Hi!
I'm Jim Rowe - Education Author, Academic / College Speaker, and TV & Podcast Guest, all based on a 45yr Marketing career where Critical Thinking & Communication are our core competencies. I've spent decades training recent grads on these skills because they come out of school... and they don't have them?
RESULTS: See PROFESSOR INTERVIEWS video
Now, my core focus is to help college professors address "The Missing Link In Education" - poor workforce skills among recent grads. While 75%+ of hiring managers rate Critical Thinking & Communication as the TOP 2 SKILLS they look for when hiring, 50-75% of managers rate recent grads hired as below-proficient. WHOA - WHAT? Think about that. After all the time, emotion, and the 10's if not 100's of thousand $'s spent on a college degree - they get out and need to learn how to think and write? It's NOT RIGHT! And it's costing corporations $ billions and seriously impacting grads career opportunities and growth.
After decades in marketing, and an agency owner and also HR Director, I've interviewed 100's and hired / trained scores of recent grads on these skills. So I researched WHY this was happening and discovered for the most part.... we just don't teach them effectively...or at all.
Therefore, I wrote a simple 2-book series to help professors to address these issues. The title - GET YOUR DUCKS IN A ROWE (after my last name - I'm a brand guy after all) - inspired by WHO MOVED MY CHEESE, and yes, it's a FABLE about DUCKS IN BUSINESS! Why a fable? As Dr. Susan Keith of Angelo State, TX told me the 3 reasons why she selected them for her graduate class: 1) the fable made it an ENTERTAINING way to learn, 2) they now had something simple and TANGIBLE to use, and 3) she encouraged her students to keep them as REFERENCE guides for the rest of their lives. And her students loved them. Post research indicated "92% of the students Totally Agreed that the fable story made it an entertaining way to learn better and faster!"
Book-1 focuses on STRATEGIC WRITING, a core workforce skill most professors don't teach. I finished and realized there's so much more I could teach so I wrote Book-2 The A-D-A-P-T-E-R Method (Analyze-Deduce-Author-Perfom-Tackle-Evaluate-Refine) to teach the whole process from critical thinking to communication to execution .
They are now also being used as textbooks at Kutztown U, PA (for the 2nd year) for several classes where I have been making in-person presentations to the students. They're also using 'complementary projects' I also created so students can apply the skills to real world situations. What's really cool is the professors are seeing significant engagement and importantly growing skills, including documented positive results from an IRB study.
Finally, armed with these results, there are now several more professors at 5 different universities exploring using the books, the projects, and me speaking to students going into 2026.
Let's talk. Jim
