Resume

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Professional Summary

Political science PhD with a specialization in applied quantitative research methods and 16+ years of experience in data-driven analytics, causal inference, statistical modeling, predictive analytics, and data mining to understand and improve the customer experience. Excels at working in unstructured environments to create, support, and manage collaborations and partnerships with institutions and collaborators across job specializations, geographies, and time zones. Has worked creatively and independently to produce large datasets that facilitate research presentations and publications. Passionate about using data science skills to improve strategy to deliver business and customer value.

Relevant Skills

• Expert in using quantitative approaches – including causal inference techniques, time-series analysis, and computational social science – to collaborate, test hypotheses, and publish with researchers and examine how institutions, social media, and issues affect elite, mass, and legal behavior
• Subject matter specialist on social media and politics who has published 2 books, 3 articles, and 4 reports and briefs on this topic
• Substantially experienced with providing education to diverse stakeholders, teaching them to leverage quantitative tools to answer research questions
• Outstanding at public speaking and using data to communicate, summarize and translate complex issues and research results to nontechnical audiences, and inform next steps that benefit multiple, distinct stakeholders
• Successfully builds relationships with diverse communities, colleagues, senior partners, and entities that span time zones and regions

Work History

Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, 2006-Present.
Collaboratively conduct interdisciplinary, quantitative research using various methodologies, including survey research and extracting data from government and legal documents, archives, websites, and other sources, to examine the role of social media in U.S. politics

• Designed and executed 10 different surveys using Qualtrics to to study social media and civic engagement among young voters, using R and Stata to implement causal inference techniques and regression-based approaches.
  • Produce peer-reviewed publications in Social Science Computer Review (here and here), Social Science Quarterly, the Journal of Information Technology and Politics, Lexington Press, and Routledge.
  • Published briefs in The Huffington Post, The Hill, and Scholars Strategy Network to communicate our research findings to broader popular audiences.
• Blended and coded original data from government documents, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United Nations, World Bank, websites and more to create multiple datasets to study the relationship between climate change and crime.
  • Used Stata and R to implement difference in difference techniques, panel data analyses, and time-series tools to produce peer-reviewed publications in Climatic Change and Environment and Behavior.
  • Published a brief in The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage Blog to communicate findings to the public and policymakers.
  • Research was featured by the World Economic Forum, International Labour Organization, World Bank, Intergovernmental Panel Report on Climate Change and more.
• Researched the relationship between congressional behavior and the Supreme Court, using R and Stata to analyze and visualize data, publishing a manuscript in Justice System Journal. This led to two pieces in The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage Blog (here and here) to communicate this research to broader audiences.
• Publicly presented over 40 pieces of collaborative, original research at national conferences that summarized and clarified complex statistical techniques and findings.
• Consult and collaborate with colleagues across departments, universities and diverse research communities to support their research by using tools for data analytics, visualization, and mapping to conduct data analyses, assisting them to successfully publish multiple peer-reviewed academic research articles.
• Develop and manage relationships with three different community colleges and a combined degree program at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville to increase the number of political science majors by 14% between Fall 2018 and Fall 2021.
• Led the process that used data from 96 peer and aspirational programs, 470 alumni job outcomes, and a survey of current students to rebuild the structure, course portfolio and requirements for the undergraduate political science major and minor programs for the first time since the 1980s.
• Supervise 7 full-time employees and 2 part-time personnel to handle student, faculty, and staff concerns and to create, oversee, and implement equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives.

Education

• PhD, Political Science, specialization in applied quantitative research methods, The University of Iowa, 2006
• MA, Political Science, The University of Iowa, 2001
• BA, Political Science, minor in Economics, Magna cum Laude, California State University, Fresno, 2000

Technical Skills

• Statistical Analysis
  • Advanced: R, Stata, time-series analysis, regression modeling, probability and statistics, causal inference, a/b testing, experiments
  • Intermediate: Git, SQL, machine learning
  • Beginner: Python
• Software: Advanced: Qualtrics

Honors and Awards

• Appointed to the Editorial Board for The Social Science Journal, 2021-2023. Editorial board membership recognizes accomplished researchers who have performed high quality peer reviews for academic journals in the past, and serve as frequent subject matter expert reviewers.
• Super Reviewer Award, 2014. Recognizes top manuscript peer reviewers for The American Journal of Political Science.

Job Training

• Advanced Causal Inference Workshop, Northwestern and Duke Universities
• Causal Inference Workshop, Northwestern and Duke Universities
• Courses in Data Science Specialization, Johns Hopkins University (Coursera)
• SQL for Data Science, University of California, Davis (Coursera)
• Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) certification (2008-present). Training on responsible conduct of research and protection of human subjects in research.
• Python for Everybody, University of Michigan (Coursera), Ongoing