Kevin Woelfel
Former Director, Entrepreneurship Center for Music:
University of Colorado at Boulder
Posted 10.2.2006
What is the role of the Entrepreneurship Center for
Music (ECM) at the University of Colorado's School of
Music?
The Entrepreneurship Center for Music was created at the
University of Colorado (CU) College of Music after Dean
Daniel Sher recognized the need to provide our students and
alumni with music specific career development services. The
Harold and Louis Price foundation stepped in to provide
start-up funds, which cemented the entrepreneurial
component of the program. The Center provides traditional
career counseling services in addition to educational
experiences about entrepreneurship.
With the exception of brass students, who are required to
take the "Your Music Career” course, our classes are
electives. If a student makes the commitment to take an ECM
class, they are generally very motivated. When I arrived at
CU, I favored requiring ECM courses, but I have since
focused on providing services that can be delivered outside
the core curriculum of the College. It seems universal that
students are in a time crunch, so offloading a portion of
their learning to an alternative period makes better sense.
The ECM Intensive, our website, and after-hours workshops
afford easier access by both busy students and alumni.
The amount of services for students offered through
the ECM seems to be growing every year. Do you have
anything new planned in the short-term?
I think we have established a set of experiences that are
beneficial to the majority of the students. Currently, we
are focusing on optimization. Having said that, this year
we formed the ECM Student Advisory Committee and they may
have other ideas about what they want! I am using them to
drive content and scheduling this year. I’m impressed with
how much more of a "buy in” we have gotten from the general
student body because of the committee’s "ownership” of the
Center. This has helped build a club-like atmosphere, which
appeals to the younger students and further punctuates our
presence in the College.
Do you have plans to offer ECM services and courses
to other arts units on campus?
We started integrating our programs into other arts units
last year. I co-teach a graduate course called Arts
Entrepreneurship every fall with Frank Moyes of the Deming
Entrepreneurship Center, a division of the Leeds School of
Business at CU. He has been instrumental in bringing to
fruition the idea of cross-campus entrepreneurship at
Boulder. The founding Director of the ECM (Catherine
Fitterman-now at NYU) documented her desire to go
cross-campus in 1999, but it took us some time to implement
it. Interestingly, the enrollment of music students in the
course increased sharply when we included the other arts
departments. Having several arts disciplines engaged in
case studies creates a much richer discussion. We are also
fortunate to have a new building called ATLAS (Alliance for
Technology, Learning, and Society) that encourages cross
campus collaborations. Very modern and equipped with a
coffee shop and the music students have expressed their
excitement in getting out of the music building and into a
more cosmopolitan learning environment. It is amazing how
much a change in scenery can affect learning.
There is growing student demand for "Social
Entrepreneurship" education in this context. Does the ECM
offer these services for students now, or do will you in
the future?
At this time, we don’t have the resources to produce a
class dedicated solely to social venturing. However, in
most of our learning opportunities, the students are free
to explore any area that interests them, which can include
social entrepreneurship. Since we are not part of a music
business program and the majority of our students are
training to become performers, the content we deliver is
not specific to one type of business. As I design subject
matter, I have to remind myself that most of our students
perceive themselves as artists. They don’t see themselves
as entrepreneurs in the same way a business major might.
From the perspective of teaching music students what they
need to know about business, the details sometimes take a
back seat to the broader concepts. The upside is that our
students learn when and how to find additional resources to
further develop their business skills after they graduate.
Could you describe the relationship the ECM has
with the business school?
Truthfully, the depth of the relationship lies in Frank
Moyes. Frank is on the faculty of the Deming Center for
Entrepreneurship at CU Boulder, with which we share a great
relationship. I feel very fortunate to have resources such
as Frank and the Deming Center to collaborate with. As the
only instructor in the College of Music that teaches
business content, I draw a great deal of knowledge and
inspiration from their program.
The business school students can directly impact the arts
students we teach. In our graduate Arts Entrepreneurship
class, we require our students to attend the business plan
competition finals in the business school so they can
witness quality presentations in action. This one event is
extremely empowering for music and arts students. Not only
do they experience how all the numbers, creativity, and
reporting come together, the arts students see how to
employ their performance skills in a business presentation.
The ECM offered an "Intensive" last May for
students. How was that received and do you have plans to
offer it again?
What an experience the Intensive was, both for the
participants and me! I have benefited a great deal by
attending the Experiential Classroom Conference at Syracuse
University and the Price/Babson SEE and REFLECT programs at
Babson College in Boston, MA. Both are absolutely first
rate entrepreneurship conferences for educators, so I
wanted to create a similar quality event for students. The
ECM Intensive is, as the name implies, a burst of
education. I don’t believe in passively approaching career
development, so we created an event to attack it. It was a
mix of career building tools, entrepreneurial concepts, and
student fellowship that created an experience you can’t get
through a regular course.
The feedback I have received since the Intensive has been
very favorable. Several participants subsequently enrolled
in one of our fall courses. There have been small groups of
attendees that have informally met to discuss
entrepreneurship and to share what they are doing with
their new skills. The secondary learning that has since
taken place has been a pleasant consequence I hadn’t
foreseen. It was well worth the time and expense it took to
create the Intensive.
I hope to offer the Intensive again, but with some
adjustments in marketing and timing. Many students see the
value of career education, but getting them to spend the
money to attend the Intensive proved more difficult than
expected. The workshop took place after the school year, so
even though our focus group thought $175 was practical, the
students balked due to the lack of funds at the semesters
end. I made the classic mistake of looking at the value for
the price instead of what the market could actually afford
to pay at that time of the year. Fortunately, I was able to
re-distribute the Center’s programming funding and save a
little money, which enabled us to offer substantial
scholarships. The event filled up and thanks to my
assistants Margaret and Darcy, it was very successful.
What advice would you offer to those who are
planning similar "stand-alone" efforts such as the
ECM?
It would be easy to say "follow the standard
entrepreneurial process." Unfortunately, academic
institutions provide numerous challenges to that process,
so there are often concessions to be made. How
administration or faculty perceives your mission can
drastically differ. Clearly articulating the purpose,
methodology, and benefits are crucial for gathering
support. Permanent funding is also vital. Entrepreneurship
is well established in business and I think it is finally
emerging in the arts, so hopefully "start-up” funds will
give way to permanent program funding.
To increase participant buy-in, I found it helpful to send
a few students to the SEA (Self Employment in the Arts)
conference in the Midwest. Our students came back energized
and evangelists for entrepreneurship. Faculty are an
important motivator for students to use career resources.
Partner with them when you can, both in their workshops and
yours.
At this point, what are the challenges the ECM has
faced, and will face in the future?
The ECM has been "on-stage” since 1998 and a lot of change
has taken place in the landscape. Many of the early years
were filled with the same start-up issues a company in any
new field would have to overcome. The faculty was
skeptical, the students were indifferent, and the content,
in the form of traditional business literature, was not
well suited for artistic temperaments. All of these areas
have seen improvement, including the growth of new programs
throughout the country that the ECM helped stimulate.
Yet, there is still a lot of work left to be done. For us,
optimizing our content and its delivery is an ongoing
process. Funding is also on the front burner. The funding
trends from traditional sources are shifting to new models,
often with the expectations that funded projects will
generate revenue. In a field of education where the
end-user is financially strapped, it can be difficult to
both deliver content and create a profit.
What would you say are the most important successes
for the ECM thus far?
Any student that has created an opportunity through
entrepreneurship is an important success! Each small ripple
in the pond of opportunity that an ECM student makes will
help create a new wave in the market. Success within our
College is represented by increased student buy-in and use.
Our numbers are up and climbing. Nationally, our biggest
success would be setting the stage for additional programs
to be created around the country.
One of the most impressive aspects of the ECM is
its sustainability. How has the ECM made itself a part of
the campus culture?
In the initial years, it was the sheer will of past ECM
Directors and Dean Sher’s desire to see the program blossom
into a valuable resource that kept it moving forward. Now
that we are more established, I am finding it beneficial to
harness the students to drive the Center. Student success
stories are good motivators for students to get involved,
and giving them the keys to the car has taken things to a
new level.
In your opinion, what is the place of Arts
Entrepreneurship efforts in higher education today - and in
the future?
(Placing the soapbox on stage) I define entrepreneurship as
"Opportunity Creation to Fuel Success" and believe the
combination of entrepreneurship and the arts IS the future.
An entrepreneurial environment breeds stability and growth
in our economy, while professional arts producers help
strengthen our culture.
Arts producers contribute a great deal to the economy, both
directly and through collateral influences. It’s a shame
that relatively few artists understand their impact outside
of the artistic domain (yes, I am speaking about money
here). The perception that there are too many musicians
because institutions have flooded the market with artists
is wrong. Artists have failed to fully develop existing
markets and to create new ones. We need to add more ears to
our respective niches and entrepreneurship is the vehicle
for doing it. Entrepreneurship takes players out of the
victim role and makes them proactive, which is the "head
space" I believe all artists should operate.
I’m fascinated by the entrepreneurial concepts that are
represented in music education already, but are
underutilized by artists. For instance, composition is all
about combining assets to create something of greater
value, otherwise music would just be scales. So why don’t
music institutions teach comparable concepts in a framework
that can be applied to more than music, such as developing
a career? If you take even a precursory look, you will find
entrepreneurship is parallel to both. Apply
entrepreneurship to an artist’s creative powers, work
ethic, and collateral skills, and you drastically impact
their probability of success after graduation.
In your opinion, how should Arts Entrepreneurship
education "fit" into the degree plan?
This is a difficult question and one that sparks a great
deal of debate between music educators and administrators.
There appears to be two camps; one for curriculum reform
and one against.
I confess that when I came to the ECM, I was for major
curriculum changes that would include entrepreneurship
courses as a requirement. Four years later, I am not sure
that would be the right thing to do. What are you going to
cut out? Music institutions are already cramming what used
to take twelve years to accomplish into four. Baroque
teaching practices were based on apprenticeships, which
took years to complete before a player was added to the
professional ranks. What should be cut out? If anything, I
think there should be MORE ear training and improvisation
added to programs.
My perspective is based on how students perceive a B.M.
degree as a ticket into a music career. Institutions push
it as a "professional" degree. Reality check; a music
degree from an arts institution signifies that you have
reached a certain level of musical understanding, both in
theory and practice. It is not an indicator of your
acceptance into the professional music market. Customers
will decide if you can make a living with your craft.
In today’s world, a career involves money. Money issues
mandate at least a rudimentary level of business expertise,
so building a professional career requires the application
of skills and concepts that are outside of music. Artistic
skills compliment business skills, but are not a
substitute. I would hate to see a heart surgeon NOT take
"Heart Transplant 405” to instead take "Billing and
Insurance 101," just as I dislike the thought of a musician
skipping “Advanced Ear Training” for "Networking 101. "ALL
are necessary for a career, so a student should plan on
learning the career development and business components
outside the artistic tract through workshops, after-hours
classes, or whatever it takes.
The other solution is to implement five-year undergraduate
degrees with embedded career development and business
courses. This would work well in a conservatory environment
where becoming a professional performer is the goal.
Liberal arts institutions would find this more difficult,
although many students already take five years to earn a
four year degree. So long as an institution is true to the
artistic discipline, the stated institutional mission, and
clearly expresses both of these to their students, I
support an elongated program that includes career
development components. [Editor's Note: See the Eastman
School of Music's Take Five Scholars Program].
Either way, musicians need help understanding and
implementing the building blocks of their career. I believe
this includes some business and entrepreneurship skills and
that institutions should rise to the occasion. How and when
these skills are interjected will be different in every
institution, but the need is real and the solutions
available. Let’s make it happen!
You can respond directly to Kevin Woelfel.
