Class began promptly at 7:15 p.m. At 7:20, there was still no sign of the professor. When the clock hit 7:30, a student got a call from him. He got caught up at work and would arrive shortly. Finally, Professor Todd Lowery came bumbling into the room at 8:00.
Lowery apologized for his tardiness. It was the first time he had arrived late all semester.
“Were you in the war room?” one student asked, jokingly.
“If there was such a thing…” he answered with a grin.
“Is there a national security emergency?” another questioned.
“If it were only that interesting,” he posited back. “I think you can sleep tight tonight.”
Lowery, who works as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, is also an adjunct professor who has taught the class, “National Security” for the past seven years at the Washington-Hillsdale Internship Program (WHIP).
In 2007, Hillsdale College approached Lowery. The college hoped to revitalize WHIP and wanted to teach a class on National Security. With no prescribed syllabus, Lowery had the freedom to choose what students in his class read. With the country at war, the class offered him the opportunity to introduce students to the subject of war and politics.
“So I thought if I had one shot with students to teach them everything that I found to be important over 15 years of schooling, what could I pack into 10 to 12 weeks,” Lowery said.
Though teaching is not Lowery’s main career, he enjoys it as a night job.
“I like it because you are introducing people to new concepts and new ideas. It also forces me to think about things and try to do a good job of explaining it,” he said.
Most students at WHIP, Lowery noticed, study national security for the first time in his class. The class has helped current WHIP student Kate Bock in her internship.
“Taking Dr. Lowery’s class on National Security Studies has greatly helped me with my job on the House Armed Services Committee,” she said. “It has been really interesting to see how the theory we learn is class is actually applied on Capitol Hill.”
The first class of every semester, Lowery asks students about their backgrounds in studying international relations. Most have very little experience. Lowery’s favorite part of teaching comes at the end of semester. He asks students to review what they have learned in the past semester.
“I’ve always found students who are very good, very informed students, have never had a rigorous, analytical approach to the study of foreign relations or national security,” Lowery said. “They come away, perhaps looking at things a little differently.”
Brittany Baldwin ‘12, uses what she learned from Lowery’s class at her current job, working for Senator Ted Cruz.
“Dr. Lowery’s class gave me a solid foundation to understand the complexities of foreign relations, and it has informed how I think about difficult questions facing the Senate,” she said.
Lowery has worked in the office of the Secretary of Defense for nine years. He met his current boss while working at a defense think tank, one of his first jobs out of graduate school. Eventually the secretary of defense became one of Lowery’s mentors.
Lowery left the think tank and entered civil service. At the end of President George W. Bush’s administration, his old boss was appointed as Under Secretary of Defense. The under secretary remembered Lowery. Since then Lowery has stayed on and worked for him in different capacities.
Though his areas of focus have shifted, international relations have always interested Lowery. Growing up in a rural town during the end of the Cold War, he was fascinated by the breakdown of the Soviet Union.
“It was ‘pre-Internet’ days so I was glued to the TV and loved reading the papers and anything I could find about how the world was changing around me,” Lowery said. “I remember the television images of people tearing down the Berlin Wall in my mind.”
Upon acceptance at Frostburg State University in Maryland, Lowery entered the international studies program.
After living in a small town, Lowery was eager to travel. He spent one summer studying in Germany. Another summer he worked at a think tank in Washington, D.C. He spent his break between semesters backpacking through Eastern Europe.
“That’s one of the reasons I like the WHIP program, because I’m a big believer in internships,” Lowery said. “Practical experience counts for a lot in this field.”
Lowery completed his undergraduate education in three years and went on to study at the University of Chicago to earn his master’s degree in international relations. He also holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Maryland.
Deep down, Lowery is a self-described “small-town kind of guy.” He said with a chuckle that he stays in D.C. partly, “because my wife likes it.” Lowery also said that the capital is the best place to study international relations and foreign policy. So he stays and continues to teach.
“It gives a certain energy to me,” he said.