Ten minutes prior to his Network Application Development class, Craig Piercy, a professor of the MIS department, looks out at his students, scattered among several round tables. He’s looking to make conversation.
Piercy spots a student typing on her laptop, a black guide dog laying under her table. He makes polite conversation with her before turning his attention to the dog, crouching down and taking note of how bored he seems. “We need to get a keyboard that works with dog paws, don’t we buddy?” says Piercy. He hypothesizes that students must put off “bored pheromones” that dogs can sense.
When a techno-sounding alarm signals the start of class, Piercy begins a quick explanation of tags before letting students work on their JavaScript projects. He moves swiftly around the room for the rest of class as students call his name from every direction. He sits next to each student, fidgeting on their computers and thoroughly explaining solutions to their coding problems.
Piercy’s former student, Tessa McCorkle, is no stranger to his patient nature. “Piercy is one of the most compassionate and supportive professors and individuals I’ve met during my time at UGA,” says McCorkle. “There were plenty of times that I had no idea what to do in a situation, both personal and course-related, and Doctor Piercy was always willing to help me sort everything out.” She recalls that his “mountain man vibe” instantly reminded her of family.
Piercy’s willingness to help students, along with his expertise, exemplifies his passion for teaching programming. Piercy says he “got the bug for teaching” when he saw the lifestyle of professors and got to teach courses while getting his MBA in Business Administration and Ph.D. in Management Sciences at UGA.
As for deciding to teach MIS, Piercy says it “wasn’t totally a conscious choice.” After graduating with a degree in electrical engineering, he worked at Towson University in Towson, Maryland, from 1997 to 2000, helping start its Computing Information Systems program. He says this brought him closer to MIS. Shortly after the MIS department was created at UGA in the late 90s, one of Piercy’s mentors and professors, who was also the chair of the department, told him about a teaching opportunity there, which he took in 2000.
Nineteen years later, Piercy currently teaches technical courses. At the undergrad level, that would include his Network Application Development class. He also teaches courses for the Master of Business and Technology at the Terry College of Business, including an advanced topics course and the program’s first course, Digital Business Technology.
Piercy says his approach to teaching is to figure out what level an audience is at and then break down a complex topic so they can understand it. Piercy says he tries to make learning more experiential by using a “flipped” classroom model for undergraduate courses, meaning students work on activities more often than he talks. This includes posting YouTube videos for students to watch before completing their coding work. Piercy also emphasizes student support. He says he’s “getting to know them well, trying to understand them as individuals and supporting them with their particular progress and their issues that they have at learning.”
Piercy says he treats students “not exactly like I do my kids, but to some extent it’s similar in that at times I want to be nice and friendly, but at other times it’s in their best interest to provide some discipline, and to give them structure.”
A story from Tessa McCorkle exemplifies the bond Piercy forms with his students. She says that one day, Piercy was playing country music during a lecture and noticed her humming to the songs. “Tessa we’re going to have to go to karaoke, aren’t we?” said Piercy. Later in the semester, Piercy came to class with a playlist of country songs featuring the three aspects that McCorkle told him every country song needs: a tractor, a dog, or your wife leaving you.
Another student of Piercy’s, Surada Sriboonruang, says, “He always says ‘hi’ to me whenever he sees me. He always jokes and asks questions about how I am doing.” Sriboonruang says this inspired her to be kind to others and try her best to help them whenever she can.
The students, however, aren’t the only ones benefiting from their relationships with Piercy. Piercy says it feels rewarding when he’s helping a struggling student with a concept and eventually sees them start to understand. “When I see the light go on in their face, it’s like that dopamine rush when you’re playing a stupid game on iPhone,” says Piercy. “You feel good about it. That kinda makes you stay addicted to teaching when you see those lightbulbs go off a lot.”
Along with being a professor, Piercy is also the Director of the Master of Business and Technology (MBT) at the Terry College of Business. As the director, Piercy has many different roles, including evaluating applications, improving the program rankings and working on accreditation.
Piercy said he thinks the program is good for students who want to level up their career by improving the skills they have, or by gaining new ones. He says that the program “has become dear to me” because he’s been so successful at evolving it over the years, especially in moving the program fully online.
Piercy says teaching online provides him and online students flexibility of scheduling and location. He says that if you keep good communication with online students, you get to know them almost as well as students in a traditional classroom. The preparation and communication involved in online classes and the lack of nonverbal cues are both disadvantages, though, according to Piercy. Although, he says, technology is getting better, and with one-on-one video calls, “it’s almost like they’re in the same room.”
As for the future of the online master’s program, Piercy says he wants to continue its current “slow-growth-mode,” but doesn’t want to move to much more than 40 students. Currently, he’s devoting his time to improving the curriculum and the rankings while maintaining the current quality of the program.
Although much of his time is focused on work, Piercy is also very involved with the Boy Scouts through his sons, Nicolas, 20, and Victor, 11. He has been an adult leader for 15 years. “That’s been both rewarding in many ways, not only with watching my sons grow and mature, but helping other people’s sons grow and mature and learn good values through the scouting system,” says Piercy.
Piercy labels himself a “family man,” with his main interests being “my wife and my boys.” Piercy has always loved outdoor activities like white water kayaking, but says “now I’m too old and out of shape to do that so much,” and sticks to paddling.
When he’s not outdoors, Piercy reads science fiction and fantasy books. “I’m one of those geeks who has read all the books of ‘Game of Thrones’ but haven’t watched the show,” says Piercy. He also says he likes to “tinker with electronics and kits and robotics” when he can.
As for the future, Piercy says he’s “pretty content with my career as it is now,” but says he might move into a more administrative role or do some outside consulting. “If I continue to do what I’m doing now with UGA, and maybe add a few consulting gigs…maybe write another textbook or two, I’ll probably be pretty happy,” says Piercy.
