The Lessons We Learn Elsewhere
I’m reminded of two conversations I had in Pittsburgh.
The first was with Katherine Barbera, co-founder of Bright Archives, who shared insights from her research into her Italian heritage. Through her work, she found evidence that the liberation of Italian women has steadily improved across generations. Yet progress remained uneven, with women continuing to experience disparities relative to men.
The second was a Financial Literacy Seminar hosted by Fourth River, a collaboration between Honcho PGH and The Rising Artist Foundation, featuring Ally Jane Ayers and Adam Degonish. During the discussion, I asked, “How is the financial sector working to serve people rather than corporations?” While I cannot recall every nuance of the response, one point has stayed with me. Ally noted that everyday people are more financially literate today than at any other point in history. This makes sense when we consider how knowledge related to financial independence and wealth-building has often been restricted to those with access and privilege. In many ways, technology has played an important role in democratizing that information.
I share these stories because they point toward the same truth: progress is happening, even if it often feels frustratingly incremental.
That reality can be difficult to appreciate when we are living through the present moment, especially when we continue to encounter systems and individuals invested in preserving hierarchy and exclusion. Yet when we zoom out, many aspects of society have improved. This is not an argument for complacency. We should continue demanding a more equitable future for ourselves and those who come after us. Rather, it is a reminder that human beings are wired to focus on what remains unfinished. Often, that instinct serves an important purpose. But recognizing progress and pursuing further change are not mutually exclusive.
What We Wish We Learned
After watching this episode of Arts Engines, I realized how much I had in common with Aaron Dworkin’s guest, John Milbauer, Dean of DePaul University’s School of Music. We both had a similar observation: artistic institutions often excel at teaching creatives how to create, but not necessarily how to sustain a life within the arts.
Looking back, I remain grateful that I chose to pursue my passion regardless of the uncertainty, and that people and organizations, like the Setnor School of Music, met me halfway. For someone who yearned to deepen his understanding of music and advance his flute playing, I was in heaven.
Yet even paradise has blind spots.
As much as Setnor nurtured my artistic growth, there was comparatively little dialogue about what came after graduation. How were my peers and I supposed to translate years of coursework into meaningful employment? This question felt especially pressing for students on performance tracks. We spent countless hours refining our craft, yet there were few conversations about building a professional identity, marketing ourselves digitally, creating sustainable income streams, or navigating the realities of today’s arts ecosystem.
Of course, students bear responsibility for their own futures. Yet when individuals are investing thousands of dollars, and often taking on significant debt, in pursuit of a degree, career preparation cannot be viewed as an optional supplement. Developing artistic excellence and preparing students for professional sustainability should be complementary goals, not competing priorities.
In many ways, I benefited from circumstance. My academic journey began as a Mathematics Education major, leading to minors in both Mathematics and Education. Those experiences encouraged me to think across disciplines and helped distinguish me from my peers. Not every student arrives with that advantage.
This feels particularly relevant today as institutions continue to reevaluate their programs. This year, Syracuse University announced that Setnor’s Bachelor of Music degrees in Performance, Music Composition, and Sound Recording Technology would sunset and continue under a revised Bachelor of Science in Music with more flexible pathways. I can understand the rationale. Careers in performance and composition can be difficult to sustain, and institutions must respond to changing economic realities. Yet these disciplines remain essential to the future of music.
The change has me wondering: Is today’s economy pushing artists toward portfolio-based careers? Will broader, more flexible degrees better prepare students for the realities of the field? And what responsibility do institutions have to ensure that professional preparation evolves alongside artistic training?
By Happenstance
For the third time, I find myself grateful for my flute instructor, Dana DiGenerro, who introduced me to a field I had never heard of before: Arts Administration.
As I approached graduation, I found myself wrestling with a question many students face: What comes next? I knew about the traditional pathways of performance and education, but neither felt like a complete fit. Then came the realization that there were careers dedicated to supporting, sustaining, and advancing the arts beyond the stage and classroom.
What struck me most was not that Arts Administration existed, but that I had discovered it almost by accident. Here was an entire profession connecting my interests in music, education, leadership, and community impact, yet it had rarely surfaced during my undergraduate experience.
Ultimately, I chose Arts Administration because it offered an opportunity to both sustain my financial well-being and contribute meaningfully to the arts ecosystem. Looking back, I cannot help but wonder how many students might benefit if arts schools devoted as much attention to helping students navigate careers as they do to developing artistic excellence. More importantly, I wonder what becomes possible when creatives are encouraged to learn beyond their discipline rather than remain confined within it. Some of the most valuable lessons of my career have come not only from music classrooms. Rather than viewing other sectors as competing with artistic training, perhaps institutions should recognize them as essential partners in helping creatives build sustainable and impactful lives.
Getting an Outside Perspective
John Milbauer arrived at a similar conclusion.
After spending two decades in higher education as a pianist and piano faculty member, he sought a perspective beyond the walls of the conservatory and enrolled in a Master of Public Administration program. Throughout the experience, he found himself returning to the same thought: “I should have learned this in music school.”
The lessons he encountered were not disconnected from the arts. In fact, many had direct applications to the work artists and arts organizations do every day. The question, then, was simple: If these ideas were so relevant, why were they being learned elsewhere?
In his conversation with Aaron Dworkin, Milbauer shared three insights that continue to shape how he thinks about arts education and leadership.
Arts and Culture’s Role and Response in Crisis
Similar to my own experience, Milbauer was completing his Master’s degree when the world shifted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In one of his final in-person classes, the course pivoted to focus on arts and culture in times of crisis. There, a familiar truth was reinforced: when crisis strikes, arts and culture are often among the first sectors to experience cuts and uncertainty, yet they are also among the first things people turn to in the aftermath.
Milbauer shared the example of Nina Simone performing “Sunday in Savannah” just three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Before beginning, Simone addressed the grieving audience: “I didn’t know if any of you would come today, but we want to provide you some kind of comfort.”
That moment captures something essential about the arts. Long before they are products, programs, or professions, they are a means of helping people make sense of life. They help us celebrate, grieve, question, remember, and heal. When words fail, we often turn to music, stories, images, and movement.
Of course, it is important to learn music’s foundations. Technique, theory, history, and repertoire all matter. Yet it can be easy to lose sight of why the music exists in the first place. At times, I realize I have performed works without fully understanding their origin stories, their context, or the humanity that inspired them. I was taught how to play the music, but not always why the music needed to be written.
The deeper I grow as a musician, the more I find that these questions matter. Understanding the human experience behind a piece does not distract from the music, it enriches it. The notes remain the same, but the meaning becomes fuller.
The Impact of the Unquantifiable Items
“Resist the urge to quantify the good you do.
If you turn on the lights behind one person’s eyes, you change the world.”
In a culture focused on measurement, outcomes, and validation, Milbauer’s recounting feel almost countercultural. Impact matters. Stewardship matters. Organizations have a responsibility to understand whether their work is making a difference. Yet, not everything that matters can be captured in a spreadsheet.
For me, one of those immeasurable moments came through PBS. It had to be fate that I stumbled upon a performance of Great Performances that sparked my curiosity and helped kindle a lifelong love of the flute. No survey measured that transformation. No organization could have predicted its ripple effects. Yet decades later, that single moment continues to shape my life and work.
I suspect many people in arts and culture carry similar stories. A concert that offered comfort. A teacher who believed in them. A painting that shifted their perspective. A song that helped them feel understood. The arts are filled with these quiet moments of transformation, moments that resist quantification precisely because they are deeply personal.
This is not an argument against impact measurement. Rather, it is a reminder that measurement is only one lens through which to understand value. When organizations become overly focused on producing metrics, there is a risk that people become numbers and experiences become outputs. In the process, we can lose sight of the very thing many arts organizations seek to cultivate: communities where creativity, connection, and human expression are recognized not as luxuries, but as necessities.
It is a question of balance.
And as I reflected on my own music school experience, I found myself asking a similar question. Where were our voices in these conversations? Were we viewed as individuals with unique aspirations and evolving identities, or simply as statistics to be tracked, retained, and reported?
The Imaginative Constraint
At his final takeaway, Milbauer rhetorically asks Dworkin, “Is the modern music school the crucible for creativity?” For Milbauer, the answer lies in retaining the ability to inspire while resisting an overreliance on institutionalized, codified, and homogenized frameworks.
Lately, I’ve been contemplating the relationship between institutions and visionaries. Do institutions truly want people to imagine alternatives, especially when those alternatives challenge the status quo? Or are they more comfortable producing individuals who can successfully operate within existing systems?
Creativity requires more than technical mastery. It requires permission to imagine alternatives. Yet many institutions, by necessity or habit, prioritize preservation over possibility. They reward what is proven, measurable, and familiar. The danger is not that students fail to learn the system. The danger is that they become so skilled at navigating existing systems that they never learn how to reimagine them.
Though I can hold resentment for what I didn’t receive, I find greater freedom in accepting what was and asking what comes next.
If progress is possible, then growth is possible. If knowledge can be shared more openly today than yesterday, then perhaps our responsibility is not simply to inherit institutions but to improve them.
That is the work I hope to contribute to: helping cultivate a generation of global citizens who possess both creative achievement and appreciation, who understand the arts not as a luxury but as a necessity, and who move through the world with imagination, care, and love
