Matthew D. Pistilli, Ph.D., is the Director for the Office of Assessment, Research, and Divisional Effectiveness in the Division of Student Affairs at Iowa State University. For over 20 years, Matt has focused on creating and assessing conditions and environments that positively affect college student success.

Most recently, this has involved working with Dr. John Gardner on determining a better understanding of what student success actually is on American college campuses, how it is staffed, its reporting lines, and its sources of funding. His past research has demonstrated the financial return of institutional investment in learning communities, identified necessary factors for implementation of learning analytics, and the use of CAS Functional Area Standards in regional accreditation processes.

Matt also serves as a fellow for the Gardner Institute, where he works with institutions of higher education on the use of data to enhance student success programming, retention efforts, analytics, and curricular transformation.

Matt holds a BA in psychology and Spanish from Southwest Minnesota State University, an MSEd in counseling and college student affairs and a PhD in higher education administration, both from Purdue University.

You can reach him at pistilli@jngi.org or (828) 388-5558.