He taught Political Theory at Michigan State University, where he was a faculty member during the early years of James Madison College, a residential college with a public affairs focus; at Michigan State he was also the Assistant Director of Academic Computing.
In 1998, he became a full-time Professor in SIMS, where he taught and conducted research until ailing health resulted in his retirement in 2006.
In 2005, Lyman became the director of the Digital Youth Project, formally known as "Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Cultures", a three-year collaborative project funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
In addition to his teaching and research, Lyman worked as an advisor to a wide range of organizations.
[6] Lyman and his longtime spouse Dr. Barrie Thorne (professor of Gender and Women's Studies, and Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley) raised two children, Andrew Thorne-Lyman, a doctoral candidate in nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health and Abigail Thorne-Lyman, the Director of the Center For Transit-Oriented Development at Reconnecting America.