Teaching for a life in the arts – and beyond

Thinking about college as instrumental—a means to acquire skills, knowledge, and connections for a satisfying career—can really rankle some faculty. They’d rather students spend their time pondering big ideas, growing as whole people, and exploring for exploration’s sake.

I don’t entirely disagree. But I take a different approach.

The students I teach at UNC Greensboro are here to earn their degrees so they can build meaningful lives and careers. They’re choosing to pursue that through the arts. My job is to help them do it—to prepare them, to support them, and to give them helpful pushes them along the way.

And in doing that, I believe they can explore identity and craft a worldview. The arts are one of the most powerful ways to make sense of the human experience. By working in the arts, they’ll stay closer to that exploration than most people ever get to. Their daily work will reflect and shape culture. That’s no small thing. Our unofficial motto at the College of Visual and Performing Arts at UNC Greensboro is that we’re educating students for “a life in the arts”. That acknowledges professional and personal goals – and the desire for having a broader impact on our larger society through the arts.

Respecting the Goals Students Bring with Them

There’s a practical reason for this approach: students arrive at college with these goals. To ignore that—to treat career ambitions as beneath the “real” purpose of higher education—is dismissive. Yes, we should push students to think differently, expand their intellectual boundaries, and consider ideas they’ve never encountered. That’s part of the job too.

But if we send the message that career preparation is beside the point—or worse, beneath us—we risk alienating the very students we’re trying to reach. They may tune us out. Or they may take our advice too literally, only to find themselves unprepared for the realities of post-college life.

Preparing students for careers and entrepreneurship is part of our job. Not instead of broader education—but as a pathway into it.

My approach is simple: start with knowledge and skills that clearly connect to careers. Let the big questions emerge from that foundation. Let students explore them on their own terms.

What That Looks Like in 2025

So with that framework in mind, here’s what’s on my mind as we head into a new academic year.

I’m worried – even pessimistic – about the nonprofit arts sector right now. The challenges are stacking up:

• Federal funding cuts, which make state and local grants shakier.
• Foundations in flux about what (and whom) they want to support.
• Resistance to real change or innovation.
• A persistent failure to adapt to the attention economy and market in ways that would actually rebuild audiences.

It’s grim. I’m not giving up on the field—I still teach arts management for nonprofit organizations, and I still believe in it. But I’m also realistic. I’m keeping one eye on the broader landscape, and I’m helping my students see it too.

Their skills can—and should—translate:

• Other nonprofit sectors.
• For-profit arts businesses.
• Solo creative entrepreneurship.
• Even corporate fields that need what we teach: project management, stakeholder engagement, marketing, team communication.

And beyond technical skills, I put real emphasis on the personal-professional skills that matter everywhere: time management, collaboration, interpersonal communication.

Teaching as Modeling

I think a lot about being a role model. From how I dress to how I run my classes, I want to give students a sense of what a healthy professional environment looks like—one rooted in mutual respect, clarity, accountability, and shared purpose.

Whether the goal is a theater production, a museum exhibition, a startup launch, or an IPO, the fundamentals are the same. I’m not just teaching content. I’m modeling what it looks like to build a life around meaningful work.

Because that’s what my students came for. And it’s what they deserve.

If you’d like to read more about teaching arts management in higher education, read the Teaching Notes section of the American Journal of Arts Management, which I edit. It’s free to read, check it out! 

Here are the earlier posts in this series which go more into my teaching approaches:

Teaching Grant writing in the Age of AI: A Practical, Ethical Approach

Making Learning Stick: How I Structure Class Time So Students Really Get It

Universal Design for Learning: Making My Classroom Work for Everyone

Backward Design Changed My Teaching—for the Better