Matt Capaldi
Education data analyst and doctoral student researching at the intersection of transportation and access to college. Data visualization & R enthusiast.
Education
Ph.D. Higher Education Administration
Minor: Urban and Regional Planning
University of Florida, FL (2021 - Present)
M.Ed. Research and Evaluation Methodology
University of Florida, FL (2022 - Present)
M.Ed. Student Personnel in Higher Education
University of Florida, FL (2018 - 2020)
B.A. International Relations with Political Science
Year Abroad: Providence College, RI
University of Birmingham, UK (2014 - 2018)
Work Experience
Graduate Research Assistant
University of Florida, FL (August 2021 - Present)
Work with Dr. Frank Fernandez on research relating to college access, primarily taking responsibility for data-related tasks (gathering, cleaning, analysis, and visualization).
Major Research Projects
Campus Climate Vulnerability Project (Summer 2023)
- Built a Shiny app to gather image feedback where the most relevant images to the current selection would be automatically displayed below.
Linking Community Colleges and High Schools in Texas (Fall 2022 - Spring 2023)
- Created spatial boundaries for TX community college service areas from legislation and Census shapefiles to spatially match community colleges to feeder high schools.
Exploring Equitable Higher Education Funding Models in Illinois (Summer 2022)
- Collected data on Illinois appropriations for higher education, labor market projections, census data, and institutional behavior, then drafted data visualizations using R (tables, graphs, and maps) for a report targeted at state policy makers.
Merit-Based Financial Aid (Fall 2021 - Spring 2022)
- Created a new dataset of all state-run merit-based aid programs in the United States including details on dates active, award amount, merit criteria, and funding rules, leading to a new typology being proposed (see Hu et al., 2023).
Residence Hall Coordinator
University of Missouri, MO (July 2020 - May 2021)
Graduate Community Coordinator
University of Florida, FL (July 2019 - May 2020)
Summer Sessions Graduate Intern
Georgetown University, DC (May 2019 - July 2019)
Graduate Assistant for Industry Relations
University of Florida, FL (August 2018 - May 2019)
Advising Intern
US-UK Fulbright Commission, UK (January 2018 - June 2018)
Student Ambassador
University of Birmingham, UK (January 2015 - June 2018)
Careers Network Student Peer Presenter
University of Birmingham, UK (September 2017 - June 2018)
International Employer Liaison Assistant
University of Birmingham, UK (June 2017 - August 2017)
Teaching Experience
EDH 7916 Contemporary Research in Higher Education
A.K.A. “the R class”, an introductory graduate level class on data management, organization, and workflow using R and GitHub.
Teaching Assistant (Spring 2023)
- Assisted instructor Dr. Ben Skinner by helping students with trouble-shooting and coding skills both in and out of class time.
- Designed and taught a lesson on working with spatial data and map creation in R. See the lesson here.
Technical Skills
R
- Data wrangling (tidyverse & vanilla), inferential statistics, data visualization (ggplot), interactive graphics (ggirpah & plotly), file management, string manipulation & basic regex (stringr), machine learning (tidymodels), mapping & spatial statistics (sf & sfdep)
Shiny
- Developing interactive apps including data visualization dashboards and data collection tools. Primarily use R Shiny, exploring shinyExpress with Python
Python
- Data wrangling (numpy & pandas), integration of Python & R (Reticulate), exploring machine learning (Scikit) and natural language processing (NLTK)
GitHub
- Version control of code, collaboration through shared repositories, publishing websites with GitHub Pages, forking & pull-requesting repositories
Geographic Information Systems
- Primarily use R for most GIS tasks but also familiar with QGIS and ArcGIS
Quarto
- Website creation (e.g., capaldi.info), formatted docx & pdf output (e.g., this CV), lua extensions (e.g., Quarto-Docx-Horizontal-Rule)
Other Software Including
- Microsoft Office, VS Code, Google Workspace, Google Colab, Qualtrics, SPSS, Stata, Zotero
Statistical Skills
Regression-Based Analysis
- Linear regression, logistic regression, geographically weighted regression, cox regression
Spatial Statistics
- Distances & central features, clustering analysis, spatial autocorrelation, hot-spot analysis, spatial outlier analysis, interpolation
Quasi-Experimental Design
- Propensity score matching & weighting, machine learning based propensity score calculation
Psychometric Models
- Classical test theory, factor analysis, item response theory, basic computational psychometrics