Reflections

I came to SMTD during the Summer of 2015, when SMTD was going through a leadership transition that created the ideal environment for the launch of EXCEL, long before we became the Department of Entrepreneurship & Leadership. 

The chance to work with Mark Clague, who had been appointed the inaugural Director of Entrepreneurship & Career Services, was exciting and built on our previous work together on a national non-profit called Arts Enterprise, which had helped catalyze arts entrepreneurship training at several universities nationwide. Outgoing Dean Christopher Kendall had approved a new staff role to develop and provide performing arts career services. At the same time, incoming Dean Aaron Dworkin brought a vision of integrating entrepreneurship and leadership training within the student experience. 

By the time I arrived on campus, my role had been formalized as Assistant Director of Entrepreneurship & Career Services. I was tasked with both exploring the most effective approach to building the right array of resources to help our students launch into sustainable, meaningful, and impactful careers. From the start, the Dean’s Office provided key institutional support, both budgetary and, more importantly, the flexibility for us to experiment, test out various resource modalities, and pivot as we learned more about needs across the school. 

It was clear to me that SMTD’s unique orientation as a top conservatory-style school within a leading entrepreneurial ecosystem meant that EXCEL was immediately able to tap into campus-wide resources to quickly establish sound operational processes. I was quickly able to connect leadership across campus, as well as a slew of alumni, faculty, and staff, to understand how arts entrepreneurship and leadership training might flourish at U-M. This open campus dynamic was key to our long-term success, because we were able to balance acting entrepreneurially—experimenting and taking risks on new offerings—while also avoiding unnecessary pitfalls that could have stymied support, stepped on toes, or needlessly overextended our resources. 

The biggest revelation to me early on was that the people in SMTD already represented an enterprising culture, one where faculty model a variety of professional activities, deeply rooted in project-based learning, for which students were clamoring for more support and guidance, and where staff bring deep operational knowledge to facilitate one-of-a-kind learning experiences. Mark and I found immediate support and thought partnerships to tailor personalized resources to students in each discipline. 

Thanks to this collaborative ethos, which included featuring SMTD faculty, staff and students in early workshops presentations and panels, we were able to establish credibility as a service center dedicated to expanding the bandwidth of professional development resources for all students. This has defined EXCEL's (and now Entrepreneurship & Leadership's) operational strategy to this day—many of our most well-known offerings, including immersions, internship funding, and an array of online resources were catalyzed by information and feedback from our community. 

For me, the true soul of EXCEL is its focus on student growth and success. This was not an accident, but reflects the program’s unique origin. It all started in 2004 with four amazing student leaders who responded to their own request that SMTD better prepare students to thrive after graduation. 

Kelly Dylla, Chris Genteel, Emily Weingarten, and Nate Zeisler created Arts Enterprise, a cross-campus student organization bridging from SMTD to the Ross School of Business. I was lucky to cheer them on as faculty advisor, but their spirit of students making things happen for students, learning by leading, and forging friendships through mutual support to create opportunity is the throughline that for me makes EXCEL so amazing and special. 

Their example changed my life as it transformed SMTD—creating a signature program that provides both the skills and spirit of audacity that has launched now a decade of their artist colleagues on bold, creative adventures.

My entrepreneurial journey started long before I had titles. It began with a simple, stubborn impulse: if I cannot find the space that artists need, I will build it. When I became Dean of the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance, I saw the same pattern play out for brilliant young artists repeatedly. They were being trained to master their craft, but too often left without the tools, language, and confidence to design a sustainable life in the arts. That gap felt unacceptable.

That is why several of us who were committed to this broader sense of responsibility related to how we prepare the next generation created the EXCEL Lab, a home base where students could turn ideas into action, learn to create and steward ethical arts experiences, and find multiple points of entry into arts leadership, entrepreneurship, and management. My hope was to build an environment that shone a spotlight on “success” beyond a narrow set of outcomes, and I wanted our students prepared to engage responsibly in a globally informed arts ecosystem.

Founding EXCEL was also about people. We were lucky at SMTD to be able to engage Mark Clague to serve as its inaugural leader, ultimately recruiting Jonathan Kuuskoski who leads the lab and chairs the Department of Entrepreneurship and Leadership, who has brought not only expertise in our field but also the leadership acumen to implement our mission within a broader school with a myriad of competing priorities and interests maximizing the impact we are able to have on our students. Today, that department and EXCEL work as one engine, offering advising, venture incubation, co-curricular training, and tangible project funding that helps students move from talent to traction.

What is most meaningful to me is watching artists realize they are not “just” performers, makers, or scholars. They are leaders. They can build teams, shape institutions, launch ventures, and create impact without abandoning their art. When a student’s idea becomes a real project, a real job, a real community benefit, that is the work of EXCEL of which I am most proud.

When joining the EXCEL Lab in May 2022, I was struck by its blend of services and programs, as well as its integration into SMTD culture. The possibility to support student growth across multiple professional development and entrepreneurship areas resonated deeply with me. Many alumni have shared the same sentiment, but I wish I had an EXCEL Lab when I was in college, and to have the opportunity to create impact through this role was a dream come true!

In my first year, there was the buzz of in person events re-emerging from the pandemic, the institutional support of funding and increased staff and faculty (my role included), and just an energy of possibility and exploration. It seemed at that point, our goal was to find the balance between remaining as entrepreneurial and game for new things as in the first years of EXCEL, but also to start to build cadences and processes to our work as an established program office and department. 

Truthfully, I was intimidated by the scope and scale of all that had been accomplished, but exhilarated by the challenge and opportunity to realize the EXCEL Lab vision where “every SMTD student acquires the knowledge, mindsets and skills to realize a meaningful, rewarding, impactful, and sustainable life in the arts.” 

Our work in 2023-2025 allowed us to hone regular offerings, like our funding programs and workshops, and revive pre-pandemic events like the New York Immersion, while still undertaking strategic pilots. We also began a more structured approach to managing collaborative events with faculty and departments, streamlining office workflow. This balance created a strong foundation for the future, whatever that brings. 

As an Assistant Professor in the Department of Entrepreneurship & Leadership, I have seen firsthand the transformative impact that the EXCEL Lab has on our students. EXCEL is more than a resource center, it is a catalyst for turning ideas into action, offering personalized support for internships, experiential learning, special projects, and immersion trips. Through EXCEL, students gain access to mentorship, funding, and hands-on opportunities that allow them to explore their passions in meaningful, real-world contexts. In my role as the instructor of record for student internships, I’ve witnessed how EXCEL’s guidance and resources enable students to develop professional networks, take initiative, and build confidence as emerging leaders.

One of my most rewarding experiences with EXCEL was leading an immersion trip to Chicago in collaboration with Gabrielle Piazza. The trip provided 20 students the opportunity to engage directly with arts organizations and industry professionals while exploring what makes Chicago a unique arts ecosystem. It is experiences like this that leave a lasting impression on their personal and professional trajectory.

EXCEL’s commitment to community and continuous program refinement ensures that our students find multiple pathways to meaningful growth. Supporting students as they turn their visions into action and watching them thrive in arts leadership and management is what makes the work of the EXCEL Lab so meaningful to me.

As a professor in the Entrepreneurship & Leadership department and through my work with the EXCEL Lab, I challenge the students to question existing systems. Though they may want to keep their heads down and practice, their artistic practice exists within a context that is important for them to understand. It is also essential for students to recognize how that context gets constructed and can be deconstructed. Together, we discuss cultural policy and history, and how to examine issues in an ethical context before making a decision. I’ll pose questions – like whether inequity is absolutely necessary, and if it is not, how do we bring in design thinking to re-imagine and rebuild the system without inequity? 

In considering what skills will be the most critical for students heading out to launch their careers, I must also evaluate whether to teach the old system or what I believe will become the new system. We’re in a liminal space between an old system breaking down and remaking of new systems. I can’t see the future and where we will land, but I am certain that three skills will be valuable no matter what: critical thinking, creative thinking, and connecting with community.

It is a privilege to help prepare this next generation of arts professionals and creatives, and one of the absolute benefits of being at SMTD is that we have made the time, space, and commitment to take on the challenging questions facing the creative sector. SMTD has galvanized the opportunity to equip future arts leaders and teachers to successfully navigate the entire lifespan of their career. When you give students all of the resources they need to become successful, it is rewarding to see what they do with those resources. 

It’s a pleasure to work with my Department of Entrepreneurship & Leadership and EXCEL Lab colleagues, who are committed to training arts workers capable of building a just and thriving cultural sector. It’s equally exciting to witness the creativity and insight of the emerging professionals who are studying in the department and participating in its co-curricular programs. 

The EXCEL faculty and staff work closely to align our curriculum with the most recent research on the skills required for today’s arts workers. We work to ensure that we are preparing individuals to operate across the commercial, nonprofit, and community sectors in a variety of jobs and positions. 

More importantly, perhaps, we train students to recognize that artistic support is not always about money, but also about the relationships, engagement, and methods of leadership that foster cultural vitality in a community and nationally. 

I joined the EXCEL Lab in 2024 as Program Coordinator, inspired by the mission to help students turn ideas into action and expand definitions of success. One of the most meaningful aspects of my role has been working alongside our exceptional student program assistants. I lead a communications team of four, whose creativity and growth continue to inspire me. 

I’m especially grateful to contribute to the EXCEL Lab’s continued growth, including leading the EXCEL Lab Arts Career Fair, which connects students with professionals and pathways that shape their futures. It is deeply rewarding to witness students’ growth from orientation to graduation and to play a role in that journey.

Before looking ahead to the future of EXCEL, I first want to look back at the long arc of performing arts education. For many generations, when the School of Music, Theatre & Dance was simply the School of Music, students accepted the notion that everything they needed to know to build a career would be found within the curriculum. Their education was directed by master teachers on the faculty, and their job was to climb up the curricular ladder and then launch their careers.

Over the course of recent decades, this school has grown, evolved, and continually innovated, adding several new areas of study, including a Department of Entrepreneurship & Leadership. As it has changed, the opportunities for students have broadened exponentially. While the curriculum remains the core of students’ educational experience, in recent years SMTD has not only expanded the curriculum but also layered on essential experiences that help students respond to and succeed in a rapidly changing performing arts landscape. One such experience that has become inextricably woven into the fabric of this school: the entrepreneurship and leadership opportunities made possible by EXCEL. 

In just its first 10 years, EXCEL has substantially deepened the already entrepreneurial nature of SMTD, creating an environment that allows for the coexistence of experimentation, agency, and imagination with the curricular rigor that distinguishes this school. EXCEL has catalyzed an evolution of performing arts education from something that resides wholly inside the curriculum to something that increasingly makes space for student-led, project-based, faculty-mentored, institutionally supported activity. Through EXCEL’s widely varied and endlessly customizable offerings, students begin to imagine and realize their own unique future. With support, they can explore and experiment, succeed and fail – all the while, gaining experiences that will help them flex and respond to the dynamic environment they will meet upon graduating. EXCEL is an absolute linchpin of the student experience at SMTD.

The future of the Department of Entrepreneurship & Leadership and the EXCEL Lab is one of exciting possibilities and opportunities – a future that is wholly aligned with the future of SMTD, as laid out in our Strategic Framework. A central tenet of EXCEL involves channeling students’ desire to serve the public good by leading ethically, spotlighting diverse artistic voices, and engaging meaningfully with communities. EXCEL operates on a principle of nurturing individualized artistic exploration, whether in traditional or emerging forms. EXCEL prepares students to break new ground both in their local communities and in the global arts ecosystem, transforming the performing arts landscape. While the present is ever-changing and the future cannot be known, the adaptability and resourcefulness cultivated by SMTD and EXCEL will prepare students for whatever they may encounter.