UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The College of Arts and Architecture’s Arts Entrepreneurship Program will present two speakers, graphic designer Craig Welsh and “serial entrepreneur” Howard Udell, as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week at Penn State, Nov. 15–20. Welsh will speak on Tuesday, Nov. 17, and Udell will speak on Thursday, Nov. 19, both at 6:30 p.m. in the Palmer Lipcon Auditorium, Palmer Museum of Art. Pizza will be served prior to their presentations at 6 p.m. in the Palmer Museum lobby. Students who plan to attend should register at http://www.gewpennstate.org.
Welsh, who holds a bachelor of science in architecture from Penn State; is principal/creative director of Go Welsh, a Lancaster, PA-based design studio; and co-founder of Society of Design (SOD). He is also an associate professor of communications and humanities at Penn State Harrisburg, where he teaches advertising and graphic design, and a visiting instructor in the MFA Graphic Design program at Marywood University in Dunmore, Pennsylvania. Welsh holds a master of arts. in advertising design from Syracuse University and master of fine arts in graphic design from Marywood University. He has also participated in the AIGA/Harvard Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders executive education program. He has judged creative competitions in the United States and Canada and authored several articles on design and creativity for a variety of publications. Welsh completed his first book project, “Design:Portfolio – Self-promotion at its best,” for Rockport Publishing in 2013.
Udell received his business degree in 1981 from Penn State, where he was a four-year member of the Blue Band. After working for Xerox and ITT Corporation for several years, he started Property Tax Reduction Services, and later several technology-related enterprises, including Saf-T-Net Alertnow. When he sold that company to the publicly traded Blackboard in 2010, Saf-T-Net Alertnow had become the largest privately owned provider of parent notification for schools. Besides mentoring and advising entrepreneurs, his current endeavor is Gooey’s American Grille, which will begin franchising in January 2016. The first unit opened in August 2015.