Faculty & Staff

Theresa Tiso received her BS and MS in Physical Education from Cortland State, New York, and also earned a New York State Health Education Certification. While a student at Cortland, she received 18 credits from the Deutsche Sporthochschule in Cologne, Germany.

Theresa Tiso is currently an associate professor in the Physical Therapy Department, School of Health Technology Management, where she is primarily responsible for teaching sports and exercise nutrition, wellness and fitness, and movement analysis. From 1981 to 2004, Professor Tiso taught in the Physical Education department at Stony Brook, was granted tenure in 1986 and promoted to Associate Professor in 1991 in the Division of Physical Education and Athletics. Prior to moving to the Physical Therapy department, she accepted additional administrative responsibilities including the Chairperson of the Physical Education department and the Director of the Graduate Coaching Certificate Program, an 18-credit cluster in the interdisciplinary Masters in Science and Liberal Studies offered in the School of Professional Development. She accomplished the task of formatting all the Graduate Coaching Certificate classes into an online platform and is recognized as a pioneer in Coaching Education, with an emphasis in Distance Education. From 1981 to 2000, Ms. Tiso coached varsity volleyball, successfully transitioning the program from Division III to Division I status, culminating in 2005 with her induction into the Stony Brook University Sports Hall of Fame.

Professor Tiso focuses her teaching and research activities in the areas of exercise nutrition, wellness, obesity prevention in children, physical activity for older adults, as well as gender and sport, and coaching and leadership issues in education. She has presented at numerous conferences and invited lectures in the past 30 years and is currently working with an obesity prevention research program, a collaboration of the Departments of Physical Therapy and Preventative Medicine in the University Hospital. As the first Director of the Wellness Living/Learning Center, she developed and taught classes in the 24- credit Wellness minor as well as participating in the Federated Learning Community-Special Topics Minor, “The Sixties.” She currently offers a sport nutrition elective for the Registered Dietetic Interns in the Department of Family Medicine and continues her lifelong professional and personal involvement in physical activity and wellness in the School of Health Technology and Management. As a doctoral student in the Stony Brook University Sociology department, Professor Tiso has recently focused on the sociology of science with an emphasis on the body, gender, and health issues.