In an effort to provide students in the Lamar Dodd School of Art and the Hugh Hodgson School of Music with comprehensive and specialized career support, the Arts Career and Entrepreneurship Space (ACES) was initiated in the Fall Semester of 2018. The shared office in the Lamar Dodd School of Art serves as a space where students can seek assistance in identifying professional objectives, building career skills, locating opportunities, preparing job application materials, and finding internships. Under the direction of Mark Mobley and Tif Sigfrids, ACES also launched a series of visiting talks with graphic designers, artists working in New York and Los Angeles, directors of non-profit spaces, composers, performers, and book designers as a way of exposing students to the variety of career possibilities relevant to their course of study.

In 2018 ACES co-director, Tif Sigfrids, initiated the ACES support fund. The fund was created to help students who receive internships in cities with high costs of living where living expenses might be a determining factor in their ability to pursue an opportunity. 

Sigfrids explains, “Internships provide students with the experience that is critical to starting a career. Many of these positions are low paid or even unpaid. Over the course of my tenure working in the arts, I’ve grown disheartened to find that many of these opportunities are prohibitively expensive for students whose families don’t have the means to give them financial assistance. In a small effort to diversify the socioeconomic fabric of the art world, I initiated the fund.”
 
Graphic Design student Reagan Floyd was the first recipient of the ACES support fund. At the inaugural ACES Career Day in January of 2019, Reagan met Bob Nunnally who was representing an Info Graphics firm in Washington D.C. called Oasys. Nunnally encouraged Floyd to apply for one of two summer internships that the firm offers annually. Floyd was excited to find out she was the first University of Georgia student to ever receive the internship. Sigfrids was pleased to hear of this connection made at the Career Day and, after meeting with Floyd, determined that she would be the recipient of the first ACES support fund award.

Remarking on the experience interning at Oasys and of the difference the fund made, Floyd states: “I learned so much over the course of my internship last summer and made so many amazing connections that will undoubtedly have an exponentially positive effect on my career as a graphic designer. After my internship I was offered a paid position with Oasys and am working remotely for the company while I finish my last semester at UGA.  Rent and living costs in D.C. are so high that I would not have been able to afford a place to stay for the duration of my work without aid from the ACES support fund. I am beyond grateful for the opportunities that ACES has connected me with.”

Learn more about ACES here.