Music, Students are His Passion

Update: This story was first published in April 2013. After 13 years working with students at Pacific University, Ryan Aiello is leaving to become associate dean of student development at Portland Community College, Rock Creek. In honor of his service, take a look back at this story.

Ryan Aiello MA ’06 talks faster than a speeded-up TV commercial. 

“I have to teach myself to slow down,” he says with a laugh. “I tend to speed up when I’m excited about things.”

And Aiello, who is director of Residence Life at Pacific University, finds himself excited about both his job at the university, as well as his extracurricular activities, including his indie band, Ill Lucid Onset.

Aiello has been employed by Pacific’s Residence Life since July 2002 and currently runs the Office of Student Conduct, which deals with both professional and undergraduate student issues.

In addition, he is the founder, lead vocalist and a songwriter for the Portland alternative rock band, Ill Lucid Onset, founded in 2005. The band is currently in the No. 2 spot on the Portland alternative rock band charts.

The two positions share a common goal, he said.

“My job here (at Pacific) is about connecting with students and helping them achieve their goals, helping them through their struggles or challenge areas, and helping them define their strengths and help them grow those,” he said.

“For me as a songwriter … I just want to connect with people. If it’s something they can really feel deep emotion with and they can connect to, that’s great. That’s where I think those roads parallel.”

Aiello graduated from Washington State University with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1999 and was a Residence Life coordinator at Eastern Washington University before coming to Pacific.  

He earned a master’s degree in counseling psychology from Pacific in 2006 and noted that some of his roles have to do “with the terrible things that happen on campus,” everything from sexual assault to suicide ideation to other life-changing events. His job is to get students to grow within their own development, he said.

“I think I work in the best field of education: student affairs. I believe that sometimes, that’s where the richest growth happens and I really get to the issue of people developing and growing,” he said. 

He comes to the role having faced many obstacles in his own childhood and adolescence.

“I actually grew up in Southern California in a pretty rough lifestyle,” Aiello said, adding that his father was a high school dropout. “My dad, most of the time until I was in high school, was dealing and doing dope.”

In addition, Aiello said, his father worked a variety of “on and off jobs.” His mother also worked different odd jobs. As a result, Aiello said, the family moved around a lot, and he attended several different schools in California.

Life changed for him, however, when his parents divorced and his mother moved with him to Vancouver, Wash., where there was family.

His mother became a nurse, and Aiello graduated from Columbia River High School in Vancouver, lettering in theatre and maintaining a 3.0 grade point average.

Aiello then went to college, but attributes the idea of going on to further education to the family of a former high school girlfriend whose father was a Harvard educated lawyer.

“They saw something in me,” he said. “They encouraged me to look at schools, even took upon themselves to say, ‘Hey, let’s go for a drive and visit these schools.’ If it wasn’t for their family, I’m not sure I would have considered college.”

Aiello said his background as a young person gave him “my passion for students who are struggling.”

In addition to the family who encouraged him to continue his education, Aiello’s aunt encouraged him to play music.

“My aunt gave me a hand-me-down guitar, an acoustic guitar, and I taught myself how to play and just started taking stabs on writing and really learning how to sing,” he said.

His band’s name is a representation of his life. The acronym “I.L.O.” — if each letter is pronounced — indicates how Aiello’s last name is pronounced. The words themselves — “Ill Lucid Onset” — is “something cool, transparent and new,” he said. "It’s a very introspective sort of music, a very thoughtful kind of atmospheric rock,” he said.

“You’re not going to hear cheesy music from us. Most of our songs are about the human experience.”