Rick A. Sheets, Ed.D.

Director, Computer Commons, Paradise Valley Comm. Coll.

e-mail to: rick.sheets@pvmail.maricopa.edu

personal web page: http://www.pvc.maricopa.edu/~sheets/

department web page: http://www.pvc.maricopa.edu/~mcl/

More about me - Professionally...

I completed my Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction at Arizona State University in August of 1994. My dissertation was on "The Effects of Training and Experience on Adult Peer Tutors in Community Colleges." I have been involved in learning assistance for more than fifteen years and was the founding director of the Learning Support Center (1987-1997) at Paradise Valley Community College, Maricopa Community Colleges, Phoenix, AZ. 

I am currently the Director of a great team which runs the Learning Support Center. Together, we work hard daily to meet the learning supprt needs of our growing student population. In addition to the critical and dedicated LSC office staff and tutors, we have more than 20 faculty involved directly with helping provide LSC services to our students.

PVCC is a campus of dynamic and innovative educators. I have been fortunate enough to be on teams who won the campus Innovator of the Year award from the League for Innovation in the Community College four different years at PVCC:

1. 1989 with a colleague for the development of the Tutor Training program at PVCC
2. 1998 as the chair of a Technology Training development team which incorporated input from and initiatives for the campus as a whole,
3. 2001 as a member of an Employee and Organizational Development Team. This team developed a cohesive interactive means to organize, fund, coordinate professional growth activities and incorporate learning back into PVCC.
4. 2003 as a member of the APB development team. Automated Planning and Budgeting (APB) is a home-grown system to provide a consistent, open, tool to develop department operation plans and budget requests which are connected to the college mission and part of a college-wide learning process..

In addition to the dissertation, I have co-authored two journal articles with Sally Ring Krueger (colleague and friend), and co-edited and co-authored a CRLA monograph with mentors in the field. I have been the co-director for the Winter Institute (with Frank Christ, Sylvia Mioduski, and David Gerkin), Site chair for the 1995 CRLA conference in Tempe, AZ, and a chapter president of SWADE (a regional chapter of NADE) and AZ CRLA.

Areas of professional interest for me include tutor and employee development and training, learning styles, metacognition, team-building, web page development, use, and maintenance, and applications and implications of technology in teaching & learning, and office support. I am also the webster for this web site, my Learning Support Center web site, the international Learning Support Centers in Higher Education (LSCHE) web portal, In Memory of..., the web page for PVCC's 2005 Self-Study, and my own "Learning Your Way (a metacognitive approach to choosing and using study strategies."

In 2006, I was elected incoming President-elect for the College Reading and Learning Association (CRLA) and the Conference Chair for the 2007 CRLA Conference in Portland, Oregon, October 31st-November 3rd, at the DoubleTree at Lloyd Center.

More about me - Personally...

My first milestone was becoming an Eagle scout at 18 as my dad had. The next was deciding to go into Education as a major. The major and continually rewarding milestone was meeting and immediately falling in love with my friend, life-partner, and wife (all the same person), Barbara. We continue to long to grow old together learning and sharing life with each other daily. She is a very caring, witty, and neat individual of whom I was very fortunate to meet and connect with. Our souls have met and changed each of us for the best.

The roughest milestone was going for a doctorate. After starting the program I moved to PVCC to start a new LAC at a new college and took two years off (took minimum required to maintain program) from my program. When I finally completed my doctorate in 1994 (nine years after I started), I realized that I have been in school continuously for 35 years (K-->Ed.D.), including 19 years while working full-time. I told myself that enough was enough and it was time for a break. Even so, during the semester following the doctorate, I signed up for a "Beginning Guitar" class for fun. I have composed two songs with lyrics. Being awarded CRLA's Karen G. Smith, Special Recognition Award in 2004, was very moving. Karen Smith, Frank Christ, and I were co-editors on the CRLA monograph and I respected her deeply as a colleague and friend.

I also write original, inspirational verses called "Thoughts in Verse." The ocean and sunsets are very moving to me. Examples of some of the VerseArt are included in the In Memory... collection listed on my home page. The collection is the beginning of a tribute to PVCC employees who had become terminally ill or died while working at the college.

Now I am exploring and training others in the fascinating world of web design as you may find as you explore some of my web pages which are linked from my home page.

Below are some pics of my family: