Fun-Loving Approach Develops Communicators Who Excel

Published June 30, 2025

Taylor Hahn unapologetically subscribes to the belief that a fun factor is fundamental for meaningful learning.

In fact since 2017, Hahn has deliberately incorporated fun into a robust curriculum as the program director of Johns Hopkins University’s MA in Communication program. His efforts have resulted in courses that develop critical skills and grow effective, gifted communicators who play a crucial role in today’s world.

Ironically, it was the not-so-fun struggles – learning disabilities, including hearing issues and dyslexia – that he experienced in childhood that allowed Hahn to discern his life’s work.

“I had a lot of trouble because the standardization of public education didn’t mesh with my way of thinking,” Hahn said. “This is probably why I love communication so much. Comm allowed me to think how I think, and there was a theoretical framework for it. My teachers when I was younger might have said I was difficult, and my love of debate probably didn’t help that. I struggled in classes, but I excelled in debate. In college I was able to do my own thing and care my own way.”

Hahn followed the joy he experienced in argumentation through communication studies at Clarion University and Wake Forest University, eventually earning a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh. He is convinced that the scope and breadth of communication, it’s sheer size and variety and versatility, is what makes the study and mastery of it so enjoyable.

“I think for students to find success in our program at Johns Hopkins, they need to have a good reason to be in it, it needs to be fun, and they need to be willing to let it be fun,” he said. “Communication is most frequently sought out by people who are invigorated by the process. In potential students, I look for creativity, interest, and curiosity, and a willingness to let yourself guide the degree. You can really incorporate comm into anything that you want to do professionally or personally. I think the real value is being able to take on a skill set that you can adapt strategically to fit almost any need, with the right training, of course. That is why we are here.”

Faculty-Fueled Fun

To ensure that fun equates with student success and satisfaction, Hahn spends lot of time attracting faculty who themselves are fun seekers.

“We – my associate and assistant program directors and program coordinators – work really hard to ensure that we are bringing in people who want to teach because they enjoy doing it,” Hahn said. “We are fortunate, being we are at Johns Hopkins, to be able to recruit incredible instructors because it is often difficult to find good, qualified, passionate educators. The student interest and success stems from how we curate our faculty, and how we get out of their way. My job is to minimize the busy work for them so they can concentrate on our rubrics and learning outcomes, of course, but also bring themselves, their personal experiences and anecdotes, into the classroom and engage with the students. When the students feel like they are learning from the person who is in that story, the experience is a lot more invigorating. We have prioritized a level of playfulness and a willingness to try.”

The other joyful, fun part about directing the program, is that at the master’s level students “only have to think about the stuff they find interesting.”

Something for Everyone

The program enrolls hundreds of students every year across 41 courses. With so many options, students can concentrate on public relations, political, health, and digital communication, corporate and non-profit communication, and applied research communication to advance their skills and careers.

“No one in comm does it all, the field is just too big,” Hahn said. “Personally, I am a classical – rhetorical theorist who studies Plato and Isocrates. I have done a lot of research on semiotics, which is how we code and decode ideas and concepts. Rhetoric, for me, is the approach of communication as artful expression. For a lot of people in the field, particularly with an emphasis on the practitioner skill set, it is a social scientific process. These are just different approaches, and that is the beauty of it. I can look at the field of communication philosophically, my colleagues can look at it practically or scientifically, and it works. I find communication to be absolutely fascinating. I find the ways that people approach it, what they prioritize, what they are interested in to be endlessly curious. If we are having fun and doing it authentically, I think that is reflective of a successful program.”

In-Demand Curriculum

Hahn also embraces the engaging process of new course development, always with an eye on in-demand degrees that reflect growth in the job market and opportunities for students.

“We really lean on our adjunct instructors, who are typically directors of comm or doing similar things in full-time positions, to give us intel on what is going on in the field outside of the academic sphere,” he said. “They will see it months before we will, whether it is a need to change a curriculum or just a change in verbiage, and we use this information to adapt and develop courses.”

For instance, Program Coordinator and Senior Lecturer Shari Ross Altarac presented Hahn with a compelling case on why the program should ramp up its focus on storytelling. She developed an introduction to storytelling class that became instantly popular, and Hahn now plans to further that component of the curriculum.

“Effective storytelling and tapping into the psychological and scientific components that facilitate storytelling as an important practice for communication practitioners is underutilized in the field, including in our program,” Hahn said. “There is great research and evidence that shows if I tell you something, you are going to understand and assimilate it more if there is a narrative behind the data. Creating coherent logic and structure and narrative helps us convey information to various stakeholders.”

An Emphasis on Ethics

The program also launched a course, Communication Ethics and Action, which focuses exclusively on ethics concerns, though Hahn points out that ethics, along with audience analysis and adaptation, is infused in every course. The emergence of artificial intelligence, through programs like ChatGPT, is one such ethical conundrum.

“Every single course we offer talks about ethics in some way, whether you are taking a course on risk and crisis management or looking at a health and pr course and how we convey concerns to stakeholders,” he said. “We also need to be more mindful about how these new technologies can be problematic ways of circumnavigating education. Ultimately, there is some kind of untapped human potential that I think comes from creativity and innovation and play that goes beyond where AI currently can go. I think this is what our students do so well. If you write about something that is fun, you won’t want to use ChatGPT. My job is to give students space around what is fun, so they want to not use AI.

“Learning is a difficult exercise but it is necessary for growth,” he continued. “I love my field and this work, and I am a big believer in this – if we are having fun, the success follows. If you are having fun and you are not successful, this is not failure but rather a need to rethink that next step. Academia is hard, but it should be.”

And, he quickly adds, it should also be supremely satisfying. That requisite fun, even for the argumentation scholar, is not up for debate.