“Our greatest strength is our attention to this field of arts and social change,” said Srygley.

The names Robert H. Smith and Clarice Smith are well-known on this campus for the academic buildings that boast their names and honor their philanthropy.

But the Smiths, who were married, have seen their buildings usually have nothing to do with each another: Business matters in the Robert H. Smith School of Business, and arts matter in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. That’s changing with “TerpTalks: Art, Community and Entrepreneurship,” the first collaboration between the two.

Formatted as TED Talks-style sessions and panels, the two-hour event will help promote dialogue and discussion about using art and business to inspire social change.

Senior music major Anna Mendham and senior music major Mairin Srygley, who is also enrolled in the individual studies program, are co-founders of the student group Voices: Arts for Social Change, which is dedicated to furthering social change and the performing arts. The group has about 15 members, most of whom are music students.

“Our greatest strength is our attention to this field of arts and social change,” Srygley said.

The group works to examine career paths that use art to make an impact in society, she said.

Then an idea was born: Why not collaborate with business school student groups working in the same field of social change?

“We decided we wanted to model something off of TED Talks because people gain a lot of information from TED Talks and hearing about other people’s successes,” Mendham said.

Artists can use their art and social change to bring about peace while also teaching others to promote a better society, she said.

For example, Srygley is an intern at the Kennedy Center in the Changing Education Through the Arts program, which helps public school teachers weave the arts into their instruction.

AshokaU TerpChangemakers and Net Impact, two business school student groups that hope to inspire change in social entrepreneurship, are sponsoring the event. The marketing chairman of AshokaU TerpChangemakers is Christopher Lane, a junior marketing and theatre major. While he has used his majors to help in sectors of performance and marketing, he’s never been able to combine them directly, until now.

“When I found out that we were going to do this, I was absolutely ecstatic,” Lane said.

AshokaU TerpChangemakers’ goal is the business equivalent of Voices: Arts for Social Change’s goal: to engage businesses in society, Lane said.

“How do we live in a world where a lot of businesses are seeking profit but actually look at that from a new perspective on how to really create some sort of social impact or social change in the community?” Lane asked.

He hopes TerpTalks attendees will start thinking about how they can make a social impact.

“There’s a lot of art entrepreneurship that can happen in the world,” Lane said.

TerpTalks runs on Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. in Clarice Smith Center 2540 (the band room). The event is free.