Susan Messer has been involved professionally in music education and church music for over twenty-five years as a public school teacher, a seminary professor, and a church music minister. Since 1997, Dr. Messer has lived in Atlanta where she began teaching middle school chorus and general music at Ridgeview Charter School in the Fulton County public school district in 1998. At Ridgeview, her choruses have consistently scored superior grades at the district Large Group Performance Evaluations. In addition to fall, winter, and spring concerts, each spring she directs and produces a musical theater production which features 75-100 middle school students. In March 2007, her chorus was the featured choir at the National Middle School Festival in Carnegie Hall, sponsored by the Field Study Center of New York. She was named the 2002-2003 Fulton County Teacher of the Year in a school system of 5500 teachers.
As a church musician, Dr. Messer has served churches in North Carolina, Louisiana, and Georgia. Presently, she is the minister of music at Parkway Baptist Church, Duluth, Georgia, from October 2005 to the present. She was assistant professor of church music education at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary from 1988-1994. After leaving New Orleans, Dr. Messer moved to Houston where she was the Apprentice Choir director for the Houston Children's Chorus. Also, in Houston, she taught at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary satellite campus.
Dr. Messer has taught at Ridgecrest and Glorieta Church Music weeks (the Southern Baptist national assembly centers) and has conducted workshops and served as a choral clinician in numerous states. For ten years, she was a writer for the children's choir curriculum for Lifeway Christian Resources, the largest Christian publishing house in the world. She received the Editor's Choice award from the Preschool/Children's Music Department of Lifeway Christian Resources in 1998.
Susan Messer earned her degrees at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina (B.M. in music education and applied piano), the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (M.C.M. in music education and piano performance), and Louisiana State University (Ph.D. in music education). Her husband Jeff works for the Coca-Cola Company as a director in the Supply Chain/Demand Planning division. Their daughter Beth graduated from North Springs High School (Fulton County, Georgia) and is a 2007 graduate of Florida State University with majors in both theater and media production. Beth is now employed at ESPN headquarters in Bristol, CT.
