Moodle Miltary Man

Paul Tannahill's journey to Linn-Benton Community College was not your typical route, but that is what makes him such an interesting story. Tannahill is the LBCC Learning Systems Administrator, or as he likes to be called, "Media Technician Four."

Tannahill's path to the small community college in Albany, Oregon begins when he finished his high school education and chose to enter the military. He had some trouble at first deciding which branch of the military to go in to, but ended up choosing the Marines. As Paul puts it, "I always tend to do things the hard way."

At 19, Paul was a Military Police Officer in charge of many people who had been in the military longer than he had been alive.

Following his four years of service, Tannahill moved to Pennsylvania in 1989 where he took a job working as a fire arms training instructor. This was the time in his life when he began to develop a passion for training services.

After several years of work at the prison he moved to Oregon and began to work for a graphic design company in Corvallis. Paul had to have Tympanoplasty surgery in 1999 after blowing out his eardrum. The surgery required that a piece of his tongue be removed and used to fix his ear. After the surgery Paul realized that his speech was affected, making it very difficult to do his job.

Tannahill said of the injury the resulted in surgery, "It happened at a company, and that's a long story."

Paul got a new job as a land surveyor but quickly realized that he missed being in training services, but his speech wasn't good enough to return. He kept thinking to himself, "There has got to be a way I can get back into training that doesn't require so much speech."

For Paul ELearning was the answer to his problem. He had always like computers, so when a job, designing blackboard courses and training professors how to use them, opened up at Oregon State University he jumped at it.

After some time at OSU Tannahill took a job at Linn-Benton. At Linn-Benton Paul works entirely with Moodle, and was the man behind the creation of Webrunner. He says that soon he will be rolling out a new help desk that allows easier access for people to do things like reset their passwords.

Tannahill credits his success to a credo he learned in the Marines, "Improvise, adapt, and overcome." He has done so much for LBCC since he started here a little over three years and seems to love it.

"This is by far the best place I've ever worked and the second best job I've ever had." says Tannahill, "If I could afford to do this job for free I would because I love it that much."