Selling Out? Panel presentation at Mid America Print Council conference
Cape Girardeau, Missouri

Friday, November 2nd, 10:15 to noon
Bedell Performance Hall, SEMO
Moderator: Charles Beneke
Panelists: Denise Bookwalter, Bob Erickson, Lari Gibbons, Nicole Hand, Scott L. Smith

Entrepreneurial initiatives in academic printshops are becoming more and more common and increasingly necessary. With dwindling budgets, a lack of institutional funding for shop equipment and student travel, and the need to promote our printmaking programs, we find ourselves playing the parts of both educators and entrepreneurs. This panel will investigate ways that academic printshops have integrated entrepreneurial practices into their shops and curricula. Panelists will address the successes and failures they have seen in their programs with the ventures that they have undertaken. They will discuss the ways these initiatives have benefited their shops and expanded the scope of their academic goals, but also question their effects on artistic integrity, additional demands on the curriculum, faculty, and facilities, and the distractions created from the hard work necessary for students to become accomplished artists. Are there hidden costs to financially profitable activities? How can we seamlessly integrate them into our programs? Are we selling to enrich our programs or are we selling out?