Ryan is a Senior Lecturer of Philosophy, a Teaching and Learning Innovation Faculty Fellow, and a founding member of the Simulations + Gaming + Role-Playing Community of Scholars at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Using Game-Based Learning, Ryan designs tabletop role-playing games to help teach undergraduate philosophy. His current project, World of Philosophers, was created for his Professional Responsibility course and is a hack of the award-winning tabletop role-playing game, Dungeon World, by Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel.

In his spare time, Ryan enjoys playing Dungeons & Dragons, watching Cartoon Network, and oscillating between hope and despair over American politics.