With 16 years of academic administration experience, and outstanding leadership skills, Pierre Moreau can “guide you to lead the way”. Most academicians are trained as scientists or clinicians and academic administration is offered to them with little specific training in management and leadership. This can lead to some struggle as they need to face several challenges in an increasingly complex academic and professional environment. Of course, this includes the most important challenge of all, which is transforming a professional curriculum. In addition to his on-the-ground experience, Pierre has completed four 3-month modules to get a certificate in Leading Innovation and Change, offered online by York St-John University (UK). This helped him to refine his competencies and ground his intuitions on solid foundations from current research and literature on management and leadership. All this experience can help you (or individuals in your succession plan) become more efficient, confident and agile in performing your responsibilities. The coaching sessions are flexible and can focus on one specific issue or provide broader academic management and leadership development.
Each service illustrated is briefly described below in its own section
Competency-based curriculum
More information can be found by reading the why CBE? page, which presents a white paper on the impetus to transition towards CBE. The framework used by Pierre to design a relevant and engaging competency-based curriculum can be found on the iCBL page, which contains references to his work in the field.
As mentioned by Nolan and Hutchison in their book Leading innovation and creativity in university education, “academics will have more trust if they know that the person leading the change has been through similar processes before, if they have a track record of being part of other teaching initiatives, or if they have supported other institutions through changing teaching, such as being an external examiner or advisor”. With his 3 CBE curriculum development an implementation experiences, Pierre brings credibility to your vision.
Needs-based education & curriculum design
As academicians, we often think that we know what is needed to improve the professional practice, We tend to avoid large consultations from the community and focus on the disciplines we believe are important for pharmacists to best serve the population. However, when we consult stakeholders in the field, we quickly realize how we can develop a program that is more relevant to the profession, by harnessing the strengths that we have within the organization and the community.
Pierre can help you create a stakeholder map to identify who should be consulted and in what capacity. He can also share his experience to develop surveys and conduct structured focus groups to identify key elements that will serve the creation of a relevant program. This important preparation and analysis step is too often forgotten with the excitement of starting the creation of the curriculum. It is necessary to better serve the profession and prepare graduates for the expected future needs…
The need assessment will also inform the global strategy to be used and Pierre can help create an action plan to devise the curriculum and make its implementation a success. Strategy is all about scanning the environment, choosing a way forward and implementing the vision into concrete actions.
Academic Leadership
Leadership is leadership, irrespective of where it is deployed, and the rank you currently occupy. However, the impact of the local culture is important to consider, as it will affect the leadership style that is likely to work. Academia and your institution have a culture that needs to be utilized and, when needed, slowly modified by creating winning strategies.
Over the years as an academic manager, and with additional specific education on leadership, Pierre has developed a noteworthy competence in transformational leadership, supporting colleagues to move their career forward while performing important tasks for the college (see testimony by Dr. Al-Taweel). He is convinced that meaningful success comes from allowing others to be successful. It is a win-win scenario! Pierre can be of assistance to help you improve your leadership competence by providing guidance and specific tasks to work on this important aspect of your capacity to inspire others and bring new projects to fruition in a serene way.
Organization development is an area where Pierre can also support you to make sure that the vision, mission and values are enacted into meaningful results. Indeed, changes in organizational structure and the underlying culture can be necessary to improve engagement and change acceptance.
“Working with Pierre for 10 years, I can truly say that Pierre’s visionary leadership revolutionized the educational landscape for pharmacy in Kuwait. He has set a new standard of excellence and innovation at our college, and with his genuine passion for education, and strategic foresight, he has brought positive change and fostered a culture of continuous improvement. One of Pierre’s most impressive attributes is his ability to inspire and empower others; I experienced this firsthand as Vice dean for four years, where he constantly led by example and consistently demonstrated strong work ethics.”
Change management
Change is always difficult to implement, especially in conservative workplaces like academia. There are several reasons for resistance to change, and they are usually anchored in the local culture. Having a strategy to address change management during any significant transformation is the only way to guaranty a successful project implementation. Having an external view on the situation can help identify negative influences at play and positive actions to move the project forward. This includes culture assessment, identification of the main barriers and developing an intentional change management strategy. Spending years on a project development, like a new curriculum, to see it falter during the implementation phase is not something we wish for. It is always better to prepare the ground for a softer landing…
With several major academic projects successfully implemented both in Canada and Kuwait, Pierre has always been keen on communicating and obtaining feedback along the way to understand and share the extra anxiety of moving forward with fomenting new. He has used an intuitive and grounded framework for change management that can help you better prepare and improve your success during implementation [ 1 ].
Lemay J & Moreau P. Managing a Curriculum Innovation Process. Pharmacy 2020: 8, 153. doi
Quality assurance and accreditation
Building and implementing a new curriculum or any other significant initiative is only the first step towards relevance and quality. There needs to be continuous monitoring and actions to ensure continuing quality improvements (CQI). A process has to be created to obtain data from the major stakeholders (mapped beforehand) and an appropriate internal structure has to be in place to channel the required changes to the appropriate players.
Obtaining accreditation from a local, national or international organization is a very powerful way to demonstrate the quality of the university, the college and the program. With experience both as a someone actively involved in a school undergoing accreditation (Montreal, Kuwait, Ottawa), or as a surveyor on accreditation visits (Canada and the Middle East), Pierre can provide expert guidance to prepare a college to identify and fix low hanging fruits, build a self-study report and plan an effective site visit. He builds on the “accelerate” model of parallel management to make sure that quality assurance is not an afterthought [1].
[1] Kotter, J. P. Accelerate. Harvard Business Reviews 44–58 (2012).
“Accreditation Self-Studies are a challenge for most people. Pierre knows how to ‘get to the point’ when addressing individual standards. He quickly determines the strengths and challenges of a program which will lead to rapid improvement. In all my years of work in the field of accreditation, i would rate Pierre at the top of my list for programs seeking help!”
Provisional CCAPP international accreditation obtained by the College of Pharmacy at Kuwait University for the new PharmD program
