ABOUT ME

When I was young, I always wanted to be a theoretical physicist (after wanting to be an inventor and a detective), so naturally, I completed my undergraduate education at Brigham Young University in the field of psychology — a discipline that in many ways could not be more different. I realized that my true passion in life is learning, so I set out to learn how people think, so that I could better understand how people learn. In addition, what I love most is helping people understand world-changing ideas — and the philosophical worldviews assumed and implied by those ideas — and few disciplines are as saturated with ideas as psychology. This is what drew me to the discipline, and so I also obtained a master’s degree in psychology from the same institution.

During this time, I also worked on the side as a freelance graphic designer, partly due to my involvement in a family graphic design business. I have also engaged in writing and blogging, and have dabbled in web design and coding. I completed a doctorate in Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences, and did my dissertation research on ways to help statistics instruction matter more to undergraduate learners. I worked for four years as a data communications coordinator and data governance coordinator at the Education Research and Data Center in Washington State. I now teach psychology at Brigham Young University-Idaho.

In 2012, I married a lovely and deeply intelligent women named Shelby, who spends her time teaching English to speakers of other languages, and caring for our infant son Forrest. Forrest is a little charmer who loves people (and cannot stand to out of sight of others). Shelby and I often muse (only half jokingly) that our mutual love of teaching and our joint interests in education and ideas would make it exciting for us to open or run our own school someday. In addition, we are passionate members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and have both served missions for our faith. Our joint faith fuels our love of learning — we hope to learn first and foremost so that we can better serve and improve the lives of others.