What you’ll hear in this episode

• About new, innovative transitional educational experiences Dean Dempster is integrating into the School of Fine Arts curriculum
• Dean Dempster’s vision for artists to become “big E” entrepreneurs
• What being Dean of one of the nation’s largest and most prestigious professional art schools actually means

Freelance artists are not often considered to be the entrepreneurs that they are. A substantial number of art school graduates will go on to become self-employed, but art schools don’t typically prepare students for that popular career path. But Doug Dempster
Dean of the University of Texas at Austin School of Fine Arts, is trying to change that by integrating transitional educational experiences into the curriculum.

“When you look at real entrepreneurs, you say, ‘well, that’s somebody who has not only the creativity but also the passion and probably a relentless work ethic to create demand where it is not currently discernable,’” Dean Dempster explains to Masters & Founders host Dan Dillard. “And that’s what all artists are, in effect, prepared to do.”

Dean Dempster didn’t imagine he would end up as the leader of one of the nation’s largest and most prestigious professional art schools. He’s a philosopher by trade, but by working with various arts organizations across the country he saw that artists were coming out of school unprepared to make a living with their passion. Yet, at the same time, he saw that there are multiple CEOs of major corporations that left the fine arts for business. Dempster takes this as proof that an arts education is not only applicable in the creative world, it can be a major advantage in the world of industry as well. That’s what set him on the path to giving art students a true professional education that encourages them to think even bigger than self-employment. He says,

“Let’s look at preparing our students and our future graduates to be not just self-employed but people that create companies, that create capital, that employ others, that build wealth and maybe change the world in big ways because they’re thinking at a scale that goes beyond self-employment.”

Listen to this installment of Masters & Founders to hear more about the new, innovative programs Dean Dempster is installing in the UT School of Fine Arts. If you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe and rate this podcast and share it with a friend! You can hear more Masters & Founders here.

Masters & Founders is a founding_media podcast created in collaboration with foundingAUSTIN.

Host: Dan Dillard, founding_media

Guest: Dean Doug Dempster, University of Texas at Austin School of Fine Arts

Transcript:

transition from students into the quote, unquote real world can be challenging especially industries that are rapidly changing and sometimes overlooked in modern society to his guest Doug Dempster is the dean of the college of fine arts at the university of Texas Austin during his tenure he has worked to shift the conversation in the classroom frequently called freelancers self employed artist are sometimes some of the hardest working entrepreneurs but for years we’re not learning the entrepreneurial tools and skills they need while attending university dean dumpster saw a need, from the creation of maker spaces on campus to better professional transitional experiences he is making changes on campus that will hopefully ripple out into other industries for decades to come here’s my conversation with dean Dempster

Well, welcome to masters and founders we’re here with dean Dempster at UT and I am I have the privilege of of just having a little bit about what we do over masters and founders and the stories that we tell and what we’re trying to accomplish so the welcome to the show in the morning I have questions I was looking at your background and just there’s so much that you’ve accomplished and I I really want to start at the beginning like when did you know that you want to go down this this path which is the academic and teaching others and and the the other things that you’ve done what well the truth of the matter is that the path of mine is not the path I expected to go down I am trained as a philosopher all my academic degrees or in philosophy and I say now later in my life that I’m a congenital floss right I couldn’t help myself so of when I went to college I discovered philosophy for the first time and realize that was my real talent All I Want to do the rest of my life was to be philosophy professor teaching young people the life of the mind but but here I am now do you know of one of the largest public university professional arts colleges in the country and that’s been kind of a winding path tell me about

tell me about that transition from philosophy to until now yes and what that was so I’ve always had a passion for the arts you from a very young age and that’s the sort of philosophy I did when I was younger and as I got my advanced degrees it was the philosophy of art and aesthetics pretty wonky stuff but of my first job out of graduate school was at at a really elite music conservatory Houston school of music out one of the best classical music conservatories in the world and I was teaching humanities and philosophy too of young professional musicians and and that was fine that was in a way my dream come true that was at the school of music and the university of Rochester in upstate New York and then the culture wars have late eighties early nineties of the NEA was under assault there was all kinds of debate about of censoring music and there was a final assault on the arts and artists and I started talking to my students about the politics and economics the sociology of the arts and I realize that these young soon to be professional artists of freelancers working out the world had no idea how the world worked to support the arts just if you take music for instance one of the oldest trade unions in the world as are the musicians kilts go back even to the Middle Ages up our students to almost nothing about the American federation of musicians which had so much do in protecting the rights of musicians out in the working world so that’s when my thinking shifted towards not only educating our students differently as future professional artists but also how our curricula that in our schools had become out of sync with a what those students needed to be a future professionals and and and the case of artists understand that many many many graduates from our schools are going to be freelancers for a freelancer is just an old fashioned term for a self employed entrepreneur entrepreneurship is a very fashionable terminology these days but out most artists self employed freelance artists are entrepreneurs because they are people with unique talents and they’re trying to find or in most cases create a market for something that most people didn’t know they need it namely that unique talent that that artist is is offering so entrepreneurship among artist is of perhaps one of the oldest professional skills and our students were not being well prepared as the future entrepreneurs they would have to be to pursue their art and passion costs resulting so I shifted all my attention towards all right how do you redesign a curriculum in a professional art school for the twenty first century that really prepares our students well and here I am some twenty years later do you have a really very distinguished of fine arts college at the university of Texas

well you up still abbreviated the whole lot of near yeah but at least we get to the passion of the turning point because it was it was this need that use you found which was Hey the and I’m just gonna but my own words but it was it was the art is fantastic and these are the challenges but one of the biggest challenge is how do you find for yourself once you’re out of school and and doing this and that wasn’t being taught in the curriculum so what have you done as dean and you might want to sum up some of the main things that you find work to make those changes to help students sure up so there are many many things for doing here at the university of Texas to really make students transition out into the working world as seamless as we can so they can realize their passion so I’ll just step back and and provide a little more context I’m chairman of the board of a national foundation called the strategic national arts alumni project that that’s a mouthful it’s a it’s a clever acronym it’s good at snap the strategic national arts alumni project is really a consortium of professional our schools they’re tracking professional outcomes for their graduates to see where they end up and how they got their own ultimately how we can do better in preparing them to move out is that world so we learned a number of important things about graduates a professional art schools for our college we know something on the order of sixty percent of our graduates are actually working out in fields that they think are connected importantly to their major in college so we consider that to be a very high rate of relevance for the training of for what students are doing but we also know that they overwhelmingly report that they weren’t adequately well prepared for that professional transition that they learned of the the literature of their art form and I don’t mean by that the written literature but if it’s visual arts or sculpture or acting or theater or music that they were made literate in the form and they achieve the skill level that at least at the level of and advanced apprentice or master of our there are from but they didn’t really know as I realized back in nineteen eighty nine during the culture wars that they had much idea of how an artist actually thrives out in the world and so the strategic national arts alumni project allows me is dean and my faculty and other colleges around the country to adapt the curriculum to make it more relevant to what students need out in the world so what are we doing in the college of fine arts up all kinds of things studies have shown that more important in the college you go to more important than the major you pursue in college to your professional success maybe one of the most important things a student can have or do in order to move out into the working world and pursue their passion as a profession is to have an internship or some kind of early professional experience that allows them through transition so we’re building those kinds of call them internships if you like but it’s a wide variety of what I call a professional transitional experiences that help students move up from their formal education out into the working world without the huge drop off the cliff that many see when they graduate so we have acting students who do a semester in Los Angeles at the end of their term we have students doing internships all over Austin up one of the big moose we’ve made is to bring entrepreneurship right into the curriculum of an arts college which is kind of an unusual idea what’s unusual is not that we’re teaching entrepreneurship because as I said before every freelance artist is in some sense an entrepreneur but I I call that small E. entrepreneurship Smalley because you’re figuring out how to find or create a market offer your unique talent and an employer self by doing it right and that’s a of a noble honorable profession and a great thing for any artist to accomplish it that they’ve employed themselves and support their lifestyle and their family and whatever else they’re trying to send their kids to college and achieve that kind of stability that you’ve talked about but the more I started to look at what was going on out in the world of the industry I realized many many CEO types people in the C. suite had backgrounds in the arts and I sort of think well how does that happen how exactly those people get into those roles well partly I suppose the answer many might give as well it’s really challenging to make a living as an artist so many creative move off into other professions but I also think that there’s something important about what attracts what kind of person the arts attract creative innovative independent thinkers rule breakers are not real followers and that these are people who actually have a skill set that advances them out in the world so I sort of think about well maybe we should be looking at Biggie entrepreneurship which is entrepreneurs are that this is just this is a philosopher whose of fine arts dean who’s just making up terms I have no idea what you are other experts on entrepreneurship would say about this but let’s look at preparing our students and our future graduates to be not just self employed but people that create companies that create capital that employ others that build wealth and maybe change the world in big ways because they’re thinking at a scale that goes beyond self employment no self employment makes that makes a sound modest right but you’ll be onsite as self employed at some level and that’s a huge industry and has gigantic reach an influence in the world but that’s not the only way a creative or an artist can have a Biggie entrepreneurship effect on the world and we’re trying to teach our students about what it means to be a Biggie entrepreneur we’ve brought Jan Ryan on to our faculty and staff in the college of fine arts Janice a serial tech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley in Austin she founded up an organization called what is it women at Austin it’s a network of women entrepreneurs she’s a partner in the capital factory and she’s in better now in the college of fine arts talking to students about their ideas that could become Biggie entrepreneur chip ideas and that’s creating a kind of seed bed of big thinkers in our college that we really think we’ll have an outsized influence on not only the future of our graduates out in the world for that they’ll prosper I think in this way

I do love the one of the comments in this journey I’ve been on the magazine last couple years done over a hundred interviews with founders and I’m also as I do the interviews I’m looking for that one gene because there’s a there’s there’s something that that makes a founder of a company to act differently and and for the most part there’s a lot of creativity and founders so I ate a hundred percent agree with and I see the connection between the fine arts and the creativity it takes to be an artist and to look at the world and create something whether it be a you know piece of technology or whether it be of a restaurant or whatever of a foundered us whether it be a new liquor or whatever they’re doing they’re creating something that did not exist before and so I read a cook a quote not too long ago were says look at everything around June’s first thought by founder and it it it brings us back to the creativity of the arts and and I I would say to the its persuasiveness sought the distinction I was making and I don’t mean to be argumentative none of that is in my nature if if if I open up a new McDonald’s franchise at a busy intersection where there isn’t one I suppose you could call that entrepreneurial but that that’s just of opening a company or or that that has a known to man to market that right there are risks involved but not what I would call entrepreneurial risks any artist is actually trying to create demand where it’s not known to exist of course meant many fail at them and so when when you work at a relaunch for nurses say well that’s somebody who has not only the creativity of also the passions and probably a relentless work ethic to create demand where it’s not currently discernible and that’s what all artists are in effect prepared to do but but it’s a question of scale at at so what we have a caller saying is yes of course do that at the scale of the individual freelance artist that’s wonderful life but don’t forget that you two could be a captain of industry yes that’s a difference that’s often overlooked by art schools because that’s conceded to the business school or the engineering tribal or computer science we’re trying to get our students sitting at scale wonderful not nor you may hear I totally undersecretary and and it’s
it amazes me the journey is that where I go and talk to the different founders just look at that create the creation and you’re right I make that distinction myself it’s it’s you know when you bring people in our magazine in our literature it’s it is trying to highlight that initial idea what was an idea that was different it wasn’t a franchise it was what makes you different what makes you tick and what was that belief system inside that made this grow and whether it’s it’s a multi billion dollar company or it’s a few hundred million shrimp still it’s still a life that you created out of out of ideas which is which is wonderful right so let’s talk more about you your future what what what what what how we can help stuff well I mean my my passion is for educating young people at and of course to the life of the mind to to the best that we have to share in our culture right that that hasn’t gone away but like many academic leaders are I worry about them the way I worry about my own children which is how will they make a living in the world so that they can really enjoy the best of that life has to offer and that means having a livelihood and doing something not just honorable and decent but to be gainfully employed and perhaps make the world a better place so I’m constantly thinking and this brings out something of the entrepreneur in me about how you move a very large college and university it into the twenty first century where the situation the conditions are very different from what they were when this college was first created over eight years ago universities but most of most of people in the wider world would be totally shocked to hear me say that universities are very conservative places and of course on making a dumb joke because there are of course not politically conservative universities are in fact as a community politically quite liberal but maybe a better term for describing university says that they’re conservationist but they tend to hold on traditions to traditions and the way we do things up of so that they don’t change too quickly now is that an inherently bad thing no absolutely not because universities whatever else they do should be codifying wisdom and knowledge and expertise said and methods of knowing and interpreting the world and passing along what’s most durable and important in our culture and our science right so you don’t what universities changing every here with the latest fashion that would be a terrible for basis for education on the other hand we’re also educating students for future which is unlike the past that many of us as faculty members are grew up in and in some very important ways and one place where our role changes very rapidly it’s not been of cosmology or or the structure of the universe or the atomic structure of the universe that changes quite slowly so trying to understand how that works is a durable on going enterprises up but culture that surrounds us and which were better work were in an effects fish swimming in at a sea of culture that changes quite rapidly of course it’s now a truism that were in an increasingly globalized culture where this amazing mashup and blending of cultures around the world and all that’s being driven by technology in radical new ways this is the other little sermon that I give is that the the interaction between technology and culture is as ancient as both technology and culture it’s always been there it’s always happened of it’s just that every new generation brings new technologies and that breeds new cultured new cultural activities actually drive the technology in interesting new directions and it’s just a constant double helix of influence as we move forward some would say the pace of change is growing more rapid than it ever has before but the are inherent conservationists and in the university has to not be so slow to advance that it doesn’t we’ve itself open to the of major changes in our culture in our marketplace or commerce of for the next generation because that’s the see that our students will be swimming and they have to be prepared for it just

just to give one example well jazz in the United States which is maybe one of our greatest national contributions to of a global culture and and appreciated around the globe now goes back more than a well about a hundred years now in the United States and was a kind of virtual also art form up which was largely institutions segregated out of colleges and universities and concert halls for many years but it took jazz almost fifty years to find its way into music schools in the United States it wasn’t until the mid twentieth century that began to infiltrate into our traditional music curricula and so now here we are at the just to wait for another fifty or sixty years Kendrick Lamar hip hop artists just won a Pulitzer Prize in music composition and the question is how long will it take before we recognize hip hop inside the academy inside universities as a durable part of our ongoing culture so we have to constantly balance our institutional conservationists and which is very very important up with a kind of intentional or mindful progressivism especially in art schools where the world’s changing very quickly and where I think on anything of an entrepreneur it’s in trying to get that balance or mixture right so that we serve our students are in the best possible way for the futures that they’ll be it’s kind of complicated but it gives you some idea of how a tricky it is to provide anything like leadership in a very complicated a university that’s trying to strike that balance

what challenges have you faced as dean of this is in in you tell your story it sounds very similar to an entrepreneurial story and and and some of things that you’re trying to change in mind sets in and bring new ideas and create you see a problem that existed back in nineteen eighty nine you said and then you’re in there making the ships to to make this happen so what are some of the challenges you face that you have overcome how long does this program go? yeah the I could start with the routine things especially a public university were is faced with financial of posterity and and in many ways the traditional established methods of funding public higher education especially at a fairly elite level which is where the university of Texas tries to position itself are becoming exhausted tuition doesn’t generate enough revenue legislative appropriations are not keeping pace with the cost of higher education we raise a lot of money from donors and their other assets and down its but the demands on higher education have grown so huge and and the race for success both among universities but also among their students and graduates of so ferocious that those traditional forms of funding are not keeping pace with the ambitions of universities are the demands on universities up so we as a college are working at alternative methods of generating revenue that went on to write our educational and research mission and more and more we’re looking at of what the employers what the corporations what industry could and should be investing and what we’re doing if we’re really delivering what day and our students of most want from us so we’re actually creating for our college unprecedented partnerships with a wider array of companies that are helping us to underwrite the educational innovations that we’re bringing so try it we’re actually trying to invent a kind of new business promise for the innovative programs that were trying to build inside the university they’re also the challenges of working with up a wide array of superdelegate faculty and scholars and artists and getting everyone comfortable with this idea of of preserving our our role as the in the traditional disciplines in arts while also making room for what’s new in the arts and that’s always a complicated organizational challenge is maintaining enough of a consensus to to keep the balance and to move forward up but not being so a committed to absolute unanimity when it if if if we can only do as an organization what were you unanimously agreed we should do then will do nothing that at and making sure you maintain the right balance between pushing up toward for progress as much as you can without losing too much of the community in that process is at the daily challenging an absolute daily challenging and third deans have very complicated roles we do a lot of fundraising our supporters are patients are extremely generous for raising tend to fifteen million dollars a year for the college of fine arts and that that so in fact in a few minutes I’ll be on the road to Houston out to meet with the owners that’s an important part of the team’s job every day recruiting top faculty talent and retaining it of all the making three phone calls on my way to Houston of both recruiting top faculty and talking to a really very talented faculty here at college right now about why they should stay and not go to that other great school that’s about offering them something attractive so there are endless chain challenges

so it’s really really similar to a start up mean raising funds hiring employees and keeping employees and great talent and then also making sure that there’s leadership there to to push forward yeah yeah yeah I I think it is a you would know more about that than I do I I am absolutely a creature of the university I I spent one year of my entire adult life outside the university and that so terrified me that I ran right back to diversity and have never left after after I graduated from college and this is in the late seventies and literally did what so many young people to back them which was just to put a backpack on my back with with twenty Bucks in my pocket and go hitchhiking around the country when the twenty Bucks ran out I I finally such back home to Washington DC and got a job working for a congressman on Capitol Hill I did that for about three months and thought this is the the most awful thing I’m going back to the ivory tower which I now call the real world and have had a wonderful career here ever since but I have to say not because I was attracted to the security of it because I thought it was a place where creativity and innovation could and and would be rewarded

what do you do in your free time I don’t have a lot of free time so I don’t do a lot I’m a runner run marathons which consumes many of my mornings just got back from the Boston Marathon which was the most miserable experience of my life but why was it miserable for you it was the worst weather the Boston Marathon the scene for years about thirty seven degrees driving rain that was a twenty six point two miles is usually unpleasant for at least six miles no matter when you do it but when you’re hypothermic and sure you’re you’re you’re either going to get to the finish line or die it’s even more unpleasant don’t ask me why do that for fun yeah the freedom to perform for sure

what advice would you give to anybody willing to follow your footsteps of yeah academic leadership is this striking a balance between this conservation is in there talked about and progressivism high higher education it’s just like our healthcare system is under enormous pressure to innovate and change to adapt to the current needs of the larger society of but they’re very traditional organizations that they for good reason the price of a tradition of so not just being a master of your discipline and a teacher of that despite but also trying but learning how to work inside a complex organization with strong traditions and strong values to create the opening the possibility for change that’s a talent that will be hugely rewarded in American higher education it’s part of the reason why of higher education states is looked up to and modeled all over the world the Americans are well we we can say our formal educational system maybe that’s not the best in the world at the K. twelve level of where we’ve neglected out to such an extent that were nothing like a leader internationally in the education of children but American higher education has long been regarded as one of the great models emulated all over the world and there are all kinds of reasons for that but one reason is that American higher education is so competitive there so much innovation going on it so restless and it’s so inclusive I don’t think there’s another country in the world that provides as broad an opportunity for higher educational participation as the United States I may be wrong about that but if if I am wrong it’s because United States a certain model for other countries that they’ve fallen and done a better it’s it’s a I heard someone describe it the other day as the wild west of higher education and like the United States this very competitive market place that higher education operates in creates the very best that you would hope for so of the you you started out by saying that you know so many who who just look for careers that provide security and safety and stability of so they can put their kids through school and college and pay off the mortgage and bought in higher education innovators and entrepreneurs are rewarded up because it is such a restless competitive environment so I I would say to those who have ambitions to academic leadership in universities think like an entrepreneur I love it I want we’re gonna close on that okay thank you so much and generally been Wilshire of learning more about this it’s it’s very enlightening and that and I know our viewers and listeners who enjoy great thanks so much thank you thank you dean dumpster for taking the time to speak with me think like an entrepreneur and see how you can take your skill crafter passion to the next level and I think we’re gonna see a lot of great thinkers coming out of UT’s college of fine arts in the coming years the masters in Venice team includes me chancellor to produce from Iraq awesome and special thanks to the whole team that found in Austin if you are enjoying the show makes you remember of our Facebook group masters and founders for even more content and don’t forget to rate and review it does help I promise thanks for listening