Artists, actors and musicians learn all there is to know about art at the University, but once they graduate, they fend for themselves on the business side of their careers.
To help ease the struggle, University alumna and entrepreneur Janice Pellar donated $70,000 to the College of Music and Dramatic Arts to create the Janice H. Pellar Creative Arts Entrepreneurship Project.
The two-year pilot program exposes students to entrepreneurial concepts using hands-on training.
“The Janice Pellar Project is something that is brand new,” said music professor Joseph Skillen. “We’re trying to look at the creative class of students on campus and give them an insight that they have a lot of skills that are very marketable.”
Pellar started the program to teach students to present themselves in a business environment.
“It may be arts management. It may be completely unrelated to the arts,” Pellar said. “But it’s important for students to understand how to market themselves and the skills that they’ve learned in the arts and to protect their intellectual capital.”
Skillen said the project, which currently involves 30 students, will bring in speakers every semester and during winter intersession for two years to tell their success stories.
The last speakers were Skillen’s twin brother, former vice president of Gibson Guitars and Warner Bros.’ record label executive Jeff Skillen, who spoke about branding, intellectual property and the four types of entrepreneurs.
“I gained valuable feedback that can help me sharpen not only my marketing skills, but communication skills,” said Morgan Taylor, musical performance freshman. “Connections create unimaginable opportunities as seen through the success of both the Skillen brothers.”
Joseph Skillen said he hopes the program can recruit University graduates who are actors or music entrepreneurs, or those who work with DreamWorks Pictures or Pixar Animation Studios.
He said the project is open to students and “people who think they’d just like to explore thinking entrepreneurly.”
Joseph Skillen said the project was inspired by Pellar’s personal success story. After she graduated in music education, Pellar said, she realized teaching was not her calling.
At the time she graduated, Pellar’s family owned an information technologies company that specialized in Motorola radio repair.
“That was the early ’70s,” Pellar said. “There were literally no other women in the United States in that type of business, but I like to tell people I was more afraid of teaching than being the only woman in the United States in the business.”
Pellar said she decided to work part time at her parents’ business, which her father founded.
“For the first several years after I graduated with music and was in business, I almost felt apologetic for my music degree, and it was only after several years of experience that I began to realize that those skills I learned in music were very transferable to business,” Pellar said.
Joseph Skillen said instead of apologizing for being a music major, Pellar decided to look at what she knew and apply it to the company.
“Running a company is very similar to practicing a piece of music,” Skillen said. “You work with other people like you would work with members of an ensemble, and taking creative ideas and turning them into reality is something that musicians, artists, writers and sculptors do all the time.”
By 1987, Pellar was named vice president and general manager of EMCO Technologies. Upon her father’s retirement in 1988, Pellar was named president and CEO.
Pellar said when she met the College of Music and Dramatic Arts Dean Laurence Kaptain, the pair discussed how entrepreneurship and the arts go hand in hand.
“I wanted students to understand from the beginning that a lot of [artists] cannot make a living as arts people,” Pellar said. “You do a lot of things before if ever you’re going to be truly self-sustaining in that art endeavor.”
 
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Contact Julian Tate at [email protected]