After earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chinese from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, Trever McKay took his graduate studies to Taiwan where he completed a Master's of Arts in Classical Chinese and a Ph.D in Classical Chinese from the National Taiwan University.
Dr. McKay has served as a visiting instructor at BYU and a translator for the National Central Library in Taiwan. He first came to BYU-Idaho in 2014 as a visiting faculty member, but quickly accepted a Chinese faculty position until 2023 when he became department chair of the Department of Languages and International Studies.