Hello everyone! My name is Chad and I am a second year PhD student in the Lindner College of Business studying finance. I am interested in behavioral finance.
After graduating from Xavier University I accepted a position at a construction subcontractor headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin called Laforce where I worked as a project manager. It was good to get some professional experience, although I quickly realized that I wanted to continue my education in economics. It was at this time that I knew I wanted to become a professor of economics. I also knew the best path forward would be to first get a master’s degree, so I resigned from my position at Laforce and began going to Miami University full-time where I also worked as a TA and RA. Upon graduating from Miami University I was not sure I could get into any PhD program so I instead accepeted a role as a buisness analyst at Standex (an electronics manufacturer). In this role I used R extensively and sharpened my skills in data science. After a little over two years I decided to apply to some PhD programs and was subsequently accepted by the University of Cincinnati in their finance program. This area of study is technically financial economics, a specialization of the broader field of economics. I am in my second year and plan on graduating in a total of 5. I also teach undergraduates Financial Markets and Institutions here at the University of Cincinnati.
My experience with R began while attending Miami University. Of course, like anyone new to R (or any other similar software) I was a novice at that time. To improve my skills I used R for as many tasks as I could as a business analyst. I also enrolled in online courses on Data Camp and earned a Professional Certificate in data science from edx. This is all to say I have a fair amount of experience using R, but certainly am no expert. There is always more to learn!