June 2008 Stories

Former Marine Takes Kemper Scholarship

Marco Fiallo ’11, who just landed a prestigious Kemper Scholarship, came to Willamette by way of the United States Marines Corp. “The Marines broadened my world,” he says. A member of a Marine aviation squadron, Fiallo traveled to ports in Asia, the Middle East, Australia, South America and Hawaii. Now the international studies student is hoping that Willamette will broaden his intellectual horizons, giving him a context to better understand the global cultures he experienced firsthand.

Fiallo followed a pattern of reverse migration growing up. He was born in Connecticut and attended English-speaking private schools until age 12, when his family moved to Quito, Ecuador, with its Spanish–speaking schools. After school each day he sold everything from pencils to microwaves in his parents’ store, on the first floor of their home in Quito’s historic Colonial District.

At 20, Fiallo enlisted in the Marines and oversaw the maintenance of F-18 jets on an aircraft carrier. “There were 12 jets in our squadron,” the former Marine corporal says. “It was all computer based, just like a car. Every 3,000 miles they get a check up. Every 500 hours the engine has to come off the plane.” The engines, he says, were the big worry. But the even bigger worry was flying itself. “One of the most dangerous maneuvers a pilot can make is landing on a small strip on a moving target.”

After a five-year career with the Marines, Fiallo met a Willamette student in Ecuador. A later visit to Salem convinced Fiallo to head to Oregon, first to Chemeketa Community College and then to Willamette.

“Oregon is very different from the life I’ve lived,” Fiallo says. “People are calm and very much into saving the planet. I’ve never seen that. People are cool here.”

Fiallo found international studies to be a good fit. “I was naive in my education about the world. I received an education in Ecuador and another education in the military, and now I’m sitting in Spanish classes and learning about the history of Hispanic thought. Politically, I’m a blank slate. I haven’t formed opinions yet, but I know I’m most interested in economics and business. When I study them, my mind flies.”

Fiallo also helps coach the Willamette Women’s Lacrosse Team, and last spring break he led a student group to Newark, N.J., to volunteer with inner-city children at a YMCA shelter. The students’ overwhelming impression, he says, was gratitude for what they have. He’s introduced Willamette students to Latino culture. He taught salsa dancing on campus and rounded up friends for Saturday night visits to Aztec Willie’s in Portland, for more for salsa dancing. And he hasn’t forgotten his military past: Last year he worked at the Salem Veteran’s Center, helping vets obtain benefits, many for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Although there’s no such thing as a typical college student any more, Fiallo defies many stereotypes. The former Marine corporal will graduate when he’s 30 and wants to be an investment banker. Fluent in Spanish and English, he is learning Portuguese. Having grown up in South America, he’s now gaining a more in-depth, nuanced version of Latino history.

Too shy to converse when he first arrived at military boot camp, the gregarious Fiallo now believes that networking is the most essential skill one can possess. “Travel has given me a global perspective, with the ability to relate to a lot of different people,” he says. “In class we talk about ‘hybridity,’ which gives one the ability to transcend boundaries, to relate to people who are white, black, Hispanic, Asian, poor or rich. This will help in business, which is moving in the direction of globalization, with everyone depending on someone else for something.”

After his education, Fiallo wants to explore more of the world. And he’ll remember the parting advice of Marine Staff Sergeant Darrel Brathwaite: “I’ve taught you the ropes. Go out there and get ’em.”

The Kemper Scholarship is open to first-year students interested in business or management, including arts management or nonprofit management. It provides two paid summer internships and assistance with tuition and books. For information on this scholarship and others, contact Monique Bourque in the Student Academic Grants and Awards office on the second floor of the University Center.

Statistics Talk

Professor Jim Friedrich is a social psychologist at heart, although many students and faculty across campus know him as the resident statistician, the man they turn to when they need help quantifying their research. “I get to be the department dentist — everybody comes to see me, but no one really wants to be there,” he quips.

Discovering relationships among research observations and determining whether results are due to chance or something more — these are the areas where statistics come into play. Since Friedrich joined Willamette’s psychology department 15 years ago, he has used statistics to study everything from how people judge social science research to their attitudes toward affirmative action in college admissions. “I do a lot of research about how people form attitudes, how attitudes are changed and how people make decisions,” he says.

College admission policies are ripe with statistics, and Friedrich and his students have examined numerous aspects of how undergraduates are accepted and whether they will succeed. One study led by a student tried to quantify whether the SAT exam was a solid predictor of success in college. The student collected data on an entire graduating Willamette class, including the students’ SAT scores, their high school grades and their final college GPA. Results showed that both high school grades and SAT scores were fairly strong predictors of college GPA — and that they were better predictors when used together rather than alone.

One of Friedrich’s more recent interests involves what he calls the “naturalistic fallacy.” When social scientists publish their research findings, the general public typically does not read those findings directly from the source. Instead, much of the research is reported to the public through newspaper articles or editorials, which may have an agenda or seek to interpret the findings, Friedrich says. “The science is simply describing nature. It’s not making a value judgment on whether nature is good or bad. But people naturally draw moral inferences that are not there.”

For example, if a statistical study suggests that men might be hard-wired to want a larger number of sexual partners than women, people reading about the report in the popular media might interpret the study as saying it’s OK for men to have multiple partners, whereas women should stay monogamous. The study did not make this inference — it simply reported on a statistical finding.

These types of interpretations also can affect public policy. A 1998 report on child abuse published by the American Psychological Association was officially condemned by Congress after the media, the public and other scientists were outraged by what they interpreted as immoral judgments in the report. “The report wasn’t making any moral recommendations, but without even reading the actual article, Congress passed a measure condemning it,” Friedrich says.

These types of issues raise a tough question for scientists: What is their ethical obligation when their published work could be misused or misinterpreted, especially if that work influences public policy?

“Nowadays you can hardly go on websites like Yahoo! News without seeing something about a researcher’s findings on the brain, as an example,” Friedrich says. “It’s tough to guess how people will interpret and process this social science information. As researchers, we want to believe we have something to say, and we want to contribute important information to society. But we also have to understand how it might be transformed as it’s communicated through non-professional outlets.”