RAP Staff

Dr. Jason Simon is the Director of Research, Assessment and Planning for the Division of Student Affairs. In this capacity he is responsible for ensuring that the Division is working towards achieving its strategic, student development/learning and administrative goals. He is comfortable with both quantitative and qualitative methodologies and has presented at numerous regional and national conferences on assessment-related topics. He is proficient in SPSS for quantitative data and the Coding Analysis Toolkit for qualitative data. He is also leading the wide scale adoption of direct evidence across the UNT campus via ID Card scanning at programs, services and events. He has also been instrumental in creating an excel-based dashboard version of the Council for the Advancement of Standards to aid senior staff in quickly determining CAS proficiency and improve staff experiences with the process. Most recently, he served as the principal investigator on the UNT Student Experience Survey of Transfer, Non-traditional and Veteran students designed to obtain statistically reliable information on affinity, pride, co-curricular growth, and satisfaction with campus services and programs. He holds a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from UNT, where his research focused on the impact of campus type as it relates to a national dataset of alumni giving.

Prior to his work at UNT, he served eight years at the University of California, Berkeley as the Associate Executive Director for Alumni and Student Relations overseeing a staff of 11 empowered to plan and execute over 120 programs and events a year for UC Berkley students and alumni. Specifically, he oversaw regional and national alumni clubs and chapters, University commencement, athletic events for alumni, student homecoming, student scholarships, student-alumni mentorship, student organizations, the annual alumni black-tie gala, and alumni career services. He has chaired numerous international advancement conferences for the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and has been published in both online and print media. He earned his Master's degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs Administration from the University of Vermont and holds a Bachelors degree from Ramapo College of New Jersey in Environmental Studies.

Dr. Stella Mulberry Antic has been the Assistant Director of Research and Assessment since September 2010. In this role, she conducts research related to student populations using primary and secondary data. She is also working to develop processes to create a statistical model of student retention using direct evidence of program and service usage patterns. Stella provides consulting support to Division staff on their assessment and research projects, and assists with the oversight, support, and implementation of the Division-wide assessment process and plan. In 2012, Stella was elected to a three-year term on the Directorate Board for the ACPA Commission for Assessment and Evaluation (CAE). The CAE promotes assessment skills and knowledge to facilitate and support student learning, development, and effective student affairs practice.

Stella holds a Ph.D. in higher education administration with a cognate in student affairs from the University of North Texas. Her dissertation topic was Political Identity of First-Year College Students: An Analysis of Student Characteristics Using Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) Data. She also holds a master of education in counseling and student services from UNT, as well as undergraduate degrees in marketing and economics from Southern Methodist University.

Prior to her work with RAP, Stella served as the postdoctoral fellow for the Division of Student Affairs at UNT. There, she provided research and leadership consulting for grant applications and conducted best practices research on administrative and student issues. Stella has extensive professional experience in the areas of union administration, event management, leadership development, student organization advisement, campus programming, academic service-learning, community service programming, new student orientation, and fraternity and sorority affairs. Before coming to UNT, she worked at The University of Texas at Dallas and at her alma mater, SMU.

Stella is a life member and alumni volunteer for Alpha Phi Omega, a national co-educational service fraternity. She has served ΑΦΩ at the chapter, sectional, regional, and national levels since she pledged the Alpha Omicron Chapter at SMU in Spring 1996. In December 2010, she served as the lead advisor to the National Board of Directors Nominating Committee at the Fraternity's 41st Biennial Convention. She has been honored with two Distinguished Service Keys from chapters in the DFW area in recognition of her contributions.

Dr. Qaisar Abbas is Manager of Strategic Grants in the Division of Student Affairs. With a Ph. D. in Mass Communication from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Master’s from Iowa State University, he has a long standing career as a university professor, administrator, researcher, grant writer and freelance journalist. He has provided leadership in both student affairs and academic programs at several institutions of higher education in the United States.

He has written a number of major grants for federal, state and private organizations including TRIO and international research and programmatic grants. He has been reviewing federal, state and foundation grants for the U.S. Department of Education, Learn and Serve America, the State of Florida and City of Dallas. He has also evaluated international institutions of higher education and media organizations including the Voice of America as a consultant.

He is a member of the Advisory Council of the Texas Campus Compact, a nonprofit organization devoted to service learning, and serves several UNT committees including the Enrollment Management Committee and the Career Services Employers Advisory Committee.

Qaisar has published articles, book chapters and columns on grant writing, media, literature and South Asian politics. He regularly contributes articles and columns on politics, media issues and literature to newspapers and online journals. Currently he is serving on the Editorial Boards of Pakistaniaat and Viewpoint journals. He is also a poet and writer in his native language Urdu with a published anthology of his poetry “Keep Holing the Sun” published in 2008.

As Chair of the 1st South Asia Peace Conference he is currently leading a major international peace initiative at UNT sponsored by 10 internal grants that involves diplomats, peace activists and researchers from all over the world. 

Leidy Silva is the Student Assistant for Research, Assessment, and Planning since April 2011. In this role, she manages extensive use of scanning technology for document imaging and survey intake of over 12,000 paper-based surveys, prepares qualitative focus group transcriptions from audio and written formats, facilitates training for RAP staff on training surveys and utilizes GRAVIC Data Collection software to increase office efficiency utilizing quantitative data.

Prior to her work with RAP, Leidy was a Student Assistant for Institutional Research & Effectiveness.  There, she reviewed and summarized current publications in the field of Institutional Research for Assistant Vice President for Institutional Research & Effectiveness; entered text of survey questions in Qualtrics, and pulled 4-column unit reports in TracDat and provided PDF files to Assistant Director for Institutional Effectiveness.

Leidy is a sophomore Emerald Eagle Scholar and a Student Ambassador for the College of Arts and Sciences. She will be receiving her Bachelor’s degree in Spanish with a minor in Criminal Justice. 

Dr. Amanda Kay Moske is the graduate data analyst for RAP. In this role, Amanda analyzes research data related to student populations using primary and secondary data. She is currently working on a quantitative analysis of institutional card swipe data to investigate patterns of service usage and student retention in support of the Engagement-Retention Index initiative.

Amanda graduated from the University of North Texas in 2009 with a masters and Ph.D. in experimental psychology. She holds bachelors degrees in psychology and biology from the University of Missouri. She is currently pursuing a second doctorate in educational research at UNT with an expected completion date of December 2013. Her primary research areas include older adults in higher education, grandparents raising grandchildren, parenting among diverse populations, parenting stress and child care.

Prior to her work with RAP, Amanda worked as a teaching fellow, teaching assistant, and research assistant within the Psychology and Educational Psychology Departments at UNT. In addition, she assisted faculty from the Educational Psychology department in grant writing and statistical consultation. She is most familiar with the statistical software SPSS, but has a working knowledge of SAS, SYSTAT, HLM-7, and R (R-Project). Since 2008, she has helped plan and organize the UNT Center for Parent Education’s International Conference on Parent Education and Parenting. Prior to coming to UNT, Amanda worked on the Alcohol, Health, and Behavior Project (AHB) at the University of Missouri. AHB is a high-risk, prospective study of the development and persistence of alcohol use disorders and other problems in adulthood which is funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Specifically, she programmed the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS) using Ci3 software, interviewed participants in the study, and performed analyses on data collected during interviews.