis to see productions on stage.

In 2005, Sarah Wigley earned her undergraduate degree in voice performance from the University of Minnesota. She went on to work with the Minnesota Opera, Guthrie Theater, Minnesota Centennial Showboat, Skylark Opera Theatre, and Mystery Café.

“I was getting good professional work for being 21 or 22,” she says.

But she also knew she wanted to do more.

After earning her master’s degree from Colorado State University, she was tapped for a musical theater professor position at the University of Northern Colorado.

Five years later, she was recruited by the University of Illinois, which was creating a new curriculum—a bachelor of musical arts in Lyric Theatre. She was hired as a vocal specialist and has been there for 11 years.

A teacher’s challenge

Sarah Wigley says the best thing about her work is the students. It’s also the most difficult. One reason: their concerns about the cost of attending college.

“I have many discussions with students and prospective students,” she says. “The ability to give a scholarship makes or breaks them coming to our school. I see it happening every year.”

She also remembers how important a four-year scholarship was to her when she was an undergraduate.

“It was a big deal,” she says. “Now that I’m a professor, I realize how hard it is to get a scholarship based on talent.”

For that reason, Sarah Wigley is using her inheritance from her uncle, Owen Wigley, ’71, to make a gift in her estate plan that will establish the Wigley Family Music Scholarship in the College of Liberal Arts at the U of M.

“This is about allowing students to choose the school they want,” she says. “It shouldn’t be out of their reach.”

Learn more about making an estate gift to the University of Minnesota or M Health Fairview.