Associate Professor
Health Enhancement K-12

121B Hosaeus PE Complex
Montana State University
Bozeman, MT 59717-3360
lowens@montana.edu | 406.994.5954

Lynn came to Montana State University in 2002 after 15 years of teaching at the University of Maryland and three years at Western Maryland College.  Lynn's expertise is in pedagogical studies (the study of teaching and learning) and she received her doctorate from the University of Maryland.

The current focus of Lynn's research is in understanding the connection between personality and performance.  Over the past 4 years, she has conducted studies examining this connection in athletic, academic, and administrative settings.  Currently, Lynn and her graduate students are seeking to understand “how to harness the strengths of a person’s personality to maximize their performance.” The overall result of this work suggests that “personality matters.”   By understanding a person’s strengths of personality and the effects of stress on those strengths, Lynn is also applying previous research conducted over a 15-year period where she studied the ethic of care.  Her work in the ethic of care focused on how teachers care for their students and teach them to care for themselves, the content, and each other.  She also studied how teachers become caring and, more importantly, credible in their teaching journey. 

Over the course of her career, Lynn has been recognized and honored as a result of both her research and teaching.  She has published and presented her work at state, regional, national, and international meetings over 60 times.  From the American Educational Research Association, Lynn has received three awards. These include the Exemplary Paper of the Year Award in 2006, the Lawrence F. Locke Outstanding Dissertation of the Year Award in 2001 and the Outstanding Graduate Paper Award in 1996.  She was honored in 2003 with the National Girls' and Women's Sport Pathfinder Award presented at the annual convention of the American Alliance of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD).  While at the University of Maryland, Lynn was a 6-time recipient of the University Excellence in Teaching Award and at Montana State University, she has been honored by her students 5 times for Outstanding Teacher.

In addition to teaching, research, and service at Montana State University, Lynn has a consulting business, Performanality, PLLC, where she works in various settings to teach, coach, train, and inspire people to understand the connection between personality and performance and how best to take care of themselves and those around them to maximize performance and be their “best self.”