Region V: Graham and Greenlee Counties
Dr Phil Mc Bride
region_v@azsta.org
Personal information that you’d like people to know:
I have a wonderful, beautiful wife, four children (1 girl followed by three boys), four wonderful in-laws, and 8 grandchildren with 2 on the way (5 boys and 5 girls). My wife, Paula teaches Genealogy and Scrapbooking at Eastern Arizona College. She is the light of my life. I have been coaching football at the high school or middle school level for 35 years. I also play the trumpet and have been in the community orchestra for close to 30 years, I love spending time with my family, especially our excursions into nature.
I am just completing my 31 st year in education. I began my teaching career in Snowflake, Arizona where as a new Secondary Education graduate majoring in chemistry at the University of Arizona, I was hired to teach physics and algebra. At that point I decided I need some more background in physics, so began a master’s degree at Northern Arizona in the teaching of Physical Science. This is where I really learned about teaching using inquiry. While at Snowflake, the Heber-Overgaard community formed their own school district and Mogollon High School was built. My family moved to Heber where I was the first varsity football coach at Mogollon High School. I was able to design the science labs for the new high school. Our family loved the White Mountains, but an opportunity to teach at Eastern Arizona College (EAC) presented itself, and in 1991 we moved back home to Thatcher, where I began teaching chemistry at EAC. I continued to coach football, this time as an assistant at Thatcher High School. In 1997, I took a sabbatical and moved my family to Oxford, Ohio where I pursued a Ph.D. in chemistry with a joint emphasis in Chemical Education and Organic Chemistry at Miami University. We loved our time in Ohio. It was at Miami University, under my Ph.D. advisor, Mickey Sarquis, that I really learned chemistry at a deeper level and developed a much stronger love of teaching.
For the past 16 years I have served Eastern Arizona College as Dean of Instruction. My favorite part of the year is our Summer STEM Camp where we take 50+ middle school kids to Camp Tonto Creek for 4 days and 3 nights in the beautiful white mountains
