Renaissance Man: A conversation with ASU professor, U.S. Army veteran Sean Ryan

Looking at this bespectacled retired colonel, you would never guess all the hidden talents Sean Ryan brings to Arizona State University.

Ryan’s military career began with his enlistment in the Army after his first year in college. But soon after, West Point came calling. 

“They notified me that, although I’d been on the alternate list, I was now going to be part of the Long Gray Line,” Ryan said. 

He restarted his military career after graduation from West Point and became an infantry officer. But that was not enough for him. Ryan soon transitioned into Special Forces, working with some of the most elite members in the Armed Forces. He commanded two Special Forces detachments, including a mountain team and a combat dive detachment. He also specialized in psychological warfare operation. 

Ryan ascended into leadership quite quickly to command the Army’s largest Strategic Dissemination Battalion. As an example of some of the practical leadership challenges the work sometimes involved, he told me a story of a team he worked with in Thailand.

“I showed up at one camp after I had been gone for two weeks to another part of the country. So, I showed up and I had to run PT [physical training] with the unit. And these guys were just dragging. I mean, I could not get them to move,” Ryan recalled. 

“And so afterwards, I grabbed the team sergeant and said, let's go out and see what they're eating. And their meals, three times a day, were bananas and rice. That's the only thing they were getting. So we had to go to the camp commander and explain, you have to give them some protein. The rice isn't getting it done,” he said. “A palm full of sticky rice wrapped up in a banana leaf is filling, but it ain't exactly going to drive you for a hundred miles under a 75-pound rucksack. Those are the real-world things that you run into.”

Ryan left active duty after 10 years of service. But that was not the end of his military career. He spent the next nine years in the reserve component, first with the 12th Special Forces Group and later with the 7th PSYOP [Psychological Operations] Group. He returned to active duty after 9/11. 

Ryan spent time at the Pentagon working for the Army Staff and then as a strategic planner for the Joint Chiefs. In the next eight years of his career, he was tasked to go to Iraq, Afghanistan and out to support General David H. Petraeus, when the general was the commander of Fort Leavenworth at Command General Staff College. 

It was during that time that Ryan was offered the assignment to go to Central Command, where he served as deputy director of the Interagency Action Group. In that role he interfaced with every other US government agency in the operations throughout the Central Command area of responsibility, which included Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Ryan's Retirement

He retired from military service in 2012. 

“The way it played out so well, it was a fun career,” Ryan reflected. “It was rewarding. I had a great time, and I would do it again.”

When asked how he decided to go into education, Ryan answered: “After I retired, I was recruited by the commander of US Army Special Operations Command to stand up a strategic planning course for special operations. I did that for the next three years while I worked on my PhD. I went on to do some consulting and then adjunct work, teaching in a graduate program at West Liberty University in West Virginia.” 

He joined their faculty full time in 2019 and worked there as a professor of management through 2022.

At ASU Ryan is teaching mostly in project management and organizational leadership in the School of Applied Professional Studies, which offers degrees and certificates in project management, organizational leadership, and technical communication. 

“The project management was what I was really brought in for, particularly the graduate program,” he explained. “When I interact with students, my goal is to help prepare them better for their future careers.

“Project management is one of those fields that applies across almost every discipline,” Ryan continued. “That’s one of the reasons why I particularly love working with veterans, because they typically come with a lot of experience working on projects, just the way the military works. And as a result,  organizational leadership and project management are a natural fit for them.”

What does Ryan do for fun?

“Well, I'm a knife maker. I forge my own steel; I recycle steel. I can take an old automobile leaf spring or a lawn mower blade and fashion a knife blade out of it,” he said. “I grew up in a family of artists, and I find that I enjoy working with my hands.”

Ryan has especially enjoyed opportunities where he’s been able to combine his teaching and his knife-making skills.  

“Probably my favorite project was when I was approached by a Scottish clan chief who had military ties, and he asked me to make him a Scottish dirk, which is a fifteen-inch blade,” he noted. “He had very specific desires for the handle design. He wanted it carved with Celtic designs. I did a lot of research into exactly what a historic dirk would be. I forged it out. It took me a year. The handle alone was nine different pieces, which included brass inlays for counterbalance, and I actually joined a woodcarvers’ guild to get my carving skills up to speed while I was working on the rest of it, and then finished carving the wood sections out of Indian rosewood."

“I also like to kayak, sea kayaking specifically,” added Ryan. “I built my own kayak, and when I was stationed in Tampa, Florida, I would take groups out for a weekend paddle around Tampa Bay or out to the Shell islands and just have a good time and an adventure.”

If that weren’t enough, he also said he enjoys fencing, rock climbing, hunting, fishing and camping. Sean Ryan, indeed, is a Renaissance man.

 

— Wanda Wright, Director
ASU Office for Veteran and Military Academic Engagement