The Artsugi project has been kicked off courtesy of a generous grant provided by the University of San Diego's "Social Innovation Challenge."

The Artsugi project has been kicked off courtesy of a generous $10,000 grant provided by the "Social Innovation Challenge" hosted by the Center for Peace and Commerce from the University of San Diego (USD). 

In 2013, while pursuing my M.Ed in Educational Technology from SDSU, I decided to fulfill one of my lifelong dreams of building an e-learning platform to support 6-12 arts education. The goal was to design an LMS platform geared specifically for art teachers and creative students with "open-facing" portfolios and an online catalog of CTE-aligned (Career Technical Education) art and music courses from a variety of creative fields.

At the time I called the project "The Free Artists Network” (FAN), and I spent the two years of my master’s program simultaneously working on and developing for the platform. The same year I graduated from SDSU with my M.Ed, I was fortunate enough to win a $10,000 grant for my work on the LMS from the "USD Social Innovation Challenge" competition in 2015 (featured in the San Diego Union-Tribune).

I utilized the award money to enter the Founder Institute program (San Diego chapter), an entrepreneurial grooming program, where I re-branded and renamed the project "Artsugi." I was additionally fortunate to have won the FI graduation night pitch competition, and I was invited to present the LMS project at the National Art Education Association conference in Chicago (2016) and again in New York City (2017).

We have since been using the remainder of the SIC grant money to build a newer, better version of the LMS platform, which you can preview here: www.artsugi.com and www.artsugi.com/school.

- Krisha Moeller (Founder/CEO)