Staff Spotlight: Dan Murphy  This month, we’re spotlighting our Director of Online Learning Technologies, Dan Murphy! In the blog post below, Dan tells us more about his work with Distance Learning. How long have you worked here? How did you come to join the DL team / get involved in distance education? I have been with SPS Distance Learning for six and a half years. Previously, I worked for online schools and an OPM (online project management) firm. In the 90s, I was an elementary school teacher with the Teach For America program. I noticed how kids who weren’t particularly

Staff Spotlight: Lynn Healy This month, we’re spotlighting our newest team member, learning designer Lynn Healy! Read more about Lynn’s journey to Distance Learning in the post below. How long have you worked here? How did you come to join the DL team / get involved in distance education? I began my journey as a college instructor of face-to-face classes in 2003 and then switched to fully synchronous and asynchronous online teaching in 2017, when my family and I moved to Texas. After defending my dissertation in 2014 on human rights, ethnicity, and gender in Peru, I turned my research

Staff Spotlight: Heather Brown This month, we’re spotlighting Learning Designer Heather Brown! In the interview below, Heather tells us more about her work with Distance Learning. How long have you worked here? How did you come to join the DL team / get involved in distance education? I started with DL at the end of January 2022. I have worked as a Learning Designer since 2013, primarily serving graduate and professional studies programs in not-for-profit higher education institutions. I’ve been teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in English studies since 2004, and as of 2013 I transitioned from hybrid to fully

Happy 2023! Let’s kick off the new year with a spotlight on Senior Learning Designer and IDS faculty member Dr. David Noffs! Read on for David’s “Day in the Life”, his favorite superhero-inspired teaching tool, and his (maybe surprising) undergrad major.  How long have you worked here? How did you come to join the DL team / get involved in distance education? I have worked at SPS since 2015 as a faculty member and since 2017 as a Learning Designer. I have been teaching for over 20 years and first began working as an online teaching specialist in 2005, after

This month, we’re spotlighting our newest full-time staff member, Instructional Technologist Antonio Ortega! In the blog post below, Antonio tells us more about his work with Distance Learning. How long have you worked here? How did you come to join the DL team / get involved in distance education? I joined the DL team on August 1st, which would make four months this December. I was an elementary school teacher that enjoyed learning and applying educational technologies in my classroom. This came in handy when the pandemic forced schools to close and move to a remote learning format. I used