#MeetUsMonday - Meet Student Success Specialist Ryan
Meet Ryan.
Baton Rouge native, a former professional opera singer, youth soccer coach, and ukulele player. A restaurant manager who pivoted into academic advising after earning a master’s degree in WIU’s College Student Personnel Services program. Varied experience advising students from the humanities to pre-nursing who’s a level two sommelier who occasionally still wears his silver tastavin around his neck for laughs. The School’s advisor to first-, second-, and third-year direct admit BSN students and an instructor for the NUR 1010 seminar elective.
PATH TO ADVISING
“I grew up in Baton Rouge, LA, but, after Cupid’s arrow struck, I moved to Philadelphia once I met my wife. Through my 20s, I was a professional opera singer . . . I traveled with the Nashville Opera Company, the Utah Festival Opera, and the Des Moines Metro Opera Company. After a while I got weary of the road, though, so I became general manager of Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in Philadelphia, and its wine buyer.
“After my wife earned a DMA in music and took a faculty position, I decided I wanted an exit out of the restaurant business. But we’d moved to a small Midwestern town, and there weren’t many opportunities. I hadn’t finished my undergraduate degree, because I’d left to begin singing professionally, and that had always bored down on me. But restaurant jobs meant I worked holidays, weekends, nights, and, by this time, we had a son, and I wanted to coach soccer and be with my family. I finally said, ‘Well, let me go back to school.’
“That was intimidating, but I was a lot closer to earning a bachelor’s degree than I’d thought. I did a semester in the community college system, found it was manageable, and was a totally different student than I’d been before. After one semester, my academic advisor, who’d also become a friend, said, ‘You really need to go to a university because you’re so close to earning an undergraduate degree.’ So, I transferred to WIU [Western Illinois University], where my wife was on faculty, and completed the degree in a year.
“During that time, I really forged a relationship with my academic advisor, Ronald Pettigrew. He invested so much time in me, and, for the first time, I really saw the importance of that student-advisor relationship. I began to wonder if becoming an academic advisor was something I could do. Another advisor encouraged me to earn a master’s degree, and, eventually, I got a graduate assistantship at WIU and worked a bunch of different advising roles: as a disabilities and access advisor, an exam coordinator, a text conversion specialist, a career advisor. After graduating, my wife accepted a new faculty position and we moved to Tennessee and I worked at Austin P. State University as an academic advisor, including to pre-nursing students.”
BEST PART OF THE JOB
“Building connections with students and getting to see them grow and get closer to their goals is my favorite part of the job. Often, we become professionally what we saw lacking in our own lives. I didn’t have an advisor at age 20 when I was pursuing a music career. I was left to my own devices. With students of this age, late teens to 20s, I can see how good support is like a pebble in a lake and can really ripple out. It’s nice to be that support.
“What’s neat here is that I get to see my student advisees make their way through the curriculum and rigors of the nursing program and really watch their progress. People come to me in the advising environment in all states: sometimes they want to tell you about how excited they are about an opportunity, and other times, they’re in a moment of crisis. It’s like Forrest Gump says, ‘You never know what you’re going to get.’
“I like to use the appreciative advising framework in my work . . . A lot of times, my early conversations with students start out with, ‘What makes you want to go into nursing?’ Sometimes I ask that question later on because, when the rigors of the program and labs and clinicals get real, you’ve got to get back to the why. ‘Keep that in mind,’ I tell students. ‘There’s going to be great highs and lows. You’re going to have it all.’
“In my work advising first-, second-, and third-year BSNs, I stay plugged in with certain faculty members, like Dr. Christine Connelly, Emily Evans, and Vlad Sebula, who teach those early nursing courses. I know when they’re having labs and exams, when big tests happen, and, because I teach a NURS 1010 elective, I can see where students’ stress levels are. It helps me keep up with them as a cohort.
"Students are so appreciative of the things we do for them . . . they’re also high achieving, and a lot of times, they’re their own worst critics. We have to remind them, ‘It’s a marathon, and not a sprint.’ Just keep moving forward.”
LAST GOOD BOOK HE READ
“Outsmart Your Brain; Why learning is hard and how to make it easier, by a UVA psychology professor Daniel Willingham.”
FOR FUN
“My vacations have always been to wine regions . . . when I was first in the Charlottesville area singing as part of the Ash Lawn Highland Music Festival, there were hardly any wineries here. Now, the Monticello AVA [American Viticultural Area] has like 40 wineries! My mission is to hit them all.
“I just went to Michael Shapp, which was great, but there are also places, like Barren Ridge Winery, and big places, like King’s Family Vineyard, that I love.
“We also work on the house. We live in my wife’s childhood home in Waynesboro. Six acres. I’m often out there with a chainsaw. There’s lots to do.”
THE SCHOOL IN A WORD?
“TRANSFORMATIVE. For students, not only does the School transform their perspective about life as a whole, it transforms their perception of the institution. I’ve never seen people so proud to be associated with a place. Many are double and triple Hoos. That’s one of the things that attracted me to UVA . . . and the fact that I love the history here, I love the Grounds, I’m a history buff, and it’s just kind of magical.”
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