Name: Timothy Law Snyder
Nickname: T-Law
Hometown: Toledo, Ohio
Favorite Movie: Wings of Desire
Favorite Food: Do I have to be honest? Peanut butter. I can eat it by the spoon full.
Go to Song: Quadrant 4, by Billy Cobham. It makes me so happy and gets me excited.
As the current President of Loyola Marymount, what are you most excited about for this upcoming year? Making progress on our many initiatives and assuring that the LMU name expands in renown and in breath. We are really trying to get our name out there because we feel like the quality of the institution so surpasses its renown. It will help all our alumni and all our work I think if we become better known.
What is your favorite thing about being President? Being able to connect people in ways that allow their ideas to forge and create something new and something good and by something good that’s very close to our mission; that something that helps the world for those here, for those to come, and for the Earth itself.
What advice do you have for incoming students? Get to know your professors. We say it all the time but they have to remember they don’t have a history here, so no matter how shy or what they think their reputation is, it is easy to do. You just trip the wire and go introduce yourself to a professor. Another thing would be to stay confident because if you’ve been admitted here yes, you will thrive here and you can thrive here. It is just a matter of applying yourself.
What do you like to do in your free time? I play music. I listen to music and I like to drink good wine.
Many are aware of your music career via your SoundCloud page (https://soundcloud.com/timothylawsnyder) or from purchasing your hit song, “Uncle Wiggly” on ITunes (see link below), but is it true you were in a punk rock band known as Whirlwind? Yes, and that is the goofiest name! We wanted to change it but our agency wouldn’t let us do it because we had a fan base and they were like, “You can’t change your name it will ruin your career!” so they wouldn’t let us change it. Our band wasn’t all punk however. We played a variety of music but we aired on the aggressive, so that might be a good example. It was a lot of pop and rock.
So basically it was some head nodding music? Oh yeah, there was some head banging on occasion.
How did you develop such a passion for music? Anything that gives me chills ignites my passion. I play guitar, I sing, I play keyboard, but I’m not very good at the keyboard. I’m better at guitar I think.
Is it true that you met your wife, Carol, because she interviewed you for CNN about the odds of winning the lottery? Yes, she stalked me. When I sit down with her and tell the story I say, “You stalked me.” I used to be a mathematician and when I was at Georgetown they had a way of describing the odds that’s different from how they usually describe it that’s more understandable. So this one time it went way out of control, nothing compared to like how it is now, but I had been up since like five in the morning and they called me at 4pm and I thought I had done my last show and it was a good one, it was MSNBC so I was pretty excited, but they go we think we have one more. I’m like “Yeah except I’m burned out you guys forget I got up at 3 today,” and they go “Yeah but this one is with Carol Costello.” I’m like I have no idea who that is. Meanwhile she was at her station and they said to her we are going to have you interview a mathematician and she was like yeah, except for one thing I’m not going to do it. So they freaked out on her and I was on a screen at the time and she goes, “I want to interview that guy,” because it was a Powerball story and they go that’s actually your guy! Neither of us wanted to do it actually so it was fateful.
Tell us a fun fact about yourself: So I tried to think of things and I’ll give you a million of them. I wrote to my wife and thought what do I do that others don’t do? One is when I go up staircases I alternate my direction so that I kind of keep balance flight by flight. So I’ll turn in the opposite way one time and then another way.
My middle name, Law, was part of my Grandfather’s first name, Whitlaw.
Carol, my spouse had eight more fun facts ending with so you want me to go on? So one of them is I count in weird ways to make my running easier to bear. I’m always doing a lot of numerical analysis on the numbers.
This is really embarrassing; I remember dog’s names instead of people’s names. So on my morning walk I know the names of all the dogs but I can’t remember the owner’s.
I love fuzzy baby heads. I have to touch them. You’re not supposed to do it but there is something about them, I like the heat.
I can communicate with cats by using strange noises. I can get them to come right to me.
I feel elation at the thought of eating a fabulous piece of fruit or hearing beautiful, soaring music in church. I might cry or something.
Simple things thrill me, like the sight of a hot air balloon. We had seen one the day before and I freaked.
I love seeing the creative juices flow when a student gets it. It makes me just pray thanks and happy to be alive.
I love experiencing new things through others eyes.