In 1983, Pacific Crest began with a mission which focused on providing high quality software technology to assist professionals with solving problems. As support services were offered to a growing client base, it became apparent that the poor problem solving skills of users greatly limited the utility they derived from the software. This discovery led to the realization that improving the performance of professionals in the workplace could be achieved by focusing efforts at the higher education level to develop the learning, thinking, and problem solving skills of students.

A change occurred in 1985 as Pacific Crest shifted its focus and began working with colleges to better integrate the use of technology in teaching, and improve the quality of teaching/ learning processes used by educators. During the next 10 years, more than 300 colleges and universities purchased licenses for the software Point Five™, PC:SOLVE™, and MacSolve™.  Pacific Crest supported faculty users of the software by offering two types of workshops. One focusing on teaching with technology and the other, designing interactive curricula using the modeling capabilities of the software. In 1992, Learning Through Problem Solving became  the first publication to use a "learning process methodology" in the design of  curriculum. The Learning Process Methodology is now an integral part of our Curriculum Design Institutes.

The first Teaching Institute was held in the summer of 1991 at Wells College in upstate New York. Pacific Crest has now facilitated more than 130 institutes. The institutes are "hands-on" and put participants in the roles of learner, educator, and researcher. There are now a variety of different institutes being offered. These include: teaching institutes, program assessment institutes, curriculum design institutes, advanced teaching institutes, discipline specific institutes, interactive learning system institutes and facilitators institutes.

By 1996, the main focus of Pacific Crest had become the educational philosophy  termed Process Education™. This philosophy has become the distinguishing characteristic of Pacific Crest and is at the core our faculty development, consulting, and publishing work. The audience for our  products and services no longer centers around faculty who use software technology but now includes any educator and/or administrator who supports or embraces Process Education. 

In short, Pacific Crest had become and continues to be a "change agent" in higher education. Our mission is to improve the quality of educational outcomes by focusing on five key processes: teaching, learning, mentoring, curriculum design, and assessment.