From attending graduate school together in Illinois to teaching in North Carolina, assistant professors Kami Kosenko and Ryan Hurley have been a couple for nine years. Their personal and professional lives are intertwined—Kosenko and Hurley both work in the Department of Communication and have done research together, and five months ago they welcomed their son Wyatt to the world. 

In an interview with the Technician, Kosenko and Hurley discuss the challenges and benefits of working in the same department at NC State.

Technician: How did you two meet?

Kami Kosenko: We knew of each other in undergraduate school. We both did competitive public speaking for our respective universities, so we were familiar with each other, but it wasn’t until we went to the same doctoral program at the University of Illinois that we got to know each other, and we started our relationship there.

T: What is it like working at the same university?

K: I think it’s great. We feel very lucky to be able to do so. It’s hard enough for an academic to secure a tenure track job at a university, let alone for two to find jobs at the same university and in our case, the same department. We feel very, very lucky, and it allows us to share in the same kind of work environment and the same kind of work issues, share in responsibilities, so I think it’s something that we see as highly beneficial. 

T: Have interactions or research with your peers changed at all since you’ve been together?

Ryan Hurley: Everyone here has known us as together since forever, so certainly no changes, but I’m not sure that we’re treated any differently. I believe that we’re both treated as different individuals, which is certainly good. I mean, there are the occasional “Can you tell Kami this,” that might not happen if we weren’t in a relationship when instead a more formal email would go out to Kami instead of passing it informally through me and vice versa. Other than those kinds of rare situations—“pass this on to your partner”—that’s probably it. It allows us to both to understand the other person’s job quite well, so any issues and/or successes are understandable—like I know what it means to get a publication in a great journal, and I know what good journals are and the work it entails—which is something I’m sure other couples can’t necessarily say. 

T: On that note, what research have you done together?

K: We both have our own interest in health and communication, but we approach it differently. I look at interpersonal discussions of health, so how people talk about health in their close relationships, whereas he looks at media representations of health and its effects on consumers of that media.

H: More than that, we have differences in methods where she tends to do qualitative research where I tend to the quantitative types of research, but I think maybe she’s probably heading towards this being one of the benefits too.

K: Yeah, inevitably we talk about our projects with each other cause we’re around each other so much and we both know that we bring different areas of expertise to the table. So when we have project ideas where we can see the other making a clear contribution to that project, I think we naturally turn to each other since we have such easy access to each other. In the past when I’ve tried doing a more quantitative study, which isn’t necessarily in my wheelhouse, I first talk to him about it and if the content of the study is appealing to him, then I’ll ask him to be a part of it and vice versa. 

H: Yeah, absolutely, but if it’s not in my area we certainly help each other out here and there, but we only really do research together if there are things we would have similar interest in. I think coincidentally, perhaps, we have overlap in interest areas even though we have very different approaches, which allows us to work together. It allows us to diverse types of research too, because where I wouldn’t typically do a qualitative study, I have now. It’s a method and approach that I’m familiar with now because of working with her, and I think vice versa for quantitative and media effects type stuff. 

T: What kind of advice would you impart to people working in the same or similar fields of study—maybe the same company or university? 

H: We do work together on things, and that is a benefit, but you also still have to find time to keep separate so that 24 hours a day you’re not in each other’s face. 

T: Yeah, at one point in time we were driving to and from school together 

H: Every day, in the car, and at work, and at home.

K: So we decided that to give ourselves just even a few minutes of time alone that we should drive separately and pay the extra amount for the parking pass, but being able to find some time to yourself I think would be a healthy approach.

H: We still function as individuals within the workplace, and so if I wasn’t interested in a project that she was working on, I wouldn’t be working on it with her, because it wouldn’t be in my realm of interests and same for her. I think our interactions with people and with students—I mean, we’re on different committees. In fact I think we’ve only been one particular students’ committee that was the same, maybe only one. We really do function as individuals working at the same place and it overlaps almost coincidentally when we directly work together. It certainly allows for a really good shared understanding of the work environment and the work experience. 

K: I imagine—it really hasn’t affected us per se—but I imagine to keep whatever relational conflicts and tensions you’re experiencing out of the workplace. That hasn’t been the case for us, but I could see how that could trickle over into your work relationship, so I think that would probably be a tip for anyone endeavoring to work with their romantic partner. 

T: What are some other benefits of being in the same workplace?

H: I mean you’d take carpool except we stopped doing that. I’ve had you grab things out of my office and mailbox before, so we’ve certainly used each other as couriers.

K: Yeah, we have easy access to each other’s office space and resources.

H: If I forget something at work, she is there to get it and vice versa. 

K: I don’t know if this is true or not, but I think to a certain extent it might help the students see us more as people.

H: I would think so too. They’ve met all three of us.

K: Yeah, they know our family, not just us as individual professors. We brought [Wyatt] to student events on campus before and had students who bought baby gifts for us, and I think in a way it’s helped us connect even further with our students just because they know us as a couple, as parents and not just as their teachers. I think that’s a benefit, and we can certainly help each other do better at our jobs. I know he’s stolen various teaching techniques that I’ve developed.

H: Yeah.

K: I’ve taken ideas from him before, so we can kind of test-run those in the classroom sort of for each other.

H: Improve each other’s work, that’s a good point—in fact I definitely note the good things she does and try to do them in my work as well and teaching and research for sure. 

K: We can help each other with things with the university that other professors would have to turn to a staff member or have to call on a colleague. 

H: I tried to find a room the other day for an honor’s society meeting and a conflict came up and it ended up getting resolved, but the first person I called was Kami, ‘cause she was on campus and could potentially deal with it—of course I know her schedule and exactly what she was doing at that time.

K: Yeah when Moodle inevitably breaks down or stops working, I can say, “Can you check this out? Is it just me?” and he’s right there. 

H: Another potential drawback though—and it’s a drawback with this job in general—is that work comes home with you. I mean, that happens as a professor as a nature of the job—the research follows you and the teaching follows you—grading and preparation and everything. Furthermore, you live with the colleague who then one of your main shared experiences is work, so then there’s more work talk not at work. I think we try not to do it except for when we need to actually be doing work, but it does make doing work at home also easier because we do work together at home. 

K: It’s a lot easier for us to bring work home with us, not only because of the nature of the professors’ kind of lifestyle but also because that’s also something that we share, so it’s so easy for that to dominate our discussions, where for other people I think maybe you would have the come home “how was your day?” discussion and then you can leave work there, but it’s rarely left at that for us. 

H: For better or worse, because I think in many ways it makes our work better but in other ways it makes our relaxation maybe worse.