Chris arrived at Clemson as a Freshman in 1974 and never quite escaped. After earning a degree in Elementary Education and teaching fourth grade for several years, he returned to the University as a graduate student. While pursuing a master’s degree in Special Education and fully intending to accept an elementary school position teaching emotionally disturbed children, Chris got hooked on computers. Instead of going back to the public school classroom, he joined the Clemson faculty in 1983 as the manager of ComputerVantage, a mobile training laboratory designed to delivered computer literacy training to teachers throughout South Carolina. He also began teaching instructional technology classes for undergraduate Education majors at Clemson. In 1986 he took a two-year leave of absence to complete a doctorate in Instructional Technology at the University of Georgia. With backing from CNN and Encyclopedia Britannica, his dissertation research involved developing and evaluating a multimedia instructional system for middle school social studies students.In 1988 he returned to Clemson as an Assistant Professor of Education. Since that time he has led the instructional technology training efforts within Clemson’s School of Education, teaching both undergraduate and graduate classes. In the early 90’s he became an Apple Consulting Educator for Apple Computer and traveled throughout the Southeast conducting workshops and seminars on multimedia development in Education.

He has also developed an interactive exhibit for the South Carolina State Museum, produced an IEP generating program for Charleston County Schools, and co-authored additional programs ranging from workplace literacy software to a system that helped assess youth who were at risk of dropping out of school.

In 1998, with support from the S.C. Commission on Higher Education and Clemson University, Chris established the S.C. Center of Excellence for Instructional Technology Training. In the past 8 years the Center and its partners have secured more than 4 million dollars in grants aimed at using technology to improve student learning. Chris remains as passionate about technology as ever and, despite talk of taking early retirement, is always looking for new ways to help teachers use technology to increase student learning.

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