MTP 18: Joe Brazel, Christian Professor of Accounting on dealing with adversity & serving students.

Joe Brazel is a Jenkins Distinguished Professor of Accounting at North Carolina State University.  
He shares about a major adversity that drew him closer to God.
He advises students to choose a major based on what they enjoy reading.
Joe incorporates his faith into his teaching by sharing church artwork.
He encourages students to read the New Testament to grow.
Joe talks about managing the right amount of anxiety.
He has a passion for teaching and serving his students.

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Transcript

Welcome to Meet the Prof. My name is Shane Hartley and my friend Spence Hackney and I have the privilege of interviewing Christian professors around the country with the purpose of encouraging Christ -centered conversations on the college campus.

We are so grateful that you are even listening and if you happen to be watching this on YouTube you may notice a different background at my mom's house in Nashville, Tennessee for her birthday.

I thought I'd introduce the video here.

 of accounting at North Carolina State University and he has an amazing story

severe health problem that actually drew him closer to God instead of further away from

 would take time to subscribe or follow wherever you're listening or watching this podcast, that will help us get it out to more people.

without any further ado, here's our interview with Joe Brazel.

Shane Hartley (01:00)

Well, Joe, it is such a privilege to get to interview you now. And thanks. I've been excited to get this time with you. And I noticed on Meet the Prof that you like playing tennis, which is my favorite sport. So how much do you play tennis? How serious of a tennis player are you?

Joe Brazel (01:20)

I used to be really serious. I didn't start till I was 40. So it took me a while to burn out, but I've had three shoulder surgeries, one probably from playing football in college, two from tennis. And now I used to play a lot of USTA, now I just play with my daughter around once a week. And she's a really good tennis player. She plays on our high school team. So we hit the ball around, I can't beat her anymore. And we started off when...

Shane Hartley (01:24)

in the end.

Joe Brazel (01:47)

when she was younger, we had a hundred dollar bet that she couldn't get a game off me. She got a game off me sometime during COVID and then we don't make bets anymore because she beats me like six - two, six - two. She really, really beat me bad. Uh,

Spence Hackney (01:55)

Hahaha

Shane Hartley (01:57)

Good time to put that to an end.

Joe Brazel (02:03)

the other thing I do, I do a lot of fly fishing. So that's a little bit of a quieter thing. So I fly fish all around the world and kind of do that.

Shane Hartley (02:11)

Where do you love to go? Have you been to Colorado?

Joe Brazel (02:13)

My favorite is Montana. I go to Montana for two to three weeks in July with a friend of mine.

Spence Hackney (02:15)

Okay.

Shane Hartley (02:22)

And tell us something about you as a college student. So when you were a student, you're playing football, you were already into accounting, is that true? Could you tell then that you loved it?

Joe Brazel (02:28)

Yeah.

No, I knew I wanted to be a business school major. So I went, I was lucky. I went to a liberal arts school that also had a business

I found out that accounting was

easy for me. It came to me very easily. I did very well on it. And then I heard about all these wonderful

Spence Hackney (02:50)

what advice have you given kids like your daughter, Abby, for instance, on finding that strength when they're, you know, that kind of formative point in college of the sophomore year where you kind of got to pick some things.

Joe Brazel (03:04)

I always say the best measure of what industry slash major you want to do is what do you like to read about? Because business press, some of it's, you know, like if I read a business article about the insurance industry, I'm not very interested in that. But you give me retail, real estate, manufacturing, those fields always interested

Spence Hackney (03:22)

Mm-hmm.

Joe Brazel (03:28)

me. So I always say the way you figure out what's for you,

is what do you like to read about? Because if you'd like to read about it, you're going to study more, and you're going to research more, and it won't be as won't be painful, and you'll learn more. So that makes the learning fun.

Shane Hartley (03:42)

Well, Joe, so students are often curious what it's like to be a professor. So what is something you would tell your students that they probably don't know about the life of a professor?

Joe Brazel (03:57)

Yeah, so it depends on the professor as far as how much research they bring in the classroom. You know, if you're constantly being exposed to like chemistry professors who are talking about their latest research, you probably have a darn good idea that faculty at a lot of the bigger research intensive schools like at NC State spend almost as much of a percentage of their time on research as teaching. I bring a lot of research into the classroom.

A lot of my research, a lot of research that I read, because I know it's not going to be in the textbook for a while, but students are kind of shocked sometimes at a business school that we spend so much time doing research.

Shane Hartley (04:37)

Hmm.

Now you were a contributor to a recent Forbes article.

The article I read had to do with employers en masse letting their employees work at home through COVID seeing some great benefits of that and employees loving that and then now years later we're starting to see like a whiplash back effect where employers are saying hey we need some more accountability come back into the office.

So, how did you contribute to that in your own field?

Joe Brazel (05:13)

Well, what I thought was interesting about that paper, it was actually presented at a conference at NC State.

And what was most interesting about the paper is the companies that are recruiting employees aren't saying remote is impossible, but they're not committing to it in words in any shape or form. Cause what they're finding, like you said, is that backlash of, hey, you told me, and then it's a big problem. So.

Shane Hartley (05:32)

Mm.

Mm.

Joe Brazel (05:38)

They're open to the possibility a day a week, two days a week, but they're certainly not gonna make any kind of contract with it where they have to follow through and are held to that standard. And that's what they found, I think, in a lot of the prior ones was, yeah, we talked about remote being a possibility in our job ad, and then two and a half years later, we want people back in the office and people are saying, wait a minute, wait a minute, I didn't sign up for this. So it's the reluctance to commit to it that companies have right now.

Shane Hartley (05:47)

Interesting.

Mm.

Joe Brazel (06:06)

I was watching a show and it said, if it can be outsourced to Boulder, it can be outsourced to Bangladesh. So be careful if you are not needed to be in the office that, you know, they can find smart people elsewhere. So be careful about that.

Spence Hackney (06:13)

Yeah.

Shane Hartley (06:16)

Hmm.

Spence Hackney (06:16)

Yeah.

Shane Hartley (06:20)

are often very curious about the personal lives of professors. On our podcast, we're talking to Christian professors and letting students know about your own spiritual journey. So can you tell us how did you become a Christian and where were you like to especially during your college years spiritually?

Joe Brazel (06:44)

So yeah, so it's a long journey. So I grew up in a Christian household, although a split Christian household. My dad was Catholic and my mom was Presbyterian.

she was persuasive enough.

We were raised Presbyterian. So all the way through, you know, my earliest years through high school. And then, you know, I would say during my college years, I probably went away a little bit. I wasn't a regular

I didn't change my beliefs, but I changed how much I devoted to it.

And I will say, you know, I go to...

one of the churches that my daughter goes to, there's a lot of NC, and it's just amazing seeing kids that are 19, 20, 23, 24 years old with so much faith. And they just look a lot happier than maybe I was during those

Spence Hackney (07:32)

Thank you.

Joe Brazel (07:37)

So essentially through college, it was a very secular experience. I went to a Lutheran school, but it was very

We had illnesses in my family, I had a severe

neurological problem that's cleared up quite a bit. But that was a six month adventure where I was barely able to leave the bed. And instead of turning the wrong way or turning against God, I came back. I could have been angry. I normally would think I would be the person, I've had a little bit of a short fuse. But I found it myself amazing that I was instead of saying, Oh, how can you do this? I was like, Can you help me?

Shane Hartley (07:50)

Mmm. Good.

Mm.

Spence Hackney (07:56)

Mm-mm.

Mm.

Shane Hartley (08:14)

Hmm

Joe Brazel (08:15)

And that was a big, that was the biggest change in my life, was going through that problem. I always tell God when I'm praying, I'm like, one of these days I'm going to say thank you for giving me that neurological disorder for six months that I thought I was, I thought I was dying. I thought I had ALS that I was getting tested everywhere. And basically my whole body was just shaking and shuddering and, and I couldn't sleep. I slept for about an hour a day for several months. Yeah, it was rough.

Shane Hartley (08:25)

Mm.

Mm.

Joe Brazel (08:43)

So yeah, and then now, you know, up to the point now where I openly talk about it, I'll ask people, I'm more open about my faith. I tell people in emails, I'm praying for you and I really am. And so now I'm at a nice state where I've never been happier and I have peace, I have less anxiety than I ever had. I'm a better father, I'm a better husband, I'm a better teacher.

Spence Hackney (09:04)

Mm-hmm.

Shane Hartley (09:06)

Hmm.

Joe Brazel (09:11)

I see myself as being a servant to my students versus them being in the way of things I wanna do. So

Shane Hartley (09:16)

Hmm.

Joe Brazel (09:18)

it has really, really helped my life in every way

Spence Hackney (09:18)

Hmm.

You mentioned you're a servant to your students. And that's, it seems like a pattern we've heard in these interviews, which I don't think as a student, we ever quite think our professors have our best interest at heart in some level. Tell me how your faith has kind of helped you serve your students better.

Joe Brazel (09:36)

Yeah.

God's students. So the same way I would treat my neighbor well, why wouldn't I treat all my students who are there to learn from

one way I try to instill the servant part is, I make it very clear every class that I'm always there for them. In every email, it's always,

If there's something else, let me know. It's never an end.

Just to tell you how I've changed, you know, I used to have office hours before I taught and I probably was a little preoccupied trying to get my class ready. And now I realized to be a better professor, I should have my office hours after class,

where there's no disruption, I'm relaxed, I'm there for them. And so therefore, you know, I'm just I'm a better teacher in my office.

So just changing my office hours came as a result of me understanding that I wanted to be a better servant to my students.

Spence Hackney (10:32)

That's awesome.

Shane Hartley (10:32)

I bet that's noticeable. I bet they experience that.

Joe Brazel (10:36)

Yeah, they always say, you know, you can tell who doesn't want students to come to their office hours. You can tell by the hour and the time of the day that they don't want them. Yeah, 630 a.m. to 730

Spence Hackney (10:42)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Shane Hartley (10:43)

Six in the morning. Come on by 6 a.m. I'm here. 6 a.m. I'm here.

Well, how much are you able to talk to your students about Jesus?

Joe Brazel (10:55)

Well, I've got a unique way. I don't necessarily speak about it explicitly, but the one way I let them know is I will tell stories from church certain days. And the other thing I do is I'm a big fan of art history and art. And I travel in Europe quite a bit and I take pictures all the time. And there is stuff that relate to my class that are from paintings from Raphael that are in the Vatican.

Shane Hartley (11:04)

Mm.

Spence Hackney (11:05)

Hmm.

Joe Brazel (11:19)

I'm in churches quite often and a lot of them are religious pictures, although I just use them to illustrate an accounting concept.

But I think that's the main way I do it is through those pictures and they get a sense that I attend Church a Mass on Sundays and then I'll see them at Mass, which is quite nice.

Shane Hartley (11:36)

how would you advise students who are struggling with believing the Bible?

Joe Brazel (11:44)

You know, my best advice will be, and it's where I started when I was getting back and growing is, you know, I, I really stuck with the, the gospels. There's not a lot out in there that even if you didn't believe in God or Jesus that wouldn't make you just a better person and a nicer person to be around. I always tell my daughters, you know, in the short term, you can be a pain and be a not a nice person. But now that I've been around the block.

you can't hang out anywhere for five, 10 years and be a bad person. It eventually, no matter what you gained from being kind of like a rat or just an unethical person or what have you, it does, you just, there's no long-term solution to that. So I would, yeah, so I would say, you know, really, really hone in on the New Testament and branch out from there, but spend some time there. Cause again, you know, worst case scenario, you'll grow as a better

Spence Hackney (12:14)

Heh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Shane Hartley (12:25)

It doesn't work.

Well, so Joe, you said on meettheprof.com that one of your favorite quotes was from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the one where something like, always do what you're afraid of, always try to do something you're afraid of. So I was wondering, when is a time you can reflect on where you felt like God created a situation for you to step out in faith, do something you're afraid of and what happened?

As a result, what did you get out of that?

Joe Brazel (13:12)

So that, that quote is actually that when you do a dissertation, which is basically, you know, book size article, research study, that was the quote I put at the beginning, because it really emanated from, I was really scared to do it. And it was sort of the first time I had done something that was a little bit more risky, you know, major in accounting, go working for one of the large firms for five years, I never left that firm.

Spence Hackney (13:20)

Mm-hmm.

Shane Hartley (13:20)

Hmm

Mm.

Spence Hackney (13:28)

Mm-hmm.

Joe Brazel (13:40)

So I had not stepped into my uncomfortable zone until I decided to get the PhD. And the reason I always bring that quote up is it was the smartest thing I ever did.

Spence Hackney (13:40)

Mm-hmm.

Shane Hartley (13:45)

Mm.

This question relates some. You said that you have a lot less anxiety now. A lot more peace now. So how would you advise your students when you know that they are struggling with anxiety,

if they come to you asking specifically for help?

Joe Brazel (14:13)

Yeah, I think the thing you never understand never. I'm constantly like I was just thinking the other day of I was playing tennis with my daughter and how hung up I was about some tournament two years ago. And now I'm playing with her and her last year prepping for her senior year. And you know, she's not going to be a pro tennis player. She's very good, but you know, life will move on and all that worrying was worthless. So the first thing I would tell students is regardless of what you think.

If you're having a problem in your dorm or you're having problems with a roommate or having problems with a class, life will move on and nobody has that written on their resume. So thinking, having more of a long-term fixture and recognizing whether you have the right amount of anxiety. So I probably had the right amount for a while and then I think it went a little too strong. And now I would argue that I've way less anxiety but...

Spence Hackney (15:00)

See you.

Joe Brazel (15:08)

I do miss a few things from time to time. I'm not as with it as I used to be. But the benefit of that with not being uptight and flying off the handle or having a short fuse, I'll

that. But yeah, so students, there are probably some students that need to have, I won't say a little bit more anxiety, but they have a little bit more attention to detail, which causes anxiety from time to time.

Shane Hartley (15:23)

Mmm.

Joe Brazel (15:36)

So figure out where you are on that spectrum and then say, okay, am I going too far? Am I letting my anxieties slow me down in my, you know, I'm afraid to put something on paper. I, you know, they say, what is it? A paralysis by over analysis. If you're in that world, you got to get away from it. And then again, and realize that these short-term life struggles, uh, they're not permanent and they're not, like I said, they're not going to be a line item on your resume.

Spence Hackney (15:37)

Hmm.

Yeah.

Shane Hartley (15:51)

Mm.

Spence Hackney (15:51)

RRRR

Shane Hartley (16:04)

Mmm. Yeah. Well, I am so grateful you're at NC State and this is awesome. Thanks for this time and maybe next time we can pick your brain more about what it's like playing football in college and the biggest lie you caught doing an audit the biggest company that You got an executive fired with But yeah, thanks for being there for the students thanks for you being such a servant example to them and thanks for this time

Joe Brazel (16:18)

Thank you.

Spence Hackney (16:23)

Hehehe

Yeah.

Joe Brazel (16:28)

Perfect.

Shane Hartley (16:34)

This is really enjoyable.

Spence Hackney (16:35)

Yeah.

Joe Brazel (16:35)

Yeah, I really enjoyed it guys. Great job. Thanks a lot.

Shane (16:39)

Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview and you can learn more as well as read about other Christian professors on our website, meettheprof.com. And you can search for professors by name or by state or even by college campus. And you can also find many helpful resources about questions that were in the interview and other ways of answering tough questions at Cru.org and that's Cru.org.

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