He roams the classroom, posing and tackling questions with great enthusiasm and referring to his students as “my colleagues.” And he frequently asks them: “How am I doing?”

School of Business Teaching Professor Kevin Ryan Ph.D. ’96 — who has won multiple teaching awards over his 24 years at Stevens — is known for his trademark energy and drive to help students succeed. His “colleagues” salutation comes from a beloved professor and his time at Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies, where he spent 23 years as a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff and educator. “I was surrounded by people who knew a lot more about things than I did, so I felt I was not the professor; I was a colleague of theirs,” he says.

“I feel that we’re all on a journey to knowledge, so I treat the students at Stevens as colleagues ... fellow searchers for truth and knowledge.”

Ryan teaches Python programming and data analytics to undergraduates; he has taught numerous networking courses to graduate and undergraduate students and he is also a Distinguished Teacher-Mentor, mentoring fellow professors. [See below]

He sees mentoring students as essential, whether he’s offering career advice or leading by example. “How I treat people and my work ethic, and how I approach my job with enthusiasm — these are the things that I hope people notice,” he says.

Sabrina Crowe ’26 describes Ryan as a “guiding figure” for her and others.

The quantitative finance major met Ryan freshman year, when she took his Creative Problem Solving in Computing class. She says his enthusiasm and commitment to students stood out. She had studied Python in high school but was never encouraged by her teachers to pursue it due to gender bias, she says. Everything changed in Ryan’s Python class.

“You have this professor who’s like, ‘Everyone should know how to code,’ and he’s so warm and welcoming,” Crowe says. She aced Python and got hired as his TA. As a sophomore, she was lecturing on Python to 30 students.

Crowe recently accepted a job with financial services group Societe Generale, a year before graduation. She can choose her team and says working with Ryan has been invaluable because he’s set the standard for the type of manager and team she wants to work with. His mentoring, she says, has mostly been about opportunities he has given her and the example he’s set. Crowe has seen Ryan spend hours helping struggling students.

“He’s kind of like a cheerleader for you. You can’t appreciate that enough. When he’s behind you, he’s behind you,” she says.

And in turn, Ryan has valued Crowe’s feedback — from whether an exam is fair to how to reach a struggling student. “She’s very smart ... but secondly, she’s a nice person, is very easy to work with, has a sense of humor and is very enthusiastic,” he says.

Just like her mentor.

– Beth Kissinger