Thomas Ryan

Background

About Thomas Ryan

Having graduated high school in 1995, I naturally followed the path of going to college to study what I loved most, which was history. Although I remain passionate about history to this day, I was only halfway through my degree when I realized that a person who has only a history degree has virtually no job prospects. Faced with the choice of adding a second major or going to law school, I made the mistake of choosing law school. While I excelled in law school, graduating third in my class at a top school, I soon realized the gross injustices and deep corruption in the American legal system were too much for me to stomach. Thinking I would become a patent attorney, I started studying science. I fell deeply in love with chemistry and was planning to study chemical engineering, but marriage and children curtailed that. Some years later, I was a stay-at-home father when my wife suddenly lost her job in a terrible economy. Needing a decent income quickly, I entered an alternative route to licensure teacher education program at UNLV. I now have five years of secondary science teaching experience (as of summer 2022), an M.Ed, and am working on a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction, focused on science education and technology design. I love teaching; I love the opportunity to help broaden young people's perspectives and open doors to careers they had never considered. My long-term goal, however, is to influence more students through the design of educational technology and curriculum. I am currently working on dimensional analysis software as part of my Ph.D. program. I have also been involved in research on teaching middle school astronomy and running science community outreach programs.