Some call her “Riri.” For others, it’s “Riah.” She’ll also answer to “Polar.” And “Shake ’n’ Bake,” too.

But one moniker for Moriah Polar is universal: “Great.”

The Purdue junior outfielder is in the midst of a season the likes of which has never been seen for a 30-something-year-old softball program, which is a reason why the Boilermakers are enjoying one of their best seasons.

“She’s special,” says Purdue coach Maggie Frezzotti. “She can do it all. She’s a five-tool player.”

The bats-left/throws-right outfielder ranks second in the nation with a .577 batting average (through mid-April), which is tops in the Big Ten Conference by a significant margin. She’s able to slap the ball and leg out a single — or hit a laser in the gap. And she has clear-the-fence power.

“She’s as physically gifted as anybody: fast, strong, good arm, great sense for the game,” Frezzotti says. “She processes things quickly, which helps her make decisions.

“But the biggest thing you don’t see right away is how present she is. No matter how big or small the moment, she’s always ready. That ability to stay present allows her to maximize all those physical tools. Her greatest talent is being ready to do something extraordinary at any moment.”

This is a story about an uber athlete with a magnetic personality who is redefining greatness on the softball diamond for Purdue.

Toughness with infectious ability

The first thing you notice about Moriah Polar is her smile. It’s infectious and comes quickly.

With her hair pulled back taut in a ponytail, there’s an ease about her as she leans back in a chair and talks about her childhood, her goals, and her dreams. No doubt: Polar is comfortable in her own skin.

Polar’s story begins deep in the heart of Texas. She was raised in the Houston suburb of Pearland, the youngest of Martin and Tiffany Polar’s two girls. Polar’s athletic prowess glowed early in life.

“She turned about anything into a competition,” Martin Polar says. “She’d say, ’Daddy, I can eat faster than you.’”

That competitive spirit moved from the dinner table to the sports arena. Polar dabbled in volleyball, track and even cheered. But her siren song was softball.

“Softball and tennis were my main sports early on,” Polar says, “but I quit tennis around age 6 because it was messing with my swing.”

Smart move.

With her father at her side, whispering coaching tips, Polar matriculated through the politics and competition of Texas club softball, motivated to play with the best. She flashed her trademark speed and athletic ability. Martin Polar knew.

“She was fast,” he says. “She had an older sister who played volleyball. But Moriah wanted to forge her own path and decided to focus on softball.”

In addition to an array of athletic skills, Polar also showed a new quality: toughness.

“At around 6 years old, during tryouts, she missed a ball, and it hit her in the face,” Martin Polar says. “She didn’t flinch. The coach noticed that toughness and picked her, even though others laughed because she hadn’t really shown skill yet. He saw something in her.”

Polar soon was dominating the competition.

Her toughness was tested last May during a Senior Day game vs. Indiana. Polar chased a fly ball in left-center field, dove, and violently collided with Jordyn Ramos. Polar was temporarily unconscious.

“I fractured my C2 vertebra, broke both sides of my jaw, and fractured/dislocated my thumb,” Polar says. “I had surgery on my jaw and was in a neck brace for three months.”

She was fully back by the start of the 2025-26 school year.

“Her injury was tough,” Martin Polar says. “It could have been much worse, but thankfully she recovered well. That experience has motivated her even more to not just return to form but surpass it. She’s always been extremely disciplined, and that’s only grown.”

Polar had several suitors

Georgia, Ole Miss, Washington, Oregon, Houston. Those were just a few of the schools that wooed Polar coming out of Shadow Creek High.

But she chose Purdue.

“She doesn’t follow trends — she’s very headstrong and makes decisions based on her own vision,” Martin Polar says. “She saw something in Purdue and believed in it.”

Adds mother Tiffany Polar: “When we visited, the campus was beautiful. Moriah loves tradition and building a sense of home. The combination of the campus, the traditions and the coaching staff made it feel like a place where she’d be safe, valued and could grow — not just as a player, but as a person.”

Polar has blossomed like few could have envisioned. Ask Frezzotti, who has seen it all unfold.

She was dispatched in a white passenger van to pick up Polar and her parents at the Indianapolis airport for a recruiting visit.

“I met her when she visited as a junior — I was an assistant coach at the time,” Frezzotti says. “I picked her and her mom up from the airport in a 15-passenger van, which was my big responsibility.

“Right away, her personality stood out — she’s bright, positive, easy to connect with, even at 16. Those conversations can sometimes be tough, but with her, it was effortless.”

Polar debuted in 2024, starting each game and earning All-Big Ten defensive team honors. That was just a tease for a sophomore season that ended with second-team All-Big Ten accolades.

This season? She’s been one of the best players … in the entire country.

“My range in the outfield is a big strength — I can cover a lot of ground,” Polar says. “My arm is strong and accurate, too. At the plate, I consider myself a triple threat: I can bunt, hit for power or place the ball wherever I need to.”

Teammate and best friend

Moriah Polar has a thing for bugs.

“Oh yeah, she loves bugs,” teammate Emma Bailey says. “If a bug lands on most of us, we try to flick it off right away. But she’ll just let it hang out. She’ll even carry it around.”

Earlier this season, a little gnat landed on her shoulder, and she just let it chill there. It was crawling around her arm and hand, and she didn’t mind at all.

“Yeah, she loves things like roly-polies,” Frezzotti says. “She really respects all life — that’s just part of who she is.”

Polar has a welcoming personality that endears her to others. She carries herself as the anti-star, blending in among teammates. She is one of many. But they all know who the straw is that stirs the drink.

“Moriah is not only my teammate but also my best friend,” Bailey says. “One thing that really stands out — beyond stats — is the kind of teammate she is. In the dugout, she usually stands near the front, and this year we started doing a little cheer tunnel when someone comes in after a big hit or play.

“She’s always one of the first people in that tunnel, cheering everyone on. That really shows her personality. She’s one of the best players in the country, but also one of the best teammates.”

And Polar’s story is still being authored at a school she knew nothing about while in high school.

“I always knew I wanted to leave Texas for college,” she says. “I love Houston, but I didn’t want to stay there my whole life.

“Purdue actually reached out to me my junior year — I didn’t know anything about it before that. Once I visited campus, I fell in love right away and knew it would be my second home.”

Written by Tom Dienhart, who has worked with GoldandBlack.com since 2019.

Purdue senior is turning an Eli Lilly internship into a career improving health care accessibility

Solving problems has always come naturally to Jordan Reynolds. In elementary school, you could find her tackling Sudoku in the mornings. As a Purdue senior majoring in data science and applied statistics with minors in Spanish and bioinformatics, she’s presented with some of today’s toughest challenges. Medicine is being made more effective through her work with the Eli Lilly and Company and Purdue University Research Alliance Center. After she graduates, she’s joining Lilly full time as a software product engineer.

Q+A

What excites you about your major?

While my skills are more math- and stats-based, my interests lie in health and pharmaceuticals. Data science is versatile and can be applied to any industry. If you’re coming out of school with a degree like mine, you can go into finance, tech, energy, sports, anything. I’m looking forward to using what I’ve learned to advance medicine.

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How has your internship influenced the way you think about the future?

Between the work I contributed to and the time I spent in Indianapolis, my internship completely set the course for what I’m going to do after college. I helped with a patient-facing platform that was inspiring. I had so much fun in Indy — being from the East Coast, I didn’t know what to expect, but I met the most amazing people.

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What’s been something that’s surprised you in college?

Before this, I wasn’t really into sports, and now I’m a die-hard Purdue basketball fan. Being in Paint Crew has brought unforgettable memories. I never thought I would get that into it, and now I’m the person going to every game and getting my heart rate all the way up.

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What are you most excited for next?

A: It’s just getting better and better. Two of my best friends joined the HEAL research generator with me when we were sophomores, and now we all have full-time offers from Lilly. I’m ecstatic to get back to Indy and see where my next steps take me.

Where else but Purdue would researchers use aerospace-grade materials to make a sports mascot’s head?

What’s more Purdue than having a mascot whose head is constructed from the same materials as a rocket or a space shuttle? 

Such is the case with Purdue Pete, the Boilermaker athletics mascot whose head is unique for several reasons. For one thing, it’s made on the Purdue campus — not outsourced to an external vendor — with contributions from current Boilermaker students. But the bigger difference is the carbon-fiber material that separates Pete’s incredibly lightweight and durable head from the costumes of his mascot compadres. 

“Most of the mascots out there are made out of cotton or fabric, something like that,” says Garam Kim, an assistant professor in the School of Aviation and Transportation Technology who has helped make Pete’s head for the last 12 years. “Purdue Pete is definitely unique. We make it out of aerospace-grade composites — the same material as we’d make a Boeing 787.” 

That represents a massive upgrade from the primitive getup that Boilermaker student Larry Brumbaugh wore when Purdue Pete debuted at the Sept. 28, 1956, pep rally before the Purdue-Missouri football game. Back then, the outfit featured foam rubber padding, long black pants, a sweater adorned with a block P and football shoulder pads, with Pete’s papier-mâché head attached using chicken wire. 

Kim estimates that ensuing iterations of Purdue Pete’s head weighed around 40 pounds. Today, it weighs less than 2 pounds — thanks in part to advancements Kim and his colleagues have made at Purdue’s Raisbeck Advanced Composites Laboratory in the Composites Manufacturing & Simulation Center, where Pete’s head is one of many products created using the latest materials technologies. 

“What we learned and what we found and what we developed with this technology, we directly applied to making the mascot. That’s how the mascot technology gets developed,” Kim says. “We have continuously worked to optimize the material system and manufacturing process for Purdue Pete and continue refining the design as new technologies become available.” 

Purdue Pete is definitely unique. We make (his head) out of aerospace-grade composites — the same material as we’d make a Boeing 787.

Garam Kim

Assistant professor in the School of Aviation and Transportation Technology

Taking pride in Pete 

Believe it or not, the guy who makes Purdue Pete’s head has never attended a Boilermaker sporting event. 

And yet it would be difficult to find anyone who cares more about Purdue Pete than Kim (BS aeronautical engineering technology ’15, MS aviation and aerospace management ’17, PhD technology ’21), a triple Boilermaker who first started working on the mascot head as an undergraduate student in the Purdue Polytechnic Institute. 

“I received an email from my advisor, Dr. Ronald Sterkenburg, asking if I was interested in working in the composite lab. It sounded like a good opportunity, so I got involved at the lab at that time — and one of the jobs was making Purdue Pete,” Kim says. “I’m not very into sports, but I just made it because it was my job. But after I made it over and over and started to learn about the history and studied the manufacturing method, I started to have affection for Purdue Pete. And now I think it’s the best mascot in the U.S. It’s very fascinating, and I’m very proud of what we’re making and how we make it.”  

Sucheol Woo (BS aeronautical engineering technology ’25) learned about the Pete project in similar fashion — and he takes similar pride in the work after joining Kim in 2024 as an undergraduate research assistant. 

“Honestly, every part of the work is enjoyable,” says Woo, who is pursuing a master’s degree in aviation and aerospace management. “Cutting the plies to fit the shape and laying them onto the mold piece by piece, then watching all those small parts come together into one giant Purdue Pete gives me a sense of pride. It feels like I am contributing to my school not just academically, but also in an obvious and meaningful way.” 

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Working on such projects in the composites lab was also a fun way to build essential hands-on skills in his chosen field. After making Purdue Pete heads, Woo says it was a breeze to pass the composites course he took as part of his aeronautical engineering technology curriculum. 

“It felt like one of the easiest classes for me because I already had so much hands-on experience,” he says. “Through designing the new Pete head, I’ve also gained valuable skills in CAD (computer-aided design), CNC (computer numerical control) machining, 3D printing and 3D scanning. This project has given me a strong foundation for the research I am doing now and the career I hope to pursue in the future.” 

The next iteration 

Speaking of new (and not yet seen) Purdue Pete heads, the project also gives students like Woo an opportunity to innovate. 

By transitioning from the heavier materials previously used to make the head, Kim and his predecessors have helped make it an increasingly wearer-friendly getup. 

“It really wasn’t that bad. It was like wearing a bicycle helmet that was extra heavy,” says Bo Pratt (BA elementary education ’07), a former Purdue Pete (2005-07) who estimates that the head’s weight had decreased to about five pounds by the time he served as mascot. “The biggest thing, in the sense of being uncomfortable to wear, is it was hot because you’d get no airflow at all. Football is kind of rough sometimes if it’s a really sunny, warm day. And there were a couple summer events where if the sun was beating down, it got really hot in there. 

“I always had to wear a sweatband because you can’t wipe sweat from getting in your eyes,” Pratt says. “Otherwise, my eyes would be burning all the time, because even when you’re at a basketball game or at volleyball, it’s still warm enough that you’re going to have sweat running down your forehead.” 

Through reverse engineering and digital assembly techniques, Kim and company have set out to add breathability to future iterations of Purdue Pete’s head. Instead of using expandable adhesive foam, customized to fit each individual wearer and hold the head in place, the researchers plan to introduce new designs that will fasten the external carbon-fiber shell to a detachable bicycle helmet worn internally, improving the ventilation inside the head and allowing the wearer to switch to a fresh, clean helmet as necessary. 

“They sweat a lot, and that sweat will soak into the helmet, so it would be much better if they could change helmets when needed. That’s why we are working on new designs to replace the adhesive foam,” Woo says. “With these designs, we can reduce the overall weight, make the helmet replaceable, and also integrate a vent system inside to make it more breathable and comfortable to wear.” 

Watching all those small parts come together into one giant Purdue Pete gives me a sense of pride. It feels like I am contributing to my school not just academically, but also in an obvious and meaningful way.

Sucheol Woo

BS aeronautical engineering technology ’25 and graduate research assistant

Improvements like these have influenced Purdue Pete’s evolution ever since the mascot project landed on the aviation technology department’s doorstep in 1989. 

The upgrades have made wearing the head less physically demanding for the handful of Boilermaker students who represent their university each year at countless campus and community events. And while most who see Pete at an event don’t realize it, the cutting-edge methods used to create the mascot’s head are also a perfect example of the technological innovation that takes place each day at the university Pete represents. 

“We’re not using something totally different from what we study,” Kim says. “We actually use the same material and technology we use for research, and we adapt it to the mascot manufacturing. 

“I have so much affection for it, and I’m very proud of Purdue Pete,” Kim says. “I think it delivers the message to the world that Purdue is passionate, strong and tough. There’s no reason not to love Purdue Pete.” 

Welsh wants to help bridge the gaps between industries to increase innovation

Meet Nicole Welsh, who knows that progress is possible when business-minded and engineering-minded people work together. She’s loved her time on campus as well as an insightful internship.

Q+A

What’s unique about your major?

Industry today requires people who have both a technical and corporate mindset. Integrated business and engineering (IBE) is at the forefront of meeting this need. I enjoy taking classes ranging from industrial design to construction engineering management.

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How was the transition from California to Indiana?

People in the Midwest are so nice! I love Purdue; it feels like home. I appreciate that it attracts diverse individuals with goals and the drive to achieve them.

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Thoughts for your future?

Racing! I interned at a digital marketing agency in Indianapolis that works with IndyCar teams on branding and storytelling. I was also the marketing and sponsorship lead for the IBE evGrandPrix go-kart racing team. Having in-depth, hands-on experiences has been huge for my future career.  

Megan Casey develops hydrologic models to help restore ecosystems

When Boilermakers begin to dream of what’s next — for themselves, for their communities, for the world — they build a brighter tomorrow together. Read the real stories that inspired our video and find out what happens when you dream bigger at Purdue.

Before Megan Casey was studying post-wildfire flooding, she was a teenager at camp, learning how ecosystems work and imagining how they could be protected. 

“I realized I wanted to go into agricultural engineering when I was around 16 years old,” she says. “That was really my first experience that this could be something that I could do.” 

That curiosity led to a career tackling one of today’s toughest challenges: understanding how landscapes change after disruption. 

Heading into the unknown    

After earning her bachelor’s in agricultural engineering from Purdue in 2021, Casey moved across the country to Sacramento, California, where she joined cbec eco-engineering as an ecohydrology technician. It was her first time in the West, stepping directly into the kind of work she had once only imagined. 

The transition wasn’t easy. COVID-19 reshaped the experience she expected, turning an in-person role into a hybrid of remote work and frequent field visits. Everything felt new, but she made the decision to just dive in.  

“You can’t be shy,” she says. “Start saying yes to things.” 

That mindset carried her through long days and into meaningful work with colleagues. She worked extensively on habitat restoration projects, seeing firsthand how ecosystems respond to human impact and environmental stress. 

Over time, her role evolved. As her technical skills grew, she shifted from fieldwork to more project-based and analytical work, gaining a broader perspective on how to design and implement engineering solutions. 

Working in California during major wildfires, she saw how deeply these events affect communities. She kept returning to one question: What happens after the flames are extinguished?  

Pioneering solutions 

That question led her back to school. Now a master’s student at Utah State University, Casey studies how watershed hydrology changes after wildfires — specifically, why flooding becomes more intense and unpredictable.  

After a wildfire, even a small rainstorm can cause major flooding. There isn’t as much vegetation absorbing the rainwater, which doesn’t soak into the soil as well. Instead, burned soil can behave more like pavement, sending water rushing downhill and increasing the risk of dangerous floods. 

Casey’s work focuses on untangling the many variables that contribute to this phenomenon. She uses that data to help inform better decision-making. 

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Her research brings teams of people together, including engineers, ecologists and water managers. The goal is not just understanding, but action.  

“The Earth is interconnected,” she says. “Humans are just as much a part of the world as any other species. We rely on natural resources. We play a role in ecosystems, but I do think it is our responsibility as the only species that can influence the world on such a large scale to be good stewards of the environment.” 

Focusing on what matters  

“I was really interested in how we could preserve both our natural resources and also account for the needs of our human population,” Casey says.  

Initially, she considered environmental engineering but ended up in agricultural engineering because of its focus on resources. That consideration traces back to her years in Girl Scouts, where she spent time at an outdoor camp and later returned as a counselor. 

In her hometown of Mason, Ohio, there’s a small park that she remembers well. It’s a quiet green space surrounded by development. As she grew up, it represented the importance of protecting these places.  

Those experiences shaped how she sees the world: interdependent and full of possibility.  

At Purdue, she found the No. 3 agriculture program in the U.S., according to the 2025 QS World University Rankings. She also found a close-knit community within agricultural and biological engineering. With a small graduating class, relationships came naturally.  

She got involved as an undergraduate researcher and started to identify the problems she wanted to solve.  

We play a role in ecosystems, but I do think it is our responsibility as the only species that can influence the world on such a large scale to be good stewards of the environment.

Megan Casey

Agricultural engineering ’21

Collaborating on solutions 

For Casey, the work she does today is grounded in both realism and hope. She understands the scale of environmental degradation. But she also sees something else: the people working to solve it. 

“My work has given me a lot of hope in how I view the world,” she says. “There are so many intelligent, caring people who really believe in the power of small actions having a big impact.” 

That belief echoes the mindset she’s carried since those early days of curiosity. Helping save the world doesn’t happen all at once. 

It starts with a place. A question. An idea. 

And then, step by step, it becomes something more. 

NASA’s recovery team includes three alums aboard the Navy ship that will retrieve the space voyagers from the Pacific Ocean

When the crew of Artemis II splashes down in the Pacific Ocean just after 8 p.m. ET on Friday, April 10, it will be the end of a 10-day journey where they traveled farther away from Earth than anyone in history. 

But the work will be far from complete for the members of the Landing and Recovery Operations team — a group that includes Purdue alumni Emily Spreen, Jason Endsley and Rob Lantz — who have spent years preparing for this moment. The team has been aboard the USS John P. Murtha all week, preparing to retrieve the four astronauts and spacecraft and safely transport them to the Navy ship. 

“I’d describe the recovery process as a carefully coordinated ballet,” says Spreen (BS aeronautical and astronautical engineering ’15, MS astrodynamics and space applications ’17, PhD aeronautical and astronautical engineering ’21), a NASA aerospace engineer who leads a team that will pinpoint where the spacecraft and jettisoned hardware will land, ensuring the safety of the waiting recovery crews. “There are a lot of moving parts and interfaces between NASA and the DOD (Department of Defense) that all must work smoothly together. We practice each piece of the recovery process many times in order to be prepared for anything on game day.” 

Purdue Polytechnic alum Endsley (BS aeronautical engineering technology ’19, MS aerospace and aviation management ’20) will share real-time data that can help the team account for weather and water conditions and make decisions on how to proceed with recovery. As the lead instrumentation engineer for the Landing and Recovery team, Endsley has installed sensors on the recovery equipment and naval vessel that will provide critical information about factors such as wave heights; water depth; line speed and tension; and the ship’s pitch, roll and yaw.

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“Prior to splashdown, the recovery team will already be working hard to prepare for our operations and will jump into action right away,” Endsley says. “The first objective will be to swiftly and safely get the astronauts on board the ship to be medically evaluated, and the second objective will be to recover the crew module.” 
 
After splashdown, projected to occur between San Clemente Island and Catalina Island off the coast of San Diego, the Department of Defense and NASA’s Johnson Space Center will share the responsibility of getting the astronauts out of the water. Four helicopters will be waiting — two for recovery, two for imaging — with the recovery helicopters alternately retrieving astronauts one at a time and carrying them to the John P. Murtha. 

“The most incredible part to me is how well prepared the recovery team is to handle this part of the mission,” Spreen says. “We practice and rehearse till the real thing feels like another simulation, albeit with much more excitement and electricity in the air.” 

Once the astronauts have been retrieved, the recovery team will turn its attention to the Integrity crew module. Endsley and Lantz (BS aeronautical and astronautical engineering ’88) are part of the team responsible for recovering it and floating it into the well deck of the Navy ship. Then they will prepare it for truck transport back to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 

“It will be a great pleasure to see the years of practice and coordination between NASA, contractors and the military come together to safely recover the Artemis II crew and flight hardware, while also making history,” Endsley says. “While there will still be more work to do after recovery operations are complete, I think we will all breathe a sigh of relief once the astronauts are safely on board and the crew module is secured in the well deck of the naval vessel.”

‘The vibe for this one is off-scale high’ 

The Artemis II mission has been historic for many reasons. On Monday, April 6, crewmates Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen eclipsed the Apollo 13 crew’s record for the farthest distance of a human spaceflight. The Orion spacecraft eventually reached 252,756 miles from Earth, beating the Apollo 13 record by approximately 4,000 miles. 

The Artemis II lunar voyage also marked the first time humans traveled to the moon since December 1972, when Boilermaker astronaut and Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan (BS electrical engineering ’56) took the most recent steps on the lunar surface. The significance of this trip was obviously not lost on those who dedicated years to ensuring that NASA could successfully send a new collection of astronauts to the moon and back. 

“I can tell you that the vibe for this one is off-scale high,” says Lantz, who has supported 108 launches since 1989 while working for NASA or government contractors with the space shuttle program. “Low earth orbit is cool, but going to the moon is awesome. Especially since I was only 8 years old in 1972 when we had the last moon mission, and I honestly do not remember it at all. I am nearing the end of my career, and I can honestly say this is one of the greatest highlights of it, along with being able to deliver each of the retired space shuttle orbiters to their retirement homes: Discovery to Washington, D.C., Enterprise to New York City, Endeavour to Los Angeles, and Atlantis to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.” 

That is a common sentiment among his colleagues who, like many Americans, watched the April 1 liftoff with a combination of excitement, awe and sentimentality. 

“Honestly, it was an emotional experience for me,” says Spreen, who watched the event at Kennedy Space Center. “My journey to NASA started when I saw a space shuttle launch in high school with my family — I wanted to be a part of human spaceflight. Now it feels like my journey is coming full circle. I am a part of it!” 

As members of the Expedited Recovery Team (ERT), Endsley and Lantz were already in San Diego at liftoff. If the crew experienced any complications that forced them to abort the mission and splash down prematurely in the Pacific, the ERT was on standby to mobilize and quickly rescue the astronauts. 

Fortunately no such issues arose, so the ERT members were able to enjoy the occasion together at a high-spirited watch party. 

“To be completely honest, we were all literally amazed that we launched on the first attempt,” Lantz says. “There was a lot of hooting and hollering, high-fives and quite a few tears shed. You work on a vehicle for years assembling and testing it, and it launches on the first attempt. It was magical for sure.” 

During the mission, the Artemis crew has tested life-support and other critical systems and capabilities of the Integrity spacecraft, such as its ability to execute docking maneuvers for future flights. 

Their work has helped set the stage for a new era of space exploration, advancing NASA’s plans for new moon landings, lunar settlements and voyages deeper into space in the coming decades. And when they return to Earth from this historic mission, the Boilermaker alums will be there to welcome them home. 

“I am most excited to see the crew module come down under parachutes and splash down,” Endsley says. “That is a sight not many people get to see with their own eyes, and I feel very fortunate to get to do that.”

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‘It feels like the first time, still’ 

The Boilermakers on the Landing and Recovery team have already participated in numerous training exercises in preparation for Friday’s splashdown, including many Underway Recovery Tests as well as the recovery of the uncrewed Artemis I capsule in 2022. 

Spreen leads the “Sasquatch” recovery team, which projects the capsule location and helps to safely position the NASA and naval recovery crews to avoid the descending capsule and items that are jettisoned off during the parachute sequence. 

If you’re wondering what the recovery process has to do with Bigfoot, allow Spreen to explain the tracking process. 

“The positioning of those (jettisoned) items is predicted as ‘footprints,’ hence the team name, ‘Sasquatch,’” she says. 

Perhaps it’s a silly name, but the software’s accuracy during the Artemis I landing was no joke. 

“The performance of the ‘Sasquatch’ team was incredible, and our predictions on Artemis I were very accurate. I was thrilled,” Spreen says. “I expect similar accuracy for Artemis II. My team works very hard to make sure that we can get recovery forces as close as safely possible to expedite crew and capsule recovery and obtain engineering imagery for flight test objectives.” 

Lantz, NASA’s lead engineer for the handling and access subsystem, shares responsibility with the lead engineer of a contractor crew for recovering the crew capsule into the ship’s well deck. They have conducted training runs aboard Navy ships numerous times since the Artemis I splashdown. 

Endsley worked in launch operations before, during and after the Artemis I launch — he is also lead ground instrumentation engineer for Artemis — but did not begin working in recovery until after watching its awe-inspiring return on video. The self-described lifelong space nerd noticed the similarity between the Artemis recovery process and that of the Apollo years and immediately lobbied to add recovery responsibilities to his job description. 

“I worked hard to learn as much as I could, continually expressed my interest in joining the team, and really just did not give up until I got the chance,” he says. “Every time I have gone out to sea since then, it feels like the first time, still, and is easily my favorite part of my job.”

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‘Purdue was setting me up for great things’ 

Those familiar with Purdue’s extensive space legacy will not be surprised to learn that the three alums are among many Boilermakers working on the Artemis program. 

“It’s always enjoyable to hear ‘Boiler Up!’ while at work or see Purdue gear while walking out of the Vehicle Assembly Building,” Endsley says. “There are quite a few Purdue alumni that work on the Artemis program, and this is evident by the fact that on this small recovery team there are multiple of us on the Navy ship. Every time I see another Purdue alum, I am reassured that I made the right choice in attending Purdue, which started me on a path to arrive where I am today.” 

Lantz agrees, noting that “it is quite special to share these special moments with fellow Boilermakers.” 

Supporting NASA’s goal to return astronauts to the moon, with the next footprints potentially being left in the lunar dust by 2028, gives their work added purpose. 

“I wanted to be a part of history in the making,” Spreen says. “I also really enjoy the adventure of getting to go underway on a U.S. Navy ship and interface across many different teams at NASA and the DOD. It is a lot of fun to be a part of, and I’ve met so many brilliant people along the way. I like feeling like my work makes a difference and is important, and I most definitely get that feeling from the work I do with Landing and Recovery at NASA.” 

The work is indeed pivotal — and their Purdue training has uniquely prepared them to do it well. 

“I still remember the day I got my acceptance letter; I knew then that I was on the right path to achieve my dreams,” Endsley says. “While I was very aware that Purdue was setting me up for great things in my future, I still would never have dreamed of being able to do the job I do. 

“Purdue has a storied history with spaceflight, and I was keenly aware of that,” he continues. “I am honored to be a small part of continuing that legacy by not only helping to build the vehicle returning humans to the moon for the first time since 1972 but also being there to recover the astronauts out of the ocean. As I sit here preparing for recovery, it reminds me that every night studying at the Purdue University Airport, Hicks Library or in my dorm was worth every moment. Those long nights, homework and final exams laid the foundation of the path that led me to this moment.”

The Boilermaker engineer, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday on April 3, 2026, was the second American in space

If Gus Grissom had survived the Apollo 1 fire, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” might never have become part of the cultural vernacular. 

Neil Armstrong (BS aeronautical engineering ’55), who uttered those iconic words after stepping onto the lunar surface, still would have walked on the moon. But a different Purdue engineer would likely have become the first to do so — if not for the disaster during a prelaunch test that cost the lives of Apollo 1 astronauts Grissom (BS mechanical engineering ’50), Ed White and Roger Chaffee (BS aeronautical engineering ’57). 

“One thing that would probably have been different if Gus had lived: The first guy to walk on the moon would have been Gus Grissom, not Neil Armstrong,” NASA’s Deke Slayton confirmed in his autobiography, “Deke!” 

If anyone could have made that prediction with authority, it was Slayton, who as NASA’s director of flight crew operations was responsible for selecting crews for the Gemini and Apollo missions. Nothing against Armstrong, Slayton explained, but he and his fellow NASA decision-makers’ preference was for one of the first seven American astronauts — the Mercury Seven — to handle that illustrious assignment. “And at that time Gus was the one guy from the original seven who had the experience to press on through to the landing,” he wrote.

Grissom had flying experience aplenty. Before becoming an overnight celebrity upon NASA’s 1959 introduction of the Mercury astronauts, the Mitchell, Indiana, native flew 100 combat missions as a decorated Air Force fighter pilot in the Korean War and spent years after that as a flight instructor and test pilot. Then he became the second American to travel to space during Project Mercury and was selected to command the first manned missions for both the Gemini and Apollo programs. 

He would have been well-qualified to execute the lunar landing, with a list of accomplishments that no other candidate could have matched during the nation’s high-stakes race to beat the Soviet Union to the moon. 

“He was an American hero,” Grissom’s youngest sibling, Lowell Grissom, says in an interview with Purdue weeks before what would have been Gus’ 100th birthday, April 3, 2026. “I guess that’s the main thing people should remember: that he did his job.” 

Alas, the catastrophic fire at Cape Canaveral on Jan. 27, 1967, robbed Grissom of the opportunity to fulfill Slayton’s grand expectations. But the reckoning that followed the space agency’s first major disaster allowed Grissom to make yet another contribution to its success. 

Afterward, many NASA veterans admitted that the fire forced everyone to slow down and focus on quality control. They believed this pause likely prevented a similar disaster from occurring in space, helping the Apollo program ultimately reach its goal of sending astronauts to the moon and returning them home safely by the end of the 1960s. 

“I think the Apollo 1 fire and the deaths are one more example of how too often in the world in which we human beings live and have made for ourselves, it takes the loss of life to sharply focus, to focus enough, on a problem for real change to then happen. Sadly so,” says Purdue astronaut Charles Walker (BS aeronautical and astronautical engineering ’71), who was a first-year Purdue engineering student at the time of the fire. 

“Their attitude became, ‘We are not going to let these guys die in vain. We’re going to fix this thing. If we have to work 24 hours a day, we’re going to fix this thing to make sure that these guys didn’t die in vain,’” says George Leopold, author of “Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom.” “That was the attitude, and in 18 months they launched again. You’d be hard-pressed to find people today who would make a commitment like that.”

‘This was not a game’ 

Perhaps it should not come as a surprise that the American engineers of that era would display such seriousness. 

Like Grissom, who enrolled at Purdue in 1946 after a one-year stint in the U.S. Army Air Forces toward the end of World War II, many of them had used GI Bill benefits to attend college. As was also the case with Grissom, who married his high school sweetheart, Betty Moore, in 1945, these veterans were laser-focused as they completed college educations that would launch their careers and support their future families. 

“He’s surrounded by a lot of guys who have seen war,” Leopold says. “This was not a game. They’re not there to drink beer. They’re there to study, get a degree and get a job, but jobs were pretty tight back then.” 

Purdue’s campus was bursting at the seams because of the influx of veterans in the years after the war, with enrollment hitting record numbers and housing in short supply. In fact, the Grissoms had such difficulty finding somewhere to live that Betty had to stay behind in Mitchell and live with her parents during Gus’ first semester at Purdue. 

Once they finally found their own living quarters, they didn’t exactly enjoy carefree college years. Betty became the breadwinner of the family by working as a long-distance operator for Indiana Bell Telephone Company while Gus was a full-time engineering student and part-time burger flipper at a local diner. He also helped make ends meet with part-time jobs as a cornfield laborer and worker in the Lafayette roundhouse of the Chicago, Indianapolis, and Louisville Railroad during his time at Purdue. 

Although these obligations left little time for social activity, the Grissoms did enjoy some traditional campus favorites, like attending Boilermaker football games. 

“He was as crazy about Purdue as most (Boilermakers) are,” Lowell Grissom recalls with a chuckle. “Of course, I went to IU (Indiana University), so we had a little fun over that.” 

Grissom was not a star student, but he completed the mechanical engineering curriculum in just 3 1/2 years, building an advanced skill set that would serve him well in the years to come. 

“He had a no-nonsense, hands-on approach to engineering,” says Purdue history professor Michael G. Smith, who has written and taught extensively about the history of the space age. “This was a calling card for Purdue at the time, which still demanded that all its engineers learn how to weld and fabricate things, inspect the power plant (where the Wilmeth Active Learning Center is now), and conduct experiments in general engineering. As an ME, mechanical, Grissom had a comprehensive, demanding education here.”

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‘He must be reliable’ 

As Leopold mentioned, however, jobs were tight in the post-war years. And Grissom still held on to the dream of becoming a pilot that first inspired him to enlist after graduating from high school. 

When Grissom and childhood friend Bill Head encountered an Air Force recruiter on the steps of the Purdue Memorial Union just ahead of Grissom’s graduation, he jumped at the second chance to fly. Unlike his first military stint, this time he would indeed become a combat aviator. 

Grissom earned his pilot wings a year after graduating from Purdue and soon shipped out to Korea with the 334th Fighter Interceptor Squadron. He named his F-86 Sabre jet “Scotty” after his infant son, flying the aircraft on 100 successful escort missions where he had to fight off air raids from North Korean MiGs on occasion. 

“The requirement of a wingman is that he must be reliable,” Leopold says. “And that’s one of the perfect words to describe Gus Grissom: reliable. And competent. And while he did not have much to say, when he said something, people listened.”

‘He was the best engineer’ 

Grissom’s greatest opportunity to flex his engineering muscle came during the buildup to his Gemini 3 mission that would make him the first person to travel to space twice. 

After initially inviting hundreds of military pilots to top-secret interviews in Washington, D.C., to gauge their interest in Project Mercury, NASA put the candidates through a series of rigorous physical and psychological tests before ultimately selecting Grissom and six others as the nation’s first astronauts. Grissom’s first mission came on July 21, 1961, when he made a 15-minute suborbital flight aboard Liberty Bell 7, the second Project Mercury flight following Alan Shepard’s maiden voyage two months earlier. When a bout of Meniere’s disease grounded Shepard in 1964, Grissom jumped to the front of the line to command the first crewed mission for Gemini — the intermediate-phase project with missions to test orbital maneuvering, rendezvous and docking, and extravehicular activity techniques that would be needed for the moon missions ahead. 

Grissom brought to the table the thousands of hours he had spent in cockpits — plus the extensive technical knowledge he built at Purdue — to help the engineers at McDonnell Aircraft create a Gemini spacecraft whose control and display layouts met a pilot’s preferences.  

“He had a lot to do with it,” says Lowell Grissom, who was working at McDonnell in 1964, when his oldest brother spent the entire summer at the company’s St. Louis plant while helping to develop the Gemini spacecraft. “He was working 12 hours on and 12 hours off when he was here. I think that’s what a lot of people forget: He was an engineer. He was very much into that.” 

So involved was Grissom in the development of the vehicle that his fellow astronauts began jokingly referring to it as the “Gusmobile.” But its performance was no laughing matter. During Grissom and pilot John Young’s five-hour Gemini 3 flight, they successfully fired the spacecraft’s thrusters to change its orbit during flight. 

“I think he was unmatched in terms of his engineering abilities,” Leopold says. “I think that’s one of the key reasons why he was selected for Project Mercury as one of the first seven astronauts because as the astronaut Mike Collins from Apollo 11 said, ‘Gus had a love of machines.’ 

“He had to know how they worked, and he would spend hours on the factory floor — whether it was in St. Louis during Mercury and Gemini, or whether it was in Downey, California, at North American Aviation during Apollo — to understand these systems, how they were put together, how they functioned, how they could malfunction,” Leopold continues. “Amongst the seven original astronauts, he was the best engineer. And I think they all acknowledged that.”

‘The hatch crap’ 

Grissom’s first NASA mission did not go as smoothly as his Gemini flight. 

The Liberty Bell 7 flight itself went as planned. It was what happened after the capsule splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean that hung over Grissom’s head. 

While waiting for a recovery helicopter to lift the Liberty Bell out of the water and carry it to the nearby USS Randolph, the capsule’s explosive hatch accidentally blew, allowing water to rush inside. Grissom escaped the capsule but nearly drowned while waiting to be rescued. An open oxygen inlet valve on his spacesuit caused the suit to begin losing buoyancy, making it increasingly difficult to remain afloat amid the helicopter prop wash. 

Grissom was saved, but Liberty Bell 7 was not. The flooded capsule was too heavy for the rescue helicopter to hoist out of the ocean, so eventually the crew was forced to cut it loose and allow it to sink to the ocean floor. And there it remained until 1999, when it was located and lifted onto the deck of a recovery ship. 

It was the only aircraft Grissom had ever lost, and he took some public lumps over the mishap. Although Grissom insisted that he did not blow the hatch, some critics believed he either did so inadvertently or out of panic. 

After reviewing evidence from the mission, however, Leopold is confident that Grissom was not to blame. 

“He was just going down his checklist,” Leopold says. “He said, ‘Give me a few minutes. I have to check all of my instrument settings to make sure I record them properly. Then I’ll give you a call, and then I’ll blow the hatch.’” 

But then the hatch blew prematurely, creating the impression among detractors that he made a huge mistake. 

“I know it bothered him,” Lowell Grissom says. “He called it ‘the hatch crap.’” 

What actually caused the hatch to blow may never be known with certainty. But Leopold, digital imaging expert Andy Saunders and Liberty Bell recovery specialist Curt Newport have developed a theory. 

The collaborators point to an interview given by a Marine aboard the recovery helicopter whose job was to use a cutting mechanism to snip a communications antenna so that the helicopter could hook on to the Liberty Bell. The Marine, John Reinhard, observed an electrostatic arc when the cutter made contact with the antenna and noted that the hatch blew shortly thereafter. 

“We think that electrostatic discharge blew the hatch,” Leopold says. “Gus didn’t screw up.” 

An independent post-flight review did not blame Grissom for the loss of the spacecraft, nor did the incident hold back his career. But when the time came to name his Gemini 3 spacecraft that lifted off four years after the Liberty Bell flight, Grissom was still as salty as the seawater he was spitting up that day in the Atlantic. 

The name he selected: Molly Brown, a nod to the hit Broadway musical, “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.” And when NASA officials balked at that name choice, he offered an alternative that they liked even less. 

“‘Sure,’ he said. ‘How about the Titanic?’” Slayton recalled in his autobiography. “Well, compared to that, Molly Brown sounded great.”

‘He knew it was a bad deal’ 

As a child in southern Indiana, Boilermaker astronaut Walker grew up idolizing the likes of Shepard, John Glenn and especially Grissom. After all, Grissom’s hometown of Mitchell was 12 miles down the road from Bedford, where Walker’s family lived. 

“He was a local hero,” Walker says. “Having been selected in 1959 to be one of the first astronauts and Mercury Seven, he was big news.” 

Walker’s family knew the Grissoms. He wanted to follow his fellow Purdue alum into space someday — and he ultimately succeeded, flying on three NASA space shuttle missions as an employee of the McDonnell Douglas Corp. But that local connection made the events of Jan. 27, 1967, feel even more devastating when an ABC newscaster interrupted the TV show Walker’s family was watching that Friday night to share the breaking news. 

“I remember it vividly. When they said, ‘There’s been a fire on the pad at the Cape,’ I knew what was going on,” Walker says. “I was read up on all available information about Apollo. I knew what was happening in that testing on the launch pad in preparation for their February 1967 first flight of the Apollo capsule with a crew. So, the words hit me hard. I turned and said to my folks, ‘Gus is in that test.’” 

Walker’s assessment was correct. 

Preparations for the first Apollo mission had been a logistical disaster, filled with frustrating delays, technical issues and miscommunications between NASA workers and those at North American Aviation, the aircraft maker that had won the contract to build the new Apollo command and service modules. 

Already a workaholic, Grissom barely returned home to see his family in 1966 as he prepared to lead the three-man crew on the planned voyage that would serve as Apollo’s first low Earth orbital test. 

“He was all-in on this stuff, and there were so many demands on his time and his expertise and constant meetings and going to Downey to keep track of the spacecraft,” Leopold says. “If you’re a commander, you have a lot of responsibilities. He’s got the lives of two other crewmates in his hands, so he’s got to balance all of that, and slowly, by the middle and end of 1966, he realizes he has a pretty bad spacecraft on his hands.” 

It wasn’t that Grissom ignored the many issues with the spacecraft as much as he kept soldiering ahead in spite of them. Like everyone else at NASA at the time, he was wholeheartedly committed to beating the Soviets to the moon and fulfilling late President John F. Kennedy’s goal of getting there and back by the end of the decade. 

After the Apollo 1 disaster, this organizational hubris — overlooking obviously sloppy work because they were rushing to get the job done — would come to be known as “Go fever.” 

“Gus knew there was a poor design and a lot of problems with all of that wiring that was bad. So he knew it was a bad deal,” Lowell Grissom says. “Mom and Dad were down there two weeks before the accident, and he said it was supposed to be an open-ended mission, but he didn’t see that it could go more than three orbits at that point.” 

Sure enough, an electrical issue ignited a fire in the cabin during a standard, “plugs-out” launch rehearsal a couple weeks before the scheduled liftoff. Because of the risky high-pressure, pure-oxygen environment within the capsule and wealth of combustible materials, the fire blazed out of control within a matter of seconds. Choking on toxic, blinding smoke, the astronauts were unable to pry open the hatch that could have allowed them to escape. 

They died of asphyxiation within moments. Their burns likely would have been survivable. 

‘He earned everything’ 

Fifty years after the Apollo 1 disaster, Leopold was attending a series of observances at Cape Canaveral when Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins asked for notes on what to say about Grissom in his keynote remarks. 

“I said, ‘Tell them that he earned everything. Nothing was given to him. And he and Betty were examples of ordinary people doing extraordinary things,’” Leopold says. 

Indeed they were, these children of the Great Depression who grew up in small-town Indiana and rose to international fame as a result of Grissom’s courage and elite flying ability. By the time Apollo ended in 1972, with Purdue astronaut Gene Cernan taking humankind’s most recent steps on the lunar surface, only two astronauts had participated in each of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs: Grissom and Wally Schirra. 

“These three programs and three spacecraft and his association with them spotlight Grissom’s very unique place in spaceflight history,” says Smith, the Purdue history professor. “One nearly killed him, one he helped improve, and the last killed him and Chaffee and White, well beyond their control.” 

Grissom was aware that such a risk existed when he signed up for the astronaut program. He wanted the job all the same, viewing it as both a professional honor and a patriotic duty. 

“I couldn’t have asked for a bigger hero,” says Lowell Grissom, although Leopold notes the original astronauts thought of their role in a different way. 

“None of these guys thought they were heroes. They thought, ‘This is what we signed up for,’” Leopold says. “He really considered himself to be a pioneer, like, ‘What’s over the next hill?’ Let’s keep pushing the technology and do it as safely as we can, but there are certain risks, which obviously was the theme of my book. You have to accept certain risks, but you work as hard as you can to minimize those risks. That’s what a test pilot was supposed to do.”

Through his teaching, writing and research, Randy Roberts helped pave the way for more historians to specialize in sports

As a documentary film crew set up around him in an abandoned Los Angeles warehouse, Johnny Smith paused briefly to look around and take in the moment. 

“There’s just crew and lights everywhere, and all these people,” says Smith (PhD history ’11), the Julius C. “Bud” Shaw Professor of Sports History at the Georgia Institute of Technology. 

It was exhilarating, as everyone had gathered that day to help convert Smith’s book, “Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X,” into a feature documentary for Netflix. And it was simultaneously cause for sentimental reflection because Smith had written the book with Randy Roberts, his Purdue advisor, mentor and trusted friend. 

“I thought for a moment, ‘Man, all these people are here because of the work that Randy and I did, because of the book we wrote.’ I tried to soak in the moment because I knew this experience would probably never happen again,” Smith says. “It was the highlight of my career in many ways because it’s a great complement to my collaboration with Randy.” 

The film shoot for the 2021 “Blood Brothers” doc was a new experience for Smith, who never imagined such hoopla would surround their first book project, which won the 2017 North American Society for Sport History Book Award. But it was old hat for Roberts, who has appeared in dozens of documentaries during his pioneering career as a sports historian, contributing to projects from Ken Burns, HBO Sports, ESPN and the History Channel. 

It served as yet another example of the mentorship Roberts has provided to many former pupils since helping to establish sports history as a topic that merited serious academic study. Many of those who studied at Purdue under his guidance — some zeroing in on sports, some on other historical specializations — are decades into their own distinguished careers as educators and authors. But even now they admit it’s easy to identify Roberts’ influence on how they approach their work. 

“I recognize a lot of Randy in me. Not just when I write, but when I teach,” says David Welky (MA history ’96, PhD American history ’01), professor and interim chair of history at the University of Central Arkansas. “I’ll catch myself doing certain mannerisms of his, for example, or telling stories that I remember him telling me or telling a class. I want to give myself some credit for developing and having my own career, but a lot of who I am in the classroom and on the page is totally reflective of his influence.” 

I recognize a lot of Randy in me. Not just when I write, but when I teach.

David Welky (MA history ’96,
PhD American history ’01)

Professor and interim chair of history, University of Central Arkansas

‘He has a gift for taking fun things seriously’ 

When Roberts started his career in the late 1970s — and even when he arrived at Purdue in 1988 — sports history was virtually nonexistent within college course catalogs and publications. 

“I think for a lot of people, it was trivial and frivolous and really not important enough to study seriously,” says Roberts’ friend and contemporary, David Wiggins, professor emeritus of sports studies at George Mason University. 

But Roberts was fascinated by what sports reveal about culture. 

“I felt to really know America, you have to know something about sports,” says Roberts, a distinguished professor of history who in 2019 was among 10 Purdue faculty members to receive a 150th Anniversary Professor designation. “There’s a great writer, professor and intellectual historian at Columbia, Jacques Barzun, who one time said, ‘Anyone who wants to know America should start with baseball,’ meaning that baseball tells us something about America. 

“Virtually nobody academically was writing anything remotely like sports history, but I believed in my topic. I believed that sports are important, I believed that sports played an incredible role in American society and I wanted to write about it. And I think I’ve been vindicated.” 

Indeed he has, and he helped accelerate that vindication. 

Roberts’ early biographies of legendary boxers Jack Dempsey and Jack Johnson helped open doors for academic writing about sports, revealing how engaging scholarly work could also appeal to a mass audience. 

“I read those books while I was in graduate school and preparing to apply for PhD programs, and I was really taken with both of them,” says Aram Goudsouzian (PhD history ’02), the Bizot Family Professor of History at the University of Memphis. “They’re written in a way that was really vibrant and colorful and appealing to the general reader, but also with this deep level of research — and at the same time circling back to the big questions about why it mattered: what these stories of these boxers could tell us about the patterns of American history.” 

As Wiggins puts it, “For my money, there’s no one who does sport history that tells better stories than Randy Roberts.” 

Roberts also applied those storytelling skills when examining other areas of American culture that might fall outside the traditional boundaries of historical study. Roberts’ lengthy publications list includes titles about the Vietnam War and the battle of the Alamo — subjects one might naturally expect an established American historian to cover — alongside his many books about sports topics. But there are also titles about actor John Wayne and 20th-century American film. 

“He has a gift for taking fun things seriously,” Welky says. “Whatever he’s writing about, he’s making that connection between an individual subject and the broader context to really illuminate these corners of American history that other people had just looked at and said, ‘Oh, that’s cool.’” 

Roberts and Wiggins also helped build platforms for other academic writing on sports, whether through leadership in professional organizations or through editorial roles with university press series dedicated to sports history. The University of Illinois Press’ “Sport and Society” series that Roberts co-founded with University of Nebraska professor Benjamin Rader became the gold standard, creating a model that other university presses have since emulated. 

“In my day, in the ’90s and early 2000s, if you were looking for serious work in sport history, 90% of that work, the best work, was done in the ‘Sport and Society’ series,” says Goudsouzian, who took over as a series co-editor upon Rader’s retirement. “And now other university presses have launched sport history series, and some of them are quite good. The field is growing in a lot of ways. But the ‘Sport and Society’ series set the foundation.” 

It also helped reveal the possibilities available for others who were interested in sports scholarship. 

“He got me to understand that this is a real thing that people do, and people can respect you for writing about sports, and you can write about sports in an intelligent way that actually says something — not just about who had the longest hitting streak, but that actually speaks in some way to American history and global history,” says Welky, who has written or edited more than a dozen books on a variety of historical topics.

Mentorship in many forms 

For his former students, Roberts’ mentorship revealed itself in various forms through the years. 

Goudsouzian was inspired by Roberts’ command of gigantic Purdue lecture halls, engaging spellbound audiences with narrative stories about presidents, warfare and popular culture that made the historical tales come alive. 

“I learned a lot about how to teach through Randy and, in particular, the way that he can hold a class with the way that he tells stories and the way that he connects with the class, even in a big auditorium setting, which he does better than just about anybody else,” he says. 

Welky once tagged along on a trip to and from Canton, Ohio, where he and Roberts visited the Pro Football Hall of Fame — and wound up unexpectedly contributing to research that resulted in Roberts inviting him to co-edit “The Steelers Reader” in 2001. 

“Still to this day, I don’t start any significant project without talking it through with him,” Welky says. 

For Chris Elzey (PhD American studies ’04), who played basketball at the University of Pennsylvania and overseas as a professional, frequent conversations in casual environments — maybe after a pickup game of hoops or in a chat at Roberts’ home office — provided invaluable insight that shaped the direction of his career. 

“Sports played such a huge role in my life,” recalls Elzey, director of the Sport and American Culture minor at George Mason. “And at that time, Randy and I did a lot of things together: playing basketball, playing tennis, running and so forth. And just in talking to him, it seemed to me that my direction really should go toward what my interest really is, and that was sport.” 

And for many former pupils — especially Smith, with whom Roberts has written four books — maybe it became most evident during the research and writing process while teaming up on a publication. 

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“Randy has this great philosophy about our collaboration. He says 1+1=3,” says Smith, whose most recent book with Roberts, “The Fight of His Life: Joe Louis’s Battle for Freedom During World War II,” published in 2025. “What he means by that is Randy could write the book by himself, or I could write the book by myself, but the best ideas come out of this synergy between us. And he’s right. We’re always able to help improve or polish the ideas that one of us might suggest. After writing four books together, he and I talk in a shorthand essentially. He can start developing an idea and say, ‘You know, Johnny, what do you think of this?’ and I’ll know where he’s going with it.” 

Roberts’ intentions behind collaborating on writing projects are not entirely selfless, however. Conducting research and writing books is a lonely process, he says. But it’s much more tolerable — and exciting — when a teammate comes along for the ride. 

“When you’re doing a book with somebody and you go on research trips, they turn into adventures,” Roberts says. “They’re fun. They’re enjoyable. You finish your day at the archive, and you’re psyched about what you’ve read. You sit down at dinner, and you talk with your coauthor, and all you talk about is the subject. 

“We authors write books and we have families and we have friends, but your families and friends only want to hear so much about what you’re writing before you become really boring,” he adds. “But when you’re coauthoring a book, you know at least one other person is as interested in that book as you are interested in that book and can talk about it endlessly.” 

Lasting influence 

While Wiggins’ and Roberts’ generation of scholars played a major role in bringing wider acceptance to sports history, Wiggins is quick to point out that it remains an underappreciated niche within some corners of their field. That’s largely why Roberts has advised some graduate students to write dissertations on nonsports topics, noting that doing so might make it easier to land jobs after Purdue. 

At the same time, far more opportunities are available today for those who wish to specialize in sports history than when Wiggins and Roberts started their careers. 

“There are some lights going on in different parts of the country, but it’s still not at the center of American history. And that’s OK,” Roberts acknowledges. “You don’t have to be sitting in the main seats at the table. As long as there is a seat at the table, it doesn’t have to be at either end.” 

The seat is firmly in place thanks to veteran scholars like Roberts, and it’s poised to remain there as Roberts’ former students carry his influence into their own work educating and informing a new generation of sports enthusiasts. 

“We have an enduring bond there that goes beyond him just being my mentor. I consider Randy to be part of my family, and I mean that. After all, he stood up at my wedding.” Smith says. “I’m very proud of this relationship. It was life-changing, there’s no question about it. Randy helped me fulfill all my dreams and my professional goals — and I know I couldn’t have done it without him. I don’t think I would have had anywhere near the success that I can say that I’ve had if I’d gone to another program.” 

And he’s not alone in that opinion. 

When Welky contemplates his relationship with Roberts that now stretches across three decades, he feels a mix of emotions. 

He feels fortunate, of course, for the guidance Roberts provided and the example he set. And he’s nostalgic about the countless unforgettable experiences, like the time Roberts led a group of Boilermaker students on an impromptu tour of the Louvre Museum when the group’s paid tour guide left a lot to be desired. But he also feels sorry for colleagues who did not connect with their college advisors like he did with Roberts. 

“My colleagues are bewildered when I talk about Randy. They’re like, ‘You still talk to him?’” Welky says. “I tell them that we collaborated on projects, we taught a class together, I went to Europe with him, and my wife and I stayed in an apartment with his wife in Paris. I rented a house that he owned for two years. 

“My father died while I was in graduate school and I always joke that I became the son that Randy never wanted,” Welky adds. “Without getting too sappy, that really was — and to an extent, is — how I view him. My father died relatively young, and Randy was there. I glommed on to him, and I still value him. The kicker that I always tell people is this: There’s a reason that my son’s middle name is Robert.” 

Trey Kaufman-Renn demonstrates the philosophical pursuit of character and meaning beyond the final score 

Long before Trey Kaufman-Renn became an All-American power forward for Purdue University, before the cameras and the roar of the fans, he was a kid riding in his mom’s car, headed to his next game. 

On those drives, his mother would pose questions. 

But they weren’t about box-and-one defenses or shooting percentages. She asked about right and wrong. She’d ask about what makes a good life and about the state of the world.  

“We would talk about moral dilemmas,” Kaufman-Renn says. “She’d say, ‘Should the world be this way or that way?’ And we’d just go back and forth.” 

A philosophical athlete emerges 

At the time, the Purdue philosophy major didn’t know there was a name for that kind of conversation. “I didn’t know philosophy existed,” he says. 

He knew basketball. He knew the rhythm of improvement, and he learned to appreciate the quiet satisfaction of seeing a skill sharpen with practice. “I love the growing part of it,” he says. “The idea that I could go in, work on my game and watch myself improve over time.” 

That desire for growth — not the desire to dominate — drew him to the sport. Competition, he says, was something he had to learn. It will come as a shock to Boilermaker fans, but intensity is not his default setting. 

“I have to put on an act sometimes,” he admits. Before games, he studies rebounding clips of Dennis Rodman, almost like an actor preparing for a role. “I’m naturally more laid-back,” he says. 

That self-awareness and innate introspectiveness is what eventually led him to change his major from physics to philosophy. A pivotal class introduced him to Aristotle, deontology, utilitarianism and the big questions he had already been asking in the car years earlier. 

“I was thinking, these are the questions that I ask myself all the time, ‘You can major in this?’” he says.  

His epiphany was not about studying something abstract; it was about alignment. Philosophy named what he had always felt: that excellence is not accidental, and character matters more than applause. 

In Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics,” Kaufman-Renn grabbed onto the idea that human flourishing is worth striving toward. “There is a certain perfection,” he says, “and it’s worthy to work and try to achieve that.” 

That is arguably an ideal philosophy for anyone to embrace when pursuing a sport. But sports complicate perfection. Sometimes you play your best and the scoreboard doesn’t match the effort.  

“Sometimes you work as hard as you can and you don’t get rewarded for it,” he says. “You can give it your all and you can still lose.” That reality forced a reckoning for him. Why pursue sports if victory isn’t guaranteed? Why give yourself fully when outcomes are uncertain? 

Philosophy offered an answer: effort for its own sake. Virtue independent of applause.

Meaning beyond the scoreboard 

Christopher Yeomans, the Justin S. Morrill Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and a professor of philosophy, sees that posture as essential to both sport and philosophy. “It’s something that we enjoy for its own sake,” he says of sport. The intrinsic value — not the external reward — is what makes the experience of sports transformative. 

That intrinsic value shows up in moments athletes call “flow” or “being in the zone.” Flow is the sensation that time slows, perception sharpens, and you become fully immersed. “You literally see more, hear more, feel more,” Yeomans says. 

But immersion does not eliminate identity volatility. College athletes live publicly. Kaufman-Renn is still seen as the power forward when he’s having lunch or walking to class. 

“When I leave the gym, I’m still TKR outside,” he says. Being seen only as a basketball player can magnify failure. A loss to a rival lingers in the eyes of strangers. Well-meaning comments take on weight. “When you’re living that roller coaster of identity — that’s hard mentally,” he says. 

To deal with that mental challenge, he built an anchor. He composed his personal “I am” statement — a practice he recommends to everyone.  

“I am one of faith, love, integrity, discipline, intentionality and cherish helping people with personal growth,” he says. It is framed where he can see it. He repeats it daily. It functions as a ballast when emotions spike or weaknesses threaten to overwhelm.  

After a win over Nebraska, that statement holds true. After a loss to Indiana, it also holds. 

“The scoreboard doesn’t change that,” he says. His identity does not begin or end with a stat sheet. 

Yeomans says the balance between competition and cooperation, between self and team, is precisely what makes sport philosophically rich. 

“You should respect your opponents, because you’re doing each other a favor by competing,” he says. 

In its purest form, there is no malice in sports competition. It is mutual sharpening and the social mechanism that enables potential to be realized. 

And team sport teaches something classrooms alone cannot: how to be responsible for others while trusting them in return. Only one player can take the last, often critical, shot. The others must live with the result. 

Yeomans says that sports dynamic mirrors citizenship itself — navigating tension between personal ambition and the collective good. 

College sports also serve to tether universities to their communities. “The attachment to Purdue cannot be secured by a briefing document,” Yeomans says. “The kind of emotional allegiance that survives a tough season to cheer again next year is forged through shared experience.”  

Kaufman-Renn sees that bond most clearly when he meets young fans after games. A homemade friendship bracelet he’s been given. A shy thank-you. A reminder that the arena is filled not just with spectators, but with stories. 

“It shows you what really matters,” he says.

The attachment to Purdue cannot be secured by a briefing document. The kind of emotional allegiance that survives a tough season to cheer again next year is forged through shared experience.

Chris Yeomans

The Justin S. Morrill Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and professor of philosophy

Failure as teacher 

Failure, Yeomans adds, is not an aberration, but an instructor. “You don’t get better from winning,” he says. “You get better from losing.” Excellence, then, is never ease. It is sustained commitment. It’s “a long-term commitment to improvement.”  

Kaufman-Renn understands and looks forward to embracing life after basketball. Whether in the NBA or after it, basketball will not be the final chapter. 

“When the ball stops bouncing,” he says, “I’ll have a lot more time” to study, to reflect, to live the values he already practices. 

For now, he plays. He rebounds. He studies Aristotle. He repeats his “I am” statement. And Purdue fans rise and cheer his rebounds and points in the paint. 

And whether they realize it or not, they are cheering for a young man who is incorporating his philosophy for life into his sport and learning how to anchor his identity beyond outcomes.  

They cheer for a team practicing cooperation under pressure and for a university community bound together by shared striving. Whether the ball falls through the rim or not, the pursuit continues.

As a flight major, Walls has extensive experience in the piloting of airplanes

Meet Victor Walls, who’s had a lifelong passion to become a pilot. He’s made the most of his college experience and logged many hours in the air.

Location:

West Lafayette

hands-on experience:

Republic Airways student ambassador

fun fact:

I'm a U.S. Air Force airman first class

Q+A

Why professional flight? and why at purdue?

I’ve wanted to fly since I was 4 years old. I took my first discovery flight at 14 and soloed at 16. I love it. Purdue has one of the top professional pilot programs in the U.S., so coming here was a no-brainer.

Making the most of the moment is what it’s all about for Rob Blackman, the voice of Purdue men’s basketball.

Choosing words succinctly and wisely is an art form. That’s how one becomes 2025 Indiana Sportscaster of the Year, an honor Blackman earned in late January.

When Fletcher Loyer dribbled across halfcourt and lofted the basketball skyward as time ran out at Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena on March 31, 2024 — sealing Purdue’s win over Tennessee and a trip to the Final Four — Blackman, after calling the play, paused to humbly pay tribute to former broadcast partner Larry Clisby, who had passed away three years earlier.

“The first thing that came out of his mouth was Cliz,” says Purdue coach Matt Painter, who later heard Blackman’s broadcast. “That says a lot about Rob, that he would take that moment to pay respect to Larry. He also paid tribute to several others around our program, like (longtime supporter) John Nine, and that meant a lot.”

Blackman gets treated like family around the men’s basketball program because he is family. He started his basketball work with the Boilermakers the year Painter became head coach, 21 seasons ago.

“He’s one of us, and he’s done a great job; he’s like another staff member,” Painter says. “You kind of make your bones by how you feel when we lose. That sounds crazy, but if you hurt when we lose, you’re one of us.

“He has worked really hard to be in this position and to be loyal to Purdue, and it’s just a great fit. We are very fortunate because we had a great fit with Cliz, and having someone like Rob is very, very similar. It’s unique. I think that’s what makes Purdue special — having guys like Rob in your corner.”

For 15 years, Blackman sat to the right of Clisby, the legend of Purdue men’s basketball radio, but when Clisby was saddled with cancer, the bittersweet reality stared Blackman in the face. Were the circumstances surrounding the eventual change of the guard as imagined? Of course not; however, the choice to fill the role was never in doubt.

“You have to earn your stripes and wait your turn,” says Blackman, who stepped into his role after Clisby retired due to illness. Those stripes he referred to were earned, and in plenty. To receive them, one had to excel at the job, and Blackman’s upbringing and prior professional opportunities prepared him well.

And the result? Carving his own successful footprint in the Purdue Athletics community.

“I have been so lucky to have so many great mentors, great people that came before and supported me,” Blackman says.

That started at his boyhood home. He grew up on a farm in northern White County, five miles north of Monticello, Indiana, as a Purdue fan. “It is clear that Rob got his work ethic from his upbringing,” says his wife of nearly 28 years, Stephanie. “I hit the in-laws lottery when it comes to great families, and the Blackman family clearly knows the value of hard work and effort.”

Stephanie also tells a story passed down about her husband’s childhood aspiration to become a broadcaster.

“They have very grainy videos — videos nonetheless — of him recreating basketball games after coming home from a high school game on a Friday,” Stephanie says. “He would recreate the game, announce it and pretend like he was the players at the same time.”

Priceless stuff.

Honing skills

The first in his family to attend college, Blackman played wide receiver at the University of Evansville, graduating in 1993, four years before the Purple Aces dropped their program.

While on the Evansville campus, Blackman garnered experience at the campus radio station and got a lucky break when a sports-minded station manager, Len Clark, paved the way for more experience.

Clark, also from northern Indiana, appreciated Blackman’s enthusiasm for the craft and his ability to manage time as a student-athlete and broadcaster.

“From his farming background, he knows what hard work looks like,” Clark says. “I don’t like the term ‘paying your dues,’ but he has carved his own path to get where he wants to be.”

After his days in the Pocket City, Blackman was hired at WRBT in Mt. Carmel, Illinois, just an hour or so up the Ohio and Wabash rivers from his college home. He even found time to coach the freshman football and basketball teams at Mt. Carmel High School from 1994-98.

But radio was his day job — and his passion, and it showed.

“Rob always treated broadcasting as community service,” says Scott Allen, who was Blackman’s boss at WRBT. “He understands the importance of bringing local moments to people who rely on radio, and he hasn’t changed that even after spending time at Purdue.”

Rick Johnston, the Mt. Carmel basketball coach for the coincidentally named Golden Aces, could tell early on that Blackman would someday outgrow the town despite being a perfect fit for the community of about 8,000 residents.

“Rob was way ahead of his time,” Johnston says. “He did things for our program that others weren’t doing, especially in a high school setting: weekly shows, coaches’ shows. It was a great thing for our program, and Rob was the impetus behind it all.”

Johnston, who had coached basketball in Indiana, had Lafayette-area ties and was a Purdue fan, encouraged Blackman to aim high at an early age. When he asked Blackman where he was headed in his career, the broadcaster’s answer was straightforward.

“Without flinching, he said, ‘I’ll be working on the Purdue network broadcasting team,’” Johnston says. Blackman wasn’t bragging; he just had that wonderful attribute: a clear vision of where he was headed and wanted to be.

Blackman began working with the Purdue radio network on the football postgame call-in show in 2004 and worked his way to the studio-host position he now holds, alongside Tim Newton and Mark Herrmann. He has also broadcast Boilermaker baseball for nearly a decade (sharing duties with Kyle Charters) and is the host of the fledgling “For Pete’s Sake” podcast with comedian Joey Mulinaro.

No substitute for preparation

Blackman’s versatility has also expanded to auto racing, working on the Indy 500 radio network. It was a sport he knew only from a fan’s perspective, but it played a role in him getting the opportunity. Blackman’s tireless preparation impressed the voice of the 500, Mark Jaynes, when Jaynes was looking for another pit reporter.

“He came to the interview with seven pages of notes and admitted he didn’t know much about auto racing,” says Jaynes, who has spent 30 years as the lead on the Indy 500 radio broadcast team. “My response was simple: ‘You’re hired.’ He could probably make a game of tic-tac-toe sound exciting, but the thing is it is so genuine. What I’ve also grown to respect about him as a co-worker and a friend is that Rob doesn’t use ‘I’ and ‘me’ much. Rob uses ‘we.’ That connects him with the audience.”

Blackman’s sidekick on the Purdue basketball broadcasts, Bobby Riddell, is impressed with his partner’s diligence.

“He does a tremendous job of preparation,” says Riddell, who has been the color analyst since the 2020–21 season. “He has a laundry list of things he puts together for every game: rosters, talking points, matchups. It makes it easy for me because I feel we are always ready.”

Not leaving much to chance while still sounding authentic is a key attribute. Also, just having fun with the broadcast and realizing you are living the dream serves Blackman well.

“There are few people who get to do a job they have dreamed of doing,” Blackman says. “I am humbled by the Broadcaster of the Year Award, as so many people had so much to do with it.”

Don Fischer, the voice of Indiana for 53 years, delivers the ultimate “it takes one to know one” comment. Fischer, who has won the Indiana Sportscaster of the Year Award 28 times, is effusive in his praise of his “rival” colleague. “Rob is a terrific broadcaster, very much a pro, very professional, and does a great job on the air,” Fischer says. “He is one of those people, not just on the air but off the air, that you could really relate to, because he’s just a great person.”

Written by Alan Karpick, publisher of GoldandBlack.com since 1996.

Andrew Kinder, a senior in business, finds hope and support as a cancer survivor

More than six years after Tyler Trent showed campus and the world what it means to stand up to cancer, his story still touches the lives of so many.  

People like Purdue senior Andrew Kinder and cancer researcher Nathaniel Mabe, and everyone at the Purdue research center that bears his name: the Tyler Trent Pediatric Cancer Research Center. It’s part of the Purdue Institute for Cancer Research (PICR), one of the university’s leading research centers. 

Kinder, who is on track to graduate this year from the Mitch Daniels School of Business, and Mabe, a PICR member and an assistant professor of medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology in Purdue’s College of Pharmacy, are also connected by something else: They are both survivors. 

Though these two individuals have never met, their paths have both been inspired by Trent’s resilience and passion for Boilermaker athletics and philanthropy.  

For Mabe, the lightning bolt to commit his life’s work to cancer research came in 2018: As a football fan and Ohio native, he happened to watch the ESPN “College GameDay” episode highlighting Purdue superfan Trent’s story, about two months before the 20-year-old Boilermaker student passed away following a five-year battle with osteosarcoma. 

“I didn’t know Tyler and didn’t have connection to Purdue, but his story really spoke to me and was a motivating factor for why I wanted to go into pediatric cancer research,” he says. 

That spark –– that unexpected connection to Tyler that so many shared –– was also a major reason he joined Purdue.  

Kinder too felt kinship with Trent, as a Purdue freshman undergoing oral chemotherapy in 2021. “Tyler was exactly what a Boilermaker is. His mindset really is also something I look at as motivation. Like you’ve always got to keep going,” he says. 

The senior comes from a family of proud Boilermakers, including his parents and two older sisters, and he attended the now-famous Boilermakers’ 2018 upset win over Ohio State where Trent made his last appearance at Ross-Ade Stadium. “I think a lot of what I modeled after him is, I just wanted to be the most normal that I could be,” Kinder says.  

Mabe’s commitment to patients 

Mabe is one of many individuals at the PICR and the Tyler Trent Pediatric Cancer Research Center working to make a difference in the lives of students like Kinder and Trent.  

“Our role in this is to be the scientist to help to make new therapies, not just to help treat cancer but to make them safer and better tolerated,” Mabe says.  

He’s motivated by the struggles of young patients and their families — and by his own story, too. In 2014, while he was a PhD student and just 24 years old, he was diagnosed with testicular seminoma. Although treatable, the cancer diagnosis changed his academic trajectory.  

Prior to his diagnosis, he wanted to study cardiovascular disease. But, Mabe says, “I decided that I wanted to be part of the scientists that were finding new treatments that could make cancers curable for everyone and not just for people like me.”

Our role in this is to be the scientist to help to make new therapies, not just to help treat cancers but to make them safer and better tolerated.

Nathaniel Mabe
Assistant professor of medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology, Purdue Institute for Cancer Research

He studies neuroblastoma, a malignant cancer that originates in a child’s nerve tissue. He says, “One of the challenges that we want to tackle is helping to increase the therapies available for these really young kids.” 

As a part of this effort, he studies the possible drivers behind this type of cancer, including epigenetics. “Every cell in the body has the same DNA –– whether it’s a heart or a brain or skin cell, they all have the same DNA, but the cookbook for making a human, all the different kinds of organs, is what’s called epigenetics,” Mabe explains. “That is, it tells a cell, ‘You’re to become a heart cell; you’re to become a brain cell; you’re to become a skin cell.’” 

It’s during this process that childhood cancer commonly develops in the tissue. By digging deeper, Mabe and his collaborators seek to target cancer cells that aren’t developing properly as tissues and use drug therapies to manipulate the cancer cells to resemble healthy tissues. He says, “That doesn’t turn them into healthy tissue, but it prevents them from continuing to grow.” 

This research, which he hopes to take to the clinical-trial phase, is part of a larger nationwide effort, including at Mabe’s previous institution, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. The collaborators are currently in talks with pharmaceutical companies, clinicians and scientists, all with the aim of developing a new drug that could help kids with neuroblastoma.  

Mabe strives to innovate in this area, and it’s his interactions with patients –– like Kinder –– and their families that keep him going. “We’re in the lab most days,” he says, “but certainly seeing their energy and commitment to the cause energizes us to work harder and to work smarter so that we can make as many differences as fast as we can.” 

Kinder finds his purpose 

Kinder chose Purdue with his parents’ help, because he knew the campus well and trusted that it would provide him with the sense of comfort and normalcy that he craved during his treatment for leukemia.  

He benefited from a few stabilizing forces. One of his older sisters, Claire, was a senior at the time and living on campus in West Lafayette, which was a big relief in case he ever needed help.  

Also, the Riley Hospital for Children, where Kinder received regular chemotherapy treatments, was roughly an hour’s drive from where he lived. And Purdue’s Disability Resource Center helped coordinate with his doctor at Riley, eliminating some of the stress when he needed to miss classes. 

Like Trent, Kinder was highly motivated to contribute something meaningful to Purdue –– a place they valued so much –– and be unrelenting in those pursuits.  

One of the ways Kinder worked toward this goal was by joining the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. During his sophomore and junior years, he became heavily involved in the organization’s philanthropic efforts in connection with the PICR and Tyler Trent Cancer Research Endowment.  

Tyler was exactly what a Boilermaker is. His mindset really is also something I look at as motivation. Like you’ve always got to keep going.

Andrew Kinder

Purdue senior in business

Each fall around the Hammer Down Cancer football game, members from Beta Theta Pi shave their heads and donate the sponsorship proceeds to cancer research at Purdue during an event called “Buzz-A-Beta.” Kinder estimates that he raised around $15,000 through this.  

For him, this philanthropy is incredibly fulfilling. “As a Boilermaker, you always keep pushing. You can’t let anything really stop you,” he says.”  

The mission behind cancer research at Purdue 

The Purdue Institute for Cancer Research was established in 1976 and became a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center in 1978. It’s one of only 73 NCI-designated cancer institutes, which are found in 37 states and the District of Columbia. 

“NCI designation is the gold standard of quality in cancer care and in cancer research,” says Andrew Mesecar, the Robert W. Miller Director of the PICR.  

He explains that Purdue’s, and particularly the PICR’s, biggest strengths are its interdisciplinary nature and renewed focus on pediatric cancer research with the Tyler Trent Pediatric Cancer Research Center, which was established in 2023 with support from the Tyler Trent Cancer Research Endowment. 

Mesecar says, “I wanted to create a model where we were not just a cancer research center, but an institute, where we can create centers focused on specific areas like pediatric cancer, and fulfill our academic mission of training students and training postdocs as the next generation of cancer researchers.”  

This model draws on Purdue’s unique scientific expertise and technological capabilities. It also brings together biologists, pharmacists –– like Mabe –– biochemists and engineers, for example, to analyze and better understand what’s driving a specific cancer and develop effective therapeutics and delivery methods. 

The institute has a proven track record of excellence in these areas for adult cancers, including three FDA-approved drugs and agents, and patents and licensed technologies. And now, Mesecar hopes to translate these strengths into advancements in pediatric cancer, an area that requires more funding and research. 

The Tyler Trent Pediatric Cancer Research Center and the recruitment of new faculty like Mabe are essential leaps toward this objective.  

Mesecar wants patients and their families to know that they’re not alone. “Purdue exists and it’s doing something about cancer,” he says.   

At Purdue, we tackle the world’s toughest challenges through timely research and innovation. Andrew’s story is just one of many incredible examples of how this pursuit continues to enhance the lives of those in our community and beyond. 

Learn more https://www.purdue.edu/campaigns/next-giant-leap/