Hilltop Happenings

Salisbury recently welcomed Jose Cepeda, father of Lucas Cepeda ’23, to campus to speak with AP Statistics students about his use of statistics in a professional setting.  Mr. Cepeda, a Senior Managing Director at the global management consulting firm FTI Consulting, shared multiple examples of his team’s use of regression, residuals, and predicted values to solve business problems for his clients.  He then shared an overview of his educational and career experiences that led him to his current work, and entertained questions in a lively Q&A session.  To top it off, Mr. Cepeda joined Lucas in his advisory’s sit-down lunch in the Dining Hall.

Mr. Cepeda shared the following after his visit: “I enjoyed the opportunity to speak on the use of statistics at FTI Consulting with the two AP Statistics classes.  We discussed how statistics can be used to address real business issues.  I was very impressed with the level of engagement and questions that were asked.  It is clear to me that these students are ready for college and are thinking of their career choices thereafter."

Responses to a survey of student feedback about the experience demonstrated an appreciation for the chance to meet and listen to a highly successful professional who uses some of the same exact tools students are learning in the classroom, as well as a desire for more visitors like Mr. Cepeda.

From Rowan Schneider ’23:

“Mr. Cepeda's visit has led me to do more research on FTI and get more interested in the consulting industry. I was fascinated by how many different branches there are within the company. I really appreciated the graphics he used as well as it simplified a lot of topics he was covering. Overall, I had an amazing time listening to Mr. Cepeda and hope we can bring some more speakers in throughout the year!”

From Kris Qian ’23:

“The visit was very fascinating because before this visit, I never knew that the statistics knowledge could be used in many different fields in our daily life such as helping different types of companies to solve their problems based on the gathered data, and this job is crucial.”  

From Chenming Yan ’23:

“I very much enjoyed the visit, I really wish we could have more talks by Mr. Cepeda or other people that would share their working experience with us in the class. It is a very good learning opportunity and in normal classes and even in college we might not have chances like this to communicate with people that have such working experience. At the same time, it also provides us students a chance to know what it is like pursuing statistics or other majors in our future and how we could utilize that to make the most suitable decisions for ourselves.”

From Sam Hall ’23:

“I enjoyed Mr. Cepeda's message on the importance of experiences. I thought his perspective on how growth is the most important aspect of your early occupational decisions was very good advice…I was very impressed with Mr. Cepeda's career path and how directly he used statistics in his current job. I also thought he shared a lot of great advice on how to grow through the work we do and how to find something which you enjoy.”

-Written by Instructor of Mathematics Bobby Nichols