McKay School of Education > News > McKay School Alum Returns as New IP&T Faculty Member
McKay School Alumnus Returns as New IP&T Faculty Member
As he was growing up, Rick West attended merit badge powwows on the BYU campus. In 2002 he returned to Provo as a master’s student in the Department of Instructional Psychology and Technology (IP&T). Today he is the department’s newest faculty member. “I’m excited to be back,” West remarked.
As an educator, West seeks to empower his students to confidently use technology in the classroom, as well as to gain competence in research and professional endeavors. As a graduate student at BYU and as a doctoral student at the University of Georgia, he taught undergraduate and graduate classes. As a professor in the McKay School, he will teach both undergrads and graduates, and he has different learning objectives in mind for each group. “For undergraduates, I want them to not be scared of using technology in their teaching,” he explained. “A lot of students don’t know how much they know until you give them opportunities to gain skills and experience.” With his graduate students, West wants them to leave his classroom feeling competent in their ability to conduct research and use their skills in professional and academic settings. “I want them to leave feeling like they are qualified to do this work in their own lives,” he stated.
West knows from experience how a teacher can help a student gain confidence in their abilities. While a student at BYU, Dr. Charles Graham offered to include West on a research publication, which helped him feel more confident as a developing scholar. Then, in 2005, he published, "Understanding the experiences of instructors as they adopt a course management system" in Educational Technology Research and Development.“It gave me some confidence,” he expressed. “By some miracle it happened.” November, 2008, marked another confidence-building event for West—he received the Young Researcher Award from the Association for Educational Communications and Technology for his dissertation work on community innovation and creativity.
West described the roundabout path that led him to the field of IP&T. “I always enjoyed teaching,” he explained. “Basically since I came home from my mission I knew I wanted to be a teacher. Deciding what to teach was the big question.” West earned an associate’s degree in journalism from Ricks College in 1999, followed by a bachelor’s degree in English from Utah State in 2002. “I was all ready to go get a PhD in English,” he recalled.
At the time, however, West was involved in the pre-service seminary teaching program. When that didn’t work out, he acted on the advice of a seminary teacher he had met through the program, who encouraged him to look into instructional technology. “It made a lot of sense when I explored the idea,” he said. “I just hadn’t ever thought about it before—you don’t grow up saying, ‘I want to be a teacher of instructional technology.’” West went on to earn a master’s degree in IP&T from the McKay School of Education in 2005, followed by a PhD in educational psychology and instructional technology from the University of Georgia in 2009.
Originally from American Fork, West moved to Blackfoot, Idaho when he was 16 years old. Today he resides in Utah with his wife, Stephanie, and their three children. Although he joked that “professors don’t have free time,” West uses the time he gets in various ways: running marathons, singing, playing sports, and hanging out with his kids. “We like to get all dressed up and go to the theatre,” he said. Someday he hopes to “write something that’s not necessarily academic—children’s books or something like that.” In the future, he and his wife plan to serve missions, and their primary goal is to raise their children in the gospel. “I want my kids to grow up and still be strong in the Church,” he said.
30 June 2009