Three countries, one international management degree
Zannie Giraud Voss, chairperson and professor of arts management and arts entrepreneurship at SMU, talks about a unique new three-country master's degree in international arts management delivered by universities in Canada, the United States and Italy.
By JENNIFER LEWINGTON
A unique new three-country master degree in international arts management will be delivered by Canada, the United States and Italy.
The new 12-month degree, the International Arts Management Master of Management, to be offered this September, is the brain-child of François Colbert, a marketing professor at HEC Montréal who holds the Carmelle and Rémi Marcoux Chair in Arts Management.
About 25 students from a variety of countries will study four months each at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, HEC in Montreal and Bocconi School of Management in Milan, Italy. The $40,000 program, to be delivered in English, aims to equip students for an increasingly global arts and culture industry that features multicountry exhibits and international tours.
With the new program, says Prof. Colbert, “We have a master’s degree that would prepare people to work globally.”
In 2008, while on a visit to SMU, he broached his idea to Zannie Giraud Voss, chairperson and professor of arts management and arts entrepreneurship at the university’s Meadows School of the Arts. She loved the notion of academic collaboration across borders.
“What if, instead of replicating faculty, we pooled our collective resources and created something that would be joint?” she recalls of the discussion. During Prof. Colbert’s visit, the two raised the idea with Prof. Voss’s dean who, she says, “immediately jumped on the idea and thought it was fantastic.”