Staff Spotlight: Dr. Robert Tirso ’15

Tell us the "short version" of your life story. Include where you were born, a few of the places you've lived, your education, your career progression, and of course we want to know about your family.
I was born the middle child (one younger sister, one older sister) of two Cuban exiles in Boca Raton, Florida, but grew up in Tomball, Texas. I did my first year of college at a community college before transferring to Texas A&M University as a sophomore psychology major. After graduating with my BS in psychology, I came back for my PhD with a focus on cognitive psychology and statistics. Originally I planned on pursuing a tenure-track academic job with an emphasis on research in metacognition and memory in educational settings. I wanted to use my work to improve educational outcomes for students, but by the end of my PhD program I realized that the academic research world was not for me. Instead, what I enjoyed the most about my work was statistics and working with data. I made a last-minute career change and ended up working as a data analyst for Student Affairs Planning, Assessment and Research just before I graduated with my PhD in the summer of '21.

What inspires you? What are some of the things you enjoy doing when you're not at work?
I love strength training in my free time. I have my own home gym and it is basically a temple where I spend my evenings after work. The endorphin rush just makes all of life's problems melt away for an hour or so and it's great. I also enjoy spending the occasional night out or night in with my girlfriend, hanging out with my friends and family, listening to podcasts or documentaries on all manner of things (usually political, psychological, historical, or economic in nature), going on walks, or playing video games.

What is one word you would use to describe yourself?
Light-hearted

What is one thing about you that few people know?
If I told you that, then more than a few people would know.

What is your DSA department, program (if applicable), what is your title?
Student Affairs Planning, Assessment & Research; Data Analyst

Why did you decide to come to work for the Division of Student Affairs at Texas A&M University?
Most of my work as a graduate student was driven by a desire to improve student outcomes in higher education. Although I would later lose interest in pursuing a tenure-track faculty position, I was still interested in education and working with data. When I saw the job ad for my current position, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to continue pursuing those interests in a more generalized manner, and it's been great.

Tell us about your job! What are your primary responsibilities and duties? And what other tasks and project do you end up doing that may not be on your job description?
Put simply, my primary responsibilities are to handle the quantitative analysis of assessment projects that our office conducts, to derive value and understanding from the data available to us, and to train and work with my graduate assistant(s) to do the same. So, if our office collects quantitative data for an assessment (e.g., an electronic survey), then I am either analyzing those results myself or reviewing the analyses my GA conducted on those data. This process involves not just performing the right statistical analyses on the data, but also thinking in broader terms about what the data show such as trends or useful relationships, as well how best to communicate those insights to others. I also work with the data that we have access to, such as the student engagement data the departments in the DSA turn in to us alongside their annual reports, to support our division's storytelling and continuous improvement efforts. I also get to travel to various conferences to present on some of the work our department does, and I participate in our department's efforts to offer assessment training and professional development to DSA staff.

What one thing do you love most about your job and why?
I love the variety and richness of the data I get to work with because it allows me to combine data from all these various sources and discover useful information from it that would otherwise have gone under the radar. For example, I've been able to use Fish Camp and wellbeing survey data to quantify just how beneficial attending Fish Camp is to the well-being of incoming freshmen in their first semester. I've also been able to use financial aid and Fish Camp data to quantify the extent to which financial resources (or lack thereof) predict the likelihood that students will attend Fish Camp, and how this relationship differs for first generation and non-first generation students. Then, you think back to the earlier work showing the positive impacts of Fish Camp and suddenly there's this compelling reason to want to increase Fish Camp participation rates... it all just comes together like a nice little puzzle.