Meet New Faculty Member Keith Luoma

Keith Luoma, Ed.D., has been teaching at Augusta University since 1988, most recently business math for the College of Math and Science before moving to the Hull College of Business in the fall semester.

Luoma describes his journey to Augusta as “falling down the country” – starting in his native Michigan, moving to the Washington, D.C., area, and then to Georgia.

He received his Bachelor of Science in Math from the University of Detroit, a Master of Operational Research at George Mason University, and a Master of Quality Assurance from Kennesaw State University. He earned his Doctor of Education from the University of North Georgia in 2021.

Luoma started his teaching career in a statistics class while a grad student at George Mason.

“My parents were both schoolteachers. Middle school. I liked the lifestyle, but I had no interest in doing it, so I found myself really shocked the first time I had to teach a course and discovering I really like this,” he said.

He first taught learning support math for then-known Augusta College, but now instructs a more challenging course, Fundamental Analytics for Business.

“That’s quite a long time I’ve been here. The advantage of having moved through some different positions is to help keep me from being stale,” he said. “It’s really fun right now, just because what I’m teaching is very fresh.”

Outside of the classroom, Luoma enjoys fitness training, including running. There was a time in the early 2000s when he was a nationally-ranked race walker. At the Penn Relays, the largest annual track and field meet in the world, he twice won the Masters-level 10,000 meter walk.

“Race walking is a virtually unknown sport in the U.S. I competed for 22 years in that sport. Before that, four years as a runner, including a couple marathons,” he said. “I had injuries that built up over the years – pesky little things – and it wasn’t fun anymore.”

Luoma has been published frequently in teacher-oriented publications. For approximately five years, he wrote a column for the Georgia Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

As a lecturer for the Hull College, his main duties are to instruct classes, but he would like to publish his dissertation focused on stakeholder relations and stakeholder management and measuring personal mindsets in management journals.