How Ryan Falcioni's career path and teachings has shaped him into the professor, person, father, and husband he is today.

By Nya Hardaway

Professor Ryan Falcioni teaches Ethics Philosophy and Western Religion here at Chaffey, as well as instructs Jiu-Jitsu classes on campus. I sat down with him right after his ethics class wrapped up, which I attend every Tuesday, to have a one-on-one conversation about ethics and how his career path has shaped his life.

Falcioni tells me he started his journey in ethics because he felt it aligned best with his personal beliefs then, and now. "In some ways, I think I was always interested in ethical issues," he says, "My professional and personal interest kind of aligned in ethics in a way that I hadn't thought of till I had a word for it."

He was raised in a religious household where he says a lot of the choices and decisions were, "religified", a word he made up to mean influenced by religious perspective. Once he began his own journey, he was introduced to new ways of thinking. "it was cool seeing things from a different lens" he continues, "There was this religious perspective on a lot of things, do's and don'ts and social issues that I still care about but maybe in a slightly different lens now."

When we talk wider about his personal beliefs, he tells me he believes he's an optimist, a person who sees hope and good in the future. "I see horrible atrocities in the world every day and I lose hope really quickly." he says, "But almost to a person, when I sit down with them and break bread, have a drink, a coffee with them, I generally believe that people want a better world [...] and maybe things just get lost in the method."

He connects to ethics on a personal level before a professional level, and you can both hear and see it in the way he teaches. I asked how he found ethics and made it his career. "It's [ethics] always been a part of who I am, and I just found different ways of coming at it and connecting to it by studying and writing." I am a strong believer in loving what you do, and he is the embodiment of that.

The deeper our conversation got, we began to talk about how important personal growth is to developing personal ethics and morals. I asked him how he has developed his beliefs while on his teaching path. "I want to think that I am constantly growing and evolving." He says, "The academic part of it has been important but I don't think it's the most important. I think it's really the encounters and the relationships you have with people."

With Professor Falcioni, the conversation is always going to be thought-provoking and honest. His classroom feels like a safe space to talk about your inner thoughts and where judgment is left at the door. He wants to learn what matters to us, and he is willing to have a conversation about anything. This is how he makes connections.

During our time together, I had the opportunity to tell him how much his class has done for me as a human on this earth. I have begun identifying my personal beliefs because of his class, and I shared how he was truly the reason I started. "Wow, thank you." He said while smiling at me, "The more important work is working on yourself, right? Soulmaking or cultivating virtue. It's about the more difficult and softer work of developing your inner self."

Before wrapping up our heart-to-heart, I asked him if he had anything to add, "I want people to be open to new possibilities, new imaginings of what's possible. Be open to those coming from places that they might not think to look and from people they may not want to sit down with."

This time, I was the one to speak first in the comfortable silence between us, "I needed to hear that."

Humans of Chaffey: Ryan Falcioni