EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was originally published in the April 2025 issue of GCU Magazine, available in the purple bins on campus or digitally.
Tina Gilson wasn’t living the life she wanted.
The Tennessean, who just completed her online student journey at Grand Canyon University, didn’t grow up in a tight-knit family and had no family members to turn to for advice when she considered joining the military.
“I grew up in a very rough life, all the way through my teens and got married pretty young,” Gilson said. “… I ended up having my son a couple years after getting married.
“I realized the lifestyle that I was living in was not very good and not where I wanted to be to raise my son, so I wanted to find something that I could do to improve my life – for me and for him.”
She decided to serve in the Air Force, enlisting when she was just 21 years old, even though it meant leaving behind her 6-month-old son, Caleb, for a time with her then-husband.
“That was a little bit tough. … But I knew we were going to get better,” said Gilson, whose son is now in the Army.
Joining the military has led to remarkable accomplishments for Gilson.
She serves as a chief master sergeant – the Air Force’s highest enlisted rank – stationed in South Carolina and Djibouti, East Africa. Her job: group senior enlisted leader for the 25th Attack Group at Shaw Air Force Base, a five-squadron combat group spanning three bases. She is the highest-ranking enlisted advisor in her group, advising the commander on everything from combat operations and readiness to mission effectiveness and morale.
And she hasn’t stopped there.
After 24 years of service, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, then a doctorate in organizational leadership from the University of Phoenix, Gilson challenged herself even more.
In 2020, amid the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic and just a year after defending her first doctorate, she jumped into a second doctoral program at GCU.
She wanted to be a better leader, she said, and GCU’s doctoral program was to her liking.
“I knew it was going to be at least (four) years of doing more learning and growing. I kind of took the plunge and went in and just did it.”
After a 4 ½-year grind to earn her Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology, Gilson defended her dissertation, “How Prior Service Members Describe Military Safety Culture and Safety Behavior.” College of Doctoral Studies Dean Dr. Michael Berger signed her dissertation in the spring.
Dr. Tim Wiltgen, who served as Gilson’s chair, said, “All my students are pretty smart, but she had passion and purpose. She knew what she wanted to do.”
He added that she was intentional about putting the pieces in place in her career, choosing a psychology degree to complement the management doctorate she already had.
“She wanted to combine the operational side of managing with the psychological forces.”
Thanks to her organizational skills, Gilson managed to balance her work and studies. Juggling her residency was her only obstacle.
“I was used to online school,” she said. “I’ve been doing it for so long that I was able to stay motivated and keep moving.”
Pursuing two doctorates enabled Gilson to view her job from a wider lens.
“What I learned the most in the process of acquiring my degrees, especially this one, is you don’t often get the viewpoint of others until you start looking for them,” Gilson said.
“And I think the doctoral programs really get you to look at things from other people’s perspectives. That’s the biggest thing – and being able to do a research project where you’re collecting those perspectives and going from where you began to where you end.
“The journey itself has just been mind-expanding for me. I think it’s improved my emotional intelligence more than anything, and has helped me become a better leader, a better parent and a better spouse. …
“Being able to learn and grow is really what my journey has been all about.”
That journey included coming to campus for her residency, which she said expanded her world beyond the people she’s around in the military.
“It’s not as diverse as going to a school residency where you have people from all different types of jobs and life, and just learning from each other.”
Gilson, whose military career has included various duties in the air traffic control field, as well as serving as chief controller and flight chief, was stationed in South Korea three times. She also served in Iraq, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Qatar, in addition to Djibouti.
“I generally will stay stateside, but then I’ll go for a yearlong remote to one of the locations,” Gilson said. “It gives me the opportunity to get the cultural (aspect) and learn about what other people are doing. And then come back home.”
Gilson said what eased her doctoral journey was Wiltgen’s feedback and accessibility, a key component for her because of the time difference between Djibouti and Florida, where Wiltgen is based
He said of Gilson, “She had passion, determination, purpose, intellect – and the other trait she had was that she never hesitated to reach out with a question or concern.
“I tell all my students, ‘If there’s anything that pops up that you don’t understand or are concerned about, reach out.’ She took full advantage of that, and that’s what I thought made her unique and successful.”
Gilson said of her time as an online student, among such diverse students, “GCU was a great experience to be able to do that and learn and grow even further in my doctoral journey."
GCU senior writer Mark Gonzales can be reached at mark.gonzales@gcu.edu.
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