Brian is a graduate of the Organizational Learning and Leadership (Ph.D.) degree program, an Adjunct Instructor for the Computer and Information Science department here at Gannon University, and the current LMS Administrator in the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL). Brian has participated in the TRAVEL program for the past two years as well and is looking for the chance to grow in his career.
Some of the skills Brian has acquired through his education and work experience thus far include exceptional written and oral communication, personnel management, student mentoring/advising and time management. Brian feels the natural next step in his professional progression is a leadership position.
The research Brian conducted for his doctoral dissertation was a phenomenological study of Gannon University faculty lived-experience with learning online compared to learning face-to-face. He has always been interested in how and why people learn and what methods are effective as well as enjoyable. This particular study focused on Gannon University faculty to help the local situation but he sees himself expanding this interest for future research. A project he worked on during his master’s program was published in IEEE Xplore titled “Autonomic University Administration System” and my master’s thesis looked at the prevalence of or the possibility to include constructivism and/or constructionism in robot learning algorithms so he would also like to bring a more technical aspect into his research going forward. He has also participated in the Multidisciplinary, Team-Based Learning studies in the SIM Center at Gannon University for the last several years, has become more involved each year, and intends to continue to contribute to this study.
Brian currently holds a full-time position as the LMS Administrator and IT Specialist in CETL. He is also an Adjunct Instructor for the CIS department. These positions require a great deal of organization, management and technical skills. Brian has considerable experience teaching in adult education, higher education and online education. He has honed project management skills, excellent communication skills and organizational skills through positions such as a member of the Key User Group for an SAP implementation project, Software Developer, Technical Project Coordinator and Instructional Technologist/ Angel Administrator. Brian has experience managing a large maintenance-mode web-based software project by corresponding with the client company executives, creating new online applications and revising existing online applications and databases using HTML, XML, SQL, Oracle, and JavaScript. Various other duties made for a multi-task environment that required written and oral communication skills, task prioritization, people skills, coding knowledge, software familiarity, and “on the fly” research skills. He also has more than thirteen years work experience in a manufacturing environment, much of which was spent in a number of leadership positions and a great number of training positions. These positions required Brian to learn various aspects of a new transactional system and then act as a member of a two-person team that organized, performed and documented the training of over 100 end users. Brian works well as part of a team, individually, and as a leader.