Creative Industries Entrepreneurship CUGS combines creativity with business know-how
Thinking outside the box, finding unique ways to brand themselves and finding new opportunities are all skills that are necessary for student entrepreneurs and business students. They’re also necessary to be a successful artist, musician, photographer or writer.
The Creative Industries Entrepreneurship Certificate of Undergraduate Study (CUGS), which just launched this spring, is an opportunity for artistic students to combine their talents and passions with the business skills and mindsets that they need to make a living doing what they love. It’s designed so that students only need to take a few additional classes to complete it, allowing them to fit it into their schedules with ease.
Jenny Drumgoole, Assistant Professor of Photography, serves as the faculty coordinator of Creatives 230, Rowan’s interdisciplinary hub that bridges creative arts and entrepreneurship. This innovative platform brings together art students and business students, providing the opportunity to collaborate and ideate on various creative elements of business ventures such as graphics, videos and writing. Drumgoole is passionate about giving young artists the business skills they need to trailblaze their own unique career path with their various projects and work.
“I think a lot of people think that entrepreneurship is just about starting a small business but it’s not, it’s a way of problem solving and a way of thinking, and it’s a skill… that kind of stuff is missing from most traditional arts and creative education and it’s something that is so vital, and it’s here, it’s a tremendous resource,” said Drumgoole.
Drumgoole noted that some students who choose to major in film, music, art or english with dreams of creating books, movies and records end up working 9–5 jobs that they aren’t as passionate about, because they don’t have the entrepreneurial skills needed to create enterprises based on their passions. She emphasized the importance for students to create their own opportunities rather than waiting for opportunities to present themselves.
“You can’t just wait for someone to just give you a show. It’s not how these things work. And it’s why so many students are like, 5, 10 years out of school working in a totally different field, because they’ve had to pivot and go to some other thing that’s not necessarily their passion,” said Drumgoole.
Independent and Entrepreneurial Media is one of the journalism courses eligible for credit with this CUGS. The course is designed and taught by Carl Hausman, Rowan journalism professor and author of several books. Hausman has experience in the world of podcasting, self publishing and professional journalism and encourages his students to build brands for themselves as journalists, writers and media professionals.
“Independent media now, I think, is becoming essential. Even for people who work for mainstream legacy journalism, because they may not be full time employees of the cable network, they may just be part of it,” said Hausman. “They have to make their money from speaking, they have to make it from books, and that’s the whole philosophy behind it.”
He also mentioned that having a background in business basics gives students the confidence to build media enterprises that may need employees, funding or legal expertise.
“There’s no real issue about if you want to start your blog, but if you want to hire some people, if you want to set up some sort of enterprise where you’re writing real estate or whatever, then obviously, a background in business is going to be helpful,” said Hausman.
Graphic arts major Michael Quaranta is a junior at Rowan who just transferred this year from Rowan College of South Jersey (RCSJ) and he has goals of starting a website where he can create video games and sell them to others online. He enrolled in the CUGS, as a way to learn about how to turn his creative ideas into a profitable business.
“It’s good to have a business background for the industry that I want to go into,” said Quaranta.
He’s extremely passionate about art, graphic design and video games and together with his dad, is in the processing phase of getting a website up and running. He wants to build exciting games with colorful graphics and with a knowledge in business will give him the opportunity to grow the website in order to reach more gamers and buyers.
Paige Britt is another junior at Rowan who recently declared the CUGS. She’s a journalism major who writes for The Whit and is currently an intern with South Jersey Magazine. After college, she is interested in being a freelance writer or starting up a media company.
“There’s a lot of really cool independent journalism that lives and functions online and digitally, and I want that to be an option for me,” said Britt.
She also wants to know how to make money off of her writing — regardless of whether or not she works for a media company after graduation. Having an entrepreneurial mindset and skills give her power to create her own success, even while she’s looking for a job.
“I think freelance is just a good option to slowly get started, if I graduate and I don’t get a job kind of right out the gate…I just want to know that I can back myself up and get started on my own business,” said Britt.
The program is open to all majors, with the exception of entrepreneurship majors and minors, music industry majors and engineering entrepreneurship majors, and advisors are actively enrolling students. For more information, check out https://ent.rowan.edu/academics/undergrad/cugs.html or email entdegrees@rowan.edu.
Visit ent.rowan.edu to learn more about Entrepreneurship at Rowan.
Story by: Madison Miller
