Welcome to The Higher Edge Podcast!
Jan. 24, 2023

People and the Art of Change in Higher Education IT (featuring Joe Moreau)

As a young man, Joe Moreau (https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephmoreau/) dreamed of a career in the arts. But an early job in media production at a small university planted the seed for his love of higher education.

After a rewarding journey as a Chief...

As a young man, Joe Moreau dreamed of a career in the arts. But an early job in media production at a small university planted the seed for his love of higher education.

After a rewarding journey as a Chief Information Officer, Joe is now in a Senior Consultant role with HIGHER DIGITAL. Today, he’s still on a mission to propel higher ed into the digital age, including by helping advance the State of California’s Community College systems.

In this episode, Joe talks about his collaborative efforts with California Community Colleges and how other CIOs can gain the Higher Edge by putting people first.

Join us as we discuss:

  • How practical art and technology skills mirror each other (4:30)
  • The California Community College system’s tech renaissance (12:35)
  • From systemwide LMS to systemwide ERP in California (25:19)

Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Announcer: Welcome 

[00:00:08] to The Higher Edge, a podcast for the brightest minds in higher education. Hear from the change makers and rulebreakers that are driving meaningful, impactful change for colleges and universities across the country from improving operations to supporting student success. These are the stories that give you, "The Higher Edge".

[00:00:30] And now your host, Brendan Aldrich. 

[00:00:34] Brendan Aldrich: Hey everybody, and welcome to the Higher Edge. I'm Brendan Aldrich and I'm here today with Joe Moreau a great friend and an amazing technologist who is just an unstoppable force for higher education technology who has, uh, actually traveled the world in support of higher education.

[00:00:50] He's been a board member for EDUCAUSE and also was the Vice Chancellor of Technology and Chief Technology Officer for the Foothill DeAnza Community College District. Located [00:01:00] in the high-tech Mecca of California's Silicon Valley. I've so been looking forward to having him on the show as Joe is both an incredibly talented individual and just a fascinating person to spend time around.

[00:01:11] Joe, welcome and thanks so much for joining us here on the Higher Edge. 

[00:01:15] Joe Moreau: Hey, Brendan, glad to be here. We've done many cool things together and this is one more on that long list . 

[00:01:22] Brendan Aldrich: Now, Joe, I normally start off the show with an interesting or a fun fact about the guest or their organization, but if you don't mind, I'd like to start with what I think is an extraordinarily fun story.

[00:01:33] Sure. When Joe was a student at uc, San Diego, he was roommates with Mike. Who went on to become an Emmy award-winning producer, writer, actor that created programs like Silicon Valley Office Space, Idiocracy, uh, king of the Hill, an important. For this mention is you'll see Bibas and Butthead. So in your college years, you and Mike engaged in, let's just say, a variety of antics with others from your dorm, [00:02:00] which later made their way into various episodes of that show.

[00:02:03] Uh, and here's where I'm gonna turn the story over to you, Joe, because years later you invited Mike up to help you kick off an event at, at Mira Coaster College in Oceanside, California. 

[00:02:13] Joe Moreau: Yeah, so, so we, we built this beautiful brand new library and information hub at Miraco. And we started a friends of the library group to kind of support some kind of cultural and intellectual activities, uh, around the library authors and poets and filmmakers and so on and so forth to come and talk to the faculty and students and staff about, you know, new and cool stuff.

[00:02:36] So I, I was able one day to persuade Mike to, to come and join us for a day and be part of this, you know, kickoff of friends of the library. And, uh, the, the day culminated with a, a, a really beautiful event where he and I did kind of a inside the actor studio format type of interview where he talked about all the kinds of things that he's done and how he got [00:03:00] from being a, a math major and an engineering student to being a, a filmmaker and an animator.

[00:03:05] And it was really quite fascinating. So at the end of this discussion, we opened it up to questions to this large crowd that had come to see. and, and one person says, now, uh, I understand Mike, many of your characters are, uh, based on people that you know from your life. Is that really true? And, and Mike went on to give a, a really, uh, great answer.

[00:03:27] He says, well, you know, it is, and it isn't, you know, there, I, I would have to say there's no one person in my life who's become one character in my work. He says, A lot of times it's been a conglomeration. Characteristics of people that I've known and, and I've kind of combined those into characters that are funny and interesting and complicated.

[00:03:48] He says, except for one . And he, and he points to me, sitting across from him on the stage. He says, this guy, this guy is the original Butthead . Of course, you know, he [00:04:00] was just kidding. Uh, I, I, I know there are a few, a few qualities that I have that I recognize in Butthead. , but, uh, I, I'm really not that character

[00:04:10] Uh, except for, for months after that I was a dean at MiraCosta. For months after that, uh, my friends and colleagues called me Dean Butthead. It really 

[00:04:18] Brendan Aldrich: is kind of fun to think about all of the funny, crazy, probably not smart things that we ever did in our lives and, and how those might make it someday into a, into a character or a.

[00:04:29] Now when you were first going to college there, I understand had been some discussions about the path that you were going to pursue in college, is that right? 

[00:04:38] Joe Moreau: My father was a brilliant engineer. He was the first in his family to go to college and he became an electrical engineer and ultimately became a very successful aerospace executive doing some, some really great work in airborne radar that that our country and many countries used to this very.

[00:04:57] And so when it was time for me to [00:05:00] go to college, the first in his family to go to college, he was like, okay, well you're gonna go be an engineer. And it's like, you know, but I don't really wanna be an engineer. No, no, no, no, no. You're gonna go be an engineer. But that's not what I have in mind for myself.

[00:05:12] Well, what are you thinking about? Well, I think I want to be involved in media, you know, television, film, photography, audio production, things of that sort. I'd been doing those as hobbies through. Middle school and high school. And I thought, well, this is the way, this is the way I want to spend my career.

[00:05:28] And he says, well, those are all fine. But you know, you can't really make a live in doing those things. And, and you can still do those things with an engineering degree. So you're gonna go get an engineering degree. And that way when you come to grips with reality and realize you can't make a living doing that artsy stuff that you're talking about, then I can help you get a job in aerospace, be do in engineering.

[00:05:51] So go be an. and I started on that path and rapidly discovered that it was an unhappy path for me. [00:06:00] And so at the end of my freshman year, I changed my major at U C S D from electrical engineering to art and, and I'm certain my father was convinced that I would be living in his upstairs bedroom for the rest of my life and never amounting to a hill of beans because I had turned my back on an engineering career, which was clearly the 

[00:06:20] Brendan Aldrich: path.

[00:06:22] But then you wound up almost by accident in education. 

[00:06:26] Joe Moreau: I did. I started my career as a videographer and, and a, and a freelance video producer. And you know, when the work was there, the work, it was good work, you know, but it wasn't always there and you never knew when the next gig was gonna come along. So it was a little stressful, particularly as I was a young man, newly married, thinking about having a family.

[00:06:48] How am I gonna pay all these. , you know, how am I gonna have benefits to support my kids, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, this was in 1990, you know, of course the way you [00:07:00] found a job in 1990 was you looked in the newspaper , you know, you get, so I got the, I was living in Los Angeles, you got the LA Times, found a job for a media center supervisor.

[00:07:10] At Pasadena City College in not too far from where I was living. I thought, well, I can do all those things, and I like to do all those things. I'm gonna apply for that job. Well, ultimately, they hired me and I found myself in an environment where I knew I was home. I knew this was the place to be. This was a place where I could do all the things that I'd like to do with technology.

[00:07:39] And I could invest myself professionally in a pursuit that was dignified, that was honorable, and that I could contribute to other people helping to change their lives for the better. And that's, that just really resonated with me in a way that I [00:08:00] hadn't expected. It was quite accidental, you know, that discovery.

[00:08:03] And so I went on to graduate school, got a master's degree, started doing some. And, and just knew very quickly that this was the place for me to invest 

[00:08:13] Brendan Aldrich: my career. Well, but you and I have talked about how your arts background really helped shape the way you approached both technology and the engineering side of your work, uh, in a very different way.

[00:08:24] And I was hoping you might share a little bit more about that. 

[00:08:27] Joe Moreau: This was kind of another discovery of my own and, and certainly a, a revelation to my father. And that is what, what I learned. Through the study of art, both evaluating other people's art and making art of my own, was that the study of art teaches you to be a systems thinker.

[00:08:48] So take a piece of art can be any kind of art. It could be a a, a motion picture. It could be a sculpture, it could be a painting, it could be any, any kind of art you can imagine, [00:09:00] and, and part of what you do in the study of art, whether it's the study of other people's art or the study of your own. Is you learn how to deconstruct that piece of art, that totality of a piece of art into its individual components, you know?

[00:09:14] So whether it's timing or brightness or hue or texture or pacing or proportion or size or scale or any of those kinds of things, you learn how to understand a piece of art as it's made up by all of its component. and whether those components contribute to the success of the piece itself, whether they detract from it or whether the complimentary nature of those components make it successful, whether the tension between those components make it successful and, and what I've found as a technologist, particularly dealing with, with enterprise or institutional approaches [00:10:00] to information.

[00:10:01] was that the, the skills that I learned studying art were the exact same skills I needed to be to help my colleagues be successful at whatever it was our institution was trying to do. Because I could look at the big picture of an information system, or a project or, or a service and be able to understand it in its totality, but also then deconstructed into its components to figure out, well, how can we make it.

[00:10:27] You know, how can we make it faster, easier, cheaper, a better experience for students, faculty, and staff? It was the exact same thinking that that was required to do that. And when I explained that to my father, he, he, you know, he, it, it never occurred to him that, that the study of art could help you be that kind of thinker and you could apply that thinking in a multitude of ways, not just in making and critiquing.

[00:10:51] it, it, it flabbergasted him, I would say in a, in a good way though, cuz it, I think it really brought us together in, in a new [00:11:00] closeness. He, I think finally had a, a better understanding and respect for the choices that I had made in my young life that he thought were 

[00:11:08] Brendan Aldrich: wrong. Hey, for everyone listening, hang tight.

[00:11:11] We're gonna take a quick break to hear from our sponsor and we'll be back in just one 

[00:11:14] Joe Moreau: minute.

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[00:12:19] Brendan Aldrich: Thanks so much for listening to our sponsor. Let's get back to the show. , well, fathers and sons. Right? I mean, I mean, it's so good that he got a chance to see how your own background and experience helped you really eventually tackle the same kind of work he had been interested in you doing, but in a way that he really hadn't expected.

[00:12:36] You know, I, I also, I made reference to, in, in the introduction to your work leading technology at Foothill Deens, a community college district, but the kind of systems thinking that you're talking about, Also really allowed you to branch out from there and take on some efforts that, that crossed the entire California community 

[00:12:52] Joe Moreau: college system.

[00:12:54] One of the most incredible opportunities I had in my career was in, in 2013, [00:13:00] uh, then Governor Jerry Brown said, you know, our, our system got devastated. The community college system got devastated by the great recession. We, we'd lost, we, we had to reduce capacity so dramatically to respond to budget cuts.

[00:13:14] We. Just to capacity reductions about half a million students. Wow. You know, that's more students than some large states have in total. And we had to pull back from serving those students. So the governor said, economy of the state's recovering revenues back. We need to really rebuild the capacity of our community colleges, because those are so close to serving so many of our students throughout the state.

[00:13:41] Just a. Group of people who, who need our help and need education. So he said, but I, but I want us to do it in a new and in different way. I want us to think about how do we rebuild capacity for online instruction. Again, our district was selected to lead that. That team reported up through [00:14:00] me as the CTO for the district, and uh, we had a number of charges.

[00:14:05] One was to bring all 115 or 16 colleges onto a common learning management. and provide a whole variety of other kinds of resources around professional development and counseling and tutoring and mental health and uh, of course design standards and evaluat, Ethan, me, evaluation methods and a whole variety of things.

[00:14:27] And, and people said, this is all good well intentioned. When we, when we began, this was all well intentioned, but you know, you're never gonna get 116 colleges to agree at anything, so you might as well just give the money. And be happy with the status quo, and we'll nibble around the edge of this problem little by little and, and see how we can make things better.

[00:14:47] But, but this wholesale change, this wholesale transformation of the system is simply not possible, so don't even try. I had the great fortune of being able to hire the inaugural team that [00:15:00] led C V C O E I, 

[00:15:01] Brendan Aldrich: the California Virtual Campus, uh, online education 

[00:15:04] Joe Moreau: initiative. And my job was to make sure that really smart people were in the room.

[00:15:10] And I would say that I was really successful with that, and I got some of the best talent in the country to come together and say, no, no, no. We, we can do this . We can make this happen. This is the right thing to do, and we'll figure out how to make. Okay, so one of the biggest challenges that we had at least, uh, uh, in the early days was to bring together all of the colleges in the state onto a common platform, common learning management system platform.

[00:15:39] We had a, a really, I think, inclusive process that allowed us to bring, to achieve a hundred percent adoption of the new. In just 30 months and for a system as large as ours that, that was no small feed. 

[00:15:56] Brendan Aldrich: Yeah. Joe, 30 months is, is actually incredible. I mean you're, [00:16:00] you are talking about the system-wide selection and deployment of a new technology platform across the largest system of higher education in the world.

[00:16:07] Joe Moreau: We had over 2 million students, 80,000 faculty and a gajillion staff and support people, and it was steering the Titanic for. . 

[00:16:18] Brendan Aldrich: Uh, so what were some of the things that you felt really enabled you to, to take that kind of initiative at that kind of scale and really draw that across the line so successfully?

[00:16:28] Joe Moreau: Sure. Well, you know, it really was not about the technology. It really was about culture and fundamentally about people, because culture is, is people. If, if, if you really break it down, kind of going back to that systems thinking approach that I learned in art. You know, we had to really look at our system as a system of districts and colleges and faculty and academic senates and, and how do all those people come, how do all those factors come together and how do they work together [00:17:00] to support each other, and how can we understand their differences along with their critical compilation of, of the system that serves so many students?

[00:17:11] When we set out to create a specification for a common. . It was a very inclusive process. We had somewhere around 600 faculty and staff from throughout the state gave their input to say, if you're gonna choose a new thing, this is what's important to me. And a lot of it was common across people as you would expect, but the point was that people felt they had an opportunity to be heard.

[00:17:34] We created the rfp. We, uh, had a number of companies propose. We boiled it down to a couple of final. and then we brought together the pe literally brought together the people for a week in Sacramento to interview the finalists and to get, see demos of products and things of that sort. And, and, and we really focused it, again, not on the products, but on the [00:18:00] people.

[00:18:00] It was a moderated session that made sure that everybody could be heard, that made sure that all the questions could get. To make sure that the things that people really cared about were, were on display for us to see and, and, uh, assess on the last day of, of that week. You know, we had seen all the vendor demonstrations and had all the discussion and answered all the questions, and we had a day of deliberation and, and it was, it was really quite a, a, a collegial dialogue, but at the end, we had to vote.

[00:18:32] Everybody had to raise their hand and say, this is the one I. . And when it came time to vote, the process had been so clear and so focused on the needs of the stakeholders, that it was a unanimous decision. It was absolutely clear what the right fit was because people had had that opportunity to exchange ideas about what right meant, and it was the first [00:19:00] time in my career that I actually saw people.

[00:19:03] after choosing a piece of software. . You know, I've been through dozens if not hundreds of product evaluations in my career and no one's ever cried before, but people, people were not happy about the product as much as they were happy about the process and, and whether they got exactly what it was, they individually, or their college or their district individually wanted, was kind of didn't matter.

[00:19:30] they knew the process was fair and inclusive and respectful, and that it yielded the best thinking of our collective brain to serve our students more effectively. . 

[00:19:44] Brendan Aldrich: Yeah. You know, it's, it's often repeated, but a super useful phrase when we, when we say that technology is easy, people are hard. Uh, which is not to say that technology isn't complex or that it doesn't need to be done well and with great attention to detail, but that working through the challenges of those [00:20:00] competing needs and desires and hopes from your different constituent groups, uh, can be an enormous and, and daunting task for 

[00:20:08] Joe Moreau: many, you know, and that's one of the things that attract.

[00:20:11] To the, to the great team of folks at, at Higher Digital is that is their focus. It's really on how do we help people change things that they're really afraid of changing or that are really hard to change, or that are really complicated to change. And having that kind of systems thinking approach going all the way back to art school, I mean, th.

[00:20:36] In in the same way that it helped me dissect complex information systems that I was helping my institutions implement. It also is really valuable in dissecting the nature of change and an organization that's as large and complex and in many cases autonomous as a college university. . 

[00:20:57] Brendan Aldrich: And when you talk about that kind of, that kind of comprehensive [00:21:00] change management program, uh, this is not the same thing as, as creating necessarily any sort of additional administrative layers or bureaucracy when you talk about comprehensive or effective change 

[00:21:12] Joe Moreau: management.

[00:21:13] It may also actually kind of be the opposite of that. It's like, how can we strip away some of the unnecessary. Layers that we've piled on ourselves, that are making things hard, that are, that are, that are making it difficult for us to respond to, uh, the kinds of things that we, we, we need to, to be modern organizations, you know, as, as, as an industry.

[00:21:39] Higher ed has been really, really bad about the people side of implementations. I mean, we really have. , you know, we focused on timelines and budgets and, and inventories and project plans and, and those are all important things there. There absolutely are. I mean, you can't get the [00:22:00] job done without it, but students, faculty, staff, administrators, boards, the public people have to use these things and we have not really given enough attention to.

[00:22:12] what those considerations are in terms of helping people use these tools more effectively. So I, I think that's what one of the things that I was really encouraged, uh, to see that Higher Digital was working on, is really developing a set of tools to not just manage change specific to an an, a large scale initiative, but also to really figure out how to weave that into the.

[00:22:39] Of who the institution is and the kinds of tools and the kinds of methodology that is really allowing that ease of reassessment and reevaluation on an ongoing basis to become part of the institutional culture. Be be how people interact with each other, how people make decisions, how people look at [00:23:00] the future, how it can be easier for people to, to continuously improve the things they do for students, faculty, and.

[00:23:09] Brendan Aldrich: That's very cool. And, and by the way, you're also staying involved with other collaborative efforts within the system as well, I understand. 

[00:23:16] Joe Moreau: Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff. So our California Community College, uh, chief Information Officers group has for a number of years, uh, held, uh, a aspiring CIO Academy.

[00:23:29] And, and this is for mid-level managers in higher ed who, who someday think, yeah, I'd like to be a cio, uh, but what do I need to know to be that job? To do that job effectively? And so, uh, just, uh, recently I had the opportunity to, uh, again, teach in that program. And really, uh, my, my, the title of my course is What kind of CIO do you want to be?

[00:23:51] The job's not really about technology. And, and so we spend a lot of time talking. Personas and leadership [00:24:00] styles and diversity, equity and inclusion and how to spot innovation and things of that sort. And it's really about people and relationships and communication and, and listening and understanding it.

[00:24:17] It really doesn't have much to do with technology. Well, and as 

[00:24:20] Brendan Aldrich: you mentioned, storytelling 

[00:24:21] Joe Moreau: going to art school. Help me understand how to tell a good. What is the narrative? How does it work? And what are the mechanics of that story? So I think that's something that I've been able to bring, uh, to future leaders and say, look here, I'm gonna tell you stories, not because I like telling stories, but because stories help us break down complex, complicated, intricate, um, sometimes not very obvious situations that we need to understand.

[00:24:50] Really. So I'm gonna tell you stories that I have for my career that help illustrate some of these things in the hope that you will develop your own repertoire of stories that [00:25:00] you can use to communicate critical and complex concepts to your colleagues as you embark on a whole variety of initiatives over your 

[00:25:10] Brendan Aldrich: career.

[00:25:11] And there's so many studies out there that show how much more memorable that we as people remember stories as, as opposed to facts as one example. That's fantastic. Mm-hmm. . Mm. , you know, it's almost prescient that we're talking about all of this work that you did with the, uh, system-wide LMS or learning management system initiative, uh, in California, because that very topic is coming up again within the California Community Colleges today.

[00:25:33] Joe Moreau: It, it is, you know, and, and one of the things that, that, uh, I've worked on, you know, and when I talk about I've worked on it, I mean, I've been part of a really excellent team of people, whether it's been a team that reports to me or a team of collaborator, , uh, you know, none of us get these things done on our own.

[00:25:50] And, and that's certainly true of me as well. Um, but working with a good group of folks to say, you know, we can build on what we learned around [00:26:00] the adoption of a common learning management system. And people began to say, well, you know, that LMS thing, that learning management system thing, that worked out pretty well and that library thing, that worked out pretty well too.

[00:26:11] You know, maybe there's other things we could do this with, you know, whether it's identity management or security. Uh, but one of the big ones we've talked about for, for quite a few years now, about five years, is could we do this with e R P? Could we take our student information system, our hr, our finance, you know, fundraising, whatever else we, we run on our E R P?

[00:26:31] Could we come up with a system-wide approach to that? Of course, doing learning management system and doing an E R P are orders of magnitude apart, but in essence, it's still the same challenge. It really, really is when you break it down again, breaking it down into its c. It, it is effectively the same kind of process and the same kind of thinking.

[00:26:51] And so I was really excited to see that our system office submitted a budget change proposal for almost 400 [00:27:00] million to the, to the governor, to, to the Department of Finance to request the funding for us to begin that journey of a common E R P. And there's so many advantages to doing that, whether it's just a common interface for students, uh, Who want to take classes at different institutions to making it easier for them to qualify for, for, for financial aid when their load is coming from different institutions to doing things for the system to say, if we had near realtime data coming out of a common e r p, we'd be able to look at ourselves and say, what happened last week and what are we gonna do about it next?

[00:27:41] As opposed to the reality of what we have now. I mean, we do extensive state reporting, but by the, but that data is often six or 12 months old and by the time it gets submitted and massaged and transformed into a format that's usable by decision makers, it could be another six or 12 months. [00:28:00] And so we're looked, by the time we actually get to a point where we're gonna make a data driven decision, we may be looking at data that's 24 bucks old.

[00:28:08] You know, things change a lot faster than that, you know, and so having access to that kind of intelligence about what are student, what are the challenges that students are facing, what are the challenges that faculty and staff are facing, and what do we do about it right away? Uh, it, the, the, uh, capacity for transforming our system is enormous, but the path to getting there is also a big one.

[00:28:33] So, . So I think we'll, we'll build on what we've learned, uh, in some very successful programs in the state and, and hopefully the state will, will fund it so we can continue that learning journey. What a 

[00:28:46] Brendan Aldrich: cool effort and, and hopefully one that will go just as well as the other ones you've mentioned, like the l m S initiative.

[00:28:53] Hey, Joe, one of the things I like to ask us on the show is if maybe you have a story from your own career that [00:29:00] that helped you see something differently or maybe look at something in a different. might help our listeners gain the higher 

[00:29:06] Joe Moreau: edge. Well, the thing that pops into my head most immediately is, is the, my first week at my first job in higher education at Pasadena City College.

[00:29:16] So my, my official title was Supervisor of the Instructional Resources Center and um, and I was dealing. You know, uh, media, film and, and videotape and DVDs and projectors and graphic arts and photography and whole, all these kinds of things that mostly supported classroom instruction. And, you know, I'm 28 years old.

[00:29:41] This is my first job in higher ed. It's my first real management position of any sort. You know, I'm super green, but I was fortunate to have a really, really excellent mentor. My, my first. A fellow named Rod Foster, who was a brilliant guy in and of [00:30:00] his own right. You know, as, as both an instructor and an administrator.

[00:30:03] He took me around that first week touring the campus, huge campus meeting people. Here's where this thing is, you're responsible for that over there. You need to know about this over here. And, and as we'd walk around the campus each day, he'd drop a little gem of wisdom on me, you know, to say you. He'd say, look, if, if, if you're gonna make higher ed your career, you need to understand this.

[00:30:28] It's gonna sound awful at first. And you, and you may have a tendency to have a bad reaction to it, but I, I, but I want you to check that and just absorb it and process it. And it might take you a few months or even a couple of years to fully understand and appreciate this. But if you, if you're serious about a career in higher, This will help you understand why people do some of the things they do and how you can support those decisions or influence [00:31:00] them in ways that are more productive.

[00:31:04] I'm like, okay, great. So he said, so he, he, what he had for me was an adaptation of a quote from Winston Churchill. The reason why the politics are so dirty is the stakes are so. and I, and I just went, oh, that's horrible, . That's really bumming me out, you know? And he's like, no, no, no. Remember I said just check that reaction and process that over time.

[00:31:29] Well, it actually did take me probably two years to fully understand that, but the way that I came to understand it was that we have people who are deeply, deeply dedicated to helping other people change their. One class at a time, one step at a time. And those, the stakes involved for us as educators in that one little thing are, are high and, and they're certainly higher [00:32:00] than for our students.

[00:32:02] But in the grand scheme of the world, you know, we're not curing cancer, we're not, you know, inventing new computing devices or things of that sort. We're, we're, we're. Lots and lots of really important little things every single day and doing it really well. And sometimes what that causes us to do is lose sight of the bigger picture to say, this is why we're doing it.

[00:32:28] This is how it adds up to something grand and important for the institution, for this class, for this individual student. And so we clinging onto things that seem important. Maybe they're not so important. . And so having, you know, and so having the ability to, to decode that behavior and, and help colleagues and friends find a new understanding about what it is they do and the value of [00:33:00] what it is they do and how what it is they do contributes in a really meaningful way to something important to our, to our students, to our college, to our state, to our economy, to our.

[00:33:12] Yeah. I, I, I think of that every single week and have for 32 years and, and that has really helped me be a better colleague. 

[00:33:24] Brendan Aldrich: Really, really great insight. Hey Joe, thanks so much for coming on the show and sharing your experience 

[00:33:29] Joe Moreau: with us. I couldn't think of a better place to be this. , 

[00:33:33] Brendan Aldrich: uh, Joe, if listeners would like to reach out to you with questions about today's episode or to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to contact you?

[00:33:41] Joe Moreau: You know, you can always find me on LinkedIn. I've been there for years and no intention of going anywhere else. So easy to find. I get a lot of people who reach out through LinkedIn and I get back to people as quickly as I can. Joe, 

[00:33:53] Brendan Aldrich: such a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks again for coming on and being a guest with us, uh, on the higher edge.

[00:33:57] Thanks for having me, Brenda. And for everybody [00:34:00] listening, I'm Brennan Aldrich and we'll talk. 

[00:34:03] Announcer: Thanks for listening to The Higher Edge. For more, subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform. Leave us a review if you loved the show, and be sure to connect with Brendan on LinkedIn. Know someone who's making big changes at their higher ed institution that belongs on this podcast.

[00:34:20] Drop us a line at podcasts@thehigheredge.com. The Higher Edge is sponsored by Invoke Learning in partnership with Westport Studios. View and opinions expressed by individuals during the podcast are their own. See how Invoke Learning is empowering higher education@invokelearning.com.[00:35:00]