David McPherson

Advanced Instructor
Department of Computer Science

David McPherson
I am an advanced instructor at Virginia Tech in the Department of Computer Science. I have been at Virginia Tech since 2004 in various capacities. I spent 2004-2007 as an instructor in Computer Science. I then transitioned to VT’s Online Course Systems (OCS) which is now Technology-Enhanced Learning and Online Strategies (TLOS) from 2007-2012. In 2012, after 2 years as an adjunct instructor, I became a full-time instructor with the Electrical and Computer Engineering department until 2020.

Teaching

I have taught many different courses from the Freshmen year to graduate courses, mainly related to programming or software development. I have also taught courses covering basic circuit analysis, computer systems, and other topics related to computing.

Education

My education is varied and spans a few disciplines

Career

After graduating from Radford in 1996, I began working for Montgomery County Public Schools, MCPS, as a 4th grade special education teacher and I stayed until 1999. In 1999, I wanted to see how we could use technology to help students learn and so I decided to get another masters degree in Computer Science.

After graduating with my CS degree I taught for a year and then worked for a local web development company. After a year working, I came back to VT and taught for 3 more years.

Then I moved to, what is now TLOS, and managed VT’s transition from Blackboard to Scholar. After 3 years as director of OCS, I became the assistant director of ePortfolio technology. At the same time I realized I missed teaching and started as an adjunct instructor for the Electrical and Computer Engineering department. Two years later I was a full-time instructor for ECE.

After 8 full-time years with ECE, I’m happy to be back with the CS department as of August 2020. I’m looking forward to my time here in CS and seeing how I can help.