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“Halfway through my freshman year, I contracted COVID-19 and norovirus at the same time,” Johnson says. “I was totally knocked down for over a week but trying to muddle through. People were recovering from COVID-19 all the time, so would I.”

Instead, he lost the one thing he couldn’t afford to lose.

Johnson says pain and ringing in his left ear quickly included severe pain in his head.

“That day and the weeks that followed were the beginning of the end for me,” he says.

Johnson’s headaches were identified as severe migraine, and an eventual MRI showed nerve damage had caused irreversible hearing loss and a permanent end to his music dream.

“I was told that a hearing aid would be needed and protecting my good ear was essential,” Johnson says. “That meant no large horn ensemble performances, a degree requirement for a saxophone performance degree. The very reason I was in college was just gone.”

Or so he thought.

New academic plan, new life goals, new relationship with music

As anyone would imagine, accepting his new reality was difficult, and Johnson says it took a while.

“At one point when I was very down, my dad just took me by the shoulders and said, ‘Look, we will figure this out. Music isn’t working right now, but there is a lot more to Ian Johnson than music and lifting weights.’”

With a talent for selling things and a natural ability to communicate effectively, Johnson changed his major to integrated strategic communication. It felt like a good fit.

“Sure, it made sense, but at the same time it didn’t feel like I was ‘selling’ the life I wanted to sell, to myself or anyone else,” says Johnson, who was seeking some deeper meaning in his academic life to match the deeper grounding he had found in his spiritual life over a challenging year.

One of Ian’s mentors and instructors in the music department was Robert Baca, professor of music and director of jazz studies. Baca says that what he knows of Johnson made it inevitable in his mind that despite the huge setback to his music dreams, Johnson would find his way to new and fulfilling goals.

“Ian is a selfless individual whose faith tells him that he was chosen for something larger in life and he believed it was just a matter of experience to discover how his God-given influence would be used,” Baca says.

“It is true that Ian loves and has a great passion for music, but as his life journey unfolds, he is the type of person who will find a workable hybrid as long as it helps others and gives him purpose in life.”

Professional studies program becomes the path to law enforcement

That “workable hybrid” came along when Dr. Bradley Carter, associate professor of biology and the instructor for Johnson's liberal education credit neuroscience class, required the class to attend an all-majors career fair in Davies Center.

“I was just wandering around this fair and I ran into the resource officer from my high school,” Johnson says. “I chatted with him and other Eau Claire Police Department officers, and they were telling me I should become a cop. Me? No, I don’t want to do that. That’s way too scary.”

The next person to speak to him at the event was a Wisconsin state trooper, who mistook him for a marine, based on his appearance. After a short chat, that officer also told Johnson he seemed like someone who would “make a good trooper.”

“It dawned on me that maybe these were signs that a career in law enforcement could be something to fit my goals,” he says. “It was back to the drawing board again with my advisor.”

Nichole Miller, post-traditional program manager in the College of Health and Human Sciences, had helped Johnson navigate his first academic plan change. Once again, Miller talked him through another shift, this time to consider the professional studies degree plan which offers flexible individualization in emphasis.

“When professional studies became an option for Ian, things really started to click,” Miller says about the opportunity for Ian to complete a police academy program amid his UW-Eau Claire classes.

“We were able to map out a plan that included online coursework and internships across several departments. This allowed Ian to earn credit while doing meaningful work in the community. Over the past year, he’s found a clear direction in law enforcement. Thanks to partnerships with the Wisconsin Technical College System, he will graduate this month from UW-Eau Claire and the police academy at Fox Valley Technical College,” Miller says.

Johnson says he owes Miller so much gratitude for all she’s helped him sort out over his time as a student.

“Nichole Miller has gone to bat for me so many times, advocating for me to have unique ways of accumulating the credits and courses needed to change majors again and commit to police training,” Johnson says. “She went the extra mile 10 times over for me and my journey.”

Johnson also credits Carter’s compulsory career fair attendance as the push he needed to start thinking out of the box.

“On top of being a great professor who helped me get through tough course content in neuroscience, Dr. Carter’s wisdom in requiring we all write a one-page paper about a conversation with at least one career fair employer was great advice, even for students not in a transition like me.”

As for Carter, he says he enjoys sharing Johnson’s story with other students, validation in the highest form for pushing outside one’s comfort zone.

“I'm so glad our assigned attendance to the all-majors career fair ended up being important for Ian’s career planning — it's great for fellow students to hear this kind of journey,” Carter says.

“Ian always brought a positive attitude to class and found relatable connections to course content from his personal medical experience, which resonated with his peers and enhanced their learning as well,” Carter says.

Local goals for a rural law enforcement future

The day before receiving his UW-Eau Claire bachelor’s degree on May 16, Johnson will graduate from the police academy at a ceremony where he will deliver the only student remarks.

“I was elected class president this year, which is cool,” Johnson says. “I was a student senator at UW-Eau Claire, and I was able to apply a lot of that leadership experience to writing up some of the policies adopted by our cohort.”

Johnson, who calls himself “not much of a city guy,” has long hoped to work for the sheriff’s office in Eau Claire or Chippewa County.

That goal is now a reality as well. Just this week, Johnson was offered a deputy sheriff position with the Eau Claire County Sheriff’s Office.

While he has been able to maintain a strong foothold of music in his life through playing in a couple local bands along with writing and recording music, Jonhson says that what once felt like a complete loss and defeat has brought him to the role he feels was waiting for him all along.

“This career as a law enforcement officer will apply all of the things that are most important in my life,” Johnson says. “My passion for fitness and strength training will be an asset, along with my ability to communicate well and remain calm in tense situations. I consider it such a gift that I will spend a career meeting people in dark or scary moments of their lives and providing hope and relief. That is the purpose I needed to find, and I have.”