Every Student an Entrepreneur with Jeff Meade

What if your college or university decided that every undergraduate student there would be an entrepreneur, not just studying entrepreneurship but doing it? That’s exactly the decision made a few years ago by the leadership at Paul Quinn College in Dallas, Texas.

Paul Quinn is an HBCU with a small student body, just 700 students. This year, the college has launched a new program called Every Quinnite Is an Entrepreneur. The goal? Every student, regardless of major, launches and operates a real venture before graduation.

On the podcast today, I talk with Jeff Meade, founding director of Every Quinnite Is an Entrepreneur. Jeff came to Paul Quinn last year with 20 years experience growing companies and advising businesses. We talk about his institution’s bold approach to preparing students for life after college and what venture-based learning looks like as this new program gets moving.

Episode Resources

Jeff Meade on LinkedIn

Paul Quinn College

Every Quinnite Is an Entrepreneur

Transcript

Derek Bruff: 0:05

Welcome to Intentional Teaching, a podcast aimed at educators to help them develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas in teaching. I'm your host, Derek Bruff. I hope this podcast helps you be more intentional in how you teach and in how you develop as a teacher over time.

Derek Bruff: 0:22

What if your college or university decided that every undergraduate student there would be an entrepreneur? Not just studying entrepreneurship, but actually doing it. And I don't mean just launching an entrepreneurship center to help students who want to start their own business. I mean weaving entrepreneurship in a very practical, applied way throughout the curriculum.

Derek Bruff: 0:42

That's exactly the decision made a few years ago by the leadership at Paul Quinn College in Dallas, Texas. Paul Quinn is an HBCU with a small student body, just 700 students. This year, the college has launched a new program called Every Quinnite is an Entrepreneur. The goal? Every student, regardless of major, launches and operates a real venture before graduation.

Derek Bruff: 1:03

On the podcast today, I talk with Jeff Meade, founding director of Every Quinnite is an Entrepreneur. Jeff came to Paul Quinn last year with 20 years' experience growing companies and advising businesses. He is currently working with the entire first-year class, 155 students, helping them to define problems, identify solutions, and build businesses. We talk about his institution's bold approach to preparing students for life after college and what venture-based learning looks like as this new program gets moving.

Derek Bruff: 1:37

Jeff, thank you so much for being on Intentional Teaching. I'm excited to have you here and to get to know you and your work today. Yeah, thanks for being here.

Jeff Meade: 1:44

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Derek Bruff: 1:45

So I'm gonna start with my usual opening question. Um, and I'm I'm expecting an interesting answer from you given your career, but we'll see. We'll see. It may not may not be a it may be an atypical answer, I should say.

Jeff Meade: 1:57

Right, right. Let's go atypical.

Derek Bruff: 1:59

Let's go atypical. Can you tell us about a time when you realized you wanted to be an educator?

Jeff Meade: 2:05

Yes, yes. And and the funny thing is, I've I've heard this question on your podcast before, so I I've thought, how would I answer that? And for me, I think what's really funny is I've grown up my whole life, and being an educator didn't cross my mind, right? Uh, but funny enough, about a year and a half ago, I was on this hike in Japan. Uh beautiful hike, Mount Fuji in the background. I'm hiking with my best friend, and you know, we're pontificating, asking each other questions about life. And he asked me a seemingly simple question. He says, What makes you happy? And I struggled to answer it. I I really did. You know, I threw out a bunch of things. I said, Hey, you know, my kids, uh, do some stuff with my wife. And he said, Yeah, of course. That you love your wife, you love your kids, but but what about you? What makes you happy? And I tell you, we we probably hiked another couple more hours, even on a flight back from Japan to Dallas. I still couldn't answer the question. And it frustrated me to no end.

Jeff Meade: 3:10

And and ultimately, what I started doing is I journaled. I said, all right, well, what are the things that I do that make me happy? And so about a year and a half ago, I was consulting. I had my own consulting firm. And I said, what I really like doing there is I love the coaching. I love when I'm able to coach my clients. And I thought about other times that I was really happy in my career. And and a few years back when my kids were being born, they're now 16 and 14. I was an adjunct at UCLA. And I was like, I really liked being in the classroom. And so, you know, I kept pulling on this thread and I said, man, it would be great to do something like that again. But but boy was I scared of the salary hit. You know, I was really nervous about that. But but funny enough, that hike uh really put me on this journey to where I'm at now.

Jeff Meade: 4:01

I've been at Paul Quinn College for a year now. Uh, but it was really that conversation where I said, you know, what truly makes me happy? You know, and I think when you're running a business, you set these benchmarks like I want to increase revenue by X or profitability or new customers. Uh but that seemingly simple question made me put on a different hat, and and now I'm on this different career journey. So that's what made me realize I want to be an educator.

Derek Bruff: 4:29

That's a big, it's a big jump though, right? A huge jump.

Jeff Meade: 4:34

Huge. Uh, but it's been fun. It has been fun. I I've been at Paula Quinn for a year now. It's it's been a lot of fun.

Derek Bruff: 4:41

Yeah. So I want to ask you about your venture-based learning work, but maybe a little more context. Can you tell us a little bit more about Paul Quinn College? Because I expect many of our listeners haven't heard of it.

Jeff Meade: 4:54

Yeah. So Paul Quinn College is an HBCU. Uh we're located in Dallas, Texas. And it's a small school. We have about our enrollment is about 700 students. Um that is very small, yes. Yes, yes. Uh we are 153 years old. Um, we originally uh started in Austin, then Waco, and now we're in Dallas. Uh so quite a bit of history. Uh, but we we've been around for a while, and uh we've been in this present location since the 90s. Uh but you know, through the last couple years, we've kind of had our ups and downs. But uh this 700 is is really like our highest enrollment. Um so yeah. Yeah. So the uh I I think what'll be revealed in this conversation is when you have such a small campus, it's essentially a learning laboratory, right? And you can kind of start different initiatives and you don't have to get thousands of kids on board, right? You can really make some quick changes. We we're very agile here uh because we're small.

Derek Bruff: 5:58

Yeah, yeah. All right, so I'm gonna come back to that. But you're a marketer. Yes. So market me this. What is venture-based learning and why should higher education faculty care about it?

Jeff Meade: 6:12

I love it. I love it. Uh you know, simply it's it the way we look at it is it's not just about studying entrepreneurship, it's about doing it. And so when students start getting into my classes, they start taking any of the entrepreneurship classes, our focus is on building a venture. And all their learning takes place around the venture. And so, whereas, you know, they will traditionally have their marketing, finance, econ classes, all of those classes are wrapped around the ventures that our students create. And and so for some context, uh, and we we're only a year in, but the way we're rolling it out is we'll have freshmen come in for Summer Bridge. So they'll come in a few weeks early, just get acclimated to the campus. And during that six weeks that they're here, I'm one of the first people they meet.

Derek Bruff: 7:02

Wow.

Jeff Meade: 7:03

So that just happened. And they they go through like a boot camp. They learn it's like a principles of entrepreneurship class, and they go through the rigors of getting ready to do a pitch. So they keep going through different iterations of their ideas. I bring in guest speakers, mentors to like pressure test the ideas, and then we see which ideas kind of rise to the surface. And and then this past fall, uh, you know, we're coming up on ending our semester, they've been pressure testing those ideas, seeing if they actually have problems, right? Like you may have a good idea, but are you solving a problem? And so we've been doing that this whole semester.

Jeff Meade: 7:39

And then as we move into the spring, what we're gonna do is start to invest in some of those ideas, um, truly put our money where our mouth is. And so the venture-based learning just really wraps around that the entire campus is truly revolved around the ideas that our students are creating. Um, so it's it's been quite the journey, as you can imagine, trying to get everybody on board and different faculty members on board, and saying, hey, can you switch up your class to include, you know, like talking to my marketing folks, you know, going through their syllabus, and I'm saying, well, can we focus on maybe one of these student businesses? And an assignment can be how do we actually get a customer? Right. So it's been it's been challenging to say the least.

Derek Bruff: 8:29

I can imagine. So just to make sure, to make sure I'm following. So when you met with these first years over the summer, that was was that all incoming first years? All incoming first years, about 155 of them. Okay. Um, and the idea is that all of them would have essentially a business idea by the first day of classes. They they may change it, they may not stick with it, but they're they're they're like, they've gotten that far, right?

Jeff Meade: 8:58

Yeah. So first day of class, they meet me, and you know, I'm doing some lateral thinking exercises, and I'm just talking to them about entrepreneurship, and I'm bringing in entrepreneurs so they can meet and talk with them. So they're just getting their feet wet, and you know, they're 18, 19 years old, so they just land on campus. Yeah, half of them are just trying to see who else, you know, who do they have a crush on right now? And here I am saying,

Derek Bruff: 9:21

How do I do laundry?

Jeff Meade: 9:24

Where can I park? Yeah. And I'm pushing them to come up with some ideas. And, you know, really the first like two weeks was really about identifying problems, you know. Is there an itch that you want to scratch so they could truly understand like, don't just come up with an idea, right? Are you solving a problem for somebody? So we start there and then we start building out all right, you've identified a problem. What are some potential solutions? So that's really how it starts.

Derek Bruff: 9:52

Yeah. And so then the idea is that as they enter their coursework in their first year and following, that instead of learning about entrepreneurship, as you said, they would be integrating their ventures in their work. So and I guess, you know, um I'm thinking of some comparisons to some engineering education that I'm familiar with. Okay. So a kind of traditional approach to engineering education is to take a whole bunch of courses, right, and then in your senior year, you get to do a real design project for a real client. And that kind of helps you synthesize all the things that you were learning along the way. Yeah. More modern engineering work builds that design experience throughout. So I know a lot of places that have a first-year design course. And so, you know, your mechanical engineers don't know a lot about mechanical engineering at that point. They haven't had the coursework, but they get into the design work, maybe with some real clients, much earlier so that they're not having to kind of wait till the end of the experience to see what is this all about.

Jeff Meade: 11:00

Oh man, that seems like some places I need to benchmark. But yeah, that's exactly what it is. We are they are learning by doing, right? Um, instead of saying, my whole goal is is really that in a lot of classes, students will say, Oh, what's on the tests, right? I I don't want that. It's really just like, how will this work in the real world, right? That's where I want them to transition to. And and I think, you know, and we may go into this or we may not, but before I got into academia, I felt like this was the knock on academia, right? Like you learn all this stuff and can you use it in the real world? And we're saying you absolutely can because we you are in the real world. You're actually trying to get a customer. Uh, you know, there's theory there, just so that students know what they're doing, but they actually have to go do it. Um I think that's the really fascinating part for our students. This you don't get to just sit back. You are actually an entrepreneur. We don't talk about entrepreneurship, you do entrepreneurship here.

Derek Bruff: 12:02

So I know that higher education is under a lot of pressure these days. Yes. Um, and and part of that is a skepticism that you kind of mentioned, is a skepticism of the value of higher ed, right? Is it worth it to spend four years hold up somewhere learning about stuff? Or should you be working? Should you be doing? Should you you be building a business? Right. Um, and so do you see this initiative as kind of responding to some of that pressure?

Jeff Meade: 12:31

I do, and I do. And and you know, one thing just to give more context about Paul Quinn, I think what's really exciting is probably about a couple years ago, our president and the board, really innovative, they kind of just threw away the playbook. They said, What if we were starting the school over from scratch? Again, we have 700 students, so we can kind of play these games, right? Yeah. Imagine what it'd be like. And so they did. It was crazy. And so what they said was first thing we want to do, we want to make sure students don't graduate with any significant debt. And so now our goal is no student graduates with more than $12,000 in debt. Like that's the goal. And so every decision we make on campus is guided by that. You know, I I it reminds me of being in business school, reading like case studies on places like Southwest Airlines, where they wanted to be the low-cost airline. So every single decision that the business made was under the guise or based on the uh decision of, hey, we want to make sure we stay the low-cost airline. Same thing we do. And so we'll use like open source textbooks. Everything is designed to make sure that our students don't have a debt burden.

Derek Bruff: 13:43

Okay.

Jeff Meade: 13:44

Um I think that is that really truly distinguishes us. The next thing we said was I think students need to have actual work experience, kind of like what we're talking about here. And so it isn't just waiting till your final year. And so what we do is students work the minute they get to campus. Uh they'll start taking jobs and enrollment management. Um, I have students that intern with me, and so they are getting an actual work experience. We are we're actually a federal work college program.

Derek Bruff: 14:14

Okay.

Jeff Meade: 14:15

And so they are working on campus when they first land. And then as they become upperclassmen, we're getting them jobs with our corporate partners. So they are getting all the work experience that they need so that when they leave, you know, they'll say, I have three, four years of actual work experience. Yeah, yeah. Uh, and then I I think the other thing they said was, and this was a lot of feedback from employers, was you know, increasingly we want students to think and act like entrepreneurs, right? You know, when they get here, we don't want to just tell them what to do. We want them to kind of figure it out. And so that guided the thinking to say, we need we need to figure out how to develop this. And and that's was the genesis for the program I'm building, the Every Quinnite Is an Entrepreneur. So it was is really about, I think what the students see is we got to start a business. But what we're really trying to do is change the mindset. How do we get students to think and act like entrepreneurs and and building the businesses through the venture-based learning? That's the vehicle so we can get them to think and act like entrepreneurs. Right.

Derek Bruff: 15:20

Right. Because I, you know, I've I spent a good chunk of my career at Vanderbilt University, which is a highly selective college.

Jeff Meade: 15:27

Yeah.

Derek Bruff: 15:27

Students have to be academic all-stars to get in there. Yes. And the challenge that we often faced was that they were very, very good at following directions and meeting clear expectations.

Jeff Meade: 15:41

Yes.

Derek Bruff: 15:41

They struggled with ambiguity or agency, right? Like they wanted the checklist, right? Right. And so I'm imagining as a business owner hiring someone like that who wants an entire roadmap of everything. I mean, sometimes that's fine, but I can imagine that could be frustrating. Whereas if you have a student who has already figured out how to find a problem and start building a solution on their own initiative, that's a that's a pretty key skill set.

Jeff Meade: 16:08

Yeah, yeah. And so that was us really just listening. This is what the marketplace wants and designing around it. So yeah, it's it's pretty exciting.

Derek Bruff: 16:16

Nice. And like you say, it's not so much the goal is to start a business, but for some students, that's a great outcome. And for all students, it's a good process.

Jeff Meade: 16:26

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And you see, I see it in the classrooms. There are some students who are really like gravitating to this is my business, right? And you know, we had we had a pitch competition, so there was a handful of students that got to really show off this is my idea, and I'm growing it, and I'm building a team, and I'm gonna be the CEO. Like they truly embrace entrepreneurship. And other students are like, all right, I'll I'll do the marketing, you know, it's just

Derek Bruff: 16:57

well, I was wondering because like, you know, anytime I see a curricular initiative that tries to target every student, right? There's operational challenges in launching such a thing.

Jeff Meade: 17:07

Yes.

Derek Bruff: 17:07

And then there's the kind of receptivity that students have that some of them are like, this is not what I'm here for. Yeah. And so so do you have students who are like, really? Do we have to do this?

Jeff Meade: 17:18

Yeah, yeah. I I think I'd be lying if I said we didn't. You know there is there's definitely students who are like, I'm majoring in education, you know, what's the point? Uh and so really just helping them think through how entrepreneurship shows up in everything. Uh I had a conversation with a fine arts professor the other day, and he's integrating entrepreneurship into his class. And and it's really cool because he's showing them that being an artist means you have to be an entrepreneur, right? You're in the business of ideas. And the more I talked to him, I was like, oh, you're selling me on this. I, you know, I like it. But but it's really cool to see faculty embrace the the thinking, that you know, thinking and acting like an entrepreneur and and trying to get that down to students. And you know, we're a year in, so we don't have any examples to show students the same. Look at what such and such did. And so as we meet them at 18 years old, there's gonna be apprehension, like just tell me what's on the test, right? Like there's too much gray area here. So yeah, we do have to battle with some of that.

Derek Bruff: 18:24

Yeah, so uh it sounds like Paul Quinn has a pretty unique relationship with its community. Yes. Um, could you s could you speak to that a little bit more? Absolutely.

Jeff Meade: 18:34

We um what I really love is that we are so ingrained into the community. Uh again, we we have the schools on campus. We were actually just launched this program or launching this program with the Sean Carter Foundation. Sean Carter is Jay-Z, uh Jay-Z the Entertainer and and Wharton. And and it's a personal finance or wealth building curriculum. And so the whole point of that is our students will be taking a personal finance class, right? We're always talking about wealth building at a school. And so it's not just the class, all the students, and this is becoming a core class for us. So all the students that take this class will also have to go out into the community and teach personal finance wealth building to our community partners. And so for the we're gonna start off with the students teaching this course at the high school level, so to younger students to get them thinking about you know, what does it mean to have a credit score? Just things that they could probably wrap their heads around. But we're also talking to local churches that we've done work with, and we will also be enrolling or putting out the curriculum to local churches as well. And so uh being that we are we're in South Dallas, which is a very what's the best way to describe under-resourced community. Um I think this the community definitely looks at us as a beacon of hope, and so we we definitely reach out as much as possible.

Derek Bruff: 20:05

What do you bring to this work given your unique professional background?

Jeff Meade: 20:11

Right. That's a good question. Uh I actually don't think I don't think there were many people that could do this work. And and what I mean is as I was designing the curriculum, uh, you know, prior to getting here, and I I kind of did a skeleton of the curriculum before I was hired. And I remember I was working with uh my alma mater is Babson College, which is known for entrepreneurship. And I remember working through the curriculum with some of those folks. And as I was going through it, I was looking at how could I bring this to different schools? And and quite honestly, what what became apparent was I could bring it to a lot of different schools, but where would I have the most impact? And and what I mean by that is one of the other struggles I had when I was running my firm was that most of not most, all of my clients were doing really well. And and I told this to some of my students, all of my clients on paper were millionaires, right? They didn't go around saying I'm a millionaire, but they were millionaires. And and what I found sh really tough was that I didn't have any minority clients. Uh, none of my it just I didn't have a diverse client base and I couldn't figure out why. Uh, and so that really troubled me. And I just kept saying, man, the work I'm doing is so good, but it's hasn't benefited my community in any way. And so part of me was trying to figure out how to change that.

Jeff Meade: 21:43

And and so as I had this idea, I said, you know what, the only way this work is gonna have the impact I want is I have to do it at like an HBCU where it would have the type of impact that I that I wanted. Um and so when I look at a school like a Paul Quinn, who has you know most of our population, um they are eligible for Pell grants, right? So when we start thinking about wealth building and entrepreneurship, what I'm trying to do is give my students a narrative that they may not have seen all too often in their neighborhoods, right? And so when what I realize is the students that I work with too, they also know what's real, right? And so it's one thing for somebody to say, hey, we want you to study this and do this.

Jeff Meade: 22:32

But I've been an entrepreneur for the last 20 years, right? I've kind of run the gamut. I've grown firms and I've told them I've grown firms, million-dollar firms, I've had opportunities to sell my firm. I messed that up. I tell them that too. Um, but but I've kind of been through the whole experience. I've had employees, I've built agencies with like 30, 40 employees. So I've kind of run the gamut. And so I've seen it all when I tell them that I want to start a business. But intuitively, I also know where they're coming from because the same way they was raised is the same way I was raised, right? And so I just think to myself, I know that there were some teachers, there were some professors that just took this interest in me and gave me a different narrative on my life. And and that's really what I'm trying to do with them.

Jeff Meade: 23:23

But also giving them access to my network, right? And so when students say, Oh, I have this idea, like one young lady who was in my pitch competition, she won a prize and she has a CPG idea, uh, consumer package goods. And so I'm scheduling time with her to meet with a factory here so that they can so she can talk to the chemists, so we can start coming up with ideas for her product, right? And I just don't think that if it wasn't me, she would have access to that network, right? Like that doesn't happen. She's 19 years old. You don't get to go to you know a factory and start testing out your ideas, right? I'm I'm having her talk to some marketing agency since that was my world for the last 20 years, sure how we start to package this idea, right? And so just bringing in my wealth of experience to actually make these kids' dreams real. Um, I I think that's the part that's exciting, but I don't think anybody has this unique skill set that could do it. And then who also loves teaching, right? Like that going to the first question, what makes me have being in the classroom with the students, right? So it's it's this unique combination that's been really great for me.

Derek Bruff: 24:36

I gotta ask, you mentioned the student you're working with, yes, the CPG idea.

Jeff Meade: 24:42

Yep, yeah.

Derek Bruff: 24:43

Um, and you're making you're helping her make some connections.

Jeff Meade: 24:47

Yes.

Derek Bruff: 24:48

And I'm thinking 700 students sounds like a small university, but that sounds like a lot of businesses for you to coach and help with.

Jeff Meade: 24:56

Yes.

Derek Bruff: 24:58

So what's how do you scale up to something that is kind of every student?

Jeff Meade: 25:04

Yes. Uh that is a great question, and I feel it. Uh but no one gets to start a business by themselves. So I don't have 155 businesses. Okay. Um, and so they are have they have to be in groups, like she is recruiting people to her team. Okay, they have to be in groups of like at least eight people, right? Okay. So we can actually, you know, somebody can do finance, someone can focus on marketing, social media, all that good stuff. So I should not have more than 15 teams. Um, and then I further break it down by we have an entrepreneur in residence program that we're launching. And so I'll be bringing people in to help with the coaching. Yeah. Right, because because you're absolutely right. 155 students, and I'm just dealing with the freshmen now.

Derek Bruff: 25:51

Oh, right. There's 155 more coming next year.

Jeff Meade: 25:54

Right. Doesn't sound like a lot until you are until they walk in in here and then they're like, hey, we were thinking about this. And I'm like, oh, that's a lot. Come back with your team, because I can't keep having this conversation over and over. Uh but but yeah, I'm leveraging different folks who want to mentor and help out students, and then and then the group work. It's group work, so that helps a lot.

Derek Bruff: 26:17

Yeah. Well, and it's it's a great skill set, right? For students. I mean, we don't often teach students how to work well on teams. We hope they do. We give them group projects, but there's a whole skill set there to develop. Oh my god.

Jeff Meade: 26:32

Yeah. If they had it their way, they would not be working in groups.

Derek Bruff: 26:36

Right? If they're gonna enter the workforce in four years, right? They need to be able to function on teams really well.

Jeff Meade: 26:44

Absolutely. They're like, can I just do this on my own? No, no, you can't.

Derek Bruff: 26:49

No, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I know it's still early days, but are there are there any stories that have started to emerge of students doing really interesting work or connections that you didn't see coming?

Jeff Meade: 27:02

Let's see. I one thing that I didn't see coming um was, and this is just how our program is evolving, is um we have started to so we developed a seed fund, and and I don't think that's novel, you know, so we can invest in our students. But we've also started talking to some folks about developing a search fund. And so this kind of gets to your question about uh, you know, what are we doing with the community? And so our whole plan is to work with some investors and start identifying businesses in the community that we as a program can invest in. Right. And so the idea is that students who are well, all of our students, there would be an opportunity for them to work at some of these places that we invest in, almost like an apprenticeship program.

Jeff Meade: 27:53

Okay, because what I have learned is when I came in, I was so singularly focused on startups. We got to start something up. And and then it just hit me, I was like, well, that's not entrepreneurship. You know, everybody doesn't start something up. There's so many people that buy into a business or franchise. Okay. So it kind of hit me, and I was like, oh, we got to get into that place. And so I think it's just really interesting having these conversations where we are talking to um family offices and private equity about investing in folks in the community with the benefit of there actually being a financial payoff. And I think what's been interesting for folks on the other side of the table is usually when schools come, they're like, give us some money and we'll do our thing. And I'm saying, give us some money and we will invest together in this community, and then there will be a financial payoff. And my sell to the school as I'm developing it is it also allows us to become a revenue center, right? Diversify our revenue stream. That's been my goal from the beginning. I don't want us to be a support center. I want us to actually generate revenue for the school.

Jeff Meade: 29:06

So I think that's been interesting. Uh, you know, my whole plan was built around startup culture, but now it's talking to different entrepreneurs. And, you know, the money isn't crazy, you know. And so I think as we start talking to them family offices, they're like, oh, we we could do that type of investment and you know, grow some of these businesses. And and so I think it's I think it's really interesting, even for our students to start to see some of these conversations where we will actually own businesses in the community and and what that means to the city and to our students who you're not just getting a job, but you're actually working with the owner, right? It's not just an hourly job, it's an apprenticeship. You get to see this business scale. Um, so so that's been exciting and and totally unexpected. I didn't see that happening a year ago. Um, so that these conversations have been really cool.

Derek Bruff: 29:58

Yeah, but you You know, I think about this goal of you know students graduating with just twelve thousand dollars worth of debt. And I think there's a higher ed version of that, which is to say our institutions need to work well with their communities.

Jeff Meade: 30:13

Right.

Derek Bruff: 30:13

They they need to be self-sustaining. We are the higher ed funding is a hot mess in 2025. Like we need other options.

Jeff Meade: 30:21

That's an understatement.

Derek Bruff: 30:22

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, people, I think academics don't like to think of higher ed as a business, but it is a business. And you have to think about profit and loss and revenue and sustainability, right? Yes.

Jeff Meade: 30:35

Yeah. It's so funny you say that. And I think because I'm not a traditional academic, when I came in, my whole goal was how can I make this profitable? And I think people are like, what are you thinking that? You know, like start worrying about the scholarship first. And I was like, no, that'll come, but how do we make sure that this is viable? Yeah. And also, you know, you know this um better than I do, but you see what happens in a in a school system when you are a support center as opposed to a revenue generator, right? Like your ability to make decisions um and and not be the whim of everybody else's decisions.

Derek Bruff: 31:11

Sure.

Jeff Meade: 31:12

Very different.

Derek Bruff: 31:12

Yeah. Yeah. No, I I know that well. Positive and negative examples.

Derek Bruff: 31:17

Um so I want to wrap up with this question. Um most colleges don't look a lot like Paul Quinn. Right, right. In various dimensions. Yes. Um, what can faculty at more typical institutions learn from what you're doing there at Paul Quinn?

Jeff Meade: 31:35

Yeah, I I think that's a good question. You know, and and I I mentioned I don't had to blueprint, but I think it's I think what I've done well and and and what we do well is is we do a lot of cross-disciplinary conversations. Right? Like we're not afraid to reach across the aisle. And and I think that has been really helpful. Uh, because it's not like you say, all right, well, you know, the uh the health folks or the education folks are doing their things. Um I have definitely just gone into their offices and said, This is what I'm thinking, you know. Tell me what goals you're trying to have for your class and how how can we make this work? And and I think in many ways uh it's been refreshing, right? Because I know even when I first got here, just in terms of like professional development for myself, uh for some of the faculty, it was really around, all right, well, what are some conferences we should go to? And I was thinking to myself, well, that's great, but when do we meet as a group, right? Like that that just wasn't happening often enough. And and in some crazy way, I think that's been a sort of professional development for us as a group, just kind of getting together and talking about what we see in the classroom, you know, the stuff that we put out into the world about what Polcoin is, how do we make that real? And I think in many ways the faculty have started to take more ownership for that and and they've started to weave in how do we make sure that we are continuing to push this entrepreneurship. But none of that happens unless we actually start meeting and talking. And I think we've just started to do a better job. We're not great yet, but we've just started to do a better job of actually talking to each other. And I start learning so much just from these conversations. Uh, and and hopefully they they have the same feeling, but we've done a really good job of just talking to each other. Um very simple, but yeah, um, I think that's what it's been for us.

Derek Bruff: 33:36

Well, I I hit on this metaphor earlier this year um uh of an orchestra, and the big caveat is I've never been a part of an orchestra, so I may be making this up, but but like you know, you've got these musicians who are playing their part and maybe they know their instrument really well and they're quite excellent, but if they don't understand what the score is, right, the whole performance, you know, they don't know what how they are connected and related to the whole orchestra, right? It's it's not gonna come off the same.

Jeff Meade: 34:03

Yeah.

Derek Bruff: 34:03

And so I think in higher ed, particularly faculty, we tend to be in our little zones where maybe we're really great at teaching our courses and doing our research and we're really excellent in what we're doing. Right. But if we don't see ourselves as part of this orchestra, as part of this college or university community that has a mission and has a purpose, right? Then it it's it's hard for that that purpose to come off, right?

Jeff Meade: 34:27

Yeah. Yeah, so true. Um, no, I I completely agree. Uh I think it's what's really cool is just starting to see the faculty do more stuff on campus too, right? Like during homecoming, we had a uh barbecue outside and you had the faculty serving food to the kids, right? Like that stuff was really cool, and it was just cool to bond with people outside of the meeting rooms, like, oh, you know, what are you doing with the kids next week? And so, you know, the little stuff, right? The stuff that we try to teach our students, just getting to know folks, and and you're right, how do I get people out of their silo? Uh because these ideas are there. What I what I see is that it just wasn't a forum, a consistent forum for people to feel like they could network with different faculty. And in the absence of that, they were like, I'm just gonna be an expert. I'm gonna focus on my classes, I'm gonna make sure that students like what I'm doing. And then I've nailed it, right? Like we weren't asking more of them. And so here I come, like, hey guys, let's let's talk and do some entrepreneurship. I just keep selling this vision. And at some point they're gonna be like, dude, take your foot off the gas.

Derek Bruff: 35:35

Right, right. But you're but again, you're bringing a skill set and a mindset to this that is a little different, right? Like you're a networker, you're a builder, that's what you've done your whole career. And so it's a it's a catalyst at your college that's really awesome. Well, yeah, yeah. No, thank you. Thank you, Jeff. This has been really great. Um, I appreciated hearing about all the good stuff that you're building there, and I hope to hear more good stuff in the future as as I especially when that first group of students graduate. So it'll be really fascinating to see what that looks like.

Jeff Meade: 36:04

I'm looking forward to that. Thank you so much. This has been great. I really appreciate it.

Derek Bruff: 36:10

That was Jeff Meade, founding director of the Every Quinnite Is an Entrepreneur program at Paul Quinn College. Thanks to Jeff for coming on the show and giving us a window into the innovative work he's doing at Paul Quinn. I'm excited about what he's building and I hope to reconnect with him down the road to see how the program develops over time.

Derek Bruff: 36:28

I've heard journalist and author Jeff Selingo say more than once that too many colleges and universities in the US are trying to be the same thing. The liberal arts colleges that all offer the same majors. The comprehensive universities all trying to be research universities. Salingo argues that a better approach is for an institution to figure out what it wants to be and pursue their unique position in the higher ed marketplace. That's precisely what Paul Quinn College seems to be doing. Graduates won't have more than $12,000 in debt. All students will work throughout their time at the college, and all students will have entrepreneurship as a core life skill. I love a college that's not afraid to be different and to be bold.

Derek Bruff: 37:08

That's it for this episode of the Intentional Teaching Podcast. See the show notes for more information about Jeff Meade and the entrepreneurial work he's leading at Paul Quinn College.

Derek Bruff: 37:18

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the Online and Professional Education Association. In the show notes, you'll find a link to the UPCEA website where you can find out about their research, networking opportunities, and professional development offerings.

Derek Bruff: 37:33

This episode of Intentional Teaching was produced and edited by me, Derek Bruff. See the show notes for links to my website and socials, and to the Intentional Teaching newsletter, which goes out most weeks on Thursday or Friday. If you found this or any episode of Intentional Teaching useful, would you consider sharing it with a colleague? That would mean a lot. As always, thanks for listening.