Students map out individualized tech degrees Think of three to five areas in your life that you are passionate about. Now imagine being able to blend those diverse interests into one fascinating career path. That’s what the transdisciplinary studies major at Purdue Polytechnic Institute offers to students. In May, a handful of students became the […]
Machine vision’s new niche — sorting baseball cards By day, Jim Parker (ECE’90) designs and engineers tiny machine vision cameras embedded in surgical and lab equipment. At night, he uses the same technology in his side business sorting baseball cards. Yes, baseball cards. Parker works for Syracuse, New York-based JADAK, a top supplier of data […]
Lessons on preparation, failure learned on the softball field One week before she graduated in May, Stephanie Ramsey (LA’18) played her last Big Ten softball game. In those waning innings, as she guarded second base, Ramsey surely considered the softball routines that became old hat — batting practice, dugout chatter, road trips. The bittersweet last […]
When Ammie Hudson-Blahuta (HHS’02) prepared to cut the ribbon at the grand opening of GiGi’s Playhouse Sugar Land with a huge pair of scissors, surrounded by family and friends, she realized that Sugar Land, Texas, was taking a big step forward. For Hudson-Blahuta, a mother of two, the snip signaled a goal accomplished. “When the […]
Every day, 22 people die waiting for an organ transplant. Darrin Carrico (HHS’90) is trying to change that unacceptable statistic. Carrico graduated with a degree in restaurant, hotel, and institutional management, with an emphasis on business, but realized six months after graduating that his passion lay elsewhere. “I had an entrepreneurial bent, but I wanted […]
How athleticism delivered Donald Winston from a life of poverty, hardship When a teacher asked Donald Winston what the most important thing in his life was, the freshman at Scecina Memorial High School in Indianapolis had a one-word answer: Football. Winston (T’00, MS T’01) was a non-Catholic and an African American in a predominantly white […]
Life is made up of an infinite number of choices. Many are mundane, but the more difficult decisions have the power to transform us, helping us lean into a bigger life. Platitudes like “choose the road less traveled” make those big decisions — true turning points in our lives — seem simple and exhort us […]
Superhero socks, astronaut diapers, and chasing your childhood dreams — it’s all there in Astro Maker’s first-person chronicles of six months aboard the International Space Station. Scott Tingle was the oldest of The Chumps. Of the 3,566 applicants to the 2009 astronaut candidate class, NASA selected nine to train for space flight. In keeping with tradition, […]
MMA athlete credits Zen-like philosophy for heavyweight success Matt Mitrione won’t take a punch in the face for free. Certainly not if he can help it. In fact, in five of 18 professional fights, he says he hasn’t even been touched. Having played on some of Purdue’s greatest football teams, Mitrione (LA’04) employs unique training […]
On the second floor of the Delon and Elizabeth Hampton Hall of Civil Engineering, a museum-quality exhibit transports visitors to another realm: the El Aguila Mine near Oaxaca, Mexico. The Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) mining exhibit, constructed in 2013, occupies a short hallway and two adjacent walls, and it has all […]
