Well, Brisbane was in lockdown at the start of the week, but it is right to host a league action again tonight, as the Wanderers come calling to take on the Roar. What are you making of the position Kamau is taking up? We're so used to seeing him be a flyer down on the flank. Yeah, I think, I mean, he certainly started well. Central is, you know, with his abilities in, on the flanks, particularly on that right-hand side. Here he is, linking up with Bacchus and teaming it up for Yabawa, who returns to Brisbane and scores the opening goal less than 12 minutes in. It all started in this city, in the A-League as a teenager, and he's back striking for Western Sydney. Got the speed of Enzac, Guillermo Brator trying to turn Western Sydney around, but it's been an assured return from Murdoch Curtis, who gives great balance to the team with these two left-footers, and Wilmering plays in Kamau, who tried to go near post. It was going wide. Young still made the save. Well, brilliant run, but the finish doesn't match the run, and he's trying to open himself up. Should have taken it on his left. Carl Robinson expected a response from his team tonight, and he's gotten one. Just moments away from taking a lead to half-time. Yeah, I think he'd be in the hurry to get to half-time, because I'm going to be happy with the last 25 minutes from his side. They're going to have to improve in the second half. Hingert with a determined run, and the header was looping. Margoosh was worried, and Madrata couldn't quite fashion the equaliser. No, looping header, like he said, it's slightly behind him. He's done well. Margoosh was certainly concerned. Chambers, with that blinding speed, got away from Dorons. What a move inside. Joey Chambers! Margoosh makes a super save. That was going to be one of the solo goals of the A-League season so far. He'd done all the hard work, and he should have taken the keeper out of the equation. Duke with the hold-up play this time. Such a good outlet for Western Sydney to try and turn Brisbane around and get some territory of their own. Great, tidy win from Courtney Perkins, and here he goes again.  Joey Chambers getting away from Bacchus, still going Chambers, teeing up Danzaki, and Brisbane equalised. Danzaki makes it 1-1. But what about the performance of Joey Chambers tonight? He's been untouchable. And it's a tidy finish. Keeps his composure, Danzaki. What a transition. They're defending close to their own penalty box. A really good challenge. Clean take. That is a brilliant Brisbane goal. Good win again, and there's space in the middle. Chambers turns provider again. Margoosh keeps it out. And where would Western Sydney be without their 23-year-old shot stopper? Well, they'd be down 2-1 right now. A big mistake. Perfect ball for Margoosh. Whipped in by Dorans and a header across the face of goal from Tass. Murdoch Curtis. And flashed across the face, and there were white shirts there as well. Oh, flashes past that far post. Both sides have had periods of dominance and respected possession, but really, apart from that wonderful start to the second half, which was all Joey Chambers, it's been very, very even. Nicolai Muller. A beanie inside the area and then out. And Troisi in an offside position was struck. And that should just about do us plenty of intel gain for the return bout between these clubs in 13 days' time. But tonight, head finishes all locked up. Scott McDonald tried to make a difference off the bench, but in the end, they settle for a point apiece. Brisbane now winless in 8, and the Wanderers looking to regroup ahead of that Mariner's bout on Tuesday night. Full time here, 1-1.


So, we ended our previous lecture by defining what is called a polyhedron. I will just revise that for you quickly. So, a polyhedron P is a polyhedron is if it is the intersection of finitely many half spaces, alright. So, if you can find finitely many half spaces, so that such that their intersection defines is equal to P, then that then P is a polyhedron. So, what this means is there exist some say m of these m of m vectors a1 till am in Rn, let us assume P is a subset of Rn. There exist these m vectors in Rn and also m scalars like this v1 till vm such that P can be expressed as the common region that belongs to all of these half spaces defined by these vectors and this constant. So, P is x such that ai transpose x is less than equal to bi for all i from 1 till m. This in we as I said we can consolidate these a's by writing them in the in this way you write say for a1 transpose as the first row of a matrix a2 transpose as a second row and so on all the way down till am transpose that gives you a matrix a, you put the b's together in a vector called b and then that gives you that P is actually nothing but the region x defined regions defined by x such that a x is less than equal to b. So, it is the region that is defined by finitely many linear inequalities. Now, this is this sort of way of defining a polyhedron where we first say it is the intersection of half spaces and then you go about finding the half spaces and give you that gives you this sort of representation. Now, polyhedron may not have may have multiple representation. So, on the face of it what looks like a poly, what looks like it is not a polyhedron could also end up being a polyhedron. For example, here if you look at this, if you look at this kind of representation, this is saying that the polyhedron is all the x's that satisfies some linear inequalities. But then you can also have a set like this. Let me show you for example, let us look at this set in R2. So, this is plus 1, this is minus 1, 0, minus 1 plus 1 and I am looking at this b. So, this region, what is this region? Well, this is one way of representing this region, let us call this set P, this region let us call this P, one way of representing it is to say well, this is x in R2, sorry R2 such that if I look at the absolute value of the first coordinate that is less than equal to 1 and the absolute value of the second coordinate that is also less than equal to 1. So, the absolute value of the first coordinate and the absolute value of the second coordinate are both less than equal to 1. That is actually this region. Both coordinates have any point in this region you take a point say here for example or here wherever you want, if you look at its coordinates in absolute value they are less than equal to 1, that is actually this region. But if you look at these inequalities, the absolute value of x1 less than equal to 1 and the absolute value of x2 less than equal to 1, these are not linear inequalities. They are not of this kind because the absolute value function is not a linear function.  How does the absolute value function? What does the absolute value function look like? It looks like this. So, this is absolute value of P and here is T, this is 0, this is going to plus infinity, this is minus infinity. So, the absolute value function is not a linear function. So, if you look at these inequalities, I have written P as an as the common region of two nonlinear inequalities. So, but that does not mean P is not a polyhedral. The point is P is still the intersection of finitely many half spaces and what are those half spaces? Those half spaces can be seen here itself. So, you can take this as one of three half spaces, you can take this as another half space, take this as another half space and then finally this as another half space. The common region between all of them is actually our set P. No, no, no, A transpose X less than equal to B. So, definition of a half space is that it is A transpose X less than equal to B. So, what we have is that this P is, if you look at it in one way, it is defined using as the common region as a common region of nonlinear inequalities. Whereas if you look at it in another way, it is actually the intersection of finitely many half spaces. So, because it is an intersection of finitely many half spaces, it is a polyhedral. So, the point is this here is our definition of a polyhedral and from here all we can say is that there exists some way of representing it as an intersection of finitely many half spaces.  Now, they may not be the one that you have chosen at the moment. Here you have chosen some inequalities, they are nonlinear inequalities, that does not mean there are no linear inequalities that will describe the same reason. So, in particular you can see observe here that P is also the intersection of these inequalities. So, the absolute value of X1 is less than equal to 1 if and only if X1 is less than equal to 1 and also greater than equal to minus, less than equal to 1 and greater than equal to minus 1 likewise for X2. So, these are actually the half spaces that I have just highlighted here. So, these are these, this is, this here is one of your inequalities, this is another inequality, this is another inequality and this is another inequality, total of 4 of them can put them together in a systematic form X in R2, X1 less than equal to 1, X2 less than equal to 1, X1 minus X1 less than equal, less than equal to 1 and minus X2 less than equal to 1. So, those define R4 half spaces, is this clear? So, a polyhedral is the intersection of finitely many half spaces. Now, this as I said and of course you objects this what this example showed you was that objects that on the face of it may not be written as an intersection of linear inequalities can still be turn out to be polyhedral. Now, another thing to point out here is the importance of finite. If I do not allow, if I allow for infinitely many half spaces, then many, many sets end up being polyhedral, which are not really what we want them to be. So, for example, just take the circle, there is circle with this, the region inside, I take a tangent here, I can, this circle is actually the intersection of all of these regions. This region defined by this tangent, this region defined by this tangent, etc, this region defined by this tangent, etc, etc. I draw a tangent at every point, I will get infinitely many such tangent, infinitely many such half spaces, their common region is actually the circle. The circle is not a polyhedral because it is not an intersection of, it cannot be written as the intersection of finitely many half spaces. So now, this is one kind of issue related to representation where you have a polyhedron that can, you can have a set which is represented by nonlinear inequalities and can still be a polyhedron. The other type of issue of representation, which I want is what is extremely important for optimization, which is what I want to talk about right now. So, this is, for this we need a couple of concepts. So, let me introduce these concepts for you. First is what is called an extreme point. So, consider a some convex set. Now, X is said to be an extreme point of S if the following is true, following implication is true. That means the implication is that X can be written as a linear combination of a convex combination to be precise. So, of two other points in S. So, X is equal to lambda X 1 plus 1 minus lambda X 2 where lambda is strictly greater than 0 and X 1 not equal to S 2 belong to S. So, if X can be written in this way, then it should imply if X, let me remove this, X can be written as in this way where X 1 X 2 belong to S, then this should imply that X 1 equals X 2. So, if X can be written as the convex combination of two points using a strictly positive weight for each of them. So, X can be written as some lambda which is X 1 plus 1 minus lambda X 2 where lambda is strictly positive. Then it has to be that X 1 equals X 2 and when X 1 is equal to X 2, they are actually both equal to X itself. So, an extreme point is a point that cannot be written as a as a strict convex combination of two distinct points in the set. So, an extreme point is one for which this implication holds. So, whenever you try to write it as a convex combination like this of two different points, it has to be that those two points are actually the same and it is equal to the point itself. As a convex combination of two points and the two points have to actually coincide. So, what does an extreme point look like? Let us take for example, just I was just writing drawing a circle takes a circle is a convex set. What are the extreme points of this set? Every point on the boundary is an extreme point because the circle does not have you take any point on this on the boundary. If you try to if you are able to write it as a convex combination of two other points, then the circle would end up having would end up having a flat flat surfaces. So, this sort of point cannot be written as a convex combination of two other points in the set. Every point in the interior can of course be written as a convex combination of two other points. There are always two other points around it whose midpoint will be this point. So, every point on the boundary of the circle is actually an extreme point of the circle. So, the extreme points actually are more interesting when you are talking of polyhedron. So, if I draw a polyhedron like this, this is an intersection of half spaces. So, the half space is being this, this half space, this half space, this half space, this half space and likewise this half space. So, now tell me what are the extreme points of this polyhedron? Once again a point here in the interior cannot be an extreme point. Oh yes, of course, sorry, I said convex combination but did not make that clear. Yes, lambda strictly between 0 and 1. Yes. So, we will come back to the polyhedron here. So, this sort of point is not an extreme point. What about, what are the other points which cannot be extreme point? Yeah. So, if I take some point here in the middle of an edge here, this sort of point is also not an extreme point. So, I can write it as a convex combination of two other points like this. So, eventually if you think about it, what remain as extreme points are actually only these points. This one, this one, this one, this one and this one. These are the extreme points of this polyhedron. Let me draw for you another kind of polyhedron. So, this is an unbounded polyhedron. So, what are the extreme points of this set? Let us say this goes on forever. What are the extreme points of this? It has only two extreme points which is this one and this one. These are the extreme points of this polyhedron. Now, this figure is actually very interesting. If you think about it, this polyhedron is unbounded. So, what does that mean? There is a sort of a direction here along which if you keep going, this sort of direction. Just imagine you started off from here and you keep kept proceeding along this direction. You keep going, you will remain in the set. There are directions like this for a polyhedron. Once it is unbounded, verify that it is unbounded means gives you that there will be some direction along which you can travel such that you will never leave the set. So, and what is amazing is that these directions are such that they do not it does not matter where you started from means. So, if there is a direction like this, let us say a direction like this along which if you can. So, if you started from a point here and went in this direction forever, you will remain in the set. But I can go along that direction starting from some other point also in the set and I will still remain forever in the set. So, for instance, I can start from this point here and still go in this direction and remain in the set. So, there are directions like this. Once a polyhedron is unbounded, there are directions such that if those directions are such that you can start from any point in the set, keep walking along that direction and you will never leave the polyhedron. These directions are what are called extreme rays of the polyhedron. Sorry, these are these directions are what are called rays of a polyhedron. Sorry, not extreme rays, they are called rays of a polyhedron or also called recession directions. So, ray. So, this actually this particular thing that I just mentioned, this does not really require the set to be a polyhedron. So, long as it is a convex set, if there is a direction along which you can keep going starting from some point, you can go along that direction starting from any other point and you will still remain in the set. This is the shape of, this is the nature of the shape of convexity. So, a ray is defined like this. So, let us consider a convex set. Let us take that convex set. So, consider a convex vector Rn is called a ray if the following implication is true. So, x belongs to the set S implies that x plus mu times D belongs to the set S for all mu greater than equal to 0. So, if it is unbounded, then if it is bounded, then the only such vector will be D equal to 0. So, once x is in S, this x plus mu D is in S for all mu greater than equal to 0. So, x plus mu D is, so the way you should look at this is that here is your point x, here is the direction D, x plus mu D as mu get is this since as you go from for mu greater than larger and larger mu, you keep going along this dotted line that I just further and further from x along the direction D. So, for all mu greater than equal to 0, this point belongs to this x plus mu D belongs to S. So, this such a vector is what is called a ray. So, another name for it is called D is also called also called a recession direction. And the set of all recession direction of a set S is often denoted by S infinity, all D such that D is a recession direction of S. This actually is turns out to be a cone and it is called a recession cone of S. It is very easy to check that this is going to be a cone and it is called a recession cone of S. So, if the set is bounded then the only vector that satisfy that would satisfy this sort of condition is the vector 0. So, in fact, it is this is this statement is also true that S infinity this cone is as is equal to just the 0 vector over the singleton set with only the 0 vector if and only if S is bounded.


of guests. It's now time for members statements. A member from Chatham Kent Essex. Thank you very much Mr. Speaker. I'm incredibly honored to say that Chatham Kent has made the top 10 of the craft hockey build 2015 competition. Hockey has a rich history throughout this country and it brings the entire communities together to celebrate the game we all love. In Chatham that gathering place is at the Chatham Memorial Arena. First built in 1949 on the grounds of a training area used by the Canadian forces during World War II. The Chatham Memorial Arena is the oldest arena in the community yet it has had the fewest upgrades. It's been the home to the Chatham Senior Maroons who won the Allen Cup back in 1960 and yes speaker I do remember that and also the Chatham Junior Maroons who won the Sutherland Cup for Junior B. Hockey in 1999. I actually gave that team a motivational speech when they were down three games to nothing against Leamington also in my writing and they came back to not only win that series but the league championship and then they went on the win the Sutherland Cup. Had to be the speech. Our area manager Brian Bennett has been part of the arena since the 60s. He devotes himself to the arena and the community and he could use some help. The roof needs some work. The bathrooms need upgrades and I'm sure that hockey players would love to see some larger dressing rooms. The same hard benches that were sold in 1949 remain as seating today. The arena offers a rustic and some might even say a rough atmosphere. The winner of the contest will receive $100,000 in arena upgrades and host an NHL pre-season so I encourage every member of the legislature to get out and vote especially for Chatham Kent. Thank you speaker. Thank you. Member from London West. Thank you speaker. Last week was co-op week in Canada and to celebrate the occasion two Ontario students were honoured as national co-op students of the year. Andrew Andrade from the University of Waterloo and Raman Alakan from Fanshawe College which I am proud to say is located in my home community of London. Andrew Andrade is a third year engineering student from Mississauga. During an entrepreneurial co-op work term at the University of Waterloo he not only co-founded his own startup PetroPredict but he also hired and supervised four other co-op students to assist with his software business. Raman Alakan is an international student studying business marketing at Fanshawe College who has completed three co-op work terms and praises the opportunities that cooperative education provides. Speaker Raman is exactly the kind of immigrant we need in London and in Ontario. I urge the Liberal government to advocate strongly to ensure that the new express entry immigration process does not create barriers for international students like Raman. On behalf of the NDP caucus I want to congratulate Andrew and Raman. Congratulations as well to Allie Zahir from Sheridan College and Skye Watti from University of Waterloo who also received Ontario co-op student of the year awards from Education at Work Ontario. The excellence and achievements demonstrated by these four young people shows how co-op programs benefit students and the Ontario economy. I hope all members of this legislature will support my private members bill protecting interns and creating a learning economy act that will expand co-op programs in this province. Thank you Speaker. Thank you member statements the member from Kingston in the Ireland. Mr Speaker as I stand here today with something I really must say I hope you're listening at the back and I hope you don't mind I share it in rhyme for it's about a sage man called LeVac. For our 10 years and five you've worked in this sphere as MPP for the riding of brand but for the last few you had much more to do as the speaker with power to end rants. The speaker you'll know is not just for show he presides over all in this house with the guardian here the debate rules are clear defined well beyond any doubts. In most recent days debates been ablaze with the same points ever repeated. Your response has been just you're holding our trust though discussions are oft overheated. Alas here we are spring break now seems afar how we long for a changed conversation but no it's more I stand you sit twice warned and that's it instead of our new legislation. Legislative change is much needed demands for order not always heated I yet I listen yet shake my head in awe teacher and principal at heart your compassion and patience true art how the daily antics here surely must not. So let it be known while insults are thrown that we truly respect what you do to the citizens of brand I direct my rant for this house's heart here here thank you. Because I heard some heckling I want to hear it again. Sorry members David the member from Perth Wellington. Thank you Mr. Speaker. This past weekend I was pleased to celebrate PattiFest and Listwall. PattiFest is a two-week long Irish festival organized by the Kinclubs of Listwall. Now in its 38th year it is one of North America's biggest Irish festivals. PattiFest is packed with events including concerts sporting tournaments and family fun activities. I spent Saturday morning flipping pancakes at the PattiFest pancake breakfast and taking part in the PattiFest parade which brings the whole community out. I would like to thank the kinsmen and kinet clubs of Listwall for their hard work organizing yet another successful PattiFest. I would also like to recognize Melissa Dunphy this year's PattiFest ambassador. There was a great turnout at this year's PattiFest and proceeds will be going towards community projects including the Steve Kerr Memorial complex. We hope the province will join us in supporting this project. Again thank you to the organizers the volunteers and the sponsors who contributed to PattiFest and thank you to the North Perth community for coming together to enjoy this year's festival. Thank you speaker. Good job. Thank you. Member statements. The member from Bradley Gormul. Thank you very much Mr. Speaker. Today I rise to commemorate three freedom fighters who opposed British oppression in India and fought for the independence of India. In fact those three individuals are Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Thapar and Shiv Ram Raj Guru. This is March 23rd, 1931 is what's recognized as March 23rd. They fought for an independent place, an independent country. They fought for a place which would respect human rights, which would respect freedom and would respect the dignity of life. However it's ironic that three days earlier March 20th in the year 2000 there was very heinous massacres that occurred in India and which were perpetrated ostensibly by the Indian government itself. This is not the type of India that these three brave souls gave their life to defend. This is not the India that these brave souls fought for independence for. Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and Shiv Ram Raj Guru fought for a free an independent country, not a country which is responsible for mass human rights violations, particularly what happened in Jatispura massacre which is connected with the Pratibal killings as well as the Bharat Khabar killings as well. Bhagat Singh stated, and it's a very strong and powerful quote, it is easy to kill individuals, but you cannot kill the ideas. Great empires crumbled while the ideas survived. In memory of Bhagat Singh, let us hope that we can move towards a society where all can live in freedom and injustice. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Siddharth, the member from Berry. Thank you, Speaker. During constituency week I had the pleasure of touring and making funding announcement at the clubhouse at the Canadian Mental Health Association, Simkel County. The CMHA Simkel County branch is a non-profit charitable association funded by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care through the local health integration network. Funding is also provided by the United Way and the Ministry of Children and Youth Services. Founded in 1960, Berry Mental Health provided the City of Berry with its first psychiatrist. This agency also provided community education, advocacy and volunteers to go to the Oak Ridge facility in Penitang machine. CMHA Berry Simkel continued to grow offering a full range of services including case management, employment opportunities, a social recreational clubhouse and housing services. In 2010, CMHA Simkel amalgamated with Simkel outreach services. When new clients arrive, they are welcomed by Greeter, Katz, Daisy and Lily. Led by Lynn Rimondi and Laurie Howcroft through the RSV program at the clubhouse, clients are then provided with recreational, social, vocational and peer support. I am pleased to recognize the dedicated staff and volunteers for all the invaluable work that they do for our community. Thank you. Thank you, members Davis and the members. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Today our friends from the Anatolian Heritage Foundation have come to Queens Park to host their annual friendship reception in support of Turkic, Canadian solidarity and cultural heritage and we welcome them. I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome our friends and thank members from the communities for their many contributions to the multicultural fabric of our province. The Anatolian Heritage Federation is a not-for-profit organization that represents Turkic communities right across Ontario. On this special occasion I'd like to inform you that the Ontario PC Caucus will be co-sponsoring a bill to proclaim one week of March every year as Turkic Heritage Week in Ontario in order to remember and share cultural heritage and educate future generations about the inspirational role that Turkic Canadians have played and continue to play in communities in Ontario. The Turkic Heritage Week shall occur during the third or fourth week of March, whichever includes the 21st day, and that's the day we mark the first day of spring and promote values of peace and solidarity between generations and within families. On behalf of the Ontario PC Caucus I'd like to wish members of the Anatolian Heritage Federation and all attendees of today's friendship reception a very happy and successful event. I strongly believe that with the help of all of our colleagues here in the Ontario Legislature the proposed bill will become a law and I'm confident that one year from now we'll all celebrate Turkic Heritage Week for the first time in the history of our province of Ontario. Thank you very much Mr. Speaker. We welcome our guests and it's now time for member statements, the member from Beaches East York. Well thank you Mr. Speaker and I'd like to tell you about on St. Patrick's Day where I hosted, not hoisted, hosted my first community skate at the East York Memorial Arena in Beaches East York. Constituents of all ages came out to enjoy hot chalk and cookies provided by the local McDonald's and they received a Toronto Maple Leaf program by MLSC and took in the dulcet sounds of New Orleans Jazz performed live by our constituent Patrick Tevelin and his band the Happy Pals. The kids wasted no time to lace up, show their moves and play games of tags. Dozens of families from Crescent Town, Main Square, Palmer Court and the Seacourt communities came out to participate and parents and kids alike were very appreciative many saying this was the best part of March Break. Now I'd like to thank Tasneem Sharifi of the Thorncliffe Park Youth Center for providing us with four hockey bags filled with skates and helmets because many of the because of their generous donation many kids for the very first time had an opportunity to come out and skate and I remember one little girl, Alicia, it was her first time on skates and she could barely stand up but she was absolutely determined to make it around the rink and about a half hour later there she was with a little help from friends and family standing there with this big smile on her face and you could see that her mother was equally proud. So I Mr. Speaker a big thanks to my staff the volunteers and the companies that helped put on this event and for all those who came out. I look forward to an even bigger and better event next year. We've been a just a tremendous opportunity to enjoy the community's activity. Thank you. Thank you. Member Stamis, the member from Ottawa South. Yes, see me see the place of down. I rise today in recognition of the incredible work being done at the Ottawa Birth and Wellness Center also known as the OBWC located in my riding of Ottawa South. During this month though I was pleased to attend the Center's first birthday party and it was a wonderful celebration. The center was the first of its kind in Ontario and it is an important partner in child and maternal health and we're very fortunate to have it located in the heart of our community. Over the past year the Ottawa Birth and Wellness Center has provided 450 mums and their families with more options for natural childbirth in an environment that is safe and respectful. They have become known for their responsiveness and professionalism and are regarded as insightful leaders in our community. My father used to say that each time we welcome a birth of a new baby it means a little more hope for the world. My father always said that every time a baby is born this meant that there's new hope for the entire world. Everyone at the Ottawa Birth and Wellness Center on your one-year anniversary and thank you for bringing a little more hope into our world. Merci. Merci. Thank you very much. Thank all members for their statements. It's now time for reports by


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We've got a Season ticket Jerry Judy Kyle Pitts Red rookie ticket Davis Mills for the Texans So 175 in the Reds and we got gold vinyl we got gold vinyl everybody It's gonna be a one-of-one and It is rookie round numbers Jaguars and Steelers Travis ETN jr. Naji Harris boom Huge one there Jaguar Steelers Jaguars is Dan M and Steelers is Takeshi or Takeshi probably gonna have to random that one off at the end Just a second sick Finally got one got two two out while rookie Otto Rams RPS there He's redemption Annie's life and Patriots rookie ticket auto silver of Andre Stevenson on card It's funny the only product that gold vinyls out of five in is prism. Yeah, so every other product for the most part gold vinyls a one-of-one And then tops, you know a super fracter I think is always a one-of-one a lot of people don't like that prism gold vinyl is to five God D hop Jamar Chase rookie That's true Tulane. Good point. Good point. God Damien Harris red to 175 Patriots and Blue contenders or MVP contenders Lamar Jackson to 99 Ravens Chiefs know a gray rookie ticket auto Not numbered Like it's a gorgeous card for sure. I just it's weird Patrick Jones the second rookie ticket auto silver for the Vikings That's the card and a printing plate. Actually get that one first is one-of-one TJ watt Steelers There you go Steelers Round numbers here silver Trask and Marshall one two three top on the diro for the bucks four five six bottom for the Panthers To top bucking ears got Keenan Allen Trey sermon Jaguars rookie ticket auto Mackay Sargent and Rams RPA black scope. That's really cool to to at well Allen's out of 10. Well black scope to 10.  I like a lot I like a scope in general, but yeah, and then black is just really cool. We've got base Josh Jacobs and a Mack Jones Blue season ticket Jerry Judy Broncos out of 99 Orange MVP contenders Ravens Lamar Jackson out of 50 Steelers Super Bowl auto Heath Miller on the insert Steelers and Ravens rookie ticket auto Tyson Williams or no, Tyler Wallace. Excuse me. Tyler Wallace. It's a much nicer autograph than Tyson Williams is On card Smoochie Wallace All right. Got season ticket Zeke and rookie ticket Ellinger Red Cardinals color match Kyler Murray to 175 nice Kyler and lottery ticket Justin Herbert That is not numbered on the silver There we go chargers and didn't see a lot of these earlier now. We got the Another one here There we go. We got Patriots Karen McGrone rookie ticket auto They're so cool And Bill's Gregor so rookie ticket auto Not numbered Yeah, even the cell even like the non-numbered looks so sick on those No, that's just a car design Yeah, I like those a lot I'm happy to get some of those. I don't even care the player. I just like the card. I Won't be picky. I'm happy to grab some of those Got season ticket Keenan Allen semi fohoco rookie orange. Josh Palmer Jags rookie to 50 and Up-and-coming Chuba Hubbard rookie for the Panthers silver insert Patriots rookie ticket auto Sean Wade and Cowboys Micah Parsons rookie ticket auto nice Micah Yeah, this year's contenders overall and optic just have so much just not the inserts are just another level So much nicer Winning ticket Jags Trevor Lawrence rookie insert Orange rams Jacob Harris rookie ticket to 50 Got Jerry Judy and almond Ross St. Brown Kenny Galladay perennial contenders auto Giants of 25 creation Jets rookie ticket auto Zach Wilson Nice silver That is bow with the Jets Looking card. We will get that mags Yeah, we pulled a lot of Zach Wilson today got access to nose Falcons D on Jones Kyle Pitts Ryan Tannehill red that one's out of 175 season ticket Titans base cards Miles Sanders and semi fohoco Cardinals Rookie the year contenders insert auto Ron Dale Moore number to 50.  Let's do got a big random here guys Random Make sure it's different teams here Steelers to cash me. All right Random here big one gold vinyl ETN and a Najee Harris Rookie round numbers. It is a one-of-one. Good luck. Let's roll the dice We'll go 11 times whichever team is up top after 11 is getting that card one two three four five six seven eight nine ten 11 It's going to the Steelers Steelers get it. There you go. Congrats Steelers Fuck one for the Jags So we had autos Ron Dale Moore Kenny Galladay Micah Parsons Sean Wade Cameron McGrone Greg or so Heath Miller Tylen Wallace 2 2 Atwell black scope to 10 on the RPA Mackay Sargent printing plate was TJ Watt Patrick Jones the second Noah Gray 2 2 Atwell Ramon Dre Stevenson Chuba Hubbard 2 2 Atwell redemption for the Rams a Lot of at well there around to the third and Patrick Jones the second He had that one of one gold vinyl round numbers This one went to the Steelers in the in the random. It was Travis ETN Junior and Najee Harris rookie round numbers He had a Bears Redemption Justin Fields on the rookie ticket RPS silver and we had a rookie ticket RPS silver of Zach Wilson Good stuff for those teams. Thanks again everybody another half case coming up


I'm Jack Seuss, Vice President of IT and CIO at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. And I'm Cynthia Golden, Associate Provost at the University of Pittsburgh. Each episode we welcome a guest from in or around higher education technology as we talk about repositioning or reinforcing the role of IT leadership as an integral strategic partner in support of the institutional mission. Hi, everybody. Today, Jack and I are joined by Joanne Kasuth, who is the Chief Operations Officer at Lesley University in Massachusetts. Joanne, welcome to the podcast. Could you take a few minutes and introduce yourself to our audience? Maybe talk a little bit about your background and your career journey. Sure. Thank you, Cynthia. It's nice to see you. Nice to see you, Jack. Excited to be here. My name is Joanne Kasuth, and I've been in higher ed quite a long time. And in the course of my career, I actually started in retail, which was a great exposure to customer service and had the opportunity to start to work at some smaller institutions when I decided to leave the retail environment. And as many of you will know, the small institutions tend to give you a number of opportunities that you might not get at other institutions. So I actually had an opportunity to, back in the late 1980s, start with putting into action my thesis that I wrote on developing and implementing information systems for small businesses as part of my graduate degree. So when I worked for Fisher College, Scott Fisher actually read the thesis and said, let's do this. And that was at a point that Fisher had 49 locations. And it was one of the first shared library systems and basically an older version, I would say, of Ethernet. That really put the pedal to the metal and made everything very real for me in the technology sense. After that, I had an opportunity to spend quite a bit of time in different areas. So I got to spend time as an assistant comptroller. I got to spend time as an instructor. So I had a broad view of the higher ed environment, which has been exceedingly helpful throughout my career. I then moved on to roles that were at Wheelock College to Boston University to Olin College of Engineering is one of the first employees getting to build a new institution from scratch, which was obviously exciting and entrepreneurial and not something that people get to do often. And after that, I moved on to work at Mitchell College and I moved on to working at Lesley University. And in between have had exposure to quite a few different institutions and consulting capacity and in accreditation visits, as I'm sure Cynthia and Jack have as well. Essentially, I tell people at this point, I feel like I've done virtually every job in higher ed, except for president and provost. And so that background has put me in good stead as my roles evolved into operations. I have animals that are part of my household. So I have a pet dog that's a Havanese and one pet cat. And we're still working on the getting along part because the Havanese is relatively young. I have some hobbies and those hobbies are actually very different, fun things. So everybody always says travel and reading, and those are true. But I like to design jewelry and I have a wine cellar where I like to collect wine, but also to enjoy the fruits of my collection. So really, this is just a wonderful sort of introduction.  And I think that's just great. That may be something that we encourage the future guests to add as well. So as you talked about your career in I.T., I remember one of the things that has struck me when it occurred was while you were at L1 University, you assumed a much larger portfolio of responsibilities. You were one of the first CIOs who really came in and took on this role as almost chief operating officer where you had public safety, facilities, dining, campus planning, a lot of the business operations reporting to you. Can you talk a little bit about that experience and the expansion of your responsibilities and how you have managed the change that sort of came about and taking on these responsibilities, but also bringing technology into these areas to really help them advance? Sure, that's a great question. Interestingly enough, I think the background I described in retail got me started in a really good place with a lot of customer service and front end practice and the small college experience because I had so much opportunity in different areas of the organization. It really allowed me to use my organizational and technology skills to not just set up systems that really revise business practices. I mean, at Olin, for instance, I had an opportunity to be the A.V.P. for advancement, as well as the point person for the Babson, Olin Wellesley collaboration, in addition to my other roles. And those roles showed me areas that I had not spent as much time in previously, but gave me a much wider purview and allowed me to develop insights into most of the functional areas in higher ed. When that first happened at Olin, I think one of the challenges was as you take on these new responsibilities, you have to basically develop credibility for those responsibilities with the teams that you're going to be working with that are probably nervous that someone who is taking over those areas, particularly when the hierarchy that was in place previously was still in place in terms of leadership in the institution. So folks had a lot of questions. One of the things I did was really have an open door policy to have a number of months where literally my door was wide open and allowed people to just make an appointment or drop by and have a conversation about what their concerns were to feel that they were being heard and also to take and learn from what are some of the challenges and what are some of the wins that those folks thought they had already had and help us move forward together in a team as opposed to expecting me to come in to these areas and have all the answers, which obviously I didn't have. In terms of Leslie, I started out doing a consulting assessment for Leslie. It was focused on information, technology and library services. As typically happens, those areas and the challenges they face are often symptomatic of larger challenges across an institution. So the assessment positioned me really well to talk to the institution of Leslie as a whole when I came in to the role at Leslie. And I think you're right, Jack, that we can think about the expansion of responsibilities, not just at Leslie, but at Olin as well under the umbrella of transformation and leveraging technology in order to be able to have information that we need to be a data driven organization. A thorough understanding that I had of the functional areas was very helpful, definitely helped with credibility and focusing on utilizing systems and reworking business processes to take advantage of functionality really helped to refocus the work of areas in the institution and led to a lot of professional development of team members in different directions they might have seen when they first started in their career. I continue to be really deeply engaged with I.T. And but the operational opportunities across the campus at Leslie have really allowed for the I.T. team to become an integral part of virtually every area in the institution, collaborating at a high level and involve very early in conversations, which in my career history sometimes has been challenging in other institutions. So the I.T. team has basically been able to realign itself. We've pulled in siloed data employees from other areas of the institution and created a reporting team. So now the reporting team is responsible for the, as we say, one source of truth for the institution and makes the reports and dashboards available for folks for self service. This is again allowed for staff development opportunities and also a lot of relationship building across the institution so that the I.T. team has a can do kind of attitude and is now seen as the place to go to have a conversation about how to streamline what you're doing, how to get information that you might not have been able to get if you in fact should have access to that information. But essentially I've seen it as a real opportunity to apply the benefits of technology, utilize that to really bring along teams to understand the importance of doing good work and doing good work in a way that makes sense and freeing up time for people. I wouldn't say that we're at the Google or Microsoft such and such a percent of your job that you have time. But it has allowed for people to really understand the institution in a way that is much more holistic than what their previous experiences were. It seems like that would be re-energizing for people, too. It's really interesting because people find it more energizing. I think as you both know, money doesn't drive everybody, right? In terms of what is really a motivator, it's really challenges. So the team is at the point now where we've been asked to do some work with advancement, for instance. And normally you can imagine saying, oh, we're going to have to jump in and do these various types of activities. And the team's like, this is cool. We're actually learning about advancement, understanding how they use information and where they go. So you're right. It's energizing, provides other opportunity and really helps the team feel rewarded as an important part of the strategic framework for the institution. That has a follow up one of the things that you highlighted early on. And maybe you could just briefly sort of talk a little bit about it. It is how you built the trust and collegiality within your group, because that is one of the hard things is bringing in groups which historically might have other cultures and other ways of thinking and bringing people together to be some of the parts becomes greater than each individual of one. So I think one big step in that was just allowing people to share. So asking something like three questions, right? So what is the one thing about your job that you absolutely love and don't ever want to give up? What is the one thing about your job that you hate and want to get rid of like as soon as you possibly can, probably phrased a little nicer than that. And the third one, if you had one thing that you wanted to make sure the institution knew and that you wanted to be engaged in moving forward, what would that be? And by asking those three questions and compiling those answers, it gave me a pretty good picture of where people were at. And then you were able to start from there and say, OK, here's what people love. How do I make sure that there's at least some portion of what people love that they're engaged in? How do I reduce the burden of the things they don't like so much? And how do I make sure that we have the interesting projects and the executive level support to be able to do those projects moving forward to retain the folks that are here since staffing, as we all know, can be a great challenge. And so that's one. The second is that I always told my teams that, you know, we're focused on customer service. So if you need to like punch a hole in the wall, you come into my office and punch the hole literally or vent, because that's important to be able to do. And the other piece for me was I understand the culture and they would explain their challenges and I would say, well, but we can change what you do. And then you would have time to do this work. And people tend not to believe it until they actually see it happen. And so one of the really important lessons I learned is you can't wait till the end of a project to have people see it happen. You have to be able to show them in the beginning in the middle of the project what seeing it happen is. And so that creates the buying and helps to change the culture. And once you have some successes, they do the talking and the sharing with each other and among the group, which helps to build that consensus. You know, I joke that we originally had some curmudgeonly people that didn't believe change to some extent was possible. And now they're like, oh, that actually happened. Right. And so that's when I feel that, you know, you've had some degree of success in doing that. And when other teams at the institution reach out to the teams that you've built to say, could you guys help us with this? Because they know they're going to get a positive response and not I have no bandwidth. I don't want to hear you. That's the second step. And I think that it's really important that the teams feel it and believe it. And they feel free to say, you know what, Joanne, I think that's a really stupid idea. It's not going to work because of this. And sometimes they're right. But the fact that everyone feels that they have the ability to comment positively or negatively on where we're headed and have conversations, which is really the important thing about building the relationships. And when people believe that you are sincere in those conversations and having a little self deprecating sense of humor doesn't hurt either. Then they're more than willing to sort of go along. And the proof is in what you're able to achieve. And when you achieve it, sharing the credit amongst all the team and also amongst the other groups you're working with is really important. So that really leads into change management and change management strategies, which is some of what you're talking about. You already said that you had an open door policy, which is very helpful to people. Are there other strategies, Joanne, that you used as you had to lead change through these role changes? Are there other things you've done that you think are important or maybe things you wish you would have done? There's always a few of those, I think. For me, it was about trying to find the win-to-win strategy. So again, as we said, that having conversations around change is easier if you already have relationships with the staff that potentially is going to be impacted by the changes, but also being able to separate the here and now and focus on the future to talk about issues from a different perspective. So if I'm concerned about what I do now and it's just me, then that tends to make me very protective and a little bit resistant to necessarily the changes. But how can we make the better experience for staff, faculty, students, the community? And all of us are in the business of working to meet changing expectations of these groups can be a really bonding experience with that win-win. Another challenge I found could be timeframe. I'm sure everyone can relate to the fact that you're often asked to do projects at a different rate of speed and in a different context that might be ideal. And since change has to be a collaborative conversation, there are times when decisions get made to expedite change in a timeframe that may not be reasonable or seem reasonable, but there might be real business reasons to expedite the change. So in that case, I found that being able to define the initial change as a pilot or a phase can help to set the expectations and also set expectations that not everything's gonna go smoothly and it's gonna be a learning experience. So having leadership that's willing to be transparent about such change, and it's also willing to support the team and take the heat is critical to getting the buy-in and then debriefing on a regular basis to learn from each of those experiences, to build that culture, as you said, Jack, of constant change similar to what we talk about with students in lifelong learning. I think early in my career, I was very enthusiastic and I was inclined to try and solve challenges in one fell swoop. I would be like, wow, great, the teams developed these solutions, let me apply these in a larger context. And I think what I got a little, what I call carried away in my younger days, that that increased the pressure on the team and often made change more difficult than maybe it needed to be. So I grew to understand that there's differing abilities of various teams to process change and I adapted to a much more incremental kind of approach with a broader sort of planned context. And all the debriefs really served to help figure out how to build the next team around the next set of changes. That's great advice. We call this podcast the integrative CIO and given the roles that you've had and are currently playing, how do you think that concept of integration plays out for the CIO or should play out as we go forward? So frankly, for me, it's difficult to think about a CIO role as non integrative. I was trying to figure out what that looks like. I think virtually every area of all of our institutions are dependent on the ability of the CIO and their team to integrate with all the functional areas of the institution to help provide expertise in solving the challenges of those areas, to drive innovation in those solutions to take advantage of emerging technology and certainly not to preclude the integration of future technologies, support the strategies of the institution in terms of differentiation, which is really critical when it comes to marketing the institution and to work to integrate information across the institution in order to support core functions such as retention in a holistic manner. So to me, there's no way to separate the integrative from the actual job of the CIO. One example I can think of recently is we deployed a technology with face recognition technology on time clocks and this functionality removed the issues related to punching in and punching out and it provided a way for us to check on accidents that may have occurred in a shift or ask questions around health issues such as COVID, by asking questions when employees punched out. So this is the integration of artificial intelligence and it's the integration of facial recognition technology and around obviously policy issues that would need to be addressed at each institution, but it allowed us to be proactive in identifying issues or concerns, which was a win-win, but also the employees felt that it was much more personalized approach than what had been done in the past. So I think trying to look at any of the concerns that employees have tied to issues we may have from a business perspective and really leveraging technology in support of those as well as in the student experience. Students tend to want to have pretty instantaneous gratification. The days when we used to say, well, we'll update this every 24 hours and you can access it, those are obviously long gone, but they wanna be able to understand things in their own language. And so one of the challenges we found was that we had a directory that was really focused not on how a student understood services, but on how we understood services. So we had a team come together to basically look at doing a services directory from a student perspective. So it's not about your bursar, it's pay your bill. It's not necessarily about the registrar, but it's like sign up for your classes. And so to really do it in that manner, allow the students and probably their parents, I would guess for the undergraduates to feel that it was much more approachable way and easier to find information, even though previously all that information had been there, but again, speaking the same language and integrating that language into the lens and perspective of the student really changed how people accessed information. So hopefully those are two good examples of integration that I think is really a core role of the CIO. Yeah, I think it's the relationships and it's the technology that you just talked about. So earlier, Joanne, you mentioned some staff professional development and I've worked with you over the years on numerous committees and we've planned and directed leadership development events together. So I know that professional learning and career development are really important to you. In fact, you have served as dean of EDUCAUSE's leading change program which was formerly the Fry Institute and directed a number of other programs for EDUCAUSE and other places. And I guess I'm wondering what advice you might have for aspiring leaders about preparing themselves for more senior roles. So I think if anything, sort of the pandemic has really brought to light where we've had gaps in leadership development and put a focus on the fact that we need to move quicker in higher education in creating flexible, agile, responsive leaders. And one of the things that's really hard about thinking about preparing yourself for the next step is the fact that you have a full plate. And so it can be challenging to figure out how to expand your purview when your plate is full. One of the big things I think can really help is making sure that you have the right butts and the right seats, as I say, with your team. So you can actually build in the ability to expand your purview. EDUCAUSE programs have often told aspirants to expand their horizons through participating on search committees, volunteering for tasks such as reviewing applications in a moment, participating in focus groups related to campus planning and other topics and basically raising your hand for a lot of opportunities. And I think all of those are good suggestions, but you have to create the bandwidth for yourself in which to do that. So my personal advice is that every aspiring leader needs to take the responsibility for their own development. I would hope everyone's supervisors are having and leading conversations as part of their normal course, but to make sure you're frank with your supervisor about what you'd like to learn, where you wanna be in a period of time. Sometimes the size of the institution or the type of institution that you're in can be a challenge. It doesn't mean you shouldn't look outside of your institution for some potential opportunities. Sometimes those opportunities often come in that there might be volunteering opportunities in a K through 12 situation. There might be an opportunity to apply for fellowship. So there are different things that can be done to move outside of some of the restrictions of your institution if those are in fact a concern. For me, I think in the institution, building relationships with senior leaders is a really important step. People like to talk about what they do and they like to talk about themselves. So asking for something like an informational interview and setting up a cup of coffee meeting or similar meetings and asking the leadership about their challenges and the areas, it'll help you be seen in a different light, but it's also gonna help you do your current job more effectively because it's gonna give you some insights into managing up and managing up is really an art as we all know. And the ability to see challenges through different leadership lenses can help you with strategy development and provide insight into how to partner with other areas of the institution to make you a more effective leader in your space and also to be seen as someone to go to maybe outside of your usual areas of expertise. I think another piece of leadership development is creating your own kitchen cabinet or a small group of people you can trust and go to with any issue. Sometimes it may have a few people from your institution. A lot of times it's not a group of people from your institution. I think in part, the success of leadership programs such as leading change, formerly fry is in making and supporting the connections that are made in that experience. And I would also advocate for including non higher ed members in your kitchen cabinet because those different lenses from a corporate or not-for-profit perspective can be really helpful in widening your approach. I also personally found that serving on boards outside.  So taking responsibility, figuring out where your balance is and your comfort and forcing yourself a little bit out of your comfort zone, but having that group that you can always rely on, whether you're having a really good day or a really bad day. I love that kitchen cabinet concept. We used to have been doing it pre-COVID by going out for tapas on a regular basis. It's a little different since COVID. How should today's leaders be thinking about succession planning? And I wanna preface that with the thought that higher education is especially sort of complex and often the way that we think about searches where we always want to do national searches even though we might have really strong people in a pipeline can somehow get in the way of succession planning. But are there any thoughts that you have around how we as current leaders should be working with teams to be building that next generation of leaders, whether they're gonna succeed you at your institution or succeed someone else at their institution? So I think succession planning is really critical, Jack. And to your point, I think it often gets pushed to the bottom of the list when we know it's something we should be thinking about and doing it just, there's a lot of things going on and people are like, oh, I'm gonna get to that. And a lot of times it doesn't get done. One of the first steps I think is developing a budget and a consistent professional development experience for your entire team and making that investment. It sends a really important message to the team but it also allows them to keep on top of either their technical or their softer skill set and sharing that experience. So requesting reports or debriefs from the folks on your team that go through this professional development experience to share with others on the team. A, in a way it gets you more for your money because you're sharing that development. And B, it also encourages other team members to step up and be more vocal and say what they would like to learn or be engaged in. And I think it's an important thing for all of us to keep learning because as we know, not just technology but just management in general and all sorts of changes in the higher education environment are something that we have to keep on top of. For me, I've always thought about my job as being to work my way out of a job in order to keep succession planning front and center. One of the challenges I found is that each individual and your team really has to gain time to learn about the next steps. So you really need to focus on building your team in an innovative way and a strong way so that it can support the scaffolding of professional development, the scaffolding of career pathing and moving on either within or outside the institution. Another thing that I found really beneficial is to find opportunities for aspirants to engage with the broader organization and the leadership and set them up for a success. So whether you want to call it mentoring, whether you want to call it supporting but really being there for the failures and the successes to help develop them and to help them debrief and understand what went well, what went wrong, what might be able to be done differently but allowing them to grow and allowing them to grow through real world experience. And you have to remember that things will get done but they may not always get done the way you would have done it and sometimes that can be a hard thing to do is let go of that for some folks. But another way I think is to have office hours, have conversations where especially now after the pandemic and where people have been really challenged in their professional, their personal lives and in their mental health to have open office hours and conversations to be helpful and just to really find the time virtually for a person to relate to people in a way that you can hear what they're saying and what they're not saying through body language and other things to be able to understand how you can help them succeed and what they're seeing is the next step. And I think when you put all those building blocks in place they build upon each other and you end up with folks that are ready and want to take on the next set of challenges because there are a lot of challenges in the complex environment of higher education, a lot of different constituencies, a lot of different relationships. So it's not an easy job and it's certainly one where people have to work hard and then they have to struggle and different campuses have different environments and cultures that folks have to adapt to. So one of the other things I like to do if I can do this at institutions is really find ways to have team members work during highly stressful times or volunteer during highly stressful times in other areas. So if it's the start of school maybe it's in residence life or it's in application processing at a certain point. So get what it's like on the other side of the coin. So you understand that moving forward you have to be able to take all those perspectives into consideration as you're going through your own development and your own decision-making processes within your organization. I think that's really incredibly astute. And one of the things I've noticed is I've been working here and trying to sort of begin thinking about these issues is it's important to be looking at both inside the organization and outside the organization around this professional development. On the outsides, you need to be getting people connected nationally and in key groups so that they can be building the kinds of connections that they're going to need to be successful from a professional network standpoint. But similarly inside the organization you've got to be sharing and putting them in a place where they can get to be making the relationships with some of the key constituents that are going to need to be and maybe part of the search committee for the next position and building that capability where some of your people have that those tight connections really are important I think for success if you're going to do really internal succession planning well, so thank you. Those kinds of things I think become really important and they may succeed at a different institution but I think recognizing that collectively that helps higher education is also important when we talk about succession planning. Yeah, I agree with that. I think for me, one of the things I get the biggest sort of recharge out of is being able to help fill the pipeline with a variety of candidates that actually have the energy and want to do the job and are up for the challenges for senior leadership roles. And I do think that taking into account some people were in higher education they left and then they decide they want to come back at times in search committees tend to hold that against people while you left higher education. You know, now you want to come back but I don't think that's necessarily bad experience. I look back again as I said with my time in retail on the customer service side so basically when you get to higher ed nothing surprises you in customer service if you've been in retail then you've all probably had some experiences outside of higher ed as well. So I think that looking at it holistically and being able to make sure that on these search committees when they ask the questions and that the candidates that you put up internally or externally really have had a chance to demonstrate their credibility as a candidate is important. So Joanne, one of the things I remember well is participating on a panel discussion that you organized some years ago at Olin and it was targeted at women students in technical fields. And so we were talking about pipelines and I remember that that was a really great discussion and that the women were really thoughtful and very practical in some of the questions that they asked. And I do remember when student asking about whether it was possible to advance in your career and have a family at the same time. And so as a profession we know that those concerns are still out there and IT is not as diverse or representative of our broader community as we'd like it to be. And I was wondering what you think our institutions could be doing to bring people from previously underrepresented groups into technical professions. So I think that's a hard question that a lot of folks are struggling with but one of our challenges is I think we often wait for people in these underrepresented groups to reach out to us as opposed to reaching out to them and tapping them on the shoulder and say, hey, this is a great opportunity. I think you've got the skills to do this, get started here and encourage them to actually become engaged in the conversation around the positions in a different way than how we've maybe done outreach before. I think getting out in the tech communities and participating in the communities for those of us that are already in them and understanding who they're reaching out to could give us some insights into additional activities that we can undertake. Personally, I found that going to the take your daughter or take your child to work days and speaking at those elementary schools and high schools and supporting fun experiences like coding camps and really focusing on the pipeline from junior high to high school students can have an impact. So I love to hire high school students as interns on the teams, obviously giving them better jobs and necessarily just working the coffee pot or the copier but so that they have an impact on your organization gets them excited and hopefully keeps them interested in the profession and the profession and the options they would have there. One of the things we've done is also partner with the enrollment team to identify students really early on the application process that may have some proclivities in this area or some energy in this area and engage them really early on as even part of a recruiting strategy to the institution. And then obviously we've all worked on trying to get college work study students but this is the way to get started a little bit earlier. I think one of the other challenges we have especially today is the market is obviously more employee than employer-driven at this point. So how are we taking into account commuting? Leslie's in Cambridge. Not too many people want to drive to Cambridge and Park. Parking, taking into account childcare, furthering education concerns. So do I need more education? Do I need a certificate? Do I need a bed? Is my family secure? And developing the human resource policies or having input into them that allows for flexibility and career pathing and looking at the jobs to the folks that aren't applying for the jobs and trying to figure out if there are things that we can do that would make the jobs more inviting, more manageable, more relational. And I think in some ways the pandemic has helped us do that with hybrid work, remote work and a better understanding of what can and can't be done though all that requires very hands-on management. So one of the strategies that I've really tried to use here at my institution because we tend to often hire people who worked here as students is to really be focusing on the diversity of my student population. Now, we may be a little unique in that we're allocating hundreds of thousands of dollars of our budget to student employees not worrying about work study. We look at it as part of building this pipeline and really extending the IT workforce. I'm curious though, and you mentioned some but as you're at Leslie, what are you doing specifically around sort of this recruitment and retention piece? Is it the work, hybrid, remote kinds of activities or is it other ideas or just a mix of whatever is really relating to the individual? So I think one of the things that we've seen as a result of pandemic and actually Leslie was in this space before but we have a number of different programs that run on weekends that are a low residency come to campus a number of times a year, different kinds of events, all those kinds of things that need support. So the flexibility of work hours. So for some people weekends aren't an ethno they don't want to work weekends or other weekends work really well for them and being flexible on how you actually configure the work week. We also look at the benefits packages around personal hours and days and how those are implemented. Opportunity is another big question that we often get asked. And so making cross-training opportunities available for folks along with regular professional development. And we get asked a lot of questions while we're recruiting people about so do I get to go to a conference, would you support me if I'm writing an article? People ask these questions down ways that maybe weren't asked before but then we also have folks that wouldn't ask that question. And so for them, it's more about challenging projects and making sure we could take advantage of their diverse skill sets that they've developed that may not necessarily fit in the exact mode of what we normally would have. I think we've also really taken care to take a hard look at our job descriptions and not put up barriers in the job descriptions as something really need ex-years of experience to something really need a certain degree level. We've also really focused on engagement as an important part for both recruiting and retaining employees. Again, so those questions about what do you want to be engaged in? Where would you really like to make a difference? And getting external advisory boards to help us. So using the environment we're in in Cambridge and Boston to leverage companies in the area to leverage organizations in the area to understand what they're doing, what are needs they see, how can we potentially partner with them in different types of business models to really afford a lot of other opportunities, not just to our students, but to some of our employees to get some additional experience. Those have been helpful if people want to do that. I think one of the most critical things we do is our president, provost and CHRO actually interview every finalist for positions at Leslie to really focus on the importance of team and being a member of the community and having an impact. And I think that sends a really strong message. So they interview everybody who's here at an institution? Yes. Wow. I wouldn't say scheduling is fun, but yes. So Joanne, just quickly, could you talk for just a minute about how organizations like EDUCAUSE and I know you've been involved, heavily involved in NERCOMP over the years. These professional associations, how have they played a role in your own professional growth? I think they played an important one. I mean, with NERCOMP, I held a variety of leadership positions on the board. Really helped me to get a wide exposure to different types of institutions, different types of professionals. I think one of my big takeaways early on in my career was that the scale of issues will be different in institutions, but the issues are pretty omnipresent across higher education. So we're actually all working together to solve a lot of the concerns. And that really was one of the first light bulbs that went off for me in terms of the importance of collaboration in higher education and not just sharing, but collaboration in ways that made sense for both curricular and financial and other perspectives. The ability to be able to have opportunities to talk about something you're passionate about and appeal to a broader audience and share your experiences was very much not just exciting, but really learning from the actual audience in real time and being able to take that back and impact your own work, as well as share it back to the broader audience to help impact theirs, building your network. I mean, one critical component we've talked about a number of ways today, but also figuring out that for me, mentoring and coaching the next group of people, the next set of talented individuals is an important piece and wanting to share and have essentially open time to have those conversations. For instance, with LCI, we actually for a year keep the current cohort in a monthly meeting where we get together and share experiences, answer questions, have them help each other as well as we jump in and help them. LCI is the leading change in students for our listeners to make sure they know what we're talking about. Yep, great, thank you. And the same thing for the alumni of the leading change institute slash fry Institute to have a monthly call to again, just share experiences, talk about issues they have. And oftentimes they'll bring in a speaker that has a particular expertise when we hear and really listen to some of the challenges that were brought up in the previous call. The other thing I think the organizations provide within the various committees and on the boards is an opportunity to really learn skills and what it takes to work on a board to be part of a board. And that I think really helps to position you when you're in your own organization and you have to have those interactions with the board which a lot of times people haven't been exposed to in other ways. So Joanne, on one side as we look at their current times you can look and see challenges with enrollment and cost and other aspects that are there. And on the other side, you can look and see just a lot of opportunity with the way that technology is able to allow us to do new things and new ways that we never thought, you know, back to your facial recognition for time clocks, you know?  And I'm just wondering how are you thinking about the opportunities and ways that you as a leader at a small institution can be helping to use technology to overcome some of the challenges that you see over the next decade to sort of lead your institution to a better place. When you talk about enrollment at retention that's obviously a challenge at a lot of places. And I think one of the things that has been interesting to me is as I work with marketing and communications and enrollment is taking a look at how we have all this incoming data from all these campaigns and ads and digital and all these things. And there's not one pane of glass. There's not one dashboard that can actually speak to how successful things are overall or where they're not successful, why they're not successful. And so we've been working at looking at how we can leverage technology to combine all this type of information into dashboards that really help us to answer the questions that we have about what do we need to focus on? What do we need to be concerned about? And so I think that really again, spending time with the data, leveraging the data. The other thing is, I think that we've learned is institutions have a lot of alumni and some alumni really wanna be engaged others not necessarily. So but if you've got alumni that wanna be engaged how do you engage them and how do they help support your institution and not just by frankly writing a check but how are they engaged in helping you think about what are their needs now that they're out of the organization in terms of what they need to move ahead in the next steps in their career. What feedback do they have for you for the types of things they wish that they had exposure to that they don't how do you maybe look at those potential opportunities to help with not just the retention but the ongoing engagement of an important constituent group. And I think one of the other challenges is just when you look at overall budgeting and so we've gone through sort of big swings in technology about everything was on premise that everything's in the cloud and then security and all its permutations but we've talked for years about personalization. And I think artificial intelligence and the growth in those areas has really allowed us to look at personalization in a very different way. So when we think about how we support our students when we think about how we advise our students obviously concerned about what am I getting is practical application skills. So I have a job when I get out of my education at least for my first pass out and then what do I wanna do and how do I maintain that moving forward that we can leverage the artificial intelligence to really understand more about our constituencies and then therefore personalize the programs in ways that are most relevant to them that don't necessarily have to be start an entire new program, right? But could be start a permutation or think about it more along like options, right? So if you send out a bid for something you're always asking people to option outlines but we have personalization to an extent but if we take a step back right now higher education provides the credentialing. We look forward, I can actually go on the web now and create my own experience. I can reach out and get all kinds of I don't know about you but I reach out to YouTube a lot when I have to figure something out particularly around the house but I can go and find a number of ways to really build my knowledge in a different way than I probably could do 10 years ago and moving forward that's only gonna increase incrementally with the focus on machine learning and feeding that loop back into intelligence and forward. So when we think about that is the future how do we in higher education keep our content our curriculum our experts relevant clearly having the relationships the faculty is important clearly having the ability to advise students and share experiences is important but the more personalized we get I think that's one of our bigger challenges moving forward is how do we really articulate on that? And when you think about the fact that I don't know what does a three year old have a phone now or pretty close to that, right? And they're used to pushing the buttons right off the bat and getting answers, right? I mean, people Google things, right? I have you heard that 411 services going away, right? Because nobody calls information anymore. So now we try to project ahead and think, okay so people are gonna have even more intense devices that can provide them with more information whether it augmented reality and you're sharing experiences virtual reality and we're all playing in those areas now we're all experimenting in those areas some of us more than others depending for a research institution but as we move forward how does that really affect the educational experience?  And I think for every institution small, medium and large we have to think about that because our students are changing their expectations are changing how they wanna engage with education is changing. You look at the gig economy, right? Do I need to be an expert in six things or do I need to have a really much more narrower expertise in one? I don't have the answers but to me I find all those things amazingly interesting and also if you just look at what's happening in neurology and the signs of neurology and how our brains work and how they accept or don't accept all these different types of inputs to me just there's so much opportunity it's hard to harness it and figure out how do we help our institutions take reasonable steps now to make sure that we're ready for whatever it is that comes and I think part of that is really inculcating change in our institutions getting folks to understand the culture is changed and moving forward being able to have as much flexibility and agility from everything from our budgets to our training and our experiences and in a way I think really hiring people that are the most curious that are gonna wanna follow through and take advantage of all those opportunities that come up. Well, I think that's a great way to end our podcast. Joanne, thank you for joining us. This has been a great conversation. Thank you, it's been fun. I really appreciate the opportunity.