Insight and Impact: A Conversation with Joe Small ’74

Show Notes

In this episode, we share the remarkable life story of Joe Small ’74, a distinguished alum who has had a successful career in software publishing, technology-based education, and – currently – acting, producing, and voice-over work.

A 2022 recipient of Providence College’s Martin Luther King Vision Award, Joe describes life as a Black Providence College student in the early 1970s, and the PC people and experiences that helped define his future.

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Creators & Guests

Host

Joseph Carr

Sr. Associate Vice President for Marketing & Communications

Producer

Chris Judge

Multimedia and Live Event Producer

What is Providence College Podcast?

The Providence College Podcast features interviews with interesting members of the Friar Family. These in-depth conversations with PC students, Dominicans, faculty, staff, and alumni provide a rich look into the lives of noteworthy Friars. Occasionally we will also bring you on-campus lectures and presentations. Go Friars!

00;00;01;24 - 00;00;28;14
Joe Carr
Welcome to the Providence College podcast. My name is Joe Carr. Today's guest is Joe Small, a distinguished alumnus from the class of 1974 an English major and an MLK scholar. Joe was a student leader during the tumultuous early 1970s and he has had a very successful career in technology and publishing, working all over the world. Joe is also a leader and working to foster justice and representation for people of color in the workplace and beyond.

00;00;28;19 - 00;00;37;05
Joe Carr
And his encore career which we will talk about in a bit, traces back to his days as a radio deejay. Joe, thank you for joining us today.

00;00;37;08 - 00;00;45;02
Joe Small '74
Thank you very much, Joe. I'm so pleased to be here. I'm humbled for this opportunity just to share my, my, my little story.

00;00;45;20 - 00;00;58;13
Joe Carr
It's a great story. We're delighted to have the opportunity to share it with our alumni family. And we're the ones I always like to start by talking about the pathway to peace. How do you make your way to Providence growing up in the South Shore area?

00;00;58;14 - 00;01;23;02
Joe Small '74
Well, I grew up in Duxbury. I'm a member of the class of 1970 Duxbury High School and our high school guidance counselor, the late, great Walter Kennedy himself was a was a friar. He went to Providence College and he was there and and really helpful to me and presenting me with an alternative path to going to a really great school.

00;01;23;02 - 00;01;47;14
Joe Small '74
I originally wanted to go to market, but my dad felt that going to Wisconsin was just too far. Being the oldest of six. And so I had to settle for another school that was pretty stellar in basketball, which was, you know, I really liked watching the friars on television at that time. And good old doctor Walter Kennedy made it possible for me to visit the campus.

00;01;49;17 - 00;01;52;20
Joe Carr
Speaking of Marquette, their national championship was in that era, wasn't it?

00;01;52;28 - 00;02;00;14
Joe Small '74
Absolutely. Being the dream manager whom I got to meet many years later, and I shared with him that story that I wanted to follow him.

00;02;02;01 - 00;02;14;25
Joe Carr
Joe, if you would, paint a picture for us of Providence College in the early 1970s, the war in Vietnam was ongoing. Kent State happened when you were a senior in high school. It was a time of great social unrest. What was it like, epic?

00;02;15;02 - 00;02;52;15
Joe Small '74
Well, it was a very strange place for me and not in the context of it being negative, but rather to find myself attending of all places. An institution that was a male institution and a Catholic institution. I grew up Protestant and finding myself on campus and actually being the member of the last all male freshman class. There were times when some of us freshmen we would get on the city bus in Providence just to ride through the city, just to see some girls that were not dressed up as nuns.

00;02;52;16 - 00;03;15;22
Joe Small '74
If you if you will, certainly there were campus protests going across town over Brown University. There were a number of protests going on there. And and so we felt that the way that we could connect not to some of the social justice movements that were taking place in Providence was to go across town. And at least, you know, from a solidarity standpoint, participate.

00;03;15;22 - 00;03;25;04
Joe Small '74
We knew we could not engage in protests per se on campus, but at least we knew we had an outlet to express solidarity.

00;03;25;22 - 00;03;38;24
Joe Carr
Tell us a little more about what it was like to be a young man at that time. I would suspect that you knew people who went to war, went to Vietnam, and there was this great division in the country that persisted through this time period.

00;03;39;19 - 00;04;04;19
Joe Small '74
Indeed. In fact, some of my dearest friends ended up being drafted and going to Vietnam thank God they came back safely. And yet one of my closest friends unfortunately ended up with a low draft number and did not have college as an option right then and there. And so he unfortunately had to make that tough choice and leave the country rather than go to Vietnam.

00;04;04;19 - 00;04;23;04
Joe Small '74
And we saw a number of young men make that difficult decision. Thank God he's back. And, you know, they provided amnesty for those who who left without being drafted and be able to put that that whole era behind us, you know.

00;04;23;21 - 00;04;31;05
Joe Carr
To your description of what PC was like at that time, could you add some detail about the particular challenges faced by black students?

00;04;31;21 - 00;04;59;29
Joe Small '74
My class, class of 74, as we entered in 1970 as freshman, there were 16 of us. In fact, to my best recollection, we were members of the largest entry class of black male students in the school's history. I don't think that they had as many young men of color coming on campus at one time. And so immediately we formed a brotherhood, if you will.

00;05;00;24 - 00;05;41;17
Joe Small '74
Just about all of us were housed right there in Raymond Hall, which was the hall reserved for freshman, one of two floors we found ourselves on. And in a very playful way, we even referred to our section of the hallway as the ghetto, you know what I mean? And, and really embraced that brotherhood. I was probably one of just a small handful who were coming from suburban suburban communities where the other brothers were from places like Roxbury and Harlem and DC and Philadelphia and of course, they brought their their urban, hardscrabble social outlook and certainly teased us to no end.

00;05;42;01 - 00;06;15;27
Joe Small '74
But one of the things that really served as the glue from a social standpoint, we fell in love with a card game called Crazy Eights. And Man you want to talk about playing Crazy Eights, which is an extension of of spades, if you will. Or and and just talking smack talk, trash talk throughout the entire game. And to this day, there's a group of us who will still make every effort to come together and have a reunion and of course, the cards come out with something crazy.

00;06;16;24 - 00;06;27;21
Joe Carr
Sounds like a lot of fun. Tell us a little bit more about the the enduring nature of those relationships with among the guys in that in that cohort. They're describing their.

00;06;28;22 - 00;07;09;00
Joe Small '74
Well, again, we're freshmen on campus at that time. And we had a number of upperclassmen, a good number of them were actually ballplayers on the on the varsity squad that time when we came in. And my fellow classmates like Marvin Barnes, they were freshmen and they had not allowed freshmen to play varsity at that time. So we had upperclassmen of brothers like Gary Wilkins and Donny and I just went blank on his name, Donny Lewis and Al Cooke and George Solomon Ray.

00;07;10;11 - 00;07;44;20
Joe Small '74
These were the big brothers on campus. They played basketball. They were role models for us. They were big brothers, and they really kept us in line, kept us out of trouble, you know, really showed us the way in terms of how you manage yourself, how you survive and thrive on a campus that's predominantly white, all male and very relatively conservative.

00;07;44;20 - 00;07;49;03
Joe Small '74
By my standards. From where many of us are came from.

00;07;49;09 - 00;08;01;18
Joe Carr
And from your classmates. A number of success stories, including you, of course. But a lot of these guys did very well, great careers and really a credit to that group of young men.

00;08;02;15 - 00;08;37;05
Joe Small '74
No question about it. And we give a lot of credit to some of the experiences that we've had to go through. You know, it's sort of like baptism by fire, where iron is forged in fire. We certainly encountered our fair share of of some barriers and various obstacles that would threaten to break your spirit, if you will. But to the credit of some of the administrators on campus and certainly our upperclassmen, they held us together, held us up.

00;08;38;16 - 00;09;15;09
Joe Small '74
There's one incident, of course, that will always remain in our hearts and minds until our last breath, which was the winter of 1970 when we had a very difficult and challenging issue that involved one of our classmen basketball players who was dismissed from the team. His scholarship was taken because of his attitude which was precipitated by lack of playing time, but how the administration responded was just not acceptable.

00;09;15;11 - 00;09;49;00
Joe Small '74
To those of us as, as students to take away a player's scholarship and to find out later that that particular player didn't have full benefit of the academic rigor that many of the other students of color in all students on campus had opportunity to experience. As you can imagine, if you're playing on a team which requires X number of hours of practice time, how much time is left to get your academics?

00;09;49;26 - 00;10;16;20
Joe Small '74
And unfortunately, in some cases, some of our athletes are receiving, shall we call it, social promotions, which maintains their eligibility, but they're denied real opportunity in which to grow academically and to acquire the necessary life skills to be successful after playing basketball. And here was one example of that having happened and so we decided to dig in our heels.

00;10;17;22 - 00;11;07;25
Joe Small '74
We went on television on a Sunday morning program and shared our pain our angst with respect to what was occurring. And we felt we needed to let people know that this was not acceptable. We found that initially the administration's response was to attempt to disprove our position, but that really wasn't going to hold water and so over a period of several weeks up to and including the basketball team threatening to boycott the holiday tournament in Madison Square Garden, and the administration brought in several celebrated basketball alumni who many of whom had played in at the professional level.

00;11;08;23 - 00;11;42;20
Joe Small '74
And the one that I remember most fondly was none other than the late great John Thompson, who came into our dormitory room where we were all meeting together as a group of black students. And basically, as I remember him sharing and saying, I heard the administration side, now let me hear your side. And that was profound. It was for me personally, a tremendous learning experience about how you negotiate and navigate certain power structures and do it in a very professional way.

00;11;43;13 - 00;12;20;14
Joe Small '74
He encouraged us to put our concerns, our demands on paper, which we did. I believe we had a total of 13 demands many of which included asking the administration, demanding the administration set in place support systems for students of color so that they had not only academic support, but they also had the emotional and just the life skills support, particularly, again, coming from our inner city onto a college campus.

00;12;20;14 - 00;13;07;06
Joe Small '74
Like Providence College, where you're feeling alienated and you need a safe space to be able to go sit down and trust that someone's going to give you good advice. And so 12 of those 13 demands were met, which created, if you will, not only the, the at that time, the black student association, which included an advisor, the late great father, Robert Morris, was, was our first advisor, then followed by Dr. Commerson Woolsey Commision and then the late great Robert Hampton, just great people who were right there who helped all of those students of color matriculate successfully through Providence College.

00;13;07;16 - 00;13;16;12
Joe Carr
Where does a group of young men 18 1920 years old find the courage to take those steps? How did what did you draw from for that?

00;13;16;28 - 00;13;51;24
Joe Small '74
I personally grew up in a household where my parents were very strong role models. My dad, self-made entrepreneur, after getting his mechanical engineering degree from Wentworth Institute, went to work for Raytheon, and then with the encouragement of his boss at Raytheon, Dad started his high precision tool and die company in the basement of our home in Duxbury. Six months later, opening up his first full time machine shop, Precision Machine Shop in Rockland, Massachusetts, by the name of Small and engineering.

00;13;52;16 - 00;14;16;11
Joe Small '74
Fast forward through those early years at Providence College. I would come home on weekends and certainly some of my summers, and I'd work in the family business and my dad would send me out on sales calls, if you will. So the likes of Western Electric, IBM, G.E., even as far as Washington, DC, to talk to buyers, mechanical buyers associated with NASA.

00;14;16;29 - 00;14;41;20
Joe Small '74
So I, I learned from my dad. He modeled for, for me and for my siblings, my brothers and sisters. You know what it means to be professional, what it means to be dedicated. And what it means to be able to sacrifice. My mom equally was very active in various social service organizations, including the National Association of Negro Business Women back in that era.

00;14;42;18 - 00;15;19;26
Joe Small '74
She, too, went on to become and managed a a car dealership as a general manager. So having a professional working mother, having an entrepreneurial father, growing up in a household with both parents who could really model for me and my in my siblings helped me personally. But what I also found and going to Providence College is that my classmates came with their own set of skills and backgrounds where we're able to complement each other.

00;15;19;26 - 00;15;47;17
Joe Small '74
And again, remember I talked about that brotherhood. So here we are, freshmen, we're hanging tough we're socializing, we're encouraging each other to to do your necessary homework, keep your grades up so you don't flunk out. No one wanted to flunk out of Providence College, I can tell you that. And so those support structures were in place to basically carry all of us through to the finish line.

00;15;47;17 - 00;15;59;02
Joe Small '74
And graduate of the 16 that arrived on campus as freshmen, eight of us graduated on time, and there was probably another four that came in one or two years behind us.

00;15;59;11 - 00;16;20;00
Joe Carr
By the way, just to backtrack a little bit, considering your experience with Johns Hopkins, by the way, an alumnus from the class of 1960, what was it like to watch his career develop and assume to become such a successful coach, but also a leader and a mentor for the young men who played for him at Georgetown and an inspirational inspiration for so many other people?

00;16;20;13 - 00;17;05;17
Joe Small '74
You're absolutely right. In fact, my youngest sister and my and her husband, my brother and I, they're both Georgetown, Georgetown Hoya alums. They met at Georgetown. My sister is a doctor. My my brother in law is an insurance executive. And when we would talk about John Thompson and you can imagine, if you will, while they're matriculate at Georgetown and of course, we're watching him as a coach on television, the one thing that we all agreed on was the fact that John Thompson carried himself in a dignified, graceful way in the face of adversity, if you will.

00;17;05;17 - 00;17;33;08
Joe Small '74
If you remember back in the days when Georgetown would come in to play other institutions and at that time, I believe he might have been the only black coach of a Division One school, and he'd get all kinds of boos and all types of micro-aggression, and he would tell his ball players, all right, you can carry a chip on your shoulder, but don't let them knock that chip off, maintain your dignity.

00;17;33;16 - 00;17;53;28
Joe Small '74
Bring your A game and always, always don't speak ill of your opponent. And I'll tell you, I want to believe though, that those lessons that John Thompson exhibited probably mostly hopefully were honed during his years at Providence College.

00;17;54;18 - 00;18;00;11
Joe Carr
And among the people he influenced, Ed Cooley, the Big East coach of the year right here at the Friar's.

00;18;00;15 - 00;18;01;05
Joe Small '74
There you go.

00;18;01;05 - 00;18;23;20
Joe Carr
That brings it full circle. To some extent, doesn't it? Yes. You mentioned other Morris people who were students during the time frame when you were a student here, almost every single one of them has something to say about Father Morris. After that, I never met him. But tell us a little bit more about what he was like and what his impact was on the college and its students.

00;18;27;04 - 00;19;14;02
Joe Small '74
He was like a surrogate father for many, many of our students of color at Providence College, including the the females, the coeds when they arrived a year later, some of our students may not have had fathers in their lives on a consistent basis. And so imagine, if you will, being able to feel comfortable enough to sit down with Father Morris and share with him whatever is going on in your personal life, and to have him take that nurturing, loving unconditional, non-judgmental, but yet firm role in that is just invaluable.

00;19;14;02 - 00;19;48;24
Joe Small '74
The stories I my experiences with him, I will only share that I got in trouble by violating curfew a major. Now we're freshmen and you're not supposed to have girls on campus after certain hours. Well, you know, the visiting girl from Calvary Regina unfortunately missed the bus back to campus and long story short is I had this come before Father Morrison and may come up on my cover.

00;19;48;25 - 00;20;19;04
Joe Small '74
I promise I'll never do it again. And I just have to tell you that he really instilled in me a sense of responsibility, taking responsibility for your actions. Setting an example that I've tried to remember throughout the rest of my life. And there are times when, you know, you're kind of wander off that path, and immediately you hear in the back of your mind that that conversation with Father Morris.

00;20;20;06 - 00;20;45;23
Joe Carr
Special Dominicans certainly a seminal figure in the second half of the college's first century, certainly because everybody has stories like that about Father Maurice. Let's talk a little bit more about your parents, because when we chatted the other day, you shared a great story about the beginning of your father's business and your mother's statement to him about Oh, well, it's time to turn this into something which you go through that or place.

00;20;46;08 - 00;21;19;14
Joe Small '74
So again, my dad working for Raytheon as a high precision tool and die maker, and he was, of course, the at that time the only black tool and die maker in this department at Raytheon, an unfortunately, his white coworkers really were not supportive of integration at that point. And so what was happening was they were sabotaging his, and she and when my dad realized this was happening, dad would show up an hour or so before his shift to recalibrate his machine.

00;21;19;28 - 00;21;41;26
Joe Small '74
To make sure he wasn't churning out, you know, junk material. His boss's foreman saw Dad's dedication, asked him what he wanted to do, and dad said he wants to start his own business. So he said, look, I'll help you do that. I'll give you some piecemeal work that you can take home. And then just set up a small lathe and drill press in the basement of the home, which he did.

00;21;42;22 - 00;22;13;19
Joe Small '74
And then six months later, Dad's working the late shift. And at Raytheon, and it's around 9:00 at night and the bulkhead door is opening and our dog is barking like crazy. And mom says to me, Go down and see what's going on. So I grabbed my baseball bat and the dog go downstairs and just as I get down to the basement before I can cut the lights on the bulkhead, door opens.

00;22;13;27 - 00;22;40;29
Joe Small '74
There's a silhouette of this giant giant of a man and a Scottish brogue ish accent. He says, Easy, lad. He says, My name is Andy McDonald, and I am your father's second shift. And I was like, Holy cow. And I go back upstairs and of course Andy cuts on the light and he's like, six foot five he's got red hair, he's got red beard.

00;22;41;09 - 00;23;05;00
Joe Small '74
And I just fell in love with this guy who ended up working for my dad for over 15 years. I went upstairs and I said to Mom, You're not going to believe this. As a dad hired an employee and his name is Andy. And of course, when Dad came home, I don't know, maybe 20 minutes later Mom says to him, If you need to hire someone, it's time to move that business out of the basement.

00;23;05;00 - 00;23;06;09
Joe Small '74
And certainly he did.

00;23;06;28 - 00;23;23;26
Joe Carr
The rest is history. That's a great, great, great story. By the way, speaking of history, back to your student days. It turns out you changed the course of the art scene in Rhode Island by introducing your friend and roommate, John Chan to Jazz Delight. Tell us about that.

00;23;24;06 - 00;24;09;14
Joe Small '74
If I may. Bear with me I got to represent this is one of John's t shirts champs, the Negro, John and I roommates. We met in the cafeteria line of Raymond Hall back in 1970 what can I say when we came together as roommates and hauling in our albums in these big orange crates he's got of course all of the Rock Beatles and Rolling Stones and The Who and you name it, I'm coming in with, with my my jazz albums and also my cousin Carole King, who was a year ahead of us.

00;24;09;14 - 00;25;07;24
Joe Small '74
So Naru is class of 73 also a member of that Final Four team. So we all came together and the common bond was music and thank goodness at that point in time we're now residing in Saint Joe's and in the basement of Saint Joe's, Joseph's Hall was the radio station W Dom, and so it was a no brainer when the opportunity came to sign up to become deejays, take the test, pass the FCC licensing, and off we went with our own radio programs and so through that, that combination of experiences of sharing our love for the variety of music, R&B, jazz and inclusive rock, it stuck with John to the point where when upon graduation,

00;25;07;24 - 00;25;26;26
Joe Small '74
John returned to the family restaurant and when soccer fans and he persuaded his dad to let him bring in some live music, and who knew that, of all things it would be and become the institution that it is today.

00;25;27;08 - 00;25;48;13
Joe Carr
And John Chan, by the way, recognized by Providence College with an honorary degree just a couple of years ago, so, so great, great, great alum who has done so much for the arts, performing and visual throughout the state of Rhode out really southern New England for sure. And Dom, you and I are just two of many people for whom you changed our Providence College experience.

00;25;48;13 - 00;25;53;07
Joe Carr
And in some sense, the courses of our lives really a great, great thing to have access to.

00;25;53;16 - 00;26;16;16
Joe Small '74
It certainly helped me, especially after college and getting my my job first job in computer programing, becoming a programmer, programmer, analyst, and eventually working my way through the ranks and education, publishing and being able to lend my voice to the first generation of eBooks, if you will.

00;26;16;24 - 00;26;35;00
Joe Carr
Let's talk about your encore career. First of all, go back to your primary career since we're on this track of audio. And so those talents nurtured in PC have brought you to this work as a producer, an actor, a voiceover performer. Tell us a bit more about this work and what kind of fulfillment you're finding in this.

00;26;35;10 - 00;26;57;25
Joe Small '74
I've always loved the performing arts. My mom made sure that all of us kids got some exposure to the arts up to and including on those Saturdays. We'd get on the busses that would take us in the Boston Symphony Hall for the the kids Boston Pops Saturday programs, loved participating in school plays. And of course, when you go off to college, your father says, get a real job.

00;26;58;13 - 00;27;33;09
Joe Small '74
And so you got to get a real job. But deep down inside, when that opportunity came to retire from education publishing after 40 years, I knew I didn't want to just sit on the sofa and do nothing and watch the news. I knew I wanted to stay active and to my good luck and fortune, I found a local community access television station in Hingham, Massachusetts, that was welcoming me as a volunteer and I lent my voice to do some volunteer public service announcements.

00;27;33;09 - 00;27;55;00
Joe Small '74
And before you know it, it started to take on a life of its own. And I got some really cool opportunities to do some modeling, to do some live theater, to audition and snag a few commercials. People remember me on a Blue Cross Blue Shield commercial that ran for a few years. I ended up getting my Screen Actors Guild card, SAG card.

00;27;55;14 - 00;28;11;23
Joe Small '74
I've been able to produce a few programs and worked on my first documentary, a short form documentary called Taking a Toke, which is all about the dangers of adolescent vaping or e-cigarettes and how much damage that has done to our youth.

00;28;12;02 - 00;28;34;25
Joe Carr
Now that you mention it, of course, I remember you from the Blue Cross Blue Shield commercial, so that was a great spot and and I'm sure that's that's fulfilling and interesting work. But your first career, as you mentioned, mentioned in educational publishing, is it safe to say that that really started with the course in PCs Nascent Computer Sciences program?

00;28;35;16 - 00;28;59;19
Joe Small '74
It certainly did. I want to give a lot of credit to to PC in that regard, because it certainly helped me snag my first job in in the industry. I took some programing classes at Providence College as an elective. Being an English major, I wasn't quite sure exactly what I was going to do with it, but I just knew intuitively and remember now I'm I'm working for my dad during the summers.

00;28;59;26 - 00;29;27;27
Joe Small '74
I'm making sales calls on IBM. So I knew of the computer industry, but I knew that I wasn't quite sure of what that truly represented as opportunity for him. But what it was able to do was those good programing classes got me my entree entry level position with a company called Control Data Corporation, and Control Data was a pioneer in distance learning computer based instruction.

00;29;28;14 - 00;29;59;16
Joe Small '74
They had a system called Plato, Plato and I happened to be one of the new employees assigned to help develop and promote this instructional technology, starting with the Department of Defense. And interestingly enough, remember Nixon ended the draft in 1973 so the only people going into the army after 1973 post Vietnam were high school dropouts and those who got in trouble with the law.

00;30;00;12 - 00;30;44;29
Joe Small '74
Unfortunately a good percentage of them were functionally illiterate at that time. And it was around 1977 when a netto exercise had the US army forces participating and they came in dead last compared to their naito counterparts. And upon further analysis it was concluded that as the Department of Defense began to deploy more mechanized computerized systems the service members were struggling readers and had very, you know, soft skills in the computational area.

00;30;44;29 - 00;31;07;03
Joe Small '74
And therein lies why they were performing so badly on the, on the exercises in the battlefield. So the army said, well, OK, we've got to do something real fast, that we hire a bunch of community college professors to come on and teach them, help them get their GED. And we saw an opportunity to persuade the Army to give us a shot using the Plato system.

00;31;07;23 - 00;31;31;02
Joe Small '74
And we were able to prove that we could get these service members to the GED passing the GED, and half the amount of time that it would have taken them going the traditional route of sitting in a classroom with a community college professor. From that point, this technology accelerated as the Department of Defense increased its investment in this technology.

00;31;31;23 - 00;31;59;22
Joe Small '74
As they say, the rest is history. And today, as we see there are now second, third and fourth generation distance learning systems, some of which unfortunately has been used to a point where, you know, remote learning has had to take a black eye during this pandemic. And because at the time the technology was never developed to replace teachers, it was to supplement what was going on.

00;32;01;05 - 00;32;42;07
Joe Small '74
But here we are. And and and I have no regrets I enjoyed that work. It took me to some great places fast forward, I got to work for Pearson Education, a global leader in multi level, multi disciplined and different media, if you will, print digital testing systems, professional development. I had a chance to work on Pearson's early diversity, equity and inclusion, helping to promote equal opportunity and access across all of the different Pearson divisions.

00;32;42;18 - 00;32;57;16
Joe Carr
And one can see how it's easy to draw a straight line from that work back to an English degree from a liberal arts college. Right. This all fits together, answers, and it answers that question What can I do with an English degree? There's not an easy answer, but there are a million examples.

00;32;57;16 - 00;32;59;02
Joe Small '74
3 million examples.

00;32;59;02 - 00;33;13;13
Joe Carr
Absolutely. This is a good one. And also something in your biography I'd like you to tell us a little more about, and that is your work with the children of migrant workers in Florida. In the Carolinas and other places in the continental U.S. What was that all about?

00;33;14;09 - 00;33;47;10
Joe Small '74
Again, this was with one of the Pearson divisions called Computer Curriculum Corporation Triple-c, which had an instructional system that was quite adept in what we call Title One, Chapter one programs. These are students who qualify and have free and reduced lunch hour. These are students who are coming from under-resourced communities up to and including some students who were part of the federally funded migrant education program on the East Coast.

00;33;47;20 - 00;34;29;07
Joe Small '74
There's a thing called the Eastern Stream, which where you have migrant workers that are planting and harvesting starting down in South Dade County. And with the melons, if you will, going all the way up to Connecticut and even up to Vermont, inclusive of Apple picking and the like. And so these families, these migrant families who are predominantly from Central and South America, as well as parts of the Caribbean, including Haiti and the Dominican Republic, these families would move every four to six weeks along this eastern stream going up and down.

00;34;30;12 - 00;34;57;07
Joe Small '74
Unfortunately, if you can appreciate it, the children are sitting in a classroom for four weeks, six weeks, but the instruction gets them to a certain point. Then the family picks up, moves to the next school district, which may be on a completely different learning path, if you will, a different set of skills that are being addressed. And so you've got a lumpiness in how these students needs are being addressed.

00;34;57;20 - 00;35;46;29
Joe Small '74
So once we determined that these families would go up, but then they would return to the same school maybe six months later, and now how do you catch them up? And so when we realized this was happening, working very closely with the migrant education coordinators within the school districts that we were able to string along in this eastern stream, we convinced the administrators to let us put instructional technologies not only in the migrant camps so that they would have supplemental remedial access after school and and on weekends, but when the families picked up and moved back, then five and a quarter inch floppy disks put the students records on the desk and then when you

00;35;46;29 - 00;35;55;11
Joe Small '74
get to the next school, just hand the disk to the to the administrators and they knew what to do with it and would pick the children right up where they left off class.

00;35;55;14 - 00;36;19;16
Joe Carr
We imagine the impact of that work across all those families and all those individual people. That's that's that's incredible and incredibly noble. Undertaking through your career, Joe. In fact, all the way back to your time at PC, you've had a vision for working to advance business opportunities for people of color, your family's business even won a Small Business Association award in the early 1970s.

00;36;19;27 - 00;36;25;16
Joe Carr
How does that work continue today? And I'm thinking specifically of your work at Rotary International you're right.

00;36;25;16 - 00;37;01;20
Joe Small '74
My dad was recognized by the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1973 as a minority pay center and President Richard Nixon acknowledged him with a beautifully written letter and dad went to Washington D.C. along with mom to receive that recognition. My dad went on to then found with the help of other entrepreneurs an organization called the Black Corporate Presidents of New England, which was all about helping to empower our economic opportunities for those who are coming from, again, under-resourced backgrounds.

00;37;03;00 - 00;37;30;08
Joe Small '74
My dad was also a Rotarian, so I'm a second generation member of Rotary International, which is a global organization that is nonprofit based and focused on service above self within their respective communities. One of the things that Rotary International is noted for is is working closely to eradicate polio worldwide and before the pandemic, they were very close to achieving that goal with the help of funding from the Gates Foundation.

00;37;31;11 - 00;38;19;08
Joe Small '74
I have been a Rotarian now working on my seventh year. I am a member of a Rotary here on Southeast Massachusetts, and I also am the chair of District 795. So I Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, which helps to support the efforts of the casting a wider net, if you will, for our 65 clubs here in southeastern Massachusetts in portions of our island in Connecticut to bring in new members who hopefully are a reflection of their communities today, younger members, members who have disabilities and members of color and members of the LGBTQ plus community.

00;38;19;19 - 00;38;39;17
Joe Small '74
So this is very challenging work. It is a marathon. It's not a sprint. There are some really great people that I get an opportunity to work with, including none other than Ralph Tarvaris Junior. That's a familiar name.

00;38;39;24 - 00;38;40;15
Joe Carr
Sure is.

00;38;40;22 - 00;38;45;25
Joe Small '74
Yes. Right. And others in Rhode Island who are engaged in this type of work.

00;38;46;13 - 00;39;12;06
Joe Carr
Ralph is a APC alum and a former leader on the Providence College staff in 2018, working with students in diversity, equity and inclusion programing. And now Roger Williams and just a terrific guy I think so he was the first or second guest when we started the podcast, so we knew where to go at the beginning with Ralph, who was just a great guy, a great story.

00;39;12;24 - 00;39;34;11
Joe Carr
Joe honored your work and your impact earlier this year with the college's annual Martin Luther King Vision Award. That's part of Pink's monthlong celebration of Dr. King's enduring impact. It was great to have you on campus for that and and to share that moment with with you. But what did it mean to you for the college to recognize your work and your impact?

00;39;34;21 - 00;40;07;27
Joe Small '74
It was humbling. I certainly didn't think that I had put forth enough effort to merit that kind of recognition. So it was incredibly humbling. And I felt very honored to be included among a number of others, including my dear friend and, well, former roommate Reggie Nunnally, who similarly was recognized for his contributions in the prior years. It was a feeling of having gone full circle, if you think about it.

00;40;08;13 - 00;40;40;08
Joe Small '74
52 years I'm coming in in 1972, here we are in 20, 22 and another two more years we will be, I think what they call Golden Friars, if the good Lord looked around long enough, I will share this with you, that as much as I appreciated the recognition, I am more appreciative of this opportunity to sit with you in this podcast and to share my experience, to share my story, to share my truth.

00;40;41;05 - 00;41;21;28
Joe Small '74
And I, one of the things that I had the opportunity to do was I spoke briefly with Father Picard and expressed to the college president my wish to see other alumni of color be a given an opportunity to share their story, to share their experience. For what it's worth, my hope is that a prospective students of color considering coming to Providence College might be curious and appreciative of an opportunity to sit and listen to someone who has come before them.

00;41;22;21 - 00;41;58;22
Joe Small '74
And especially if that alumnus that alumni experience resonates with that prospective student or an existing student who might be challenged and struggling on campus just as I was influenced by listening to John Thompson, perhaps there's a student on campus who would appreciate listening to whether it's me or listening to Reggie, not only or listening to Al Cooke or listening to Wiley Johnson or listening to Mal Davis.

00;41;58;29 - 00;42;20;16
Joe Small '74
I mean, I can go on and on and on. All these brothers and sisters, Wanda Ingram, Eva Irby, you know, Cathy Graves, these are sisters who also came through Providence College and have great stories and experiences that deserve to be recorded and preserved for future listening.

00;42;21;07 - 00;42;42;01
Joe Carr
It's a great idea. Father Cicada, as most people probably know, is the college's president. But to his credit, he got that word to us on the staff and we started talking about it. We have colleagues in the Phillips Memorial Library who have expertize in that kind of work. That oral history and preservation of stories. So where we are going to get to work, continue working on that.

00;42;42;01 - 00;42;53;21
Joe Carr
Ed, take you up on this plan. It was it's a great thought and it will have real impact, I think. So thank you for thinking of that and and for inspiring us, too, to get moving on it and for sharing your story with us today.

00;42;54;04 - 00;42;57;15
Joe Small '74
Thank you for the correction. I mispronounce his name. Father's the card. Oh.

00;42;58;01 - 00;43;19;25
Joe Carr
I'm sure he doesn't mind. So which is great. We should let people in on our audience on our time here today. Joe we started this. So it's Thursday, March 10th. We started talking a few minutes after 11 a.m. We have a hard deadline. The Friars and Butler are just about to square off in the Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden.

00;43;19;25 - 00;43;27;14
Joe Carr
So we got to stop, right with a game to watch it. It'll be very exciting. What a season. This has been just wonderful.

00;43;27;14 - 00;43;37;24
Joe Small '74
Unimaginable we all. Hats off to Coach Cooley and really congratulate. Congratulations to Coach Cooley for getting a Big East coach of the year. That's fantastic.

00;43;37;24 - 00;43;58;14
Joe Carr
And hopefully some more awards coming his way in quite a few more games because we don't want this ride to end now. But when the season's been made, the winner go by pretty fast indeed. Well, Joe, thank you for your time today for sharing your remarkable story. Enjoy the onset of spring and a Big East tournament and we'll look forward to seeing you soon and hopefully you do stay in touch.

00;43;58;17 - 00;43;59;17
Joe Small '74
Thank you very much, Joe.

00;43;59;20 - 00;44;07;00
Joe Carr
Our guest today, Joe Small. Thank you for listening to the Providence College podcast for producer Chris Judge. I'm Joe Carr. Until next time.