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Dr. Moffett joins BPC’s Division of Education

Dr. David W. Moffett

MOUNT VERNON—Brewton-Parker College’s new Education Division chair, Dr. David W. Moffett, is a pioneer in online education, and he hopes to excite even more interest in online education at BPC – especially in the college’s education offerings – during the 2007-2008 academic year.

Dr. Moffett began teaching online courses 10 years ago when the use of the Internet was just starting to become a daily practice in most American homes. With the assistance of a Lilly Endowment grant, he created the first online course for the University of Indianapolis and has also designed computer databases for various applications since 1981. Dr. Moffett explains that much of his research during the past decade has been devoted to the merit of using online platforms for teaching and learning.

“Bill Gates’ early vision of information at our fingertips has come to light and now students are learning anywhere, anytime,” said Dr. Moffett. “Students no longer need to enter a building to gain needed knowledge. Learning is everywhere and it will be difficult for some of us who have been trained to do one thing at a time to learn how to effectively multitask and be virtual educators, but we must do this in order to survive and thrive.”

Dr. Moffett has taught and administered across many levels of education and he’s currently in his 13th year of higher education. His first day at BPC was July 2. He praises the college’s current online course programming as being “the best” in the country.

“At Brewton-Parker, we have the best asynchronous program for online education, Blackboard,” explained Dr. Moffett. “Asynchronous means that students and teachers use message boards to post and reply to topics in a two to three day period. Synchronous is real-time learning, which we don’t have but I’d like to begin using at Brewton-Parker. We can use technology to grow quality programs through a combination of these learning styles and systems.”

Dr. Moffett began in K-12 education where he has been a public high school teacher, a private school elementary and high school teacher, an administration intern in an urban parochial grade school and an alternative school coordinator. In higher education, he has created and taught 39 different education courses and seminars from freshman level through doctoral completion. In 2002-2003, he was a finalist for an Excellence in Teaching award and in 2005, he was named a Leading Educator of the World by the International Biographical Centre, Cambridge, England.

Other highlights from Dr. Moffett’s career include a two-year research project focused on K-12 students’ critical thinking as measured through their writing abilities, and serving as the lead investigator in a K-12 public/private school study, which helped catapult a large U.S. city mayor into becoming the chief domestic policy advisor for faith-based initiatives to the George W. Bush campaign in 2000.

According to Dr. David R. Smith, BPC president, Dr. Moffett’s talents for leadership in education will be a great asset to BPC in the future.

"Dr. Moffett's long and distinguished career in teacher education makes him an ideal candidate for his position," said Dr. Smith.

Dr. T. Ronald Melton, provost, adds, “Dr. Moffett brings a wealth of experience, which will prove to be of great value to BPC as he leads the Education Division. I am anxious for our students, faculty, staff, alumni and members of the local community to have the opportunity to meet and work with him. I am confident that he will provide great vision and direction to our programs.”

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