About

Delivering keynote speeches at national conferences and commencement speeches at graduations. Doing stand-up comedy in bowling alleys. Hosting burlesque shows. Directing a graduate studies program as a tenured professor. Dr. Ken Schneck is as experienced, memorable, action-oriented, and chuckle-inducing a presenter as you are ever going to find.

And he’s a rabble-rouser with his pen too! Ken serves as the Editor for The Buckeye Flame, Ohio’s LGBTQ+ digital platform, a role that earned him the “2021 Sarah Pettit Memorial Award for LGBTQ Journalist of the Year” from NLGJA - The Association of LGBTQ Journalists.

And apparently he’s interesting too! Ken was named to Cleveland Magazine’s list of “Most Interesting People 2024,” a fact that amuses him because he usually bans students from using the word interesting in class.

He writes regular features for Cleveland Magazine, PRIZM, and FreshWater Cleveland, and his writing has been recognized multiple times by the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists, including First Place in the "Best Criticism/Editorial" category. His work has been published in a ton of national media including The Advocate, The Windy City Times, 201 Magazine, Bravo TV, and NBC News.

For 6 years, he was a featured contributor to The Huffington Post, penning thoughts for the “Queer Voices,” “College,” and “Impact” sections that have been viewed and shared millions of times. His piece “Student Affairs Get Suicidal Too” sparked a national conversation about wellness in colleges and universities and is required reading for trainings across the country. And his piece “Cleveland Pride Was Just Canceled. And It Hurts.” helped to coalesce the rainbow energy of the entire world to make the push to (successfully!) restore the Cleveland LGBT Pride events.

In his spare time, Ken is a tenured professor of education at Baldwin Wallace University and serves as the Director of the Leadership in Higher Education (LHE) program, where he teaches courses on student development theory; race, class and gender in higher education; college leadership; and the intersection of public policy and higher education.

For 10 years, Ken was the producer and host of This Show is So Gay, the award-winning, long-running, nationally syndicated radio show/podcast focused on people using their voices in a unique way to create dialogue around LGBTQ topics. He interviewed over 500 of the most notable names in LGBTQ culture from civil rights champions to champions of drag, presidential candidates to singer/songwriters, prolific authors to one former member of Menudo (not as famous as Ricky Martin but just as gay). This Show is So Gay received the 2016 Excellence Award in Podcasting from the National Lesbian and Journalist’s Association and was nominated for the Best GLBT Podcast in the People’s Choice Podcast awards in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

In addition to all that, Ken somehow manages to find time to publish four books (so far): Seriously...What Am I Doing Here? The Adventures of a Wondering and Wandering Gay Jew (1984 Publishing) was released in 2017, LGBTQ Cleveland: Images of Modern America (Arcadia Publishing/The History Press) hit the shelves in 2018, and LGBTQ Columbus: Images of Modern America was published in 2019. His fourth book, LGBTQ Cincinnati, was released in 2020.