Pamela Murphy, PhD

Dr. Pamela Murphy is an Associate Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arizona Global Campus. She has developed and/or serves as the lead for research methods and statistics courses for the BA and MA programs in Psychology. In addition, she serves as a faculty research fellow in the UAGC Office of Research and Creative Scholarship. Dr. Murphy earned a PhD in Educational Research and Evaluation with a concentration in Statistics from Virginia Tech, an MBA from American International College, and a BA in Graphic Design from Hampshire College.

She first encountered online learning in the years between her master’s and doctoral degrees. Living and teaching in a rural area at the time, she took courses in education and mathematics for professional development purposes. Some of these were on campus (a commute of about an hour each way), while other courses that were unavailable in the local area were offered online by a state university. She loved the idea of being able to take college and graduate-level courses while living far away from a physical campus and the flexibility that asynchronous courses provide for adults with work and family responsibilities. Later, at the end of her first year as an on-campus doctoral student, she told her faculty advisor that she was interested in online teaching and learning. He immediately took her across the hall and introduced her to a newly hired faculty member who was going to develop the program’s first online course. For the next three years, she worked as the graduate teaching assistant helping to develop, maintain, and teach the program’s online courses.

With a wealth of work experience in a variety of fields, including graphics and printing, writing and publishing, computer software development and support, business management, and education, Dr. Murphy is equipped for her mission of helping students gain knowledge and skills they need to achieve their own goals in life. Beginning in 1994, she has taught high school students, adults preparing for the GED, school system faculty and staff needing to meet requirements for computer literacy, undergraduates, master’s level students, and doctoral students. She has also been involved in original research in education, geriatrics, and psychology. Several of her papers have been published in peer-reviewed journals, and she has given multiple conference presentations. Dr. Murphy is an active member of the American Educational Research Association and three special interest groups (SIGs) within it: Studying and Self-Regulated Learning, Online Teaching and Learning, and Mixed Methods Research. She has been an officer in the Studying and Self-Regulated Learning SIG for the past several years, and, at the time of this writing, is the immediate past SIG Chair.

Dr. Murphy began teaching at University of Arizona Global Campus in May 2010 as an associate faculty member and became full-time in November 2012. She has two adult daughters and a son-in-law and resides in her hometown of Washington, DC.