Practice Areas & Solutions
Services
HIGHER EDUCATION
Strategy, program development, acceleration, scaling, innovation
Student experience
Residential, remote, multi-modal offerings
Partnerships & industry relations
Leadership, management, operations, personnel
FOR
Academic Programming: Degrees, Certificates, Micro-credentials
Continuing Education: Executive Education, Bootcamps, & Master Classes
Career-Connected & Experiential Learning
Industry Partnerships & Student Connection
Assessments & Planning
Program Strategy & Architecture
Implementation
Strategic Partnerships
Branding & Communications
A bold shift is needed
5 Most Critical Challenges Facing Higher Education Today.
Prioritizing Career-Ready Student Outcomes
Creating New Revenue Sources
Shifting Workforce Demands
Maintaining Competitive Edge
Better Serving Our Communities
The legacy post-secondary education model is at a crossroads, struggling with financial pressures, evolving job demands, falling enrollments, and diminished relevance.
Joel envisions a future where universities are agile, connected, and responsive—ready to tackle today's challenges head-on. This new era demands adaptive financial strategies, industry-aligned curriculums, targeted enrollment efforts, and a commitment to innovation and relevance.
Joel helps universities turn strategic imperatives into growth opportunities, equip students for the future, and redefine the value of post-secondary education for the 21st century.
Turn your strategic imperatives into growth opportunities.
Joel helps institutions to design, accelerate, and lead academic programs that strengthen student experience, career readiness, and workforce impact. His work spans undergraduate and graduate degrees, professional certificates, continuing education, and curricular innovation across multiple modalities.
He has led the developed and scaled some of the nation’s most recognized academic programs. At the University of Colorado, he founded the Masters of the Environment (MENV) graduate professional program, the university’s flagship sustainability program. While Joel was Director, MENV enrollment grew 6.5x in five years, 3000% 5-year ROI, 98% student retention, and became the Mountain West’s largest largest professional development and leadership training program in sustainability. He was also the founding director of the Outdoor Recreation Economy graduate professional program, the nation’s only comprehensive program to serve the $862b industry. Built on a novel stacked-certificate design at 1/3 the cost of residential programming, and grew 4x in 1st 2 years.
Joel has worked across disciplines and institutional types—from public research universities to private institutions and business. He has also served as an advisor to numerous other university and professional programs. Joel also teaches >30,000 students annually at the University of Colorado, through Coursera and through corporate partners.
Program Development Highlights:
Founding Director of University of Colorado’s Master’s of the Environment graduate professional program.
Founding Director of University of Colorado’s Outdoor Recreation Economy Program
University of Colorado’s School of the Environment
Outdoor Industry Association’s Outdoor Industry Business Certificate
National Geographic’s first On-Campus program
University of New Hampshire’s Community Development Policy Practice professional master’s program
University of New Hampshire’s Earth School
University of New Hampshire Department of Geography’s internship program
University of Michigan’s International Programs in Engineering
Get in Touch
Want to address one or more of those five challenges? Something else? Let’s start the conversation.
