About Robert Audet
Robert Audet is an innovative leader in the educational sector with over three decades of experience. His entrepreneurial spirit has been a driving force behind his commitment to enhancing student services and educational opportunities. Robert’s most notable achievement is spearheading the establishment of an International Campus for Lambton College in partnership with Saint-Paul University in Ottawa, a project that reflects his dedication to expanding access to education.
Throughout his career, Robert has demonstrated a unique ability to build sustainable business models that serve students effectively. He began his journey by launching the first bookstore at Collège Boréal as a multi-stakeholder co-operative, successfully integrating various student services such as a cafeteria and temporary employment agency. His work with Desjardins and Laurentian University further underscored his commitment to fostering cooperative development and supporting individuals in their entrepreneurial pursuits.
At Cambrian College, Robert had the privilege of bringing together six areas of student life and services under one umbrella. This experience deepened his understanding of Indigenous culture and values as he collaborated with the Wabnode team. The knowledge he gained is something he is eager to bring forward in his current role, working with the Indigenous Centre at Saint-Paul University.
Robert is a firm believer in nurturing talent and guiding individuals along their unique paths to success. He emphasizes the importance of supporting both students and employees, recognizing that everyone has their own journey. By focusing on individual strengths and providing tailored support, Robert ensures that each person can thrive in their educational and professional endeavors. His collaborative approach and commitment to stakeholder engagement create an environment where innovation and growth flourish, ultimately leading to a more enriching educational experience for all.
Connect with Robert Audet: Email | Linkedin
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Resources Mentioned
Lambton College
Saint-Paul University
Collège Boréal
Laurentian University
Cambrian College,
The Transcript
**Please note that all of our transcriptions come from rev.com and are 80% accurate. We’re grateful for the robots that make this possible and realize that it’s not a perfect process.
Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator podcast. This is your host, Sam, and today we are joined by a special guest, Robert Audet. Robert is an innovative leader who has dedicated over three decades to transforming the education sector. His entrepreneurial spirit has consistently driven improvements in student services and educational opportunities throughout his career. Most notably, Robert spearheaded the establishment of Lampton College’s international campus in partnership with St. Paul University in Ottawa, demonstrating a commitment to expanding access to quality education. He also spent a lot of time this weekend shoveling snow. Robert, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the podcast here today.
Robert Audet
Good morning, Sam. It’s my pleasure. I was looking forward to this chat and leaving the snow behind. Please take a moment to introduce yourself and explain what got you interested and involved in education. You kind of covered a little bit of what I’ve been doing. I guess I got hooked into education back in the 90s where I was working for a financial cooperative and then I got an opportunity to work for Laurentian University in a special project to help people on social assistance create their business plan, teach them some courses, some life skills that they needed to start a business and actually help them start their business. And so it was a very small team. So I got to teach courses. I got to bring in guests with special knowledge for our students and actually see them through the incorporation of worker co-ops and actually see them start their own businesses. And that got me hooked because the feeling of seeing them progress and getting their independence and just doing so well, that was enough for me. So when the French college in Sudbury opened up and opened up their first campus, Collège Boreal, I had the opportunity to go there and start a multi-stakeholder cooperative to run a lot of their student services. So I jumped on that opportunity real quick, started their cafeteria, their bookstore, their pub, their food services for the daycare center, et cetera, et cetera. So it was so overwhelming at the time, but at the same time, so challenging, so it just hooked me right in. And I’ve been mostly in the educational sector or there for a couple of years for most of my career after that.
Sam Demma
When you were helping with the student run businesses, would you consider your personality more like Robert or Kevin O’Leary?
Robert Audet
Not Kevin. I definitely always, I mean, especially, you know, that first initial project was done as a multi-stakeholder co-op, which was the first in Ontario. We were breaking ground. I had to make sure we had partners from the student body. First of all, I had nine students on my board of directors. I had three people from the college. It started with people, high-profile vice presidents in the college. And then I went out into the community to make sure to get some partners in there as well. So, you know, you try to get the expertise around the table. So, you know, you try to get an accountant at the table, you try to get a lawyer at the table. Little ways of saving money when you need some advice from your friends in the community, but it was such a collaborative approach, you know, creating it as a multi-stake cooperative, multi-stakeholder cooperative, that, you know, it was really about building all those relationships more than anything else.
Sam Demma
I think that’s the heart of education, building relationships with stakeholders, with community partners, with the students we’re aiming to serve and support. And you’ve been doing it for over three decades in education. I’m curious over the 30 years, like what fundamental changes have you observed in students’ needs and expectations? Maybe first when you started, what’s different about education today than it was then?
Robert Audet
I mean, I think what’s different is that we have a lot more diversity on any of the campuses right now. And there’s a lot of changes happening to international students coming to Canada for the last little while, let’s say since January. But so that’s different in the sense that, you know, some of the needs of the students could be different adapting to a new country, et cetera. But at the end of the day, it hasn’t really changed. If you really, if you really go down to what’s important when you’re dealing with students over there, like, like you mentioned three decades, I feel old now. No, it’s experience, it’s wisdom. But if you think about it, the reason I say it hasn’t changed is you have to take each student for who they are and try to bring them to the next level. And every student has their own journey. Yeah, they have a common thread of being in a certain program together or they have a common thread of coming from a certain area or, you know, they’re varsity players or whatever, whatever brings them to your campus. That’s just the start. Now you gotta, you gotta build trust with that student. You gotta make sure that they understand that they have someone on campus that they can go to if they meet any barriers or struggle with anything. And once that is built, then you can actually help them, well, actually to be able to help them to get to the level they need to be, you need to understand them. So too often people will say, we’re just here to lecture them. They have to figure it out their own way. But once you understand, and then I have the luxury of having a smaller campus here in Ottawa because we’ve just started a year ago, but the beauty of that is that you can actually meet your students. You can actually have some conversations, see what they’re struggling with, and make sure that they’re connecting with someone on the team. And that hasn’t changed, whether I was working for 20 years in student services at Cameron College or here at Lambton College in Ottawa, that has not changed. You have students, like I’ve met some students over the years, so many great relationships, you know, and I’ve learned probably more from them than they’ve learned from me just because they were growing through at times easy stuff, but at times very difficult things. And the fact that they trusted you to be there along with them to get them through that, I probably gave more to my worth of life and appreciation for life than anything else. And so I’ve worked with students at all levels, whether it was just to try and pass a course so that they can get to the next level, or whether it was to help them fit in to the college system because they had no friends, or whether it was to become one of the provincial leaders influencing where education is going.
And all of those were just as important as the next one because that’s where they were and that’s where they need to be. And then you look back and I guess I get to look back because it’s been 30 years. You look back at how well some of those students are doing. It’s just so much, it’s so rewarding. It’s just, that’s all I can say, very rewarding.
Sam Demma
That’s such a key idea that the external changes, the environment may change, the technology may change, the technology may change, the subjects we focus on may change, but the human being is the human being. We have similar human needs, whether it was 30 years ago or now, and making people feel like they have a person on campus who can support them, building trust, building the relationship, those things haven’t changed. One of my favorite speakers and authors is a gentleman named Jim Rohn, and he’s passed away now. In one of his lectures, he would always tell a story of a company that hired him to come and deliver a speech at their company to talk about the future of their industry, because they thought he had some great insights on it. And he said, he went and delivered a speech and he said, folks, I can confidently tell you that the industry is gonna be just like it’s always been. Unless you change, unless you change. And that made me think of what you just shared now about the fundamentals of building connections with young people. And that makes me curious when it comes to supporting young people and building that trust, what things can educators do to ensure that that trust gets built and they do feel supported and, and encouraged.
Robert Audet
It comes down to listening and listening to actually absorb what they’re going through, not just listen to pretend you’re listening. It’s really that simple. It’s making connections with people. And sometimes it’s harder. The bigger your campus is, like we had, my last campus, we had 6,000 students. I can’t say I knew every student. It’s just not possible, right? But the team that I led, though, we made sure to stay open to any student that would. So we wouldn’t say, oh, you know, if a student comes to me and it’s not my area, but they’re comfortable talking to me, we wouldn’t say just turn them away. We would make sure to bring them, actually walk them to the service they need, make the connection with them. And if they still felt more comfortable coming by my way first, my door was open, right? So it’s really about just listening and making that connection because the needs will vary drastically from each student.
Sam Demma
I think that listening is difficult in a world where there’s a distraction everywhere we look, whether it’s our phone buzzing, another conversation, an email popping on our computer screen. Listening sounds simple, but it’s sometimes very difficult to do. So I appreciate that reminder and I think it’s a timely one. When you started the role, I’m assuming someone didn’t pull you aside and say, Robert, it is your responsibility to build a partnership with St. Paul University. Can you talk about how that partnership was built and the value it’s provided to both campuses today?
Robert Audet
That’s a great question actually. And no, that’s not how that went down. The relationship was already started when I was hired on to come and start the campus, I guess, and manage the campus. They even had hired a few employees. And we’re a very small team right now in Ottawa, to come and start the campus, I guess, and manage the campus. The AIA even had hired a few employees, and we’re a very small team right now in Ottawa, seven plus our faculty. But it is a fantastic partnership. We’ve been growing the common areas, we’ve been growing how do we help each other in doing wellness activities, how we collaborate on different things, how we potentially work on research projects together, et cetera. But the idea was to develop a public to public institution partnership so that we can offer great programs and have the resources we needed in Ottawa to quickly be able to welcome new students. So they had room in their residence, for example. So we negotiated some rooms in their residence. So when students showed up, if they didn’t wanna stay on campus, that was fine. We would help them with housing as well, but they would have an opportunity to go there. So everything’s nice and close until they get used to our snow, our mountain of snow, since our first term was in January. But last year was nice.
Robert Audet
It was an easy winter. But you know, that’s just an example. We’ve collaborated at so many levels and having, being in this historical building here in Ottawa, I mean, I won’t be able to quote you on what year it was built, but I’m pretty sure it was in the 1800s. And it’s slowly being, you know, redone and modernized here and there, but while keeping its charm, right. And so every time I get visitors from our Sarnia campus, which has been there since 1966, they go, I can’t believe the atmosphere here. I want to move to Ottawa just to work in that building. And I go, yeah, I agree. It’s small enough that, you know, it’s a friendly atmosphere with the three partners, actually, Collège Boreal is on campus as well. And we’re building that relationship and we’re having a blast. We’re doing an EDI event in March coming up. And it’s fun because, you know, I had to take a step back when I was approached with the idea, would you apply for this job? Because my wife had just accepted a job here in Ottawa. And I’m like, yes, I should, and I will look into it. But what’s interesting is I had to take a deep look inside myself and go, I’ve done a lot of startups.
Robert Audet
Like even when I went to Cambrian College, it was a new startup, was a new student’s life center. Then I took on, I kept growing the department, right? It became six departments in one. And it was just, for me, it’s all about startups and making those relationships. So I was like, do I have another startup in me? That was the question. And I was like, yes, I do have another startup in me. I think I go to Ottawa and I have some fun. I meet some new people and I’ve been meeting some interesting, our faculty that we’re recruiting, industry experts, we’re having a blast with that. Like developing the relationship with St. Paul, like, you know, going to skate on the canal, uh, you know, building those relationships just to be able to have those conversations and build those relationships. Uh, Ottawa is just fantastic to be in. I I’m going to enjoy it until I, uh, until I retire here in Ottawa and then, and then I’ll go back home, but I have to visit Ottawa now that I know it.
Sam Demma
It sounds like you might have another startup in you after you leave this role. Maybe it’s something related to a business that you’d like to start after you finish. I don’t know, but I get the sense that maybe you will continue doing something.
Robert Audet
It’s funny you say that because I have, I was talking with one of the researchers from the university the other day and he goes when you do retire, you know You have a very good skill set on organizing people and getting stuff done So he says it’d be a shame for you just to put that to rest and I’m like, I’ll have to give it some thought I was thinking retirement man. I’m going cycling. I’m going kayaking But but time will tell right
Sam Demma
When it comes to entrepreneurship, I think there are so many skills that are so important for educators and students to carry forward. It sounds like you’ve surrounded yourself in the startup world and in the entrepreneurship world for a very long time, whether it was helping students start their businesses or literally building and starting departments on campuses. What are a few of the entrepreneurial traits that you think are important for educators and students to live out and carry forward each day?
Robert Audet
This almost sounds like one of my, it’s a different question, but I love the question, but I’ll spin it back a little bit. I’ll spin it back to a question I got when I was doing the interview for this position. I was asked, what are your number three traits that you’re looking for in an employee? And I remember saying, initiative, initiative, and initiative. And they’re all going, well, that’s one. I’m like, yes yes now let me explain right so so initiative is you know if you know something needs to get done get it done or find the right people to get it done or build the relationships that will get you there sometimes people try to take shortcuts though they try to get it done quickly and sure it gets you a quick result but if you time take the time to build the relationships around it not only will you get. But if you take the time to build the relationships around it, not only will you get it done, but you will get it done with buy-in. You will get it done with people that are wanting to see you succeed as much as they wanna succeed, because usually you help them succeed. If you’re entrepreneurial, I’ve had a few small businesses in my early career as well. If you wanna succeed, you only succeed by helping others succeed at whatever your services are. So in education, we’re helping people create careers. They come back and support the college as with the foundation or even just come in and do a presentation, support our students, take a co-op for our students, employ one of our students that’s just graduated. So you should never take a shortcut. It goes back to building those relationships, getting buy-in and building that respect.
Robert Audet
I have no doubt in my mind that if I ever in need of something, I can pick up the phone and call one of my many friends that I’ve made over the years and say, you know, do you have a contact that could help me with that? And we’ll find a solution. The one thing I have used in my entire career, well, I shouldn’t say my entire career, but after I heard it, which is probably close to 30 years ago, is, I don’t know who the author was, but it’s a statement that says, there’s no such thing as a problem, only opportunities to find solutions. You know, that inspires me every time I hear it, even though I’ve known it for like probably close to 30 years.
Robert Audet
Because if you go in with that mindset, you’re not just stopping at, I did my task today. You’re looking at how else can we make this better? You’re looking at who can I bring make this better? You’re looking at who can I bring in that will develop this with me? How can I surround myself with people that are smarter than me, that are better than me in so many skills, especially as I get older? I’m like, you know, you asked me what’s different and I said nothing. Well, that’s not true. I’ll tell you, technology is different. We just had a session on AI and then a session on academic integrity and how AI can impact it, etc. to help our faculty understand all the changes that are happening. And you know, am I the best person to actually offer that session? No, but I surround myself with people that have that high knowledge of AI, right? So it’s really about creating all those connections and always trying, if you’re entrepreneurial, stay a step ahead of the game. Wake up before everybody else, start your work before everybody else, try to know what’s coming ahead at you so you’re not surprised. And you’re likely finishing your day later than most people do. And as you get older, I guess harder.
Sam Demma
I’m taking a big theme away from all that around preparation, you know, preparing, taking initiative. I had a conversation with my uncle about, you know, how do you identify talent? And, and, um, the word for initiative he used was hungry, you know, same, same idea, like you go and get the work done. And he said, hungry, humble and smart. And the humble piece is also huge, you know, just reminding ourselves that we still have learning to do. We we are always students of the of the craft we’re working towards. And I think it’s just such an important reminder. There’s been moments in my life where I’ve really burned the midnight oil and read all the books. And then moments where I stopped reading as many books as I used to. And, and I catch myself every once in a while, why, why did I stop? You know, why did I, why did I get out of the game? You know, and, um, it’s, it’s, it’s really cool to hear about your passion for education.
Robert Audet
It’s not just about the books. The books are important, don’t get me wrong. There’s ways to fast track them nowadays too. Compared to the good old days when you read every word. I think for me, I’ve learned I learned more from everybody I meet, which is why I was looking so much forward to this interview, right. Then having a chat with you, because it doesn’t matter who you’re meeting with. If you’re actually taking the time to, to sit in and be present in that moment, you’re going to learn something every time. And I don’t care how old you are, how young you are. When sometimes people tell us stuff and we’re not ready to hear it or we’re not ready to absorb it and it comes back to us later and that’s okay but that and I guess that goes back to when I was saying you take every student to where they are and bring them that extra level right so sometimes it could be taken a student that is you know just barely surviving and you bring him up to you know oh I pass all my courses and they’re celebrating and they’re happy with that. And then you see them again two, three years down the road, now they’ve learned how to learn and they’re actually able to take on bigger challenges. And sometimes it’s actually just trying to keep up with a student that is so brilliant. You can’t keep up with them, but you support them and you eliminate barriers for them to make sure that they can keep running as fast as they can because they’re just a shining star going through the world. And you do your best to support that, like even though you can’t keep up. And you know what, that makes me happy because that’s the future. If I can’t keep up on with some of our students, that’s, that’s, that’s awesome.
Sam Demma
The mark of a great leader is when their students surpass them in many ways, you know, that’s why you build people up and lead them. And I am so grateful for you taking the time just to be here today to share some of your ideas around education, some of the things that have stayed the same and things that have adjusted or changed over the years, the importance of collaboration in working with other partners in the community and other educational institutions to drive forward common goals. Your passion for education is very obvious, and I hope as long as you continue to work in it you feel the same way about it and after you finish I will look forward to watching your business unfold. forward to watching your business unfold.
Robert Audet
Absolute pleasure, thank you.
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