Faculty Appreciation: Dr. Lindsay Hogan

The call to educate hits every professor and teacher differently. There's a general, abstract understanding around how they love to digest and share knowledge, but not everyone dreams from a young age of standing in a classroom or lecture hall. Other career paths start the journey, even though they all eventually find their way.

That was the case for Lindsay Hogan, an Assistant Professor of the Practice in Boston College's Communication Department. The Texas native started her career in marketing and public relations in Texas, but after assimilating into the classroom by chance, she's now educating undergraduates in an ever-changing world resembling nothing of the past but retaining an eye towards future innovation.

"I don't want to teach the same things every semester," Hogan said, "because keeping up with new things is part of a lifelong learning process. I've been fascinated with how advertising changed in terms of programmatic advertising and algorithmic advertising, but it's about keeping up with the past practice of it while reading academic literature, plus you get to meet students while having the challenge of teaching them."

Teaching at Boston College is a long way from Hogan's roots, but it's where the former Longhorn found a home after a life that began almost exclusively in Texas. She's from the Dallas-Fort Worth region and graduated from the University of Texas-Austin to begin a career in agency-based advertising. Concentrating on branding and marketing, she specifically worked with Southern Methodist University as a client and developed campaigns around alumni outreach, a path that sprung her to a position as the Associate Director of Marketing Communications at SMU's Edwin O. Cox School of Business.

It was ideal work, and employment with a university allowed her to at least draw interest in some of SMU's academic programs. She never thought of returning to the classroom, but exploring individual coursework required enrollment in a master's program, a formality that unexpectedly pushed her back behind a desk as a student studying media and advertising.

The chance action linked her to faculty and triggered intellectual thoughts to flow through writing papers. Hogan's professors allowed her to guest lecture in the classroom, and after writing her theses, she found herself continuing down a path towards a doctorate that became more and more possible through the ongoing combinations of success and passion.

A crossroads jumped out of nowhere, and Hogan, a first-generation college graduate in her family, now needed to consider if academia was her permanent future. She enjoyed the classroom but enjoyed her job, and though a career change wasn't expected, she had to consider exploring new avenues. It was unexplainable, and she applied to programs around the country. After an acceptance into the program at the University of Wisconsin, the Texas girl traveled north and left her home state to take a leap of faith in Madison.

Diverging that path ultimately led her to Boston College after she merged her passions into her studies at Wisconsin. Hogan wrote her dissertation about the construction of children's media after watching the emergence of new demographics, and after she graduated, she joined BC's faculty in 2013.

"I had a good transition period when I worked at SMU as a full-time staff member," Hogan said. "I managed all of the advertising for the alumni magazine and created the very first social media account for the business school. I was a part of higher education, just not as a professor. But then I started guest lecturing in some of the undergraduate classes, and I loved it. I loved teaching. It was a bug that bit me, and it convinced me to quit my job and move across the country so I could do it as a career."
She is now an Assistant Professor of the Practice in BC's Communications Department but continues to research the media industry to remain fluid for her coursework. She introduces students to the merged world of new media communications and shows them a world beyond what they know while offering them a bridge to the evolution of an industry that continues to break ground with seemingly every innovation.

"I had two younger brothers who were born when I was [a teenager]," Hogan said, "and all of the watching in their television environment was crazy different than when I grew up. I was fascinated by that sort of shift, and having worked in consumer products and for an agency and with consumer products departments, I was super interested in this new, emerging market segment. There were preschoolers and elementary school children that became teenagers, but it wasn't really defined until we saw the types of technology [emerge]."

Hogan truly loves the work, and the overarching changes to media keep her courses fresh and new for students who change seemingly overnight. She's been a professor long enough to watch the emergence of social media, but she remembers a time when cable television offered new demographics ways to consume their television shows. It lives both in the time before Netflix and Facebook while offering a glimpse at where things can go after premium streaming options and TikToks fade into the next past.

"I love being able to really dig into the undergraduate programs here," Hogan said, "as opposed to other types of schools or universities where their focus is on the graduate programs. I teach the introductory class, which was my favorite thing to teach at Wisconsin, which is what we call the Survey of Mass Communication here [at BC]. It's basically the introduction to media studies and what the major is all about, and I've taught it every semester that I've been here. I'm able to redesign it and update it every semester, and I get to meet the freshmen and sophomores right when they're starting in the major.

"I also have another required class on communication research methods," she added, "and I'll usually get sophomores and juniors. Then there's a writing-intensive, media writing seminar for seniors, so I get to see [students] progress and get to really know them through that progress, which is super fun."

She's been uniquely qualified to reach her students, but her full package is particularly appreciated by student-athletes because she understands the unique role of athletics at a Division I school. She grew up in Texas and worked at SMU before pursuing her doctorate at Wisconsin, and all three schools exposed her to a healthy respect for athletes at a Division I institution. As a professor at BC, she fostered mutual respect for the academic and athletic sides of the house. Having known both sides, she now blends in her approach to the Eagles she sees in her classroom.

"Being a product of very large state schools, there's something about being at a physically smaller school," she said. "I love the fact that class sizes are smaller and that students all live on campus [at BC]. There's a community that's fostered here. And also here, our student-athletes have almost two full-time jobs as students and athletes. They come to BC as much for the educational aspects as they do for the athletic experience. That means there are students in my classroom who get up at 5 a.m. and schedule around games and travel, but their commitment to both the work on the court or on the field and in the classroom really shines through."

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