[1] Lepper's work in industrial design, his fascination with the impact of technology on society and its potential role for artmaking formed the background for his class "Individual and Social Analysis", a two semester class focusing on community and personal memory as factors in artistic expression, which with his theoretical dialogues with his most promising students outside the classroom fostered the intellectual environment from which such diverse artists as Andy Warhol, Philip Pearlstein, Mel Bochner, and Jonathan Borofsky would later build their art practices.

[5] Lepper taught art from beginning in 1930 and helped to establish one of the country's first industrial design degree program at Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1934.

[3] He taught a class entitled "Individual and Social Analysis," in which he encouraged students to look at ordinary items from their daily lives as potential works of art.

One of his students was Andy Warhol, then Andrew Warhola, who drew upon his meals at home and made Campbell's Soup Cans.

Other notable students include Warhol's friend Philip Pearlstein, illustrator Leonard Kessler, editorial cartoonist Jimmy Margulies, conceptual artist Mel Bochner[1] and Joyce Kozloff, who developed an interest in public art when working on Lepper's Oakland Project in which students went out into the Oakland neighborhood and made paintings or drawings of the infrastructure, buildings and people.

[3] He made several murals under the Federal Arts Project (1935-1943) of the Works Progress Administration, including post offices in Grayling, Michigan, and Caldwell, Ohio.

River Creature is a model of a 60-foot-tall, fire-breathing dragon proposed work of art, to "humorously" reflect Pittsburgh's industrial history.