After spending 30 years as a reporter for The Springfield Daily News and The Republican, Mary Ellen Lowney decided in 2007 that it was time for a change.

“I’m too young and have a lot of time left, and I should think about doing something else, and one good step to that was going to grad school,” Lowney said.

The longtime journalist enrolled at Bay Path College, but wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted to do after spending three decades in journalism.

Ironically, at this point, Lowney was covering colleges for the newspaper when she met American International College President Vince Maniaci, who offered her a job a position as an adjunct professor for a journalism class.

“I was still in grad school, so I told him to ask me when I’m done and I would love to,” said Lowney. “When I was done, I saw him again and they still had an opening, so I took the one class and I really liked it.”

After teaching the journalism class that spring semester, a full-time position opened up, and Lowney got the job. A few years later she was promoted to become the Chair of the Communication department at the school. Now, Lowney celebrates her tenth year at AIC.

Now a college professor, Lowney has always loved writing, reporting, analyzing and presenting new information – dating back to her days in high school.

Lowney grew up in nearby Enfield, Conn., and went to Enfield High School, where she perhaps fell in love with writing.

“When I was in high school – this was during the Hippie days – my friends and I decided we were going to start an underground newspaper,” said Lowney. “We wrote a few articles with a radical slant. We went into the copy room and we got caught.”

The teacher who caught them decided it wasn’t a bad thing that the students were doing after all, so he supported them, and started a book club for them.

“I don’t know why he didn’t start us on a journalism club,” Lowney said. “But in my mind, I never really lost interest in it. I just thought it was a cool thing to do – to bring together information and disseminate it.”

Lowney then attended Springfield Technical Community College, where she didn’t major, but had an idea of what she wanted to do.

Just for the fun of it, she decided to take a journalism class. It was in that class that STCC’s student newspaper was launched.

“We voted to start a student newspaper, it was called ‘STCC It,’” Lowney said, laughing. “All of our work was around getting that paper out.”

She also worked at STCC’s radio station, WTCC, where she had her own show.

“I was always so nervous to talk on the air,” Lowney said, which may come as a surprise to those who know this outgoing professor. “They had a great record collection though, and back then it was actually spinning records, so I had to get my license from the FCC.”

After her two years at STCC, Lowney went to UMass-Amherst, and she needed to pick a major. She had her mind set on Early Childhood Education, but missed the deadlines to register.

“I was so mad, it’s like, after this semester I’m going to be a senior!” Lowney said. “So I thought about what I wanted to do.”

Lowney recalled that during her first semester at UMass, she used her good researching and writing skills to start a little business of writing papers for other students. She would interview them, and then write up their papers, and she insisted “they always got either an A, or a B+, or a B.”

So when it came time to finally choose a major, one of her friends suggested majoring in Journalism, which she thought was a good idea.

When Lowney graduated from UMass in 1977, it wasn’t easy for recent college graduates to find jobs due to a recession. But somehow, Lowney was very lucky.

“Don’t ask me how, but I ended up with three job offers,” Lowney said.

Two were summer jobs – one as a reporter for The Daily News and the other in marketing/public relations for The Big E. The other was as a newspaper stringer – where you got paid by the inch – for The Hartford Courant.

Lowney ended up taking the job as a reporter, because she saw that job as having the most potential, and in the end, she wanted to be a reporter.

She started out doing general assignment work and writing briefs, which she said wasn’t her favorite.

“I actually hated it for a long time because only every once in a while they’d let me do a real story,” Lowney said.

Eventually, Lowney started doing some beat writing, and covered various topics in her time as a journalist. She covered beats such as the city’s schools (for 10 years, her longest assignment), colleges, county government, and what she called the “catastrophe beat” of cops, fires and accidents.

The passionate former journalist said she loves breaking news, but then added she has “equal love” for it along with investigative journalism and feature stories.

“The in-depth stuff was nice, where you analyzed things and came up with new information,” Lowney said. “When you’re at a newspaper as a news reporter, you’re going to do more news than features, so features are a nice break. And they are a good way to get everyone on your beat to trust you and like you, and see that you’re going to do positive stuff too.”

She gave examples of some interesting stories she took on over the years. She talked about one in particular, during a boom in state funding for school construction, when Lowney thought that the cost of this construction was too expensive,

“Sabis Charter School came in, building schools at like a quarter of the cost – the difference was unbelievable, for the same number of students,” Lowney said. She also said she likes a story she wrote that compared cleanliness of schools with academic achievement.

In her later years working for the paper, Lowney had a weekly story called “Quality of Life,” a Springfield feature typically about something that hurt the quality of life in a particular neighborhood.

“It was always either on a crappy house that was falling apart that nobody was taking care of, or a lot that was all full of garbage – it was something bad that hurt the quality of life in that neighborhood,” said Lowney. “They were really good stories, and really easy to write.”

Lowney said she “started getting really out there with the writing,” pushing the limits and writing sarcastically and funny without breaking any rules.

She’s also a devoted traveler, so naturally her most fun stories were when she actually got to travel – a rare occasion.

“They actually let me go to England once, I was so psyched,” Lowney said. “Sabis had a summer program in Bath, England and some students from Springfield went there, so I went for a week. I also pitched a few travel stories while I was there, so that was fun too.”

Lowney usually goes on an annual trip to Ireland, and she would write a story from there every year.

While Lowney had a lot of fun working as a journalist, 30 years working in any profession is a long time, so moving on and getting her Master’s in Communications and Information Management at Bay Path sounded interesting to her.

Now, she’s happy as can be in her role at AIC. Many students recognize her as a very down to earth person who genuinely loves to teach, and her office door is always open if you want to stop in.

“I like it a lot, it’s fun,” Lowney said of her job. “You get to hang around with young people, and you get to stand up and talk and everybody listens to everything you say.”

The Communication major has evolved a bit in the years Lowney has worked at AIC. Technology has changed, and jobs are different both inside and outside the industry.

“There was a time when I first started, where graduates were having a hard time getting jobs in the industries, but it doesn’t seem that way anymore,” said Lowney. “Kids are getting out and even if it doesn’t happen right away, within a year, a lot of them are getting good jobs.”

Many recent AIC Communication graduates have gotten jobs doing social media, and not just within the communications field; for “regular old businesses,” according to Lowney.

When asked about what her favorite aspects of her current job, Lowney paused to think for a moment.

“I think the Yellow Jacket might be my answer to that,” Lowney said. “You know, I like helping students – obviously that would be the biggest thing – seeing all the graduates doing well, that’s the best part, and I’m not making that up.

“But in terms of day-to-day stuff, I love working with my YJ editor, and organizing the stories, and getting them published” she added. “And it’s really been cool seeing them online, I love it!”

Lowney really loves her job as a college professor today, but recently, she hit a little bit of a road bump within her personal life.

Early in November, Lowney was diagnosed with breast cancer. Thankfully, the problem was detected early. She quickly received a surgery date and underwent an operation to remove the tumor.

After a week off from school, she is back in action and on the road to becoming cancer-free.

In the end, she has quickly realized that life is too short to worry about things out of your control.

“It’s already given me a new outlook on life, I think that happens instantly,” Lowney said. “You realize what’s important and you don’t sweat the small stuff anymore. You just never know what life’s going to throw your way.”

She continued, “the thing that I have noticed is that I feel more decisive. It doesn’t matter what anyone else wants me to do, I’m the one deciding. I don’t mind listening to what someone thinks, but I don’t care anymore. It’s not about you.”

Overall, despite having to fight a terrible disease in the middle of the holiday season, Lowney is at peace and is happy with her life.

“I do have a good life though, I really enjoy my life,” Lowney said with a smile.