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Drew Bracken| Correspondent

ZANESVILLE He has a talent with math and analytics and Zane State reaps the benefits.

Growing up, I always got good grades in school and really liked math and science, but I dont think I had any particular career direction I knew I wanted to go," remembered Andrew Morrison, I considered engineering or being a business professional, but I certainly didnt think Id be doing what I do now.

Today, Morrison is Director of Institutional Research at Zane State College.

My time is largely spent building reports, analyzing trends, and working with college employees and external stakeholders to get them the information they need, he explained, I love being able to take a large set of data and distill it down to see the overarching trends and insights. I also really enjoy the challenge of what I like to call data puzzles. Basically, we have a particular question were trying to answer, and we have to work through what data to use, how best to organize it, and what calculations need to be run in order to arrive at a solution.

Morrison holds a critical position at the school according to Joseph Keating, executive director of operations at Zane State College.

Andrews position requires a high level of analytical and technical skill to produce and analyze reports for the college that enables our administration to make data-driven decision that impact the lives of our students, faculty, and staff, Keating said. Andrew embraces technology, which supports his analytical skills, and our college reaps the benefits.

Morrison grew up in Philo, graduated from Philo High School in 1999, Zane State with a degree in electrical/electronics engineering, then Ohio University with a bachelors in business administration. He also earned an MBA from the University of Wisconsin and just recently a masters in data science from Eastern University.

During my time as a student at Zane State and later Ohio University Zanesville, he said, I was a student worker at the campus bookstore and loved every minute of it. The college staff were (and still are) amazing and just being in the environment always felt like home. After graduating with my bachelors degree, I worked for a couple of years in banking, but then the textbook manager job came open and I jumped at the chance to work at the college again.

When I started my career at Zane State, he continued, I was the textbook manager at the bookstore, which involved working with faculty to get their required textbooks and then ordering the right quantities to have them available for students. It was a great job and I enjoyed working with faculty and students in that role, but at the same time I found a real interest and passion for analyzing trends and making decisions based on sound data. For instance, I would take sales, enrollment, and inventory data and pull it all together in a spreadsheet to try to build more accurate sales forecasts.

Zane States mission of empowering people through education is an important one, he concluded. Even though I may not be teaching a class or advising students directly, I take pride in being able to do my part and help our employees further the colleges mission. At the end of the day, I love the work that we do and am proud to be a part of the good work Zane State is doing.

Zane State College is located at 1555 Newark Road. For more information, call 740-588-5000 or log on http://www.zanestate.edu.

Aces of Trades is a weekly series focusing on people and their jobs whether theyre unusual jobs, fun jobs or people who take ordinary jobs and make them extraordinary. If you have a suggestion for a future profile, let us know at trnews@zanesvilletimesrecorder.com.

Originally posted here:

Aces of Trade: Andrew Morrison is proud to be a part of Zane State - Zanesville Times Recorder