Art Institute Gets Art Types Business Ready; Recruiting by Disney, Electronic Arts Orange County Business Journal

Monday, May 15, 2006 Tony Novak, chief operating and financial officer at Aliso Viejo Web designer 2Advanced Studios LLC, has searched far and wide for specialized software programmers. "I found a guy hiding in Peru," he said. 2Advanced, which does work for Ford Motor Co., O'Neill Inc. and Motorola Inc., needs not just code crunchers but people who have artistic flair and business sense, Novak said. "That's not an easy individual to locate," he said. Novak said he would "fill four positions now in a New York minute" if he only could find people who know how to create "rich media" sites that talk, move and pop. A lack of interest isn't the problem. 2Advanced gets about 3,000 resumes a month, Novak said. But few measure up, he said. So imagine Novak's delight when he found what he calls one of his better hires in his own back yard: Sonny Kotler, a graduate of the Interactive Media Design program at Santa Ana's Art Institute of California-Orange County. "Everyday I'm writing code," said 22-year-old Kotler, who primarily writes PHP hypertext preprocessor, a scripting language used to create dynamic Web pages.

"It's my passion. I love it," he said. 2Advanced isn't alone. Recruiters Calling Redwood City-based game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. and Irvine advertising agency Young & Rubicam Brands have hired graduates from the Santa Ana school. So have Home Depot Inc., which has picked up interior design grads, and the Disneyland Resort and Lawry's Carvery restaurant in Costa Mesa, which have hired cooking students. The Art Institute offers associate and bachelor's degrees in 10 programs, including graphic arts, industrial design, game programming and cooking. The campus is one of 33 for-profit Art Institutes in North America. The Santa Ana campus has 1,800 students, including about 300 in culinary arts, and employs about 100 teachers. Education Management Corp., based in Pittsburgh, is the Art Institute's publicly held parent. It's set to go private next month in a $3.4 billion buyout led by Providence Equity Partners and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners. The school serves a critical local need: providing designers for an economy that's big on engineering smarts and style sense. It's a smaller,and closer,version of the region's dominant design school, Pasadena's Art Center College of Design.

2Advanced's Novak said he got involved with the Art Institute about two years ago when the school asked him to speak before a class. He said he found Kotler during the Art Institute's Portfolio Show, where students present their work to about 90 visiting companies. The school's career placement program made the hefty tuition worth it, according to Kotler. "More than anything, I would've paid the tuition just for that," he said. It costs about $77,000 to get a bachelor's degree and about $45,000 for a two-year associate degree. Kotler said he was able to get half of his tuition paid with a scholarship. Loans covered the other half. Next year, about $700,000 will be available for scholarships, according to the school. Lawry's restaurant and Disneyland hire students from the institute's culinary program, which started three years ago. Demand for workers to run restaurants and for chefs is high, said Dan Levinson, president of the Art Institute of California-Orange County. The school tries to match its programs to the demands of businesses in the area, according to Levinson. "We do a lot of homework as far as our markets are concerned," he said. Culinary students run 50 Forks, a California cuisine restaurant on campus, which is open to the public.

The Art Institute was Kotler's first choice for college, he said. The Laguna Hills resident found out about the institute through a couple of friends who attended the Art Institute of Dallas. "They helped me get into the whole thing," he said. Kotler said he liked the idea of small classes. "If you ever have any questions, they're right there," he said. The school has a business bent, according to Levinson. "We try to give (students) the work ethic," he said. "You can use your creativity to make money but you have to work." Stressing Attendance Students, some of them artsy types, are prompted to get to classes on time and keep attendance up, Levinson said. Students generally take five classes. Each class is four hours once a week. They learn how to create art that would work for businesses. And they learn how to present their work, Levinson said. In business, students won't get to create art for art's sake, he said. They'll be given assignments and deadlines. The dress at 2Advanced is sandals and T-shirts, Novak said. But workers need to fit into a business setting, he said. Sometimes young artists can be over the top, boisterous and loaded

with ego, according to Novak. The more the artistic bent, the higher the maintenance, he said. Once, Novak said he had a candidate bold enough to interview in a T-shirt that said, "Americans Scare Me." "He had an ego a mile wide," Novak said. Clients such as Ford won't tolerate unprofessional behavior, he said. Students learn how to work with businesses as part of their coursework. Students in the advertising class recently began a 10week competition against 10 other Art Institutes for Toyota Motor Sales USA in Torrance. Working with Toyota The project: develop a nontraditional ad campaign for Toyota's new Yaris. The Yaris, which recently hit dealer lots, is Toyota's small, stylish car marketed to the college crowd. As on "The Apprentice," students met with Toyota executives to learn about the Yaris and the objectives of the campaign. "This is the capstone of the advertising major class," said Jennifer Savary, senior planner corporate marketing for Toyota Motor Sales. It is the first time Toyota worked with the school. During the first five weeks, students will come up with the creative

part of the campaign. In the second five weeks, they'll put the plan into action on their campuses. Students will be judged on the campaign's effectiveness, so they need to be able to measure the buzz, Savary said. Each campus gets a $2,500 budget. Three winning schools are set to get scholarships. Students will dine with Toyota bigwigs. There could also be job prospects at Toyota units including Calty Design Research Inc. in Newport Beach, Savary said. The Art Institute also does ad work for free for local nonprofits. Chip Dill, captain of the Costa Mesa Fire Department, contacted the Art Institute for an intern to create a fire safety information disc. He got a whole class. "They created a look for us," Dill said. Now the Web design class is set to come up with a fire safety Web site, he said. The Art Institute started its advertising degree program last fall. This summer, it plans to offer a visual and game programming degree. One of the Art Institute's local competitors is Laguna College of Art & Design in Laguna Beach, which has degree programs, certificates and individual courses. More art oriented, Laguna College offers bachelor's and master's in fine arts.

The Art Institute, which opened in OC five years ago, is set to expand. It has three buildings on West Sunflower Avenue, with about 93,000 square feet, some of which it shares with a sister school, Argosy University. Argosy offers evening and weekend studies in various programs. Once Argosy finds a nearby building, it plans to move out with the Art Institute taking over the space.