Working in corporate America for 15 years gave me the notion that there was something more. I worked myself into a teaching position by completing my doctorate at Michigan State University. I had some international exposure in the corporate world and had a dream of some day being a visiting professor at a university somewhere in the world.
I had my eye on Ferris State University as I knew through retirement and other things that sooner or later a position would open. The piece that attracted me to Ferris was similar to what I found the difference between a large corporation and a small business to be: you have the opportunity to do more varied things at a smaller organization. By 2007 Doug Blakemore, Mike Cooper, and I had developed an undergraduate degree in Information Security & Intelligence, and in 2012 Doug Blakemore, Jerry Emerick, Hwee-Joo Kam, and I developed a graduate degree in the same field. Currently, we're working on developing a doctoral degree as well. Developing three degrees as well as more or less defining what your job will be is something that would be difficult to pull off in at a larger university.
I submitted an application for a Fulbright Scholarship for a teaching and research grant July 2012. My first attempt at a Fulbright was 2010, with my target the University of Barcelona in Spain. After submitting the application I called the department in Barcelona that had a Fulbright opening, but they indicated that although it was a potential good fit, they already had the person in mind that they were interested in. To top it off, I indicated in my application that a secondary goal was to develop better Spanish language skills and Barcelona is a heavy Catalan speaking area. Time to chalk this off to a learning experience.
I decided that I was much more interested in Latin America Spanish rather than that from Spain. Further, I felt that Latin America was often overlooked and didn’t necessarily get the respect it was due. Everyone seems to focus on Europe and places like China, but my sense is that I want to be where the action is going to be rather than where it has been – and it doesn’t take a genius to see that Latin America is on the rise.
While I had spent quite a bit of time on things like Rosetta Stone, it was also clear that my Spanish skills were far too basic to get me where I needed to be if some semblance of fluency was a goal. So I didn’t submit a Fulbright application in 2011. Rather, I started taking college level Spanish courses and reading children’s books in Spanish. With three semesters of Spanish under my belt, an improved research resume, and a Distinguished Professor award, I was confident 2012 was going to be a better Fulbright outcome. Particularly given that my field of digital forensics is very hot right now. I narrowed my choice by researching the top 10 universities in Latin America, researching the programs and course offerings in Information Security, and looking for a potential match. The Spanish classes I had taken included exposure to people from Latin America, and it helped me refine things even further. I decided between Argentina, where my brother had spent time, and Chile, which academically and perhaps culturally seemed to fit with my personality. Brasil (they don't spell it Brazil) was an intriguing option, and they had an unusually large pool of potential Fulbright opportunities in my field in 2012, but Spanish can be maintained in Northern Michigan – Portuguese not so much. For that matter, Spanish is really the only non-English language that is common in Northern Michigan. Not too many Dutch or German speakers, which is my heritage.
The University of Chile seemed to have many of the aspects I was looking for, and Chile is a very intriguing place. So the next step was to try and identify a contact. Remembering that during my previous Fulbright attempt the candidate was identified before the applications were due, I knew this was important. I went through the list of faculty and looked for two things – 1) a background in information security (more specifically, something complimentary to digital forensics), and 2) time spent in the United States so that I wouldn’t run into language and cultural issues discussing a potential match. I found a potential match and fired off an email cold. After not hearing for a couple weeks I tried again – hoping things were just overlooked. Soon enough, I received a promising reply that would later prove to be the key to making this dream come true. The professor wrote strong letter of invitation for me and worked through the red tape on that side. In retrospect, this was really an act of kindness and cooperation that is hard to fathom. Simply the result of an email.
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