Purchase College-SUNY will offer a master”™s degree program in entrepreneurship in the arts starting in fall 2015, college officials announced.
The first degree program in the U.S. to focus exclusively on creating new entities in the arts, it will give graduates both the skills to create arts ventures and act as entrepreneurs and an in-depth foundation in management and leadership skills, they said.
“This visionary degree program will enable graduates to identify, imagine and build enterprises that will create and sustain the arts marketplace of tomorrow,” said Thomas J. Schwarz, Purchase College president, in the announcement. “It will address a critical need for creative leadership in both the commercial and not-for-profit arts and culture sectors.”
Ravi Rajan, dean of the college”™s School of the Arts, said the program is designed to train leaders “who will redefine the arts through innovation. It will foster a ”˜meta synergy”™ by equipping graduates with a unique blend of idea generation, marketing, policy, management and financial skills to apply to the creation of new entities for the arts.” Those arts-world ventures could include organizations that deliver services, companies that build devices, and organizations that re-imagine the arts disciplines and how they interact with society.
College officials said the design of the one-and-a-half-year degree program was spearheaded by James Undercofler, professor and chairman of the Purchase College Department of Arts Management and Entrepreneurship. The program recently received final approval from the state Education Department.
