Once a Titan, always a Titan: Featuring lecturer Ryan Lohman By Katelyn Firestein
Visiting Lecturer in Communication Studies Ryan Lohman might be new to teaching classes on campus, but do not let that fool you, he is quite experienced in the Titan life. Lohman was born and raised on the west side of South Bend. Upon his graduation from Washington High School, he decided to attend IU South Bend, merely out of convenience. Working full-time while attending college was part of Lohman’s plan, so IU South Bend made this goal more attainable. He began taking classes in the fall of 2006. He took a break and returned to campus in 2010. When he returned to campus, Lohman realized something was different, and felt more connected to the campus. Lohman “quickly fell in love” with IU South Bend and completed both an undergraduate B.A. in Mass Communication with a concentration in journalism, and his M.A. in Communication studies. “Like many local commuting students, I took advantage of campus work opportunities throughout my entire undergrad and graduate careers,” Lohman reflects. “I worked as a tutor in our wonderful Writer’s Room, which offered me so many chances to not only help students with their writing, but to improve my own writing as well.” Lohman also spent time as the editorin-chief for the campus newspaper, the Preface, and worked as the student editor for Aspire magazine. “Writing for the Preface was an amazing experience because the students are really in charge of the entire operation, which is a huge responsibility, but it’s the only way to learn news writing. I worked with some amazing editors who took me under their wings and taught me the basics,” Lohman explains. Lohman ended up leaving his job at Aspire early to pursue an internship
with The South Bend Tribune. However, he is still grateful for his experience and learnings from the magazine and paper. With Lohman’s extensive experience in journalism, his undergraduate minor seemed to be a perfect fit, both to help him in future careers and help diversify his skillset. “As an undergrad, I minored in Integrated New Media Studies, which I would recommend any journalism or public relations student to do. Most journalism work requires knowledge of publishing software, page layout and design, and these are the kinds of things you learn in new media classes” Lohman says. “Like many communication students, I started my degree in pursuit of one area of communication scholarshipjournalism- but ended up branching out to embrace quite a bit more from the discipline, which is vast,” said Lohman. After finishing his bachelor’s, Lohman immediately went on to complete his master’s degree at IU South Bend. He explained that this timeline worked well because he “was working with professors and advisors who already knew [his] academic and research interests.” Lohman added,“professors Yuri Obata and Brett Labbé, were able to recommend graduate-level readings for me while I was still an undergrad in anticipation of me joining the program, so it was a really smooth process.” “Part of the graduate degree in communication studies involves a class in pedagogy. That class and my time as a tutor prepared me to teach, and so when a job became available in my own department, I was ready to accept the challenge immediately,” Lohman says. He added, “working as a tutor felt like a transition between being a student and being a teacher so jumping into
a teaching role full-time felt pretty natural.” Lohman has had a long journey at IU South Bend, but the journey has helped him find his passion in teaching others. Now, Lohman is a visiting lecturer in Communication Studies. His journey at IU South Bend has come full circle. So far, he has taught public speaking courses, but is looking forward to teaching additional Communication Studies courses in the future. Aside from his dedication to IU, Lohman enjoys spending time with his wife and his dogs. He loves to read and has been playing guitar for more than 20 years, primarily acoustic folk and American primitive guitar music. Given his wisdom and experience, Lohman shared the following advice with IU South Bend students: “The thing many students don’t realize soon enough about IU South Bend is that it is a goldmine for ambitious students. You have such amazing opportunities here that you may not have had going to other universities. In my context, that meant all of the writing and editing opportunities.” “For other students, it is the leadership opportunities, such as Student Government or Titan Productions.” He continued, “I was able to work as a staff writer, copy editor, and editorin-chief at my university paper, which were all very valuable experiences. I was able to work for Aspire and interview world-renowned musicians. As a graduate student, I was able to design and edit the Graduate Research Journal. I do not think I would have been able to have such robust real-world experiences anywhere else. You should take advantage of those experiences and appreciate them while you can.” 77
