Peter Rich is the kind of father who sings his kids to sleep over the phone when he is away on business. He is the kind of Dad who reads Harry Potter with a different voice for each character. He is the kind of friend who will watch your kids or your cats or help out with any kind of project. He is the kind of teacher that you can relate to, one who always chimes in to contribute something interesting or funny to your conversations. And ... Peter Rich is the kind of BYU football fan who sets up a projector to watch the John Beck-Johnny Harline game against Utah.

Rich only began teaching Instructional Psychology and Technology at BYU last fall, but to students like Andrea Velasquez, it's hard to tell he's new.

"He teaches like he has years of experience at BYU," Velasquez said.

The fact of the matter is, he has. Rich received his undergraduate degree in Spanish and minor in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) from BYU before attending graduate school at the University of Georgia.

When he started as a freshman in 1996, campus was a different place. The library had two main entrances instead of one, the Eyring Science Center was just being finished and the JFSB didn't exist.

"Campus is evolving as ever," Rich said, but "Provo never changes."

Rich and his wife, Paulina, who met in the foreign language housing, did a lot of dancing when they were students here. Swing club, ballroom, Latin and "country dancing if I could convince (her( it was ok," Rich said.

Although the couple loved the time they spent in Georgia, they are excited to be back in Provo. Rich, who is originally from Park City, has a lot of family in the area including cousins for his kids to play with.

Rich has two boys, ages 5 and 3, and a 7-month-old girl. They enjoy horseback riding, playing games, coloring, reading books and roughhousing together.

"They're boys, so we wrestle," Rich said.

The boys have been enrolled in a Spanish-speaking preschool in the hope that they will become successfully bilingual.

"That's the aspiration," Rich said smiling, "We speak Spanglish at home."

Drew Polly, one of Rich's graduate school classmates, said that his fondest memories of him are the times when his wife and children would come visit him and work.

"He would put things aside and completely shift his focus to his family," Polly said.

Polly also remembered web and phone conferences he had with Rich where she could hear the sound of his children in the background.

After family, church callings, and work, "there is no free time," but Rich did say that he and his wife will be working hard to fix up the house they recently bought, and to keep up the beautiful yard that came with it.

While his grad school classmate, Michael Barbour, was doing about a third of the assigned readings, Rich read everything that was required plus recommended material. He was chatty, talking to anyone and everyone, and asking all kinds of questions.

While earning his undergraduate degree, Rich worked as TA in an introductory computer course for teachers, updating computer tutorials. It was then that Rich developed the interest that has become his expertise-designing educational technology.

"It's finding out what goes on in people's heads," Rich said. "It's figuring out the best way to get things there and keep them there."

Today, Rich is a skilled technologist. He is the first person friends go to when they want Mac advice.

Cary Johnson, a student in Rich's Designing Distance Education class, said that he has an interactive, engaging teaching style and cares about the program and its students.

The student organization Johnson is involved with hosts a weekly collaborative student-faculty soup luncheon.

"The thing I appreciate most about Dr. Rich is the way he pitches in to make sure things happen," Johnson said. "Even when he is swamped with all of the responsibilities he has as a new faculty member, he makes time to network with us as students during our 'Soup Kitchens.' He even makes soup!"

Rich's colleague and former classmate, Rick West, told of a time when at a University of Georgia luncheon, Rich gave students a "rousing" rendition of the Cougar fight song "including long runs of 'la-la-la-la-la" for all of the parts that he ... didn't know."

"When it comes to his work, (Peter( is very much a type-A personality," said Barbour, "but when it comes to everything else, he is much more relaxed and easy-going."

For Rich, his wife is his motivator.

"She's not afraid to try things, even if she doesn't know how they'll turn out," he said.

West remembered a time when Rich and Paulina gave everyone in their research lab a Book of Mormon for Easter.

"I thought it was terribly courageous," West said, "and it shows his dedication to the gospel and his desire to share it."