Thursday, April 19, 2007

CEI Awards Grant to Explore Development of Artistic Entrepreneurship Initiative: Dr. E @ UNC

CEI Awards Grant to Explore Development of Artistic Entrepreneurship Initiative

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — UNC faculty will explore development of a concentration in artistic entrepreneurship thanks to a $38,000 program development grant from the CEI Innovations Fund.

Dr. Elliot McGucken, professor of physics and programming, received the grant to lead development of a proposed new Artistic Entrepreneurship Initiative. He will work with Bill Balthrop, chair of the Communications Studies Department, and other faculty in the arts and humanities to develop a curriculum for students and faculty with interests in the arts, with particular focus on its intersection with technology.

“The digital media revolution is fostering a natural convergence in the arts, entrepreneurship and technology,” says Dr. McGucken. “This convergence provides extraordinary opportunities for UNC students and faculty, from arts management, independent record labels and video game companies to media distribution, small presses and digital rights management.”

The initiative envisions a new curriculum to help artistically inclined students from the humanities and sciences explore those opportunities and create sustainable social and commercial ventures from them. A pilot course, New Media Arts, Technology and Entrepreneurship 101, will be offered Spring 2006. Students will pursue independent, semester–long projects to build ventures that incorporate technology and the arts, such as media archives, production companies, record labels, distribution centers and galleries.

The artistic entrepreneurship program would complement business and social entrepreneurship tracks launched by the CEI in the 2004–2005 academic year. The planning grant for the new program is the second awarded by the CEI Innovations Fund, which is designed to seed faculty proposals for new programs that will keep the initiative fresh and stimulating. The Campus Y received an Innovations Fund grant in the fall to develop a new Social Justice Entrepreneurs Program.

“CEI seeks to instill a culture of entrepreneurship across the university community to help students, faculty and administrators learn to transform their ideas into enterprises that have value and are sustainable,” said John D. Kasarda, Kenan Distinguished Professor and director of the CEI and the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, which coordinates the CEI. “This program for the arts will help us extend the CEI’s reach and impact to a much broader and more diverse constituency.”

The CEI Innovations Fund accepts faculty proposals in two grant cycles (fall and spring) of each year. It provides competitively awarded grants of $5,000 to $50,000 to UNC faculty and staff who develop creative new programs for the initiative. Visit www.unc.edu/cei/innovationsfund for information or contact Kasarda at (919) 962–8201 or john_kasarda@unc.edu.

The Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative (CEI) is an $11 million program funded in part by The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, managed by the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise and led by faculty and staff across the university from an array of disciplines. Successful entrepreneurs, many of them Carolina alumni, serve as advisors, lending their real–world expertise.

http://www.kenaninstitute.unc.edu/centers/cei/?y=news.20050420&t=News



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