After working for many years as an engineer for the United States Navy, Jason Updegraph decided it was time for a change. He chose to pursue a master’s degree in secondary physics education through Slippery Rock University’s flexible online program, allowing him to care for his family while earning his degree and state teaching certification.
“That prior knowledge of applied math and science made teaching a good fit and a great way to help the next generation,” said Updegraph, ’25, who completed his degree last December.
Updegraph was recently hired by the Slippery Rock Area School District and will be teaching mathematics this fall after being certified to teach physics and technology education.
Before he decided to become a teacher, Updegraph worked 17 years in the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division, laboratory, including six years detailed to the Naval Special Warfare Development Group in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He helped design, build, test and field new high-performance boats for the Navy SEALs. Prior to that, he worked in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, designing and producing mega yachts.
He entered his career as an engineer after earning a bachelor’s degree in naval architecture and marine engineering from the prestigious Webb Institute in New York.
“After finishing my work with the Navy, I took some time to decide what my next steps would be, and teaching was something that I had some interest in for a long time,” Updegraph said.
Multiple forces came together to bring Updegraph to SRU. A Portersville native, Updegraph has family in the area, which made Butler County an attractive place to settle down. After looking into a few other in-state, online Master of Education programs, Updegraph decided that SRU was the place for him.
“I was attracted to how affordable the program was, and I also had a sense that I would get what I needed to succeed from it, whether that be from professors or my field placement or student teaching,” Updegraph said. “SRU also has so many good local contacts and it’s respected in the area, so I felt that I was in pretty good hands.”
Updegraph is also a husband and father of two girls, so having the ability to balance his own career progress and his duties to his family was important.
“Prior to transitioning into teaching, I was a stay-at-home dad for a few years,” Updegraph said with laugh. “I feel like there was some education practice along the way there.”
Alongside his work on his degree and caring for his family, Updegraph also worked as a graduate assistant at SRU’s Macoskey Center for Sustainability Education and Research, serving as the center’s trails and homestead assistant and supporting programming. This was an opportunity that Updegraph said gave him valuable experience that worked with his schedule, allowing him to balance classwork with his assistantship.
The SRU College of Education faculty were also helpful to Updegraph as he pursued his degree.
“I have an admiration for all of the professors,” Updegraph said. “I had valuable experiences and I can appreciate the approaches that professors took to their courses.”
Updegraph offered particular praise to his adviser Jason Hilton, professor of curriculum, instruction, and educational leadership, who offered him important guidance early on in his teaching journey.
Having served as a substitute teacher prior to earning his master’s degree, Updegraph had some classroom experience that, coupled with his field experiences and classwork, allowed him to step into his student-teaching experience with confidence.
“One thing I had to do was brush up on the elementary math and science that you use in a high school physics classroom,” Updegraph said. “I had three different AP physics sections for 16 weeks. I jumped in within the first week, teaching two of three classes and then by the second week I’d taken over.”
Updegraph got an interesting view of different teaching techniques and was able to hone his own approach in a way that he felt served his students best.
“Some teachers lecture without slides, just sort of off the cuff, and that can work for them,” Updegraph said, “but I got to create my own slide decks and materials in the classroom that worked for me. It helped me to improve my process.”
This investment in his teaching paid off for him by giving him smooth, meaningful teaching experience. He was named one of SRU’s Student Teacher of the Semester award winners, as voted on by the college’s faculty. Contenders for the award had to record a lesson and upload it to software that analyzes teaching videos, and they also had to submit written explanations of their teaching practice.
Throughout Updegraph’s experience at SRU, he benefitted from the flexibility, not just in regard to the flexibility of an online program with supportive instructors, but also to remaining flexible as a student.
“You’ve got to spend some time coming up with a plan for each semester, but you also need to be willing to pivot as new courses open up,” Updegraph said. “Everyone is different and juggling different things, but being flexible is important.
“I would recommend this program to anybody who is thinking of transitioning from their career into teaching.”
More information about the secondary education master’s program at SRU can be found on the program’s webpage.
