Informational Interview

Samuel Tiras is the Department Chairman in the E. J. Ourso College of Business Accounting Department at Louisiana State University. His job consists of full management of the accounting department, evaluation of performance, fundraising, handling student complaints, research, and evaluating tenure requests responsive to demands from the dean. Sam spends most of his time during the day in meetings, talking to people about various issues concerning the department, or its research.

For a desk job, he does not stay in one place all the time, rather he is mostly up moving around from one place to another, working on whatever needs to be focused on at that time. Giving advice to students about their career decisions is one of Sam’s favorite things about his job, whereas his least favorite is handling the constraints of the budget and faculty evaluations. Before working here at LSU, Sam started off working as an international auditor at the age of 23, traveling to many different places, as well as living in the Northwest for some years.

After that experience, he continued to find jobs within universities, until he came upon the opportunity at LSU, which he stated, “sort of just fell into my lap”. When the position was offered to him, his motive was because he wanted to see the accounting department to move in the direction he desired, in order for it to improve with its teaching research and service missions. He thinks his job is a fun one, sometimes a bit difficult, but much easier now working atmosphere, always learning something new and never has anything too repetitive to deal with.

He enjoys his job very much, is comfortable where he is, and is not sure if he would take on any new options given to him right now. He advises anyone interested in this field to prepare to be flexible, and to find time to be able to concentrate on your own research. I personally am not sure if I would be interested in this sort of job; although it does seems fun, I would more likely be willing to consider this sort of job later in my life, when I have the experience and know what direction I would like to go with my career.

He gets to work around his schedule well, being able to make it to his son’s baseball games while handling business over the phone. He did note that his phone is what helps make his life so much easier, being able to access his email and have anyone contact him wherever he may be so he is able to do his job well. I had a wonderful time talking to Mr. Tiras, for he is easy to talk to about anything you are interested in.

He is a great listener, and helped me try to decide on what concentration in business that I would like to graduate with, which degrees would be best for what I want to do later in life, and where I should start looking for jobs that will help give me the experience needed to obtain my experience. I enjoyed having the interview with him and hope to see him again in the near future for further discussions.