Alex: 

This is Alex Psomas, and you’re listening to, This is Purdue. 

Kate: 

Hi, I’m Kate Young and you are listening to, This is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking. Who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators, who are these boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty, and alumni, taking small steps toward their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same. 

Alex: 

AI is a set of tools for all sorts of things. The AI umbrella is so large, so many things fit under it. In our application, we were trying to solve a very specific task, which is match food donations to food recipients. The other thing is now you can scale. Now you can just go beyond Indiana. You can include more food banks. You can process donations a lot faster because a human doesn’t have to sit around trying to call people on the phone and so on. 

Kate: 

In this episode of This is Purdue, we are talking to Alex Psomas, assistant professor of computer Science in Purdue University’s College of Science. Alex and his team at Purdue are using artificial intelligence to fight hunger. That’s right. This Purdue researcher is helping to solve one of the world’s toughest challenges, food insecurity and hunger. Now, we’ve all heard so much about AI in the news recently, and Alex is going to dig into this technology and how he leverages AI for good to solve societal issues right in his own Indiana community. You’ll hear about Alex’s AI models used to outsource decisions to make more informed and fairer choices on how best to distribute food among food pantries in Indianapolis. 

Plus, he shares how this model can scale to other areas of the country as well. By the way, this interview was extra special for our, this is Purdue team because Alex was the first boilermaker guest to join us in our new podcast studio. You can check out more on our YouTube page, YouTube.com\@This is Purdue. Okay, first things first, though. We kicked things off with Alex’s life growing up in Greece and his journey to becoming an assistant professor and researcher more than 5,000 miles away at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Alex, thank you so much for joining us on, this is Purdue. This is our first interview with our new studio set, so we’re really excited to have you and show off our studio too. 

Alex: 

Awesome. Thank you for having me. It’s very exciting. 

Kate: 

So tell us a little bit about your childhood. Have you always been interested in technology? You’re a computer science professor and researcher. Is that something growing up that you’ve always loved computers and technology, or how did that start for you? 

Alex: 

Yeah, that’s a difficult question to answer. So my dad was a welder and later on he had his own business of making stainless steel tanks for wine and oil and these sort of things. So even as a kid, eight, 10 years old, I would go on sweep floors or whatever. So I kind of used to growing up with large machinery around, so to speak, he would throw me around. I would always be curious about how things work and I had a computer at home that I would take apart and put together because I had nothing else to do, I guess. So I was always into how things work. 

Kate: 

Kind of tinkering around with computers. 

Alex: 

Yeah, exactly. 

Kate: 

Give us a little bit of background on what sparked you and your interest in wanting to give back to your community. Was that something that interested you when you were younger as well? 

Alex: 

So I’m from Greece. Greece is a small place and like all small places, community is important. I was part of many communities growing up, my rowing community, my high school community, my college community, family, later on in grad school, the theory community and so on, and looking back at my life and experiences. Every time I’m part of a strong community, that’s when I’m the happiest. And of course, part of being part of a community is not just feeling supported, but also supporting others. 

Kate: 

So you’re from Greece. We have to hear about your journey to Purdue and how you wanted to become a boilermaker. How did that happen? 

Alex: 

In Greece, the paths are somewhat structured. So up until high school, even if you’re in a small village, an island with 10 people or you’re in downtown Athens, everyone does the same books. Everyone is very uniform education right up until the last year of high school where you have to make humongous choice of where to go to college, and it’s very specific. So if you pick to be a math major, you’re looking at 40 math courses and nothing else. 

Kate: 

Oh wow. 

Alex: 

Computer science major, 40 computer science courses and nothing else. You don’t really get to pick inside of college. 

Kate: 

Not very well-rounded. 

Alex: 

Yes, yes, very one street. So it was a very hard choice for me. I was into math, computer science, mechanical engineering, coaching, everything under the sun. I picked computer science because I’m greedy, looking at the curriculum, it looked like it had the most loopholes to learn a lot of things. It had a lot of math. You could do more physics if you wanted. You could do more coding if you wanted. So I thought it was a good way to decide later. And in college I fell in love with algorithms, and computer science, I really… First course I took was phenomenal, which is a course I’m teaching this semester, by the way. 

I always tell this to the students. And then I went to grad school. That was my first experience in the United States. I went to Berkeley. Then I wanted to just keep learning, keep contributing to research and postdoc and then job market for academic jobs. That’s the first time I visited Purdue when I was interviewing here. And it really struck me as a special place. It seemed that even though people were doing super cool stuff and super impactful stuff, it was a sense of calmness and kind of lack of stress. Everyone was very nice. And from the people I talked to, it felt like everyone felt supported. My experience as well is the same. So it has lived up to this expectation. 

Kate: 

Yeah, we were talking before this about how California and the mid-west is a bit different vibes, right? 

Alex: 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The stress levels are really- 

Kate: 

I’m glad we’ve given you the warm Midwest welcome here. Okay, so let’s get into AI. Someone who doesn’t know AI, doesn’t know how to use it, what would you tell them? Like AI one-on-one for beginners? 

Alex: 

That’s a great question because I can answer it with other people’s words. 

Kate: 

Okay. 

Alex: 

This topic has shown up since Ancient Greece if you really want to be pedantic about it. But even the beginning of computer science, this conversation has come up again and again. For example, Larry Tesler, famous computer science said, “AI is what has not been done yet”, which is somehow accurate. Dijkstra another very famous computer scientist, my favorite quote of all time, which is regarding artificial intelligence. So you have intelligence, you have thinking. “So the question of whether computers can think is the same as whether submarines can swim.” 

So people like to have this cute one-liners, but what is AI? AI is a set of tools, a big umbrella, all sorts of things fit under it, and it’s an evolving agenda. So when I was an undergrad, we talk about spam filtering or things that are now silly, spell checking, this would fit under AI was now because my phone does IT, it doesn’t seem so exciting anymore. Back then my phone didn’t do it, so it was more exciting. But what’s common, typically when we talk about AI, we mean reasoning, learning, knowledge, representation, language processing, all these sort of things are typically under the AI umbrella. 

Kate: 

What would you tell someone though who might be confused about it? Is it easy to use? Where would they start, maybe? 

Alex: 

So the reason I think things are confusing is because the umbrella is so big, the question is so broad. When you say about AI, let’s do an analogy. There’s this beautiful book by Narayanan and Kapoor, okay, AI Snake Oil. And there they describe a world where every machine that can take you from place A to place B, it’s called vehicle. So a bicycle and a car and a ship and an airplane and a rocket. They’re all vehicles. So now let’s try to have the discussion of if vehicles are environmentally friendly, it’s a very hard discussion to have. It’s impossible because we’re putting all these things under one umbrella. If someone made a faster ship engine, all of a sudden you’re like, why is my bicycle not going any faster, right? It’s very, very difficult. So I think the difficulty in the conversation comes from the umbrella being so big. 

So we can talk about prediction, AI prediction. Is AI any good at predicting the future? Is AI any good at recognizing things like, show it a picture of a cat, can tell you it’s a cat. These are two very different things. So I would say where to start, just to answer your question, start at understanding that it’s not one thing. There’s categories. That’s the first thing to understand. AI is a set of tools for all sorts of things. The AI umbrella is so large, so many things fit under it. In our application, we were trying to solve a very specific task, which is match food donations to food recipients. It’s a matching problem, and we were trying to automate a person. So we have very, very concrete task at hand and we have very, very concrete tools to solve it. 

Kate: 

So as Alex just mentioned, he and his team used AI to match food donations to food recipients. Now, if you remember our research series episode with Purdue food science professors, Amanda Dearing and Haley Oliver, food insecurity is a massive problem across the world. And boilermaker researchers are continually working on solutions, including Alex. And according to the United States Department of Agriculture, food waste is estimated at between 30 and 40% of the food supply. So how is Purdue helping to solve this? Alex explains more about how his work with the Indy Hunger Network on an initiative known as Food Drop allows shipments of perfectly edible food to be efficiently donated to food banks instead of being bound for a landfill. 

Alex: 

So the Food Drop Initiative is an initiative run by the Indy Hunger network of food organization in Indianapolis. And its purpose is to redirect rejected food loads of truck drivers away from landfills and into food banks. And the idea was very simple. You had these truck drivers and for one reason or the other, they had little to do with whether they were carrying food that was edible, but they had a bunch of food that they had to get rid of like whatever they were supposed to deliver it didn’t want it for whatever reason, you can think of you’re carrying and pallets of food and one of them shifts. The food is fine, everything is fine, but the recipient doesn’t want it. So now what do you do? The outside option is just take it to a landfill, throw it away. So Food Drop was trying to not have this happen and match the food to food banks. 

Kate: 

So how and why exactly did Alex and his team use AI to fuel food pantries? He shares why this unique process takes all of the emotion out of the equation something humans find impossible to do and replaces this decision-making with innovative AI models to weigh all of the possible considerations and then come up with a solution that best benefits the most amount of people. See, by automating food matching decisions, more logical and fair food distribution can occur. 

Alex: 

So where does AI and machine learning come in? So in these problems, these are matching problems. You’re trying to match a donor with a recipient. There’s many things you can think of this way. So as things scale up, when you let a human make these decisions, what you’ll start seeing is that 99% of the donations go to only 1% of the possible donors. And this could be all sorts of human aspects, like, oh, this person responds quickly, or this person is very reliable or whatever. But the effect is the effect. The things start concentrating, and that’s where machine learning and AI can help. The current system is a person is making these matching decisions and we just want to automate it. And in doing so, we want to ensure that of course we’re doing the right decisions, making a sense of people are not driving a lot, the food is going to people who want the food and can use the food. 

But also at the same time, we are being fair. The way decision making works is we would, for many decisions that need to be made, we would like to have to do things in a democratic process where we all come together and make a decision. And that is sometimes possible, for example, when we want elect a representative, but often the way we make decisions is we elect a representative and have them make all the decisions, which is sort of the other extreme. And that is because lack of expertise or because the input output is too much, it’s too much to ask everyone for something every single time. 

The thing with AI and one of the methods that we do suggest, you can often predict what people would do. So if I could predict what you think all the time, then maybe I can simulate the way that direct democracy. So asking everyone a question all the time would work if I just have a good way to predict what you would do. And now this allows me to scale or this allows me to make more fair decisions for a number of things. So food donation, that’s precisely the approach we took. 

Kate: 

Alex dives further into food insecurity in the US and reiterates the importance of using AI for good. 

Alex: 

When you start working in these food allocation problems, I didn’t realize it at least, but food insecurity is embarrassingly bad, globally but also in the US. You would think, okay, there’s so much food, everyone’s throwing away their leftovers and trying to lose weight or whatever. Food insecurity, which is defined as, I’m going to bed hungry. A hundred percent of US counties have food insecurity. Somewhere like 40 million adults, 10 million children face food insecurity in this country in 2022. The numbers are shocking. In our minds, or at least in my mind. I knew it was a problem, but I didn’t realize before I started working in the space back in 2017 that it’s a huge problem. It’s unbelievable how big this problem is. 

Kate: 

Alex says, this machine learning program also saves people time and energy. Not only that, but this model can be scaled beyond Indiana to include more food banks. 

Alex: 

Beyond people’s time. So again, this matching process is run by a single person. This is not their only job. So now we can free some of their time into something that in a sense, a machine can do better or an algorithm can do better. The other thing is now you can scale. Now you can just go beyond Indiana, you can include more food banks, you can process donations a lot faster because a human doesn’t have to sit around trying to call people on the phone and so on. 

Kate: 

And speaking of scaling, Alex and his team are now working with the Society of St. Andrew, a United Methodist Hunger Relief nonprofit that focuses on food waste and hunger. 

Alex: 

So the idea was once it’s automated, it would get passed on to another organization which we have now. So this is now being supported and it lives under a different organization called Society of St. Andrews. But they didn’t have to train anybody, they could just immediately take this on because there’s nothing to do. There’s nothing that you need to learn. You don’t need an employee who knows how these decisions are made or how to navigate the process. And in fact, a few months ago, an organization from Washington, the state of Washington, so near, I think their south of Seattle want to take this on. They want to run a similar program over there. They don’t need to do anything. They could just, our code is open source, they can just take it, change the locations of the recipients and run it. It can run tomorrow if they decide to run it. 

Kate: 

As Alex just mentioned, this model uses open source code, code that’s open to the public. It’s also funded by the National Science Foundation and a Google AI for Social Good award. He discusses his goals for continuing to expand. 

Alex: 

We are interested in expanding. So we have seen things getting allocated. We want to do more. I think there’s more to do just because we’re not limited by human time. So we can expand in a sense for free. So we have some funding underway. There are some changes we want to make in the backend, some technical changes. The goal is to try to grow our set of recipients, so the people on the list. So contact more food banks. So we’re working with the Society of St. Andrew for this. We have applied for some funding for this project and we’ll see how it goes. 

Kate: 

We talked about there’s no human decision-making and it’s all AI, but ethics in the tech industry has been at the top of the headlines lately. You’re nodding. So why are you confident that your solution with this food drop has this fairness and can maintain that fairness? 

Alex: 

Well, the short answer is is because I can prove it. Okay, you see, or what’s the process here? You see a real problem. You see a real world problem. Now reality is complicated and math cannot deal with that. So you abstract away details and you get to some nice model, a theoretical model where the actors behave in a simple way, simple enough for you to be able to argue for. And in that model you define what fair means and then you prove some stuff and hopefully whatever you prove matches something to back to the world. 

So the only disagreement can come, someone can complain, is whether they disagree with what I mean when I say fair. they say no, what you say is fair is actually not fair. And the other is, when I did this abstraction, whether I move something that I shouldn’t have, whether I took away something from the real world that’s very important. And I removed it because I didn’t think it was important. And I believe that we haven’t done this. I can tell you what the fairness notion is. I think that’s a simple one. So there’s no technical things about it, but if there’s any arguments, it will be one of those two steps. And because everything is open, you can go read my paper, I’m open to- 

Kate: 

You’re open to feedback? 

Alex: 

Yeah, of course. So that’s how science proceeds. 

Kate: 

We’ll link Alex’s research in our podcast show notes for you all. Alex’s graduate and undergraduate students are involved in this research as well. So what’s his approach to mentoring them, especially when it comes to topics like AI and computer science that are changing day to day on a global scale? Here’s a hint. What he wants for these boilermakers students is actually pretty simple. Find something that excites them. 

Alex: 

So what’s my teaching style? So I’m a little chaotic. I don’t know if this coming across in this conversation. It’s not for no reason. So I really strongly believe that the bottleneck in research, in academic research, many, many times, more times than people would think, it’s not intelligence or talent. That’s what most people think. That’s why science is not progressing because there’s not enough talent. I think that’s not true. I think the real reason is there’s not desire. So people like me are excited about problems and I have found it a very unsuccessful way to mentor people is to tell them to work on the problems that I’m excited about. So instead I do something that is very difficult for them. So they’re all very annoyed, which is tell them everything under the sun that I’m excited about. Not one thing. So 50 things and then let them pick. 

Kate: 

So tell us some of those things that you’re excited about. 

Alex: 

A lot of them are very technical, like very specific technical questions that I don’t know how to answer, but others are the opposite. So I’m very excited about AI applications in democracy. What does that mean? What can we do? How can we make better decisions collectively? How do you form committees, citizen assemblies? These sort of things are very excited for me or I’ve been recently learning a lot about, through actually colleagues here at Purdue, applications of AI and machine learning in medicine, how some things are done a little naively. 

So I’m excited to learn more about, okay, there seems to be some room to put things together more. So this will be very open-ended examples. And my hope, and this hope has been materialized, is that someone will get excited about something that is in my peripheral vision of excitement and then I get to learn from them. So that’s the best way to keep track of things is have someone who’s really excited tell you about it, right? So I hopefully to infect someone and then learn from them. 

Kate: 

I love what Alex just said right there. He knows he can’t mentor students by telling them to work on problems that interest and excite him. They need to work on problems that inspire and excite them. That’s the difference maker. And speaking of students, in 2022, Alex received a career award from the National Science Foundation, which is the most prestigious award given to junior faculty who embody the role of teacher scholars through research. Alex shares what this honor means to him. 

Alex: 

First, it was really nice to be able to get the funds to fund students and have them explore their interests together with mine. Certainly the award helped with that, but more than that, it felt really nice because this was under AF, Algorithmic Foundations, so which is a very broad kind of umbrella in theoretical computer science, the comparison a little bit apples to oranges, how you compare to people who to give the award to. So it really felt, I would say, very, very nice that people appreciate the work that I do. People in my community, in the theoretical computer science community appreciate this work. I feel like that was the most meaningful part of this. 

Kate: 

You talked about your passion for computer science. Purdue had the first computer science program in the US. How are researchers like you at Purdue using that experience to be part of this rapid evolution of AI? 

Alex: 

Purdue has had the first CS department and that really put us in a good spot today. And you can see that computer science really has a big place in Purdue as a whole. Purdue is at the forefront of all sorts of things. There’s people like me who focus on more foundational aspects, understanding things at their core. We have very, very strong people doing computer vision, things that have to do with images, video, that sort of thing. Robotics, we have a very, very strong robotics team. We might have Aniket Bera- 

Kate: 

That’s exactly I’m thinking of the AI dialogue. 

Alex: 

Yes. Security is very strong. So people trying to figure out is AI security? Is AI trustworthy? Purdue as a whole is attacking the human computer interaction, all the talent we’re recruiting and all the kind of combined efforts that go into the broader agenda. But I think Purdue as a whole, computer science is really at the forefront of this. 

Kate: 

So not only is Purdue a leader in computer science, but our university is also a leader when it comes to AI and one of Purdue University President Mung Chiang’s strategic initiatives includes Purdue Computes, which launched as student interest in computing related majors and the societal impact of artificial intelligence and ships continued to rise rapidly. Purdue computes emphasizes these four key pillars, computing, semiconductor research and development, physical AI and quantum science and engineering. Alex shares more. 

Alex: 

Purdue computes is this massive initiative at Purdue that’s trying to attack a huge number of problems all at the same time and recruiting the manpower to do so. The whole initiative is facing challenges and providing solutions for things across the board. So AI and applications to agriculture, manufacturing, detecting bias, chip design, robotics, everything across the board. I think just so many exciting things are happening in that space. 

Kate: 

What’s your favorite part about being part of the Purdue Computes initiative? 

Alex: 

I think getting to collaborate with people, just having the expertise that you need available. So for example, I was recently in talks with Food Finders, the company, the NGO here in Lafayette. Again, some AI application in their operations and there was some problem with data collection. It seemed that there was a very expensive solution and that cheaper solution to do the data collection would take a picture. Everyone in the market takes a picture of something and I was like, oh, but I know nothing about computer vision. So I don’t know, actually what I’m saying is reasonable. Well, two days later now, I know it’s reasonable because I was talking to my colleague Raymond, who is one of the best people in the world and computer vision and he was right there, I could just ask him. It really makes everything go a lot faster having all these cool people doing cool stuff. 

Kate: 

We’ve had a lot of researchers on the podcast who have said it’s so collaborative. It’s this special community within Purdue. So that’s cool to hear. 

Alex: 

That’s how science moves. Just by having the expertise. No one can be an expert on everything. It’s just too many things going. So just knowing that you have reliable colleagues that are experts in their own domain is really, really important. 

Kate: 

Going back to, you talked about community, growing up in Greece. What has it been like acclimating and being involved in this boilermaker community overall for you and your family? 

Alex: 

It’s been fun. It’s been fun. It is just very different. It’s very hard to compare. Greece is a very uniform place. Everyone pretty much looks like me and acts like me. Exactly. Roughly, it’s exaggerating. On the flip side, Purdue is an international community driven from the university. So just so many people come from all sorts of different backgrounds. It has been really cool to be part of that. 

Kate: 

What discoveries or findings can we expect from Purdue, specifically within computer science and AI in 2025? 

Alex: 

That’s a hard question to answer. So we have some of the best people in the world working on things across the board. So foundational things, theoretical things, vision, robotics, human-computer interaction, and their applications across the board to agriculture medicine. 

Kate: 

So last question here. You get to see and contribute to so much amazing research at Purdue, like we talked about earlier. What do you want the world to know about the work that’s happening here at Purdue? 

Alex: 

We’re a leader in so many things. People here are pushing the agenda in all sorts of things, especially the College of Engineering and the College of Agriculture are a big part of being world leaders. But even at the College of Science, we’re really a part of all the exciting things that are happening in the AI space. 

Kate: 

Well, we can’t thank you enough for joining us and celebrating our new studio with us. Is there anything else I missed? Anything you want to tell our listeners? 

Alex: 

Regarding AI, I think the most important thing is to really go beyond the buzzwords. I would say that is a concrete message that I think is important to put out there. I think a lot of people are somehow suspicious that AI around them is bogus or exaggerated or just straight out false. At the same time, it seems very useful in other things, and I think people are having a hard time articulating exactly what they mean and it’s difficult to articulate exactly what you mean. And I think that the confusion and the way the confusion gets clarified is by knowing the stuff. So be less scared and more open to learning how these things work because it’s not going anywhere. Our lives will become more and more algorithmic, so to speak. 

Kate: 

I love that. That’s great. Be open-minded. Don’t be scared to utilize AI in your general life. 

Alex: 

It’s easy for me to say because it’s my job and also it’s my job to be wrong. That’s most of research. Only mistakes. 1% of the time you do something good, 99% it’s wrong. That’s fine. So I’m very used to being wrong, but that’s really the worst thing that can happen. You could just be wrong. Say something embarrassing and it’s fine as long as you learn something in the end. 

Kate: 

I love that. No, that’s perfect advice. Well, again, we can’t thank you enough. 

Alex: 

Thank you for having me. It was great. 

Kate: 

It was wonderful to have this special boilermaker in our new podcast studio. We have additional bonus content from Alex’s interview on our podcast YouTube channel. Head over to YouTube.com/@This is Purdue and click that subscribe button while you’re there. Plus you can check out some videos of our new Purdue brand studio as well. And of course, be sure to follow This is Purdue on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young. Our podcast videography for this episode was led by Ted Schellenberger in collaboration with Jon Garcia, Thad Boone and Zach Mogensen. 

Our social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. Our podcast distribution strategy is led by Carly Eastman. Our podcast design is led by Cheryl Glotzbach. Our podcast photography is led by John Underwood. Our podcast team project manager is Rain Gu. Additional writing and research assistance is led by Sophie Ritz and Ashvini Malshe. Our video production assistant is Dalani Young. Our this is Purdue intern is Caroline Keim and Purdue brand studio team member Brittany Steff is the author of a Purdue News article featuring Alex’s research, which you can check out in our show notes. Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcasts. There you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review. And as always, boiler up.

Dan Kiermaier: 

Hi. I’m Dan Kiermaier. I’m the head groundskeeper here at Wrigley Field with the Chicago Cubs, and you are listening to This Is Purdue. 

Kate Young: 

Hi. I’m Kate Young, and you’re listening to This Is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking. Who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators? Who are these Boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty, and alumni taking small steps toward their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same. 

Dan Kiermaier: 

I don’t think there’s a bad seat in the house. When you’re here, you feel it. It’s hard to describe, but it just has that it factor. It’s a really special place to me, and I’m lucky enough to watch 81 games a year at this place. It’s amazing, and I still get goosebumps when I walk out there. 

Kate Young: 

In this episode of This Is Purdue, we’re talking to Dan Kiermaier, the head groundskeeper for the Chicago Cubs. Dan uses his Purdue College of Agriculture degree in turf management and science to maintain the safety, playability, and historic atmosphere of one of sport’s most iconic venues, Wrigley Field. You’ll hear more about Dan’s career journey, sports turf maintenance tips, and behind-the-scenes stories from Major League Baseball’s second-oldest stadium in the country. Plus, we dig into Dan’s experience attending that 2016 World Series win. Yeah. You know the one. And we discuss how Dan’s team balances player safety and innovation of the Friendly Confines while maintaining the historic charm and that unique ivy, which has a surprising link to Purdue, by the way. Dan is a fantastic storyteller, so enough from me. Here’s my conversation with this Boilermaker who’s living out his dream career with one of the most celebrated sports teams in America. 

Dan, thank you so much for joining us on This Is Purdue, our official university podcast. You’re a proud Boilermaker. You’re a big Cubs fan, so it’s really amazing to see you living your dream with the Cubs now. And you’re using your turf and science management degree from Purdue’s College of Agriculture as the head groundskeeper for the Cubs at the iconic Wrigley Field. We’re super excited to dive into your journey and talk to you today, but let’s kick things off with your earliest memory of the Chicago Cubs. You’ve said that you went to visit Wrigley when you were about 10 years old. How did that visit influence you and change the trajectory of your life now? 

Dan Kiermaier: 

Yeah. It was the summer of 1998 when Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire were having their historic home run chase. I was 10 years old, playing baseball, so that was the time that I really got into watching the Cubs. And I remember just coming to the ballpark and just being astonished by just the ambiance of the place and just how beautiful the grass was, the ivy, the scoreboard, all of the things that you hear about with Wrigley, but to walk into this place for the first time was something special and that I will always remember. 

And a little cherry on top with that whole situation was the fact that Sammy hit … I think it was his 41st or 42nd home run that season, and the place went crazy. So, it was just a really cool moment as a 10-year-old kid. And at the time that I was here, I had no idea that groundskeeping or anything like that was even a career that you could pursue. Like many people that come to the ballpark, I just kind of took it for granted. It’s, I guess, cool now to have that perspective of looking back and just knowing what goes into this place each and every day to make all of these events go on and just all of the hard work that takes place behind the scenes, but yeah. That was a cool first moment for me to step into this place as a big fan. 

Kate Young: 

So, during that game, were you like, “I want to work for the Cubs. I want to at least work within Major League Baseball?” 

Dan Kiermaier: 

At that time, I was still hopeful that I could be playing for the Cubs. Fate would have it, I wasn’t good enough to be a ballplayer in the field, but I found my own little path to get to Wrigley, and I’m happy to talk about it. 

Kate Young: 

I love that. What is it about that atmosphere of Wrigley? I have been there a couple times and had a grand old time, and I’m not even truly a baseball fan, but what makes it so unique and spark such loyal, passionate fans? 

Dan Kiermaier: 

The Cubs have a very passionate fan base. That is, for me … The fans make the place, and it’s crazy because you can come to Wrigley on Wednesday or Thursday day game, Friday, and doesn’t matter when, what time of year. You’d think all these people would be at work and at their jobs, and it’s packed at full house. And those are some of the funnest days, but it’s just, I mean, everything. It’s the fact that it’s over 100 years old. It’s a very tight … Or some of these new stadiums are so big and monstrous, and this place is just compact. You’re kind of on top of each other, so you’re close to the action. I don’t think there’s a bad seat in the house. It’s one of these places. I mean, when you’re here, you feel it. It’s hard to describe, but it just has that it factor. It’s a really special place to me, and I’m lucky enough to watch 81 games a year at this place. It’s amazing, and I still get goosebumps when I walk out there. 

Kate Young: 

That’s so exciting. So, flash forward, you’re the head groundskeeper at Wrigley. How do you help maintain that unique atmosphere that we just talked about? 

Dan Kiermaier: 

I just try to do my part and make sure that the place looks as pristine in my area. We want that field to wow people every time they walk out there or step into the ballpark. It’s like, as I mentioned earlier, there’s so many people that make this place go, and there’s so much planning and execution that has to take place 81 times a year, plus, if we’re lucky enough, playoffs. We have other events too. It really is a very cool place for a lot of different events. There’s so many people that are talented in their fields to make it amazing. I just want to uphold what people know and expect from the field, as in … which is the ivy’s nice and full and green from May and beyond because I … There’s not much I can do in April when it’s not warm yet, but we just want that field to be something that people remember, and that, it’s a small part of it because they’re there to watch the game, but we take a lot of pride in how the field looks and plays every day. 

Kate Young: 

How do you keep ensuring that the turf is updated, it’s safe, it’s playable, and then still keeping that nostalgia for all the fans as well? 

Dan Kiermaier: 

For us, player safety is number one. We want the ball to play as consistently as possible each and every day, and that’s tough to do because we have different weather conditions all year round. There’s different tactics that you have to take on in April than you do in July and August when it’s hotter, but it’s just a feel thing for us where you kind of develop an understanding of the environment that you’re in throughout all the years. I’m going into my 11th season at Wrigley and sixth as head groundskeeper, so you just kind of learn and understand what to plan around, what’s going to do well, what’s not. 

And it’s just a lot of it is trial and error, but we try to talk to the team and the players almost daily, if not daily. Every homestand when they’re playing, we want to get feedback. “Hey, how are things performing? Is there anything you like or don’t like?” It’s just always keeping that open communication line to make sure that their needs are being met. Like I said, we’ve developed some good systems and SOPs with how we do things and work around some of the bigger events that we do, and thankfully, I have a lot of good resources too to lean on with my counterparts in the MLB and then just a lot of people that have been valuable resources and just people that I lean on for some questions that I might have. 

Kate Young: 

You talked about the newer stadiums. They’re getting bigger and grander. How difficult is it to maintain a baseball field in a stadium though that’s over 100 years old? 

Dan Kiermaier: 

There’s unique challenges, definitely. I’d say, logistically, it’s a little bit tougher here because the ballpark is … It’s 110 years old now, I believe. When we’re receiving sod or some dirt and materials like that, it’s not as easy as just pulling up into a parking lot and dumping it out there. We have to kind of work around. We’re in a neighborhood. There’s definitely some nuance to work around when you have people walking on the sidewalks and you’re trying to pull rows of sod off of a semi. It can be quite difficult. 

Another thing is some of these newer stadiums have service tunnels or shops. We’re kind of stuck with the footprint that we have. The storage space, it’s a little bit tight here. Thankfully, we have a warehouse a couple blocks away that we keep a lot of the equipment, but just like any other ballpark though, every place has its challenges, and you just kind of find solutions to work around those, and thankfully, I … It’s not just me. I have a very talented group, a lot of very smart people that I work alongside with that help come up with different answers to some of the problems that we have. It keeps on your toes for sure, but we’ve kind of developed some systems over the years to work around them. 

Kate Young: 

Speaking of challenges, not every team has cold weather, obviously, but in Chicago, we know that the weather over the winter is quite rough. So, how do you get the field ready for these home openers after the offseason? 

Dan Kiermaier: 

We’ve done so many of them. Every spring is a little bit different. This time last year, we were actually prepping the field and getting ready to lay sod. This year, we haven’t been as fortunate with the weather. That being said, I’d say we’re on a pretty normal trajectory where we’re hoping to be out there and start laser grading the field, prepping all of the sand underneath, and then, typically, the … sod the field after an offseason because we had a couple events in the offseason. It only takes two days to actually lay the turf, and then, from there, it’s just all the detail stuff. We still have a mound to build. We still have a lot of clay work and laser leveling to kind of smooth everything out, but we have things that we do and that we know that are going to work with certain fertilizers or chemicals, or we throw grow blankets on the field every spring to kind of help trap some of the heat from the sun to kind of create a greenhouse effect underneath, and that will help green up the grass and just move things along. 

But it’s different every year. There’s always obstacles with the weather. That’s my number one headache with everything, and the first thing, from the moment the season gets going until the day it ends, I’m always looking at the weather, the first thing I do when I wake up every single day. So, that dictates so much of what we do. So, you have to be prepared, and you have to have an adjustment or a plan in place to kind of work around some of those tougher times when weather isn’t as cooperative as you’d like it to be. 

Kate Young: 

We had a winemaker on from California who’s a Boilermaker, and he said, “The one thing you can’t control is Mother Nature,” so- 

Dan Kiermaier: 

Yeah. Yeah. I can speak to that. Thankfully, we have very good weather services, and we have good operating procedures for different things, but Mother Nature, she is … When you think you have it figured out, she throws a curveball on the thing and kind of just have to adjust and, I guess, pivot to another thing, so- 

Kate Young: 

Well, and speaking of that, obviously, there’s rain. There’s other weather besides just it being cold and snowy. What is it like to get the field ready after an extreme weather delay? Do you all feel that pressure because there’s all these fans watching you? How have you and your team worked out those processes? 

Dan Kiermaier: 

Yeah, no. There’s definitely pressure in those situations because, as good as the weather services are, you trying to be exact, and we don’t want our fans waiting around. We don’t want the players waiting around. As soon as that rain ends and we look like we have a window where it’s not going to start raining again, it’s all hands on deck. Everybody goes out there, and as I mentioned earlier, I’ve been very blessed to have a very cohesive unit with our team, and we haven’t had a lot of turnover. So, once we get the go ahead to start getting the field ready, everybody will run to their certain areas. We’ll get the tarp off, and then we will begin throwing material out on the infield skin, which is the playing surface area, trying to dry things up. It’s kind of organized chaos in a sense where we just all know that we have maybe 20 or 25 minutes to get the field back to where it was before the rain interrupted play. 

That’s where it gets very stressful for me is we obviously have the fans looking at us, but it’s just trying to communicate with all of the different parties that you need to … Obviously, my crew needs to know when we’re going out there, when we’re going to do it, get everything off. I’m talking to both managers on both teams, the traveling secretaries for both teams, and just trying to notify and inform those guys, “Hey, this is when the tarp’s coming off. This is when the field will be ready,” and not to mention all the people within our own organization where we have to make sure that they’re ready to go and when play resumes as well. 

So, yeah, I probably gain a couple gray hairs on my head on those days, but that being said, it’s … For me, I’m very lucky that a bad day for me is … Hey, all it’s doing is raining. 

Kate Young: 

Right. 

Dan Kiermaier: 

When you take a step back, it’s not the worst thing in the world. And I love what I get to do and where I get to do it, and if I have to put up with a little weather here or there, so be it. 

Kate Young: 

Dan walks us through a typical day in a life as the head groundskeeper at Wrigley Field. Plus, he dives into what it takes to prepare Wrigley Field for big events outside of baseball games such as the National Hockey League Winter Classic, Big Ten Conference football games, and concerts. 

Dan Kiermaier: 

I wake up. I’m looking at the weather. I have to know what to anticipate and how we’re going to attack the day. Our crew will show up, if it’s a day game, at seven or eight in the morning. We’ll start mowing the field, getting all the areas, the home plate, the mound, the infield, the bullpens. Everything is going to be getting their hour of specialty work done. 

And then we’ll start prepping for when the team wants to come out and use the field with batting practice, with any sort of early work and defensive work that they want to do, which varies if it’s a night or a day game, but they’re on a pretty strict schedule on both times. So, I will be in communication with each team’s representative to make sure that we’re ready for what they want. And then, if weather becomes an issue, we’re trying to plan around that. And if we have to cancel anything, we’ll obviously let both teams know if the tarp needs to go out there to protect the field for the game. And then, if there’s any sort of weather issues, obviously, we’re going to be in constant communication, not only with each team and all the other people that I’d mentioned earlier, but the MLB because there’s obviously the TV production and just the understanding, the communication that needs to take place from each team to let them know if there’s a weather delay or anything like that going on. 

Obviously, those days, I don’t have as much fun as I do on the bright, sunny, beautiful, perfect days. Those are the, truly, the … just the gems. They’re great, and I kind of always tell people, I mean, there’s not a better place in the world and … than Wrigley Field in June, July, or August, and it’s a weekend series, and you have three-day games. It’s a very fun environment, especially when that sun is shining bright. 

Kate Young: 

So, beyond Cubs home games though, Wrigley hosts a lot of other different events, concerts. We’ve had Big Ten Conference football games there. Even our Purdue Boilermakers were there back in 2021. How do you navigate those events? 

Dan Kiermaier: 

That’s something that we’ve taken on a lot of the last couple of years. I try to talk to people in, like I said, in my field, so to speak, other groundskeepers that may have had some of the same events or similar events. And then you try to take all the information that they give you and kind of use it how you can with your facility. And there’s some of the processes that we have to do for football, where we have to remove a dugout and build a football field over top of it that other teams don’t really, necessarily have to deal with, but there’s other little tidbits that you can get from them to understand how to transition the clay to the grass and just make it so that it’s nice and flush and it’s going to be seamless. So, you just try to do as much homework as possible. 

A lot of people will often ask, “Hey, what are you doing in the winter?” And what I’m doing is trying to make plans for what to expect and what big events we know are coming in the pipeline and just get out and get as much thought and just as many answers as possible ahead of the time that we have these big events because we’ve talked a lot about the weather, but the weather can change. You could have six months of planning and everything planned, the perfect plan in place, and then weather throws a major hurdle that you have to kind of quickly adjust and adapt to. And you try to think of everything you can to make sure that things are going to go as smoothly as possible. 

With concerts, we have, thankfully, we’ve been working with a lot of the same vendors for most of the concerts over the years. You develop relationships with those people, let them know what’s going to help you be successful. And you also want them to be successful in what they’re doing and operating with, so we just try to keep an open communication and dialogue and really just try to mitigate as much risk or just anything that could go wrong as possible by getting out in front of it and then kind of addressing it with anybody who’s involved. As much planning as we can do, it just comes down to executing. I’ve been very fortunate to have an amazing group of people that I get to work with, and somehow, someway, they always pull these crazy, big events off, so- 

Kate Young: 

So, Dan highlighted some of the challenges in his career as a head groundskeeper in the MLB, but now, we’re diving into the more glamorous parts. He shares his favorite memories and experiences throughout the past decade. Plus, he shares what it was like to witness that legendary World Series game in 2016, the one where the Cubs took the Commissioner’s Trophy home to Chicago after a 108-year drought. Yeah. It was kind of a big deal. What’s your favorite kind of behind the scenes moment over the past 10 years that you’ve been working at Wrigley? 

Dan Kiermaier: 

I have so many of them. It’s hard to pinpoint just one thing. For me, it’s all the amazing people that I’ve gotten to meet because of this job, this role, and a lot of the cool concerts, the big baseball games, the football games. There’s not just one thing. You could go back to any one year. I could say, “This is what happened. That’s what happened. I remember this. I remember that.” There’s just so many of them, and like I said, this place, it attracts a lot of very cool people that, obviously, you don’t have the opportunity to meet or other places. And I’ve had such an amazing time here in the last decade, living here in Chicago and working for the Cubs. There’s not one thing. It’s just everything. It’s all been so tremendous. 

Kate Young: 

We can’t have this interview and not talk about the Cubs winning the World Series in 2016. That was just one year after you joined the organization. How can you even describe what that felt like to be part of that historic season, especially as a fan yourself? And then we got to go over where were you watching? Who were you with? Tell us all those moments. 

Dan Kiermaier: 

Yeah, 2016 was a very magical year. I was fortunate enough, like you said. I came on the year before, and the team kind of had some more success than anybody anticipated. You could kind of see that building going into 2016, and they got off to a very hot start. And it was something like 16 and three or they’re 17 and three. It was something like that, crazy in the first month of the season, and you just kind of knew then. Something was different about that team, and kind of looking back and been a part of a lot of different teams, it … Just the ball seemed to bounce their way every single time. They’d win all the close games. They didn’t have many injuries. It was just a very special group, and going into that postseason, you … I mean, everybody had the hopes that, “Hey, this is the year.” And then we get through the first two rounds of the playoffs, which there are some challenges there too, but they got through them. 

And then going to the World Series, we’re actually in Cleveland for the first two games, and it was freezing cold. Cubs, I think, lost game one, won game two. We come back here to Wrigley. It was Halloween weekend. It was a Friday, Saturday, Sunday on Halloween weekend, and the baseball gods were just looking out for us because it was 70 degrees, perfect weather. We’ve had snow on Halloween multiple occasions here since I’ve lived here. It was just one of those crazy years that it was absolutely perfect. You could just feel the energy and the buzz. I’d be driving into work, and there would be lines around the block with bars, people waiting to get into the bars at 9:00 AM for a 7:00 PM game. 

Looking back, and I’m getting the chills just thinking about it, it just had such an amazing feel. We felt like the center of the universe for those games. Then Cleveland comes in, and they win the next two games, games three and game four. Cubs are down three to one, and then, thankfully, we win game five, and we’re going back to Cleveland. Thankfully, the Cubs handled it so amazingly. They took our whole front office. We were all allowed to bring a guest. We’re all there for game six and game seven. So, I actually watched game seven in the ballpark, and to have that perspective, to be there in the biggest moment, in the biggest game in the Cubs history, and probably one of the biggest games in baseball history, to be honest, because that was one of those “where were you” moments. I was lucky enough to be in the stadium. I was with my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, but we’ve since been married, and then the whole front office. 

I can take you back to that game, I mean, when the Cubs got out to a hot start. Dexter Fowler hit a home run to lead off the game. They’re kind of cruising throughout the entirety of the game, and I think we got to the … I think it was seventh or eighth inning, and Cleveland kind of made a comeback. Rajai Davis, who hadn’t hit a homer, I think, all season long, maybe one, it was his first one since June, hits one off Aroldis Chapman, who, at that time, was the closer and the guy that nobody could hit. And you’re just kind of sitting there like, “Oh my God. Here it comes.” And five-five, going into the ninth, and there was obviously a … Everybody remembers. There was a rain delay. 

Kate Young: 

Yes. 

Dan Kiermaier: 

And a very short one, but everybody … I think a lot of people have heard that Jason Heyward and the guys kind of rallied in there, and they came out after that rain delay and thankfully scored two runs, which is important. I think a lot of people forget. They scored two runs and … because Cleveland did score on the bottom of the 10th, but on that ball, it was a short, little dribbler hit to Kris Bryant. And he throws it to Rizzo and kind of slips, and it all kind of happened in slow motion because it was such a big moment, and I can remember every little detail about it. You had to pinch yourself, almost, when it actually happened. And I remember me and my wife just grabbed each other and hugged, and everybody was screaming and going crazy. And the celebrations afterwards were amazing, the parade. We were a part of the parade. 

And just my whole experience with that, I don’t know if it’ll ever be topped. It was, as a Cubs fan, as somebody who grew up watching them and kind of went through all the heartbreaks, going back to 2003 and just … I’m 36 years old right now. So, there’s a lot of older Cubs fans that have been through a lot more of the devastation. I know ’84 is one that everybody kind of looks back at. It was just a dream come true. I don’t know how I got so lucky to join the organization, the only organization that I’d ever wanted to work for, to be a part of it at the time when it just seemed like it was just the magic moment. And it’s something I’ll never forget. It was just an incredible experience. From the opening day until the last out of the World Series, it was just awesome. 

Kate Young: 

You’re such a good storyteller. How cool to hear it from someone who was there firsthand. 

Dan Kiermaier: 

Just so lucky and just such an amazing ride for all the Cubs fans. I know everybody can relate to that because we all felt it, and it was such a huge, pivotal monkey off the shoulder moment for everybody and that’s ever rooted for the Cubs. 

Kate Young: 

For our listeners who can’t see out there, Dan is smiling very big right now. That’s awesome. Okay. Dan could host his own podcast with stories like that. Now, we’re going to rewind a bit to years before that historic win. Dan discusses why he decided to go to Purdue and shares more about his path to pursuing a career in turf management and science. 

Dan Kiermaier: 

I’d always wanted to go to Purdue. My dad and my grandpa were big Purdue fans, football and basketball for me growing up. Neither of them attended. They were just fans for whatever reason. We grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, so I guess it was close in proximity. So, I can remember going to games, and I’m … Before I ever came to Wrigley, I was at Purdue games. So, I remember I was four or five and my first experience at both Ross-Ade and Mackey. So, it was just something, a place that was always special to me, and a diehard Boilermaker for my whole life. So, it was somewhere that I always wanted to go. 

To answer your other question, I did not know that I was going to get into turf science. I had no idea that turf science was a major you could study. I did not know that this was a career that you could pursue. Initially, my first two years, I was actually just general studies. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. And then I got into physical therapy the second semester of my second year, and I … Only reason I’d gotten into that was because I knew some friends’ dads who did it, and they were successful. And I got into it just because I didn’t have anything else. I was like, “It’s time to decide.” So I got into that, and I did not enjoy it at all. 

I thankfully was rooming with a guy that was studying turf science, and when he told me that, I kind of brushed him off like, “Whatever. I don’t know what turf science is,” but that … The end of the first semester of my junior year, I was just kind of at a crossroads and didn’t know. I was like, “This isn’t what I want to do.” I didn’t know what else I wanted to get into. I’m a junior in college, and I still don’t have an idea of what I want to do, and I just talked to my buddy again. I was like, “Hey, what is it that you do?” And he explained that he was going to go try to be a golf course superintendent and get into that field, but he explained there’s the landscaping side. 

And that was initially what I … clicked with me. I grew up mowing lawns in the summers, just to make some cash as a high school kid that was playing baseball and couldn’t get a normal job because I had games at night and things like that. I mowed lawns for probably four or five summers and always enjoyed it, never thought of it as a career. When I was done with it, I went into college. I just never thought of it again, and then he’s explaining that side to me. And so, like I said, that’s what I thought I was going to do. And he also mentioned there’s a sports turf side. People that do this also maintain baseball fields, football fields, soccer fields, things like that. And I grew up playing baseball too and football. And so, those are both sports that I love, but I never thought of being a groundskeeper for a baseball field or a football field as a career. 

So, fast-forward, I get into turf. I have an internship at a golf course, enjoyed it, but I didn’t grow up playing golf. So, at the time, that didn’t really click with me, and thankfully, my next summer, I got an opportunity with the Staten Island Yankees up in New York and got introduced to groundskeeping of a Major League Baseball field. And that’s where I found my passion. I knew what I wanted to do with … for the rest of my life. It goes back to a conversation at Purdue, and thankfully, Purdue’s turf science professor, he kind of explained the curriculum and how to fast track me and get me through everything. And it’s just Purdue’s been a big part of my journey and where I’m at right now. 

Kate Young: 

Yeah, that’s incredible. And that’s so cool that you pivoted again and pursued something that you didn’t initially even know about. How do you apply the skills in your job today that you learned within Purdue’s College of Agriculture? 

Dan Kiermaier: 

Looking back, Aaron Patton and Cale Bigelow were my professors for all of the turf classes, and they did a great job at preparing us and prepping us for the real world that was to come. They did an amazing job just explaining everything from the scientific side of everything. And Cale’s just somebody who I still lean on to this day, and if I have a question, I mean, those two, Aaron and Cale, they’re the smartest turf guys I know. Cale’s been able to answer a lot of questions for me when I have something that comes up and I’m not really sure how to handle it or just how to proceed going forward with things, and just very tremendous people with a wealth of knowledge that I’ve relied on a lot throughout my years. 

And then Purdue also did a great job at creating a curriculum that wasn’t just centered on turf itself. We had accounting classes, finance classes, because a big part of what I do is also just budgeting here. We have, obviously, budgets to work around, and I use those skills that I learned in those classes to this day with my Excel spreadsheets and things like that that we’re on track with where we need to be from a monetary perspective. So, it was just a very well-rounded curriculum that they obviously taught you the turf side of things, but they exposed you to different things that you’re going to have to use in your career as well, so- 

Kate Young: 

That’s a super interesting aspect about the budgeting and the money that goes into maintaining these professional fields. 

Dan Kiermaier: 

And it’s like it doesn’t matter if you’re a Wrigley Field or a golf course or a little league facility. Everybody has a budget that they need to uphold and that you have to work with, and it’s your job to go into the season knowing everything that you’re going to need and trying to stay within those parameters. You learn to become sort of like a businessman from that aspect, where you’re not only … you have to apply your science side, but you have to be pretty good knowing when to buy certain things, when to back off certain things, and just things like that. Purdue did a great job preparing me for everything that was to come in my professional career. 

Kate Young: 

Now, we knew going into this episode that Purdue and the Cubs have some ties. For example, we have a large alumni base in Chicago with its proximity to Purdue’s West Lafayette campus, and the Purdue Alumni Club of Chicago is one of Purdue for Life’s oldest and largest alumni organizations. We also know our men’s basketball head coach, Matt Painter, is a huge Cubs fan, but another fun fact that ties Purdue and this historic MLB team together, the Cubs actually have backup plants and ivy growing at Purdue’s College of Agriculture. Dan explains more. 

Dan Kiermaier: 

About 20 years ago, the groundskeeper who was running the field, he realized not only do we need grass, a sod replacement or anything like that. When the ivy gets dinged up or anything like that, we’re going to need some replacement plants. So, he contacted a botanist at Purdue at the time to come out to Purdue, to take some of our leaves and our ivy, to propagate them, and then to grow them. So, it’s essentially like a clone plant that they’ve derived from Wrigley Field, and they started that process about 20 years ago. 

Fast-forward to right now, Nathan Deppe at Purdue, he’s a botanist at Purdue. He still maintains the backup plants that we would need if anything would ever go wrong. We have had to lean on those because we’ve had construction projects over the years where the wall has to be worked on behind the ivy, and we had to take the ivy down and lay it on the ground during the winter, and then it just … Things occur during those times where something gets … A limb or a branch gets broken, and then when it starts growing back in the springtime, you have a spot that has a void. 

And like I said, going back to the origination of it all, it was propagated out of the ivy that we have here at Wrigley. It’s not grown from the started ivy, but it all derived from the Boston ivy that we supplied with them a number of years ago. And so, we have leaned on them, and they’ve supplied us with backup plants if something does occur during one of those construction periods or if something crazy happens. So, for me, it’s a nice … just a backup plan. Some years, we haven’t had to use them at all, but it’s peace of mind knowing that, hey, if something does happen, we’re going to be okay. 

Kate Young: 

Dan isn’t the only person in the Kiermaier family who is passionate about baseball and has made it his career. His younger brother, Kevin Kiermaier, played in the MLB for 10 years, most recently for the 2024 World Series winning Los Angeles Dodgers, and Kevin almost played baseball for Purdue. Dan shares more about this unique story and discusses what it was like to host his brother at Wrigley Field in 2022. 

Dan Kiermaier: 

He has a crazy story too. So, Kev was somebody who was very late to hit his growth spurt. He didn’t have a college scholarship until the last game of his high school career, which was the state championship. Going into his senior year, he grew about five or six inches and put on 20 some pounds, and then he really excelled. His high school team won the state championship in football and baseball, and then that last game of his state championship, which they ended up winning a coach from Parkland Junior College, and Champaign, Illinois was there to watch another player, saw Kev. Kev had a good game, offers him a spot. Kev goes to Parkland, and then that’s where his career really took off. 

His freshman year of his first year there at Parkland, the team goes to the World Series. He wins MVP, and that’s kind of when he started getting scouted and looked at by other major universities. His second year, he does tremendous again. And then the coach at the time at Purdue, Doug Schreiber, offered him a scholarship, and Kev committed to go to Purdue, but there was another curveball where he got drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays in 2010, and it was the … He was the 31st round pick, and not a lot of 31st round picks ended up making it to the major leagues. And there was a lot of people kind of in the … saying, “Hey, go to Purdue. You’re going to be a first round pick,” but I think with him, he felt like it was the right fit going to Tampa Bay, where they are an organization that have taken some chances on some lesser known guys, and it was just the right opportunity. 

So, he decided to forego his scholarship at Purdue, made his way to the minor leagues, and then the rest is kind of history. He was up in the major leagues from 2014 until this last season when he was able to cap his career off because he just retired, but he capped it off with the Los Angeles Dodgers and won a World Series, so- 

Kate Young: 

Wow, and 10 years in the league is a big deal too. 

Dan Kiermaier: 

Yeah. So, every ball player, 10 years is when they can get the full pension. And I didn’t know this until he obviously hit that milestone, but only 7% of all major league players play for 10 years or more. So, to be included in that category was very special for him. I think if you’d asked him 15 years ago what you’d have done with your life, I don’t think he could have ever dreamt that his life took him on the path that it did, much like mine. We are both very fortunate to have lived out our dreams and our respective avenues with baseball. 

Kate Young: 

Two World Series rings between the two of you too, no big deal. 

Dan Kiermaier: 

I know. I got to one up him here in the next couple of years and get my second so I can rub that in his face again. 

Kate Young: 

So, you hosted your brother at Wrigley in 2022. What was that day like? I’m sure there was lots of friends and family there celebrating that, but how cool? 

Dan Kiermaier: 

It was really cool because he played here in 2014, the year before I got here, and the way that it worked out at the time with the scheduling was it’d only be every three years that an American League team would come play in Chicago at the Cubs. So, 2017, I think he ended up fracturing a hip when Tampa Bay came to Wrigley Field, so he couldn’t play then. He was on the disabled list. And then 2020, they were supposed to come back, and then the whole COVID situation kind of threw a wrench in the whole season where they redid the schedule. We only played 60 games, and you only played teams within your geographic footprint. We missed out on that one, but then, thankfully, in 2022, I think it was the first or second homestand we had that year. It was in April. It was freezing cold. There was snowflakes out there. 

Kate Young: 

Oh, no. 

Dan Kiermaier: 

Wasn’t ideal conditions, but it was a great … a really cool moment for the both of us to kind of just finally cross paths in that respect on our careers. And the Cubs, they were so gracious and cordial, and David Ross called me to his office one before the first game, and here I am thinking. I’m like, “Uh-oh. Something’s wrong with the field or something,” and he tells me, “Hey, the managers often exchange lineup cards before the game, and they meet with the umpires.” And he let me know, “Hey, you and your brother are going to present the lineup cards to the umpires today.” So, we had that cool little moment before the game, and it was a fun moment for us. We had a lot of fun with it, and to share with our friends and family, it was a cool little thing that we got to do and experience together. 

Kate Young: 

There’s lots of crossover between Cubs fans and Boilermaker fans. How often do you interact with other Boilermakers in your role now? 

Dan Kiermaier: 

I do it quite often. So, I’m still close with a lot of my classmates at Purdue and, obviously, guys that do what I do. So, Steve Vonderheide, who was a classmate of mine, he runs the baseball field there at Purdue, and he’s somebody I talk with pretty frequently about things. 

And then you end up doing some business with guys. The guys that grade our field, Zach Ferguson, he runs a company now, J&D Turf, based out of Indianapolis, and they do all of our laser leveling and things like that ahead of the season. Jamie Mehringer with Advanced Turf, he’s somebody that graduated Purdue back in the early 2000s, and he’s become a big mentor of mine, an advisor, and he … somebody that I lean on a lot. Joey Stevenson, who runs the Indianapolis Indians field, is another Purdue grad that he’s been doing that for a long time now, and he’s somebody I bounce ideas off of and will reach out to for just little things here and there. 

And there’s just so many people that go through Purdue that end up with very successful careers in their own right, and they’ve been tremendous resources for me to lean on, no matter what situation comes up or just to be a friend. A lot of them are just friendships, and we don’t even talk about turf. It’s just you develop a lot of those friendships in college and through the university, and it’s been an amazing ride and a lot of great people along the way. 

Kate Young: 

So, we discussed before how impactful Dan’s first visit to Wrigley Field was when he was just 10 years old. What would Dan say to his 10-year-old self now about who he has become and where he’s ended up? 

Dan Kiermaier: 

I would probably say, “You can do this, and you get paid for it.” Now, if I could go back and just tell myself anything, it’s just like, “Hey, follow your passions and dream big because, if you work hard enough, crazy how things do play out, but you will end up where you want to be.” And like I said, I’m just so thankful that I met the right people and was at the right places at the right time. It’s crazy how everything kind of works and ties together when you do look back, but, I mean, I would just say, “Hey, man. Follow your gut and your passions, and the rest will take care of itself.” 

Kate Young: 

Well, we can’t thank you enough for joining us today. Is there anything else you want to share with our listeners, our loyal Cubs fans out there? 

Dan Kiermaier: 

I just can’t thank you guys enough for considering me and having me on this podcast. It means a lot. Even when I was a student at Purdue, never in a million years did I think I’d be on a platform like this representing the university. So, I just want to thank you guys for having me be a part of this. 

Kate Young: 

Ah. It was a pleasure. Like I said, you’re a great storyteller, so I know our listeners will love this episode. 

Dan Kiermaier: 

Thank you. 

Kate Young: 

Dan ends this special episode with some fun, rapid-fire questions. What do you get on your hot dog at Wrigley Field, Dan? 

Dan Kiermaier: 

I’ve … didn’t grow up in Chicago, but I’ve been made a true Chicagoan where I like the Chicago dog. I like mustard. We’re not doing any ketchup. We got to have onions, relish, peppers, tomatoes. You don’t want to wear a white shirt eating these hot dogs because you’ll end up with a mess on yourself, but they’re phenomenal. 

Kate Young: 

Who was your favorite player when you were a kid 

Dan Kiermaier: 

Growing up, Sammy Sosa. I grew up a Cubs fan. He was the guy at the time. Sammy’s my favorite player growing up by far. 

Kate Young: 

You probably can’t pick favorites in your current role, but do you have a favorite player right now? 

Dan Kiermaier: 

Well, up until last year, it was my brother Kevin Kiermaier. 

Kate Young: 

Favorite/most memorable game you’ve attended? I think I know the answer to this one. 

Dan Kiermaier: 

Yeah, easy answer. Game seven, 2016 World Series, game I’ll never forget. Unbelievable. 

Kate Young: 

Okay. So, speaking of the World Series, when do you wear your World Series ring? When do you pop that out? 

Dan Kiermaier: 

It’s few and far between. A lot of people would probably think that I would bust it out a lot, but it’s probably got dust on it right now. I don’t bring it out very often. I guess if we’d have some sort of family get together or something like that, I might bring it out, but it’s not brought out to daylight very often anymore. 

Kate Young: 

We can’t thank Dan enough for joining us on This Is Purdue, and we wish him and the Cubs the best of luck heading into the 2025 season. We have additional bonus content from Dan’s interview on our podcast YouTube channel. He dives into more detail on turf maintenance, how fast his team can get that tarp out during a weather delay, and so much more. Head over to youtube.com/@thisispurdue, and click that subscribe button while you’re there, and as always, you can follow This Is Purdue on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

This Is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young. Our podcast videography for this episode was led by Ted Schellenberger. Our social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. Our podcast distribution strategy for this episode was led by Teresa Walker and Carly Eastman. Our podcast design is led by Caitlyn Freville. Our podcast photography is led by John Underwood. Our podcast team project manager is Rain Gu. Additional writing and research assistance is led by Sophie Ritz and Ashvini Malshe. Our video production assistant is Dalani Young, and our This Is Purdue intern is Caroline Keim. 

Thanks for listening to This Is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcast. There you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review, and as always, boiler up. 

Eric Hall : 

This is Eric Hall and you’re listening to, This is Purdue. 

Kate Young : 

Hi, I’m Kate Young and you are listening to This is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together. Persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators? Who are these Boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty, and alumni, taking small steps toward their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same. 

Eric Hall : 

There’s a lot of expectation just on ourselves. We want to bring the best show, so it’s always cool when you do it, when you start a show like the first show, Luminous’s first show, or Epcot Forever’s first show, and you have people around the lagoon, and at the end they’re all applauding and yelling and they appreciated the effort that you put into it. 

Kate Young : 

In this episode of This is Purdue, we are talking to Eric Hall, senior technical director at Disney Live Entertainment. We are so excited to feature our first Disney boilermaker on the podcast. Eric grew up in Hobart, Indiana and was a Purdue fan from a young age. Initially, he wanted to pursue aerospace engineering at Purdue, but says once he saw Purdue’s theater engineering program, he knew that was the right path for him. This big pivot he made during his time as a boilermaker certainly worked out for him. Eric recently celebrated his 30th year at Disney Live Entertainment and has decades of experience with large-scale events, live shows, and of course, the famous nightly Disney fireworks extravaganzas, Epcot Forever and Luminous, the Symphony of us. 

Eric’s also worked with celebrity talent throughout his years and even offered Prince Harry a donut as the two were watching wheelchair basketball together as part of Prince Harry’s Invictus Games, which were held at Walt Disney World Resort in 2016. Prince Harry politely declined the donut Eric says. Eric has plenty more Disney behind the scenes fun in store for us today, so let’s get to it. Here’s my conversation with Eric. Eric, thank you so much for joining us on. This is Purdue, Purdue’s official university podcast. There are so many Disney fans within our team with Purdue Brand Studio. You’re the first Disney employee we’ve had on the pod, so we’re just really excited to learn more about your Purdue journey, but also your Disney journey. Let’s get right into it. 

Eric Hall : 

Great. 

Kate Young : 

Thanks for coming and joining us. 

Eric Hall : 

Thanks for having me. 

Kate Young : 

Of course, of course. So at Purdue you studied interdisciplinary engineering and then you concentrated in theater as well. Why did you choose Purdue and where did this unique passion come? 

Eric Hall : 

Well, actually, Purdue has always been around in my life. I have two aunts and an uncle that graduated from Purdue. So early on they were kind of, “Purdue, Purdue, Purdue.” But as I got older and I was in high school, my uncle kind of steered me into the engineering realm. I looked into that, so I was like, “Well, I have an aptitude towards that sort of thing.” And Purdue is one of the top engineering schools, so it was kind of a no-brainer for me to choose. I got into the theater engineering program soon after. I was still kind of undecided as to what type of engineering I wanted to study, so they had the classes that kind of go over all the different types and just for people like me that wasn’t quite sure where I wanted to go with it. 

I did theater in high school. I did acting and show choir and stuff like that, so I already had kind of a draw towards that sort of thing, and when I saw that there was a theater engineering program, definitely, I jumped right on it. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time to get into that program. So it was actually perfect. 

Kate Young : 

I have to say, you have a theater voice, a radio, maybe you should start a podcast. I think your voice is incredible. 

Eric Hall : 

Thanks. Funny you say that. My son is trying to get into voiceover work. He’s an actor as well. 

Kate Young : 

Nice. 

Eric Hall : 

He sounds just like me. It’s really weird. I’ll let him know that kind of between that he’s probably got the same type of voice and good for recording and radio. Appreciate that. 

Kate Young : 

Eric walks us through the unique hands-on experiences he gained during his time at Purdue. 

Eric Hall : 

There were several, especially with the theater program because I took engineering classes and theater classes, and within the theater classes there were a lot of hands-on because you have to do hands-on in order to do theater tech. So it was a matter of installing sound system and black box theater and just setting up a show in terms of sound design, hanging lights and fixing lights and just getting into the equipment. Also, I had a really cool opportunity to go to USITT with other students in the theater program. We presented some labs that a graduate theater student had developed for students to learn how to do things such as how to solder properly or how to test impedance on a speaker, things like that. 

I kind of drifted more towards the audio portion of engineering and the theater, and when we went to USITT, I got to present a portion of that, so that was really cool. I really enjoyed that. I also did an internship at a recording studio in Lafayette. I don’t know if they’re still there or not. That was a really cool opportunity as well. That I really enjoyed. I love just kind of learning about a little of everything. 

Kate Young : 

Yes, you’ve had some unique experiences for sure. What is the biggest thing overall that stuck out to you during your time at Purdue? 

Eric Hall : 

The biggest thing that I got from that is just my love of audio because I started off as an audio engineer, and that’s where I really kind of drifted towards, like I said, and learning how studio techniques work, and it was just fascinating to me how placement of a microphone makes a difference and the acoustics of an environment in a studio makes a difference in how things sound. So it was just that love of… I came away with, “Oh, I really want to do this for a living,” sort of thing. And then when the engineering part kicked in was the acoustics and the math and the theory part of audio and live sound and studio engineering. That helped me immensely. 

Kate Young : 

It’s really cool because when you think about… I think of theater, singing, acting, those are usually more creative or writer types of people, and then you also paired that with engineering with STEM, so it’s like the best of both worlds collide really. It’s interesting. 

Eric Hall : 

And the theater engineering program that Purdue has actually does marry that together because you learn design, you learn why things are chosen for a particular production in terms of scenic lighting and audio for that matter. So having that sort of the left brain, right brain type of thing together makes it really valuable because I can understand when a show director wants something and I can explain, “Oh, I think this is what you’re looking for.” Sort of ideas are, “Hey, this doesn’t seem right. What do you think of that?” It’s not purely technical. I can understand the creative process and help maybe guide that along and be creative within my technical role as well. 

Kate Young : 

I have to say there is nothing that upsets me more than when a professional podcast that makes money with ads and everything has poor audio. So I’m sure that you feel me when you are listening to audio and it’s not perfect. 

Eric Hall : 

If you ask my wife, it’s this. When you go to concerts, I can never fully just enjoy it. I’m always looking at, “Oh, what type of speakers are they using? Oh, what does that sound like?” And yes, I do get irritated if it doesn’t sound good. So right there with you. 

Kate Young : 

So fast-forward after graduating from Purdue, Eric shares more about his journey to Disney. As he mentioned, he’s always been passionate about live entertainment, but what drew him to pyrotechnics specifically, plus he shares some age-old advice to get your foot in the door for your dream career. 

Eric Hall : 

I wanted to work for Disney, and I didn’t know what capacity and what roles were available. At the time, internet was just barely going, so you really couldn’t find anything out other than going to Disney’s Casting Center. So I went to apply for a role at Disney. I figured out, well, I’ll be a stage tech, I’ll get some hands-on experience. I know how to do live sound and the studio stuff, so let me do that. They didn’t have any positions at the time, so I started off in monorails. I drove a monorail for about a year or so, and then they had a cross utilization program to where people with aptitude towards a certain discipline, that area, if they have a need for a temporary fill-in for something, they would pull somebody from another department. 

That’s what’s great about Disney is you have all these opportunities and got brought over and proved myself worthy, and then they offered me a full-time position. So I started off as a stage technician working the various shows in the Magic Kingdom. We used to do a lot of events. We still do a lot of events, and I used to do grad night and Night of Joy. And then I moved up from there, I became a crew chief, so I would help plan events and figure concerts out and filmings and stuff like that. And then I was asked to see if I wanted to become a technical director, which our role is basically to be the guide for the project in terms of technical. We’re responsible for the technical delivery of a project, so audio, lighting, effects. 

We kind of shepherd that process. I did that for… Let’s see, I’ve been a technical director now since about 2009, and then I was promoted last year to senior technical director. In my current role, I am assisting with our work with the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, formerly known as Reedy Creek. I help with our permitting process and building codes, and I help shepherd some of my peers and coworkers as to what’s allowable when we design for a show or project. So that’s pretty much it. So it’s again, a lot of opportunity and a lot of people that helped me along the way, so it’s been a great journey so far. 

Kate Young : 

You really got your foot in the door and then moved up from there, right? That’s what it sounds like. 

Eric Hall : 

Yes, and I preach that to students. Sometimes maybe what you’re looking for isn’t available, get as close as you can, get the hands on, build those relationships, then it goes from there. 

Kate Young : 

I know you just said you worked at Disney since 1995, so you’re celebrating 30 years there. Congrats. That’s awesome. 

Eric Hall : 

Thank you. 

Kate Young : 

What has made you stay at Disney for three decades? That’s a long time. 

Eric Hall : 

It doesn’t seem that long, to be honest. 

Kate Young : 

That’s always good. 

Eric Hall : 

Right. Time flies when you’re having fun. 

The relationships that I’ve built have kept me there. The company as a whole, they treat the cast members really well. There’s a lot of cool things that I get to do. I don’t do the same thing every day. There’s always something different. I work different projects in different parks throughout the year. There’s always some sort of challenge, and I like that. I like being challenged. I like being able to solve problems to be creative, and the company’s just giving me opportunities to do that, and I get to do some very unique things, work with some very cool people. I have a lot of friends there. I’ve been happy and I’ve stayed, and like I said, it just doesn’t seem that long. It’s been a fun journey so far. 

Kate Young : 

What have been some of your most challenging projects, most rewarding projects throughout those 30 years, would you say? 

Eric Hall : 

Two of the most rewarding projects that I recently worked on was Warrior Games, which is an Olympic style event put on by the Department of Defense for disabled veterans and service members. And watching those athletes do what they do and how much effort and passion they put into it was just… You feel it. And I was just so proud to be part of that. And then similarly, there was the Invictus Games. It’s a very similar event. Prince Harry actually produces that. He was there, same thing. It was just amazing to watch these brave people overcome what happened to them and be successful in their sport, and they were very loved and they really had a good time. It was amazing. Most projects are challenging. 

The two fireworks shows that I’ve worked on Nighttime Spectaculars and challenging in itself because anytime you’re starting from scratch and you’re coming up with a blue sky and you’re trying to figure out what’s the best way to impress our guests and make them smile and have great memories. There’s always challenges because we want to do something different that really hasn’t been seen before, or we want to produce the best we can. And so there’s always something that when you’re working with things that you’ve never done before, it’s always a challenge. So Epcot Forever was a challenge in itself that had lit kites. We had never done that before, put lights on a kite and actually have them change via computer control. 

And then of course with Luminous, we basically had… We built brand new barges and there were a lot of them, and we had a lot of things that are on the barges, lighting and fountains, and the pyrotechnics, and so there’s figuring out how that fits is a challenge and just getting everything made, but it’s fun challenges. Those things are like, “Ooh, let’s get into that sort of thing.” 

Kate Young : 

I love that. When you look back on the past 30 years, is there one defining career moment that you could share with us? 

Eric Hall : 

When I do these projects, for the most part, a lot of people see them. There’s a lot of, I don’t want to say pressure. There’s a lot of expectation in terms of just on ourselves. We want to bring the best show, so it’s always cool when you do it. When you start a show like Luminous’s first show or Epcot Forever first show, and you have people around the lagoon and at the end they’re all applauding and yelling and they appreciated the effort that you put into it. I had some really great mentors, some really great people help me along the way, so very appreciative. But most importantly, when I did the Epcot Forever Show, right afterwards, my son came up to me, they were selling merchandise in the shops that were a themed to Epcot forever. 

And he said, “I want to get one of those shirts because I want to wear it to school tomorrow.” He was very proud of me and he wanted to… “My dad put on the show.” And so that right there made everything worth it. Just the fact that my family was proud of what I did, that’s the top for me. It’s great that guests love our shows and they write about them and they think they’re great. It’s a good feeling knowing that you’ve made that many people happy and created those memories and made people smile. But the one that got me was when my son was showing that he was proud of me. 

Kate Young : 

That’s so special. I hope you bought him a shirt or a hat or something, a couple different pairs. 

Eric Hall : 

He got it for sure. 

Kate Young : 

That’s awesome. Disney’s known for so many things. They’re known for their fireworks, but they’re also known for safety, keeping millions of people safe in these parks every single day. How does Disney make safety such a critical element of the guest experience? 

Eric Hall : 

Because we put it first, it’s as simple as that. When we design, we’re always looking for what’s safe. We have programs, we have safety professionals, we have a lot of resources, and as we go through the process, safety’s just first and foremost. If we can’t do it safely, we just won’t do it. We’re not only looking out for guest safety, we’re looking out for cast member safety as well. I can’t tell you how important it is and how much it comes up every day. To us, it’s just secondhand now. 

It’s like, “What are we going to do? Is this okay?” We check with people. We have a lot of resources, a lot of people who know such things, and then we… Obviously, there’s other regulations and things that we obviously follow, so that fitting into those pockets and figuring out what needs to be looked at more in order to be safe, just like I said, first and foremost, it’s always on our mind all the time. 

Kate Young : 

Absolutely. How has that changed over the years that you’ve been there, that technology, the safety in these pyrotechnic shows, how has that evolved into everything that visitors see today? 

Eric Hall : 

Disney was the first to really use computer controlled firing systems for shows. If you’ve seen the documentary about Epcot becoming, they mentioned how the pyro was lit by a flare in the old days, so that’s just an example. So we find ways to make things safe. We innovate in order to help get to where we need to go. Technology has gotten more and more advanced when it comes to entertainment systems. Show control is a huge part of it. We have everything that works together in the show talking to each other, so it helps us keep track of what’s going on, and that’s really the main thing is just using innovation and technology to help tell the story and to help us do things more efficiently and safely. 

Kate Young : 

Eric shares a few behind the scenes moments with us about what it’s like working at the most magical place on earth. 

Eric Hall : 

I get to go do things that people would be very jealous of. I get to kind of climb around the parks and go backstage. There’s not a whole lot I can share with you on that, but we get to work with some really, really neat people and do a lot of things that not all everybody gets to do. Behind the scenes in terms of, in a generality, that’s where all the action happens. We want to do things that if it’s not ready, we don’t want the guests to see it. We want to present it, it says, if you’re opening a Christmas present, you don’t want to know what you’re getting beforehand. If you’re a kid, you do, but it’s that unwrapping that present we want people to be surprised and to be delighted when we present something. 

So the behind the scenes part, there’s so many people that help put it together. So for the fireworks show, we have technicians, producers, managers, designers, engineers. There’s hundreds of people that could work on any particular show at any particular time, and they all have a different role. There’s a lot of collaboration that happens when it comes to developing these behind the scenes. We come up with ideas, we work through those ideas, we test ideas. And what works best, what’s going to fit for what story we want to tell, it’s an interesting, fun thing. Each department has their own backstage and behind the scenes things that you don’t really see. It’s all about what we want to present to the guests. 

We love doing the behind the scenes for the documentaries and stuff. That doesn’t tell the whole story, but at the same time, there are so many people that help with these shows on just from an entertainment perspective, let alone our operations partners that do the shows on a daily basis and the technicians that do the show on a daily basis. 

Kate Young : 

Speaking of technicians, Eric says, these techs load over 1400 pieces of pyrotechnics onto multiple barges each day for ECOT’s current nightly show, Luminous: The Symphony of Us. In the afternoon, they drive those barges out to the lagoon and begin to prepare. And by the way, if you’re visiting the park, you can see what Eric calls the parade of barges. As the techs drive these small boats filled with pyrotechnics into their show spots for the evening, Eric did a lot of work on this Luminous show, which was recently featured in the documentary Epcot Becoming: Inside the Transformation on Disney+. Eric shares more. How cool is it to watch these back and point out, “Oh, my team and I did that,” or “That’s something that I impacted personally?” Talk us through that experience of watching that. 

Eric Hall : 

It’s great. The current documentary, I was actually done with my portion of the project, so you won’t see me in that. But seeing my team do their thing and watching the show and watching it all come together. There were actually some moments that I hadn’t seen until the show opened that we kind of added. It was a delight to me, and I was very proud of my team. I was like, “Well done, well done.” So yes, it’s very exciting to see my peers and my coworkers and my friends get the kudos that they deserve on a global scale. It’s great. 

Kate Young : 

If you are a Disney fan and have visited the theme parks, you likely remember the fireworks as a way to cap off your day and really your whole experience at the park. For decades now, Disney has featured these fireworks shows as a magical way to send you home. Walt Disney referred to the fireworks as a kiss good night. What does that mean to you that you’re impacting all of these visitors who are coming near and far? What does that mean to you to impact their experience as that final goodbye when they leave the park? 

Eric Hall : 

It impacts me to the point where when you had asked me earlier, why are you at Disney for 30 years? That’s why. It really is. Usually when you go somewhere or you see a show or something, you always talk about it afterwards in your family and it creates a memory. “Wow, wasn’t that neat?” Just people walking away and the shows like that, that are the kiss good nights are the final, “Hey, this is what we got for you and let’s create some memories here.” We always like to present something that hasn’t been seen before or people don’t get to see that often. So we really, really, really want to present something that once the guests walk away, they’re chatting about for days, and then maybe we inspire people at the same time. 

Maybe they’re like, “You know what? I want to do that. I like those lasers. I wonder how they do that.” And that’s what gets people involved and that’s what people appreciate. It’s inspiration as well as just entertainment. We strive for that. We like to do things that make people go, wow, and we want them to talk about with their families. Yes, and in fact, we’re making memories. It’s what it’s all about. 

Kate Young : 

I asked Eric how Purdue’s theater engineering concentration in multidisciplinary engineering prepares students like him for incredible careers in live entertainment. Plus, he digs into his mentorship work with Purdue students and gives advice to those who may want to pursue a career of their own in live entertainment. 

Eric Hall : 

The program helps you understand and helps you analyze. You have the left brain and the right brain, so you have the technical and the creative. And that program, like I said before, kind of melds those together. So learning about design and the technical part, it’s great because it teaches the students to think through what their problem or their challenge is. The students that have the engineering mind to come up with things to solve creative challenges, that program seems to have done really well. There’s two other cast members that I work with in our live entertainment department that have come from that program, and they were extremely prepared. That program has actually gotten… It’s improved since I was there, obviously. 

So over all those years ago, I was just really impressed with how well they prepare them for careers in entertainment because those two students who came to us, they fit right in. They knew what we were talking about, they knew how to solve problems. What do you think? They were impactful right away, and that’s important because theater technology is getting more and more complicated and more complex. You really need to have a technical mind in order to understand these things. There’s a of technology that’s come out since I graduated from Purdue that I’ve had to learn in my process. It’s always ever evolving, ever-changing. 

We’ve gone into the LED light era and the digital era and having these students be prepared for that to understand how to program a lighting console and to create some sort of mechanical device that will move scenic the way you want it to. It’s super important and giving those students those tools to go, “Hey, you have this sort of problem. Here’s how you go about solving it.” And that’s super important. Troubleshooting in our industry is super important because not everything works great the first time, and again, it comes down to meeting the challenges in the design as well. 

Kate Young : 

We’ve had many Purdue engineering students on the podcast and what you just said, just the problem solving skills that they learn at Purdue impacts everything with their career, so I love that. 

Eric Hall : 

It was super important to me as well. Being able to analyze and think through a problem to step back and to understand the bits and pieces of the whole is extremely valuable. 

Kate Young : 

Absolutely. Tell us about your mentorship work with Purdue students. I know you frequently give presentations, come back to campus. What does it mean to you to mentor and recruit boilermakers? What advice do you give them about working for Disney, working in live entertainment? 

Eric Hall : 

I love it actually. It’s really great because again, when I was at Purdue, I didn’t have the resources that we have today. We don’t have the internet. You can contact, you could look up somebody who works at Disney. “Hey, what do you do? What exactly do you do every day?” And I just like giving back because I’ve struggled in my time learning things and understanding, and I’m lucky to have mentors that help me through the process, so I want to be a mentor to people to maybe make it a little easier for them to get where they need to go and to help just give them the tools to be successful. All the students I’ve talked to are extremely bright and passionate, and they just want to know, where do I go from here? What do I need to know? I give them advice. 

I tell them what Disney Live Entertainment does or what my role involves. I have some students that reach out that they’re like, “I’m not sure what I want to do with this.” I talk to them. I ask them what they’re interested in. Maybe I point them in a direction, one of my peers or other cast members that may have some answers to them. So it’s not just me that’s giving answers. I’ve connected with some of the people that I’ve worked with that maybe have the information that those students are looking for. And just in general, just kind of giving them, “Hey, it’s okay to not know everything. It’s okay to say, I don’t know.” It’s learning and giving them advice. Things like that as to how to approach a job in general or a role. 

They really seem to appreciate that. It’s not just the, “Hey, you should know this, this, this.” It’s the here’s how you go about things. And I try my best to connect people with different experiences or just to talk about what they’re interested in so they can find maybe the right fit for them. 

Kate Young : 

We had a Penske race engineer on during the Indy 500, and he was saying that he also didn’t have the internet to go and network and get into the racing world, and he sent physical letters to try to network with people and get his foot in the door. And I assume that’s what was going on with Disney back then too, to try to, “Hey, how can I get to know people and network with people at a huge awesome company like that?” 

Eric Hall : 

And within Disney, we network as well. I had a manager in Monorails that, “Oh, you have an aptitude for theater tech and you want to be a tech. Oh, I know somebody who’s a tech manager. Let me talk to them.” And it’s that sort of thing. Building relationships is super important in any role that you’re in. Talk through and then give yourself a chance to be seen to let them know who you are and what you’re interested in. And then Disney’s great about that, trying to find opportunities for people. 

Kate Young : 

We talked a lot about innovation previously, Disney, Purdue, big innovators. What do you see in the future of live entertainment? How do you see it involving? What excites you the most as you look towards the future? 

Eric Hall : 

We have a lot of things coming up. Basically, I see the future of entertainment, and especially with technical is getting more and more complex. Digital systems, more compact equipment, needing to know those things is super important. It’s just going to get more complex and I believe more safe. Most companies are looking for the safest way to do things, so I’m very excited about that piece because there’s been some great innovations and great products that have come out that have helped keep people safe. Now in terms of Disney as entertainment, we have some really cool things coming up. We have a new nighttime show at Magic Kingdom, a nighttime parade called Starlight. And I’ve seen what that’s going to look like and it is going to be beautiful. 

I am very excited about seeing that. And we also have a new villain show that’s going to be really exciting because we’ve never really done anything like that. That’s going to be really, really neat. And then most recently we have a new Little Mermaid show coming as well. So those are three of the big things that have been announced. There’s a lot more exciting things coming. I can’t really discuss, but trust me, people are going to be surprised and delighted. We’re always trying to bring that wow factor to everything we do. 

Kate Young : 

Well, I know a lot of people love the wow factor and think that you absolutely do that at Disney. Is there anything else that I missed? Anything you want to tell our listeners? 

Eric Hall : 

For the people that want to work for Disney, it’s a great company. I’ve been there for 30 years and we have a lot of people that have been there for a very long time, so it shows how good of a company it is to work for and for those who want to maybe become techs or get into theater, do it. There’s some really good roles. I mean, not just for theme park entertainment, there’s entertainment everywhere, and they’re always looking for skilled technicians. For those young people who are into STEM, but they don’t really know what they want to do and they kind of like the theater thing or they like doing shows or presentations, I highly encourage it. It’s a fun thing to do, and Purdue has helped kind of see that. 

I’m not sure how many theater engineering programs are out there. I don’t think there’s that many. But what Purdue has produced and their program is exactly where entertainment is going to be going. Engineering minded, creative minded people. So if you’re that way, I encourage you to think about that, follow your passions, enjoy what you do. You hear that a lot, but it really is, it’s super important. That’s my takeaway if anybody has just any doubts as to what they want to do. 

Kate Young : 

Well, Eric, I think that’s the perfect outro. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Thank you so much again for joining us. It was a pleasure. 

Eric Hall : 

Thank you. I appreciate it. 

Kate Young : 

Eric ends this special episode with some rapid fire questions. Number one, what is your favorite pyrotechnics show? 

Eric Hall : 

I have to be biased and say Luminous. 

Kate Young : 

That’s fair. 

Eric Hall : 

It’s a beautiful show. I really am so impressed with my team. It’s a gorgeous show. Everybody has to see it. You’ll love it. 

Kate Young : 

I mean, any show that has a documentary on Disney+ about it has got to be a good show. What is your favorite overall entertainment show, not just at Disney, any type of show that you’ve been to? 

Eric Hall : 

Believe it or not, I just recently saw some Broadway shows. Those were really impressive. The Harry Potter one was very impressive. For Disney shows, I’m partial to festival of The Lion King at Animal Kingdom. It’s so energetic and just the talent that is in that show. Everybody from acrobats to dancers and singers, it’s an amazing show. Everybody should see that when they come to Animal Kingdom. I love it. I see it every time I’m there. 

Kate Young : 

Noted. What is your biggest tip for people visiting Disney theme parks? 

Eric Hall : 

Have fun. That’s kind of obvious, right? But sometimes just enjoy it. Don’t worry about the little things. We help take care of that. We want the guests to have the most amazing experience, and sometimes people aren’t sure what it’s about. Maybe the first time that people have come to Disney, just enjoy it. Enjoy that time with your family, create those memories. We’re here to help you do that. Just have fun. 

Kate Young : 

I love it. Simple. What is your favorite thing about Disney? 

Eric Hall : 

The uniqueness of what we do. Just how passionate cast members are about putting on a good show. And that doesn’t mean just entertainment people. Putting on a good show is for our custodial partners, our attractions partners. Everybody is passionate about the guests having a good time. That’s really the best thing, is the energy that cast members bring to their role and how we help guests enjoy themselves. That’s kind of unique. A lot of people talk about Disney’s guest service and it’s the best. So that’s just my favorite thing is just how everybody who works here just loves what they do and loves the guests and loves that they’re giving them, making memories again. 

Kate Young : 

We have additional bonus content from Eric’s interview on our podcast YouTube channel. He dives into more detail on Disney fireworks and shares the best spots to watch these incredible shows at the parks. You don’t want to miss it, trust me. Head over to YouTube.com/@thisispurdue, and click that subscribe button while you’re there. You can also follow This is Purdue on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you’re enjoying our content, leave us a rating and review. We love to hear from our listeners.  

This is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young. Our podcast videography for this episode was led by Ted Schellenberger. Our social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. Our podcast distribution strategy for this episode was led by Teresa Walker and Carly Eastman. Our podcast design is led by Caitlin Freeville. Our podcast photography is led by John Underwood. Our podcast team project manager is Rain Gu. Our podcast YouTube Promotions is managed by Kirsten Bauman. Additional writing and research assistance is led by Sophie Ritz and Ashvini Malshe. Our video production assistant is Delaney Young. And our This is Purdue intern is Caroline Kime. 

Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcasts. There you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review. And as always, boiler up.

Kate Young: 

Hi, I’m Kate Young and you are listening to This is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking, who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators, who are these boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty, and alumni, taking small steps toward their giant leaps, and inspiring others to do the same. 

 Brandon Boor: 

Our work recently in the past few years has been really focused on understanding the factors that affect the competition of indoor air. Now, what is in the air that we’re breathing, whether we’re sitting in our home, working in our office, or if you have a student that’s out in the classroom at school. 

Nusrat Jung: 

Air is very fascinating because it is something that you don’t see. So having really, really cool instruments in our lab, allowing us to see what we cannot see. 

Kate Young: 

In this episode of This is Purdue, we are talking to Brandon Boor and Nusrat Jung and diving into the groundbreaking indoor air quality research they’re conducting right here at Purdue University. Brandon is Purdue’s Dr. Margery E. Hoffman Associate Professor in Civil Engineering, and Nusrat is an assistant professor in Purdue’s Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering. Together, Brandon and Nusrat are working to advance healthier, more energy efficient living through collaborative innovation, and this research is happening inside a first of its kind Tiny House lab on Purdue’s campus. In this episode, you’ll learn more about their recent research discoveries like how hair products and wax melts can impact indoor air quality. They’ll also share ways you can improve indoor air quality in your own home. Oh, and by the way, have I mentioned yet that these two are not only a research pair but also a real life pair? Let’s dig in. Here’s my conversation with Brandon and Nusrat. 

Thank you both for joining us on the official University podcast, This is Purdue. We’re so excited to talk to you. You’re both civil engineering researchers and professors, and you all have been working on some truly incredible stuff. So we’re excited to dive into this groundbreaking work that you’re doing at Purdue that’s really making a global impact. So, let’s kick things off. We want to get to know you two a little bit better. You are not only partners in research, but you’re partners in life. You’re married. So, we want to know how did you meet and how long have you been married for? 

 Brandon Boor: 

Thank you, Kate. So we’ve been married for 10 years and we first met in Finland in 2011. Nusrat was a research scientist at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, which is a big research center in the country. She was working on buildings research and then I joined VTT as a visiting PhD student. I had a grant from the National Science Foundation called The Nordic Research Opportunity. So I was there for a few months, we met. Working in the same group, the first week that I was there and the rest is history. So, we really enjoyed our time and didn’t want together living up in the far north where it’s quite cold and quite dark, but they have excellent research, excellent education, and I think it really prepared us for our faculty careers here at Purdue. 

Kate Young: 

That’s incredible. So who else is part of your family, any pets? 

Nusrat Jung: 

Yes, we have three wonderful cats. Two of them came with us from Finland, and one of the cat adopted us here in West Lafayette. So we are family of five. We were very happy when we moved to Purdue because there is an excellent veterinary school and we were quite worried about the care that involves during the whole lifespan of a pet. So we have been really happy that there are right places and very, very good doctors that are available for anything that they need. So, it’s been a really nice setup. 

Kate Young: 

I mean, these are international cats. These are special cats. 

 Brandon Boor: 

Yeah. 

Nusrat Jung: 

Yes, they actually have Finnish passports. It’s really funny story. So they had to travel, the vet issued Finnish passports and the passports have information about the vaccination that they carry and that they are healthy. And it was really funny because I was asking about the Finnish language exam that they skipped. 

Kate Young: 

That is so fun. Wow. Okay, so I can tell that you’re both very passionate about the work that you do. When did you both realize that science was your passion, and do you remember any moment or experience maybe growing up that you were like, “I really want to be a researcher and make these really cool discoveries?” 

Nusrat Jung: 

Yes, I remember I was always a very curious child. I was getting into things I wanted to know about things, and I remember in high school we won the first award for science competition. We came up with a chimney that is of a power plant and we wanted to reduce the pollution somehow and come up with a control mechanism that will basically remove the pollution before it is exhausted. I think I have been thinking in terms of emissions and the care for the environment and people’s wellbeing for a long time. So, I’ve always been a person who is needs an active research question in mind or something to look for, something to find, something related to science. And I think the sense of discovery, the excitement that comes with it. 

 Brandon Boor: 

For me, it was also in high school. I grew up in Maryland and we had a Technology Magnet Program at my high school that was really instrumental in introducing me to engineering and science at a young age. I had a chance to participate in rocketry and robotics competitions. I worked at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab as a high school student. So I think that really drove me towards engineering, really enjoyed tinkering with things, working with my hands, the design aspect of engineering, working as part of a team. And then as a college student, I had the opportunity to do a co-op at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is in Gaithersburg, Maryland. They had an indoor air quality research group that I worked with for about eight months, and that introduced me to scientific research, working in the laboratory, working with advanced analytical instrumentation, working with scientists, and I think that really drove me towards pursuing a PhD, pursuing a research career. 

I learned that I could do experiments in the lab, make new discoveries, get all this interesting data, and try to make sense of it. There was an endedness to it that maybe is not so traditional and the conventional engineering path. So I think the research path allowed me to pursue my curiosities, do things for the first time in the lab. And make these discoveries that I found to be very interesting, and also impactful because I think indoor air quality is a field that does impact our everyday lives. 

Kate Young: 

You talked about you were in Finland and now you’re in West Lafayette. That must’ve been a big change. Tell us a little bit about your paths to Purdue. 

 Brandon Boor: 

So I applied to Purdue for a faculty position about a decade ago, and I was fortunate to receive an interview here. There is an open position in architectural engineering. So Purdue University, it’s one that few programs in the United States that has a very strong architectural engineering program within their civil engineering program. And architectural engineering is what Nusrat and I, do. Research-wise, teaching-wise, it’s really to study of buildings, indoor environments, and of course that encompasses indoor air quality. 

So I was fortunate to receive an offer and joined Purdue in 2015 as an assistant professor. I’ve been very fortunate to be here because we have such a strong focus on buildings research, research on the indoor environment. And large scale research infrastructure, experimental facilities that really have allowed me to pursue all my interest research-wise. And I think that in terms of the United States and what we have in architectural engineering, Purdue definitely has one of the best programs. We have facilities unlike any other universities, and this has really enabled us to make discoveries that you cannot make anywhere else. So I’ve been very happy to be here for 10 years almost this August, and to work with all the amazing students, undergraduate, graduate students and faculty that we had here at Purdue. 

Nusrat Jung: 

For me, it was that Brandon moved away from Finland, of course, and [inaudible 00:08:44] I was a PhD student at that time. And for me, it was just so incredibly exciting to see the things you can do when you become a professor. So actually, you have the ability to take something as an independent person, a thought that occurred, and then you can create and build upon it. You can actually write a proposal and then send it out somewhere for evaluation that it’ll get funded. 

Of course, there’s a whole sequence of things that you need to do, but at the same time you can really bring your ideas to life and that was very exciting of a thought. So once I was on the verge of completing my PhD in 2018, I actually never saw it as an end of something. I saw it as a new beginning, path to independent research career. So for me, it was incredibly exciting that you can actually do that. The only university I could think of was Purdue because Brandon was here and I wanted to have my dreams come true as well. And it was very exciting to just simply come here and then be a professor. I was teaching a class up to three months of graduating, exciting a new generation of engineers, starting to create new infrastructure. I mean, it has just been such an exciting time seeing all these years. 

Kate Young: 

When did you first start collaborating on your research together here at Purdue, and what has that experience been like? I’m sure there might be pros and cons with that as well. 

Nusrat Jung: 

We have actually enjoyed working together quite a lot. So, our first opportunity came during COVID-19, so everything of course was shut down. We had very nice home offices as well, both of us enjoyed working. During this time, there was this opportunity called as Protect Purdue Faculty Innovation Grant, and we had this idea because every time you would go out to groceries or to get something, you would smell all of these disinfectants in the air. And we started to talk about it and convert it into a short proposal that we put in for evaluation in this program, and we were so happy that it was accepted. And that was the first time that we collaborated and we were quite nice to find out that we work very well together. So it’s been really fun to actually have somebody, because naturally of course when you do research, you work in a team. So it is incredibly exciting when you have the whole team invested in the idea. When you make a discovery, it’s even a bigger celebration. So we have now had the opportunity to take our celebrations home as well. So, it’s been quite nice. 

 Brandon Boor: 

It’s been good because we brought different experiences and expertise together, and we did a PhD separately on different research topics and they were both connected to buildings. We were able to leverage the different experiences that we have had throughout our academic and our research careers. And I think that has really helped us in looking at buildings through a unique lens and looking at indoor air pollution issues within buildings. So, I think that’s been very helpful for us to approach a research problem from different perspectives. I think another aspect has been that a lot of the work that we have been doing has been in the form of this large scale measurement campaigns. And this is common in air quality research, whether that’s outdoors or indoors, or basically you bring together many faculty and graduate students to do a very intensive set of experiments at one particular location. 

And we have been able to do that here at Purdue, the two of us working together with other faculty collaborators where these measurements are very intense. So we have many instruments up and running that are very complicated, that are measuring all aspects of air quality, all the different pollutants that are in the air, and then all the different factors that are really affecting the composition of air. And then we work with faculty that have different areas of expertise related to atmospheric chemistry, environmental chemistry and so forth, along with industry collaborators. 

So these very intensive measurement campaigns that we’ve been able to do at Purdue, have really allowed us to make new discoveries because we’re measuring so many different things that we’re able to pick up on things that maybe other research groups would miss. So I think this has worked very well, but it takes a lot of work, a lot of coordination, and a lot of project management to oversee such a large research team. And to make sure that all these instruments are working together in unison because a lot of our work is looking at real-time dynamics of air pollutants. 

So everything has to be synced down to the second so we can make sense of the data that we’re generating, and we generate tons of data in our measurement campaign. So, I think working in this format has been very productive for the two of us along of our collaborators. And producing new research insights related to the factors that affect air quality in your home or your office or in the school. 

Nusrat Jung: 

And especially beneficial for our graduate students. So our graduate students have rights, they can come to us very easily and say, “Hey, Dr. Jung, this instrument I’m really interested in using in Dr. Boris lab. Is that okay?” And I’m like, “Okay, let’s go talk to him.” So it’s an easier conversation. Students have really enjoyed having the open opportunity to collaborate between our labs and so on. And of course, we have many independent projects as well that go on. We are also interested in our independent thoughts and ideas that we pursue them. We also work with many other faculty colleagues. I mean, it’s a mix of everything. It has been quite nice. 

 Brandon Boor: 

I should add that we have worked with IU Indiana University. They have, of course, been our rivals on the basketball court, but we’ve worked with them on many different research papers related to indoor atmospheric chemistry, which has been certainly a positive aspect of a research here at Purdue. 

Kate Young: 

And speaking of Purdue basketball, you can check out some additional bonus content and hear what Brandon and Nusrat enjoy doing together in our Boilermaker community on our podcast YouTube page, youtube.com/@thisispurdue. Now, for the past few years, Brandon and Nusrat have been focused on indoor air quality, and studying airborne particle emissions. And how architectural designs and energy-efficient building innovations can impact air quality. So, what’s been this pair’s biggest takeaways from this research so far? 

 Brandon Boor: 

Work recently in the past few years has been really focused on understanding the factors that affect the composition of indoor air. What is in the air that we’re breathing, whether we’re sitting in our home, working in our office, or if you have a student that’s out in the classroom at school. What are the factors that are affecting the air pollution that we’re exposed to? And we try to approach this from different angles. We want to understand how the building affects air quality. Buildings have a big impact on the air that we breathe, whether that’s protecting us from outdoor air pollution, for example, wildfire smoke. We’re contributing to the transmission of respiratory viruses like SARS-CoV-2. But we try to look at it through the perspective of buildings they’re designed and their operation because there’s a lot of opportunity there to make buildings that promote their health and well-being. 

So whenever we do our measurements, we always try to do it in the context of how is the building affecting the composition of air, affecting sources of air pollution, the removal of air pollutants and so forth. Then we also want to look at occupants. So in any indoor environment, people play a big role in what’s going on, whether that’s energy consumption or air quality. Our very presence is releasing a variety of different gases and aerosols to the air around us. 

So we try to look at the role of the occupant, and we have done studies in the Herrick Living Labs looking at this in the zEDGE Tiny House and other facilities where we’re trying to frame the research around people, whether that’s a lot of people present or just one person that’s cooking on a stove top. So we found that occupancy, occupancy patterns, and occupant activities, cooking, cleaning, using personal care products have a big impact on the air that we breathe. So it’s really looking at air quality through the lens of buildings and people, and then trying to frame our results in the context of how can we improve indoor air quality and what are we exposed to? What are we inhaling into our body that may ultimately affect our health? 

Nusrat Jung: 

I very often when I start my class, I do speak about this number that we spend 90% of the time in buildings. When you say it in a sentence, you actually don’t think very much about it, but when you start to think how we are spending our everyday life, then it makes more sense. So for example, you are waking up in a building when you get ready to go somewhere, you go to another building, then you go to another building. So somehow we are moving through many buildings throughout our day and it is incredibly important to understand the fundamental processes that are occurring in these spaces. 

And what may be driving the change in the air that we are breathing, be it outdoors and indoors. So outdoor and indoors are both connected. We have outdoor air that we are going to bring into the… So many ways that the air can come in. Here is very fascinating. I find it to be very fascinating because it is something that you don’t see. So having really, really cool instruments in our lab allowing us to see what we cannot see. So we are able to measure a large particle size distribution in terms of aerosol science, and we are also able to understand the chemistry of the air, so chemical speciation of what is in that. So ultimately, we are trying to understand the constituents of what is in this air and how rapidly it changes because of the activities he conducts in these buildings every day. 

 Brandon Boor: 

I would add that at Purdue University, we’ve been very fortunate to have access to all the most cutting edge air quality instruments. Some of these we own here, they’re in our lab, and some have been on loan to us from our industry partners, but we’ve been really excited to use these really cool sensors, basically. And these are very sophisticated sensing technologies that allow us to measure all sorts of things with excellent resolution. And that has enabled some of the discoveries that we have made. And we’re able to, for example, measure incredibly small airborne particles, nanoparticles that are present in the air when you’re cooking on a gas stove, we’re able to measure all these different chemicals that are in the air second by second. So, I think having access to all this really cutting edge technology at Purdue is really advancing our research. It’s very exciting for us and our students to use this equipment and to bring it all together to tell a story about indoor air quality and what affects it. 

Kate Young: 

So, how and where exactly are Brandon and Nusrat conducting their research? The Purdue Zero Energy Design Guidance for Engineers or zEDGE lab is a 192 square foot tiny house that has all of the features of a typical home that is equipped with sensors for closely monitoring the impact of everyday activities on a home’s air quality. This lab is so uniquely Purdue, and it’s the only residential lab space for indoor air quality research. Nusrat shares more about the Tiny House lab, plus digs into one of the biggest discoveries from her and her team’s indoor air quality research. How chemicals like siloxanes found in hair care products can linger in the air after its use. 

Nusrat, I want to talk to you about the zEDGE Tiny House. you and a group of students designed this back in 2020. Tell us more about this lab. It’s the first of its kind. It’s the only one of its kind. How does it add to Purdue’s status as a global leader in this specific research? 

Nusrat Jung: 

We are continually working to elevate our status. So we are the gold standard, and I really want to continue to strive to recreate the best. I was very fortunate to have received education in India, in Germany, in Finland, and I have a very enriching experience in all of these countries. So when I moved here to the United States, I really wanted to create something that amalgamates all of my experiences, and that resulted in creation of this perfectly tiny house which is also a super high-tech lab. It is a house because we want to provide our audiences to our students, to our researchers, to our fellow people something to relate to. We live in houses, and it really helps connect with the real world activities. So in this lab, everything is looking as if it is a normal house, but it is outfitted with thousands of different sensors. 

We are sensing everything. So this serves for us something called as a completely mixed flow reactor. That means if I were to cause a little bit of pollution in this lab, all of my instruments will light up and collect that data set. And then that data set would allow us to identify, is there an issue with this pollutant? Is there something that we need to be worried about? So this very unique lab has been the source of so many discoveries that have come out from our research lab. One of the major discoveries that we reported last year had to do with chemical products that we are applying in our hair. You mentioned, hairspray, right before you got ready today, I am not so happy to share that perhaps it’s something to avoid. So we found that normal hair care products that you find in grocery shops, any shop that you would go to, it’s actually I have to say quite amazing the number of products there are. 

So if you go to any store, you would see the aisles are filled with them, and we rarely are looking into the composition of the product, right? Because of course we all want to look good, we want to get ready in the morning and improve how we look because that’s how we function as a society. But at the same time, we don’t wish to be exposed to harmful chemicals. So we found that while we are conducting our everyday care routines, we might be exposing ourselves to very high levels of a compound called saloxane. And this compound is bioaccumulated, it is toxic, and it is really not something you should be exposing yourself to. And if you were to be someone who is using a treated appliance in tandem with application of the product, that further exacerbates the volatility of the product. So, this activity is quite unique because you do it every day, but you don’t realize that you’re breathing right here, right? 

So this is our nose and our mouth and this is the delivery of air into our lungs. So, why did we want to deliver the air into advance? We really want to avoid the chemical delivery into our body, to our system. So my general advice about air quality or indoor air or how to avoid this is really being aware of what you are purchase. Always remember, it is a chemical mixture and this mixture as much as it may make you look better or look certain way, it might also be doing other things. So it’s a good idea to always read the products that are behind, and somehow gain an understanding that perhaps reducing our exposure is our number one option. So reduce the number of these products that we bring into our home and possibly avoid things that are scented. 

So it’s nice to use fragrances every now and then, but a continuous exposure during several times a day of something that is chemically charged can possibly not be good for us. I mean, just to think naturally. We all know taking a walk through a forest is a nice thing, but we rarely come across like a whole bed of roses in terms of perfume. I just think about it in terms of my grandfather’s advice, “Everything in moderation,” maybe is the way to go. 

Kate Young: 

I have a strong feeling that our listeners and viewers at home are thinking, “What can I do? What can I do to help control the air quality in my house? How can I still enjoy scented products?” I just sprayed some hairspray before this interview. I know we talked about perfume. Is there anything that we all can do to help improve our air quality at home, in our workplace, et cetera? 

 Brandon Boor: 

So three strategies to improve indoor air quality in your home or an office, the first is better ventilation. This is something that came to light with the COVID-19 pandemic that buildings are just not ventilated sufficiently. So ventilation is a great way to bring in outdoor air to dilute all the contaminants that we’re generating indoors. These can be pollutants that are produced during cooking, [inaudible 00:25:56] activities, but also the human body. So, we’re releasing viruses into air, bacteria, carbon dioxide, and these pollutants can build up over time if buildings are not sufficiently ventilated. So ventilation is a great strategy, but we need to sometimes make renovations to buildings to ventilate them better, install new HVAC equipment. But this is something that can be a very effective mitigation strategy. The second would be filtration. And this can be done within the HVAC system. So the furnace that may be down in your basement or up in the attic, filters can remove contaminants very efficiently. 

We can create do-it-yourself air purifiers that we can place in your bedroom. We can put it into a classroom and those can scrub out pollutants quite efficiently. So filtration is a great strategy to us from all the stuff that we’re generating indoors like viruses and bacteria, but also pollutants that may be coming from the outdoors. So wildfire smoke for example, if you’re living out in California and your home is exposed to wildfire smoke, how could you protect yourself, or you can use better filtration. And these filters can remove the particulate matter from the air. The last is to look at the different sources of air pollution around us. So when we go to the grocery store to buy different products that we bring into our home, we should be thinking about the different types of chemicals that may be present in those products. Some of those are listed on the label, some may be not listed. 

We have to be mindful that our buildings are chemical reactors and we bring in a lot of household products, a lot of personal care products, cleaning products that do contain chemicals of concern. I think this is something where if you just don’t use those products, you could reduce your exposure, but some things are hard to get away from. And some of these sources are connected to the building itself from the different furnishings and building materials that we use. So we have to be thinking about long-term, how can we create products that do not have hazardous chemicals in them? And to raise awareness about the chemical loadings of our home of the indoor environment. Things like forever chemicals like PFAS are quite ubiquitous, and they’re found in many different things. So we have to be thinking about how can we remove these pollutants from the indoor environment, whether it’s better ventilation, better filtration or source control, just not bringing this stuff into our home. These are all effective strategies. 

Nusrat Jung: 

We talked about filtration. That’s great. We want to filter, we use filter media. In buildings, we can improve that. I think the bigger issue is going to be in cities because in cities you are really close to each other’s exhaust vent. So, exhausting everything out of a building may remove it from your immediate breathing zone, but it does not remove it from the atmosphere. 

So we have to understand that buildings are pumping out chemicals and aerosol pollutants into the air that then become part of the whole atmosphere. So, it is a shared volume of air that we have access to, and what can we do to better it? We can really start with looking into these pumping of chemicals. We need to think about how do we filter the air that we are sending out in the world as well. So, we do have solutions and ideas in mind. We do have new discoveries that will come out that will be reported. But it is important to think of systems as a whole, buildings as a whole, the whole world as a whole, how everything is interconnected. So interconnectedness of all of these systems do, they are very important. 

Kate Young: 

So haircare products impacting indoor air quality was one major discovery found from the research being done in the Tiny House lab. But these two researchers are working on another major finding, which involves a popular cozy ritual. In their paper titled Flame-Free Candles are Not Pollution-Free, which was recently accepted by Environmental Science & Technology Letters. Brandon and Nusrat found that scented wax melts actually pollute indoor air as much as normal candles do. The pair explains more. 

Nusrat Jung: 

If you go to any grocery store, but notice that you have candles on one side which has combustion elements. So you have to light it up. And then you have something called as wax melt, which is something that you put in a wax warmer so you don’t have that lighting part of it. So basically we wanted to study, “Hey, what is the real difference in it?” Because they are being sold these days as pollution-free possibility to create scented atmosphere homes. Our major discovery here really led us to understand what is happening in terms of the chemical pollution they are generating at the house. We also notice the really high amount of fragrance that it is injecting beyond a candle that we would purchase normally. 

 Brandon Boor: 

We found that even though the wax warmer, the wax melt has no combustion involved, we’re actually generating similar amounts of airborne nanoparticles as you would have with a candle. So this is a non-intuitive finding. We buy these products, you’re not burning anything. You think that you should not be generating any smoke or particulate matter, but in reality you are. So this is something that we have reported on in a number of papers recently, and that these fragrances that Nusrat is describing are highly reactive, that highly reactive with things like ozone. Ozone comes from the outdoors via ventilation and it can initiate very complex chemical reactions that can form very high concentrations of very small nanoparticles that can get deep into our respiratory system. So what we found is that using these fragrance wax melts can actually produce a lot of nanoparticles. You don’t see them, we don’t see visible smoke, but these particles can impact our health. 

We think they can cause issues with our respiratory system, and we need to be aware that these particles are being formed within the indoor atmosphere. These are processes that are not so simple to understand, but they are occurring in the air around us throughout the day. And they can just be initiated with this burst of fragrance that we release, these very reactive molecules. So, hopefully people could understand that these fragrance products when they smell like lime or lemon or orange or pine, can initiate the formation of very small particles, which can get deep into our respiratory system. And again, this is not something that you would be aware if you’re just looking at the product because you cannot see the smoke particles. 

Kate Young: 

We’ll link their paper in our podcast show notes for you if you want to dig into more detail on this research. Both of you have talked about the industry partners with Purdue and the benefit that we have to work with these types of partners, and I know they’ve benefited from the Tiny House lab as well. So why is that an exciting opportunity for Purdue to work with these industry partners? 

Nusrat Jung: 

We really are very excited to have this opportunity to work with all the industry partners. I’d like to highlight that the equipment we have on the Tiny House, for example, all the appliances and other equipment, they have been donated by two of the largest HVAC companies. We also have industry partners who have contacted us to actually test their instrumentation. So when they see that such creative, exciting discoveries are coming out of this research lab, they really want us to find out the capability of their instruments. 

So we are able to really test the lower threshold and the higher threshold of whatever product that they are producing because we are able to measure so much in our lab. So it has been very exciting to form new industry collaboration. It has happened on several occasions that we have received the instrument to test in our lab before it has been released to the public to purchase. So we are really fortunate because we are always excited with the ability to measure air. If we can do that and help advance industry as well in that direction, we are very happy to take that as I mentioned. 

 Brandon Boor: 

I think that Nusrat highlighted the benefit of working with industry partners, especially related to measurement technologies for air pollution. This has been something that has really helped our research to move it forward. Going back now almost half a decade, working with different companies around the United States and beyond, to use the most cutting edge instrumentation to measure different aspects of air quality that very few people in the world can measure. I think this has really been quite fun for us to use these instruments in Nusrat’s Tiny House, which is such a controlled atmospheric environment. So we can run these very controlled experiments, which enables us to make deep fundamental insights. Since we know everything that’s going on inside the Tiny House when we bring in an instrument, we have the ability to really characterize air pollution dynamics very carefully with a level of precision that you could not do perhaps in other environments. So I think working with companies, working with their cutting edge instrumentation inside of Nusrat’s Tiny House has really been a great experience for the two of us. 

Kate Young: 

I know our This is Purdue team had the pleasure of meeting some of your students. It’s so unique for the to be working in this one of a kind lab as well. What are you hoping that they take away from it? 

Nusrat Jung: 

Okay. First I have to acknowledge that at Purdue University we do a very good job in providing opportunities of research to our undergraduate [inaudible 00:35:54]. That is so important because it’s not just about going through a curriculum for an undergraduate students, it is also about being part of our discoveries. This is really unique that they have an opportunity here at Purdue to participate in our discoveries. We have programs such as OUR, Office of Undergraduate Research. We have also had students from SERF, which is Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship. We have also had many students that have come from international programs. We have had students from, I think Contest Program from Brazil. We have also had the students from recently all across the world and United States. The students who go here to Purdue have been part of our lab. We also have an [inaudible 00:36:40] which is project management team and where the students really work together in groups to create new engineering solutions. 

All of these students have had access to the tiny house to conduct research with our research groups. So overall, I think over hundreds of students have gone through the lab in terms of taking away new knowledge. I think the number one thing I would like students to take away from this lab instead, buildings are very complex engineering systems, and each building presents a new challenge because it functions differently. For example, a hospital would function very differently than a residential house. 

So what are these parameters that make them different? What are these parameters that make them unique, and what are the things we have to be consistently careful about as engineers to improve our build environment? So I think this lab has allowed the students to have an understanding of these individual parameters that they need to care for to actually create an exceptional built environment. As civil engineers, we really play a very [inaudible 00:37:56] society, we are the foundation of society. Everything we do is behind the scenes, but all of the infrastructure that exists, really civil engineer has a huge role to play with that. So we want to basically enhance their learning in our lives, and hopefully provide them with skill set where they can make better decisions when they go join us [inaudible 00:38:19]. 

Kate Young: 

It sounds like you’re both really passionate about teaching about your students. How do you think that the things that they’re learning at Purdue through the two of you specifically, how will that lead to them solving these tough challenges as we look into the future? 

 Brandon Boor: 

I think we’re trying to give our students a holistic understanding of buildings, which are a critical part of our built infrastructure in the United States, that we want to create buildings of the future that promote our health, our well-being, our productivity that are energy efficient, that integrate all the latest advanced sensing technologies, control technologies, appliances and materials. So I think within civil engineering, within the architectural engineering program, Nusrat and I, our faculty colleagues are really trying to help students, undergraduate and graduate students view buildings holistically. And really have a strong grounding in the fundamentals, the fundamentals of thermodynamics, heat and mass transport and so forth. So they can go into the workforce and bring with them all this new knowledge so they can design buildings of the future that outperform the buildings that we have now that can address issues like indoor air quality needs, optimized lighting and thermal comfort, keep people in the center. 

I think that buildings are designed and created for people. I think that’s something that we try to integrate into our teachings and into our research. We have a lot of opportunity through engineering, through design, to create buildings that optimize our performance, whether that’s in the home or in the office of the classroom. So I think that’s something that we’re trying to focus on for our education program and architectural engineering. And I think we have been successful with that. And I think that we will continue to work on helping our students understanding emerging challenges, societal challenges related to energy, environmental pollution and so forth. So they can really be the leaders. And I think that at Purdue, students get a great education, whether that’s in the fundamentals, but also as Nusrat explained, all this hands-on experience that they can get here through ethics, through research experiences, through co-ops and things like that. They can get a very holistic experience that will prepare them for the workforce or for perhaps a research career if they end up becoming a professor. 

Nusrat Jung: 

We are always excited to see all of them succeed. The way we approach learning in both research and teaching, it’s really also focused on to not shy away from the complexity of the problem. In fact, be very easy about it, take it easy in terms of how complex it is. So understanding something requires that you become comfortable with it being a very complex challenge to solve. So all the students who have gone through our labs, they are very, very, very much at ease looking at large quantities of data set, looking at huge problem in terms of what they are trying to solve, and then really taking a deep dive into each of the items that may have an impact. 

So I think it’s not just about one thing, it is really about the whole picture. The students in our labs have and in our classroom have a very holistic understanding. So, they’re not just book smart. We want them to be actually smart, like really smart. So we try to provide this real environment that we always want to bring them back to reality, that all of these things that they are learning in our classroom have a very real use in the real world, and having mastery of what they are learning here will definitely improve their ability to meet in the future. 

Kate Young: 

Between facilities like the zEDGE Tiny House lab and the innovative Boilermaker collaboration happening daily, Purdue is a global leader when it comes to environmental health research. Brandon shares more. 

 Brandon Boor: 

I think one aspect to that has been the research infrastructure available to Purdue faculty and students. We have a lot of large-scale infrastructure in place so we can do cutting-edge experimental work. I think that’s one of the reasons I’ve really enjoyed being here. Whether it’s been Nusrat’s Tiny House or other facilities that we have access to, these large labs have really allowed us to do really cool things at a scale that you cannot do at other universities. For example, in air quality research, a lot of people may study processes in small chambers. Here we can do full-scale test houses and offices and HVAC systems. I think that has really allowed us to do work that’s fundamental, but has a strong practical element because it’s done in a real environment. 

So I think that’s been very unique. And I think over the past decade and being at Purdue, I think there’s been a growing number of faculty that have working on environmental pollution issues, whether that’s air quality, water quality, and you’re collaborating together. And we have worked with a number of faculty within civil and environmental engineering chemistry tried to study some of these different environmental pollution issues. So I think there’s been a growing focus at Purdue. He’ll look at the environment to try to understand where the pollution is coming from to try to mitigate that pollution, and that really requires expertise from many different areas, engineering, science, health, and so forth. 

Kate Young: 

Okay, last question today, it’s a big one. You get to see all the amazing work at Purdue, all of the researchers in the different fields, what they’re doing every day. What do you want the world to know and remember about the work that Purdue is doing? 

 Brandon Boor: 

So I think Purdue is a leader in engineering research. Being here, I can see that we’re doing really cutting-edge research. We’re doing research that a lot of universities and the world just cannot do because we have the infrastructure in place to do these full-scale investigations. And that spans all the engineering disciplines, whether it’s aerospace to civil, to mechanical and so forth. I think we are just doing really cool things at Purdue that impact society. I am happy to be a part of this engineering program because we’re really focused on doing high quality research on buildings. And I think this is making a difference and I think it will continue to make a difference. The two of us are looking more at the indoor environment, the indoor air quality part of that, but there’s just so much research at Purdue on buildings and how to make them healthier, more energy efficient, and it’s really cool to be a part of that and to see so many different faculty and students studying our built environments from different perspectives. 

And all this high quality research that we produce at Purdue does have an impact. People read it, researchers from around the world read our papers and they learn about the knowledge that we’re generating here in our lab. So we’re sitting in this Tiny House and we can make a discovery and we can publish that. And somebody in Europe, somebody in Asia can read these papers and learn about the new knowledge that we have created. And this can transform the whole research enterprise globally. And I believe that’s what we’re doing at Purdue. We have a lot of very productive faculty that are really generating high quality research that does play a role that can affect policies. It can provide the general public with new insights, and just great to generate this knowledge because it’s something that’s so important. Science is an important part of society, and a lot of this science starts with professors and students and doing really deep work. And I believe that Purdue is a leader in doing this really deep fundamental work that has this practical aspect to it, whether it’s health or technology or so forth. 

Nusrat Jung: 

I also believe it is also the years of training and the years of experience and expertise that you’ve built over the year, right? So there are several years of work has brought to all of these discoveries that have come out. And it is not just simply about your ability to measure, it is also about your ability to take that data, do a deep dive into it, build the mathematical models that allow you to actually see the discovery, then fine tune this work, then publish the work. 

So all of this is really years of hard work that has gone into what has come out of our labs. So, it is the representation of extremely dedicated students that we have very committed professors, exceptional environment in our classrooms of innovation, or excitement about the future. So all of these things when they culminate together, you really do have something brilliant and outstanding. So we are both really excited to be here and to be part of this culture, and also creating our old culture around us. So it’s really just been such a wonderful time and we continue to be excited still every day when we come to the lab, which is quite amazing. 

Kate Young: 

We got to witness a little bit of your culture with the students and getting to see the Tiny House lab in person and getting a tour of that. So we will link that for our listeners as well, and they can check it out on our YouTube page. And speaking of this one of a kind Tiny House lab, Nusrat shares one last interesting fact about the design of this lab that may surprise you all. 

Nusrat Jung: 

So this is very funny. Our toilet doesn’t have a door. So it’s funny when everybody comes in here is like, “Professor Jung where is the door?” I don’t want you to use the toilet, which is why there is no door. So of course it is a house where it’s a lab, and we really want to avoid activities such as using the toilet in the [inaudible 00:48:05]. So that is really funny every time that happens, I have to give a little bit of an explanation to everyone about why we don’t have a door, but we have a toilet. It flushes, it works because of course we also want to monitor all the flows in the building, right? We also have a water meter, and at different points, we are also measuring what is flowing in the building and flowing out of the building. So we want to have a system level approach, to a very engineering approach to all the problems that we look into. 

We are measuring energy, we are measuring air, we are measuring all of the water that flows through the building. We are measuring how these different appliances are operating, what effect they have on the air inside. So we really believe in measuring things because when we measure, we can identify. And the quality of the equipment that you measure with is also very important because you might be looking for something that the instrument cannot detect, so you will never find it out. So it is important to really have a holistic engineering, very scientific approach to looking into each and every query that we conduct in our research labs. 

Kate Young: 

Now, that’s an interesting behind the scenes tidbit right there. Remember, if you want to see this incredible Tiny House lab firsthand, you can watch a special tour with Nusrat on our podcast YouTube page, youtube.com/@thisispurdue. Well, again, thank you so much. I know our listeners and viewers are going to certainly learn a thing or two from this episode, and it was a pleasure talking to you both. 

Nusrat Jung: 

Thank you, Kate, so much. We really enjoyed speaking with you. We wish you a very nice happy New Year. 

 Brandon Boor: 

Thank you, Kate. This was a fun experience for us. 

Kate Young: 

It was a pleasure getting to know these Boilermakers civil engineering professors and researchers, their passion for their research, their students, and the Purdue community really shines. Remember, there’s additional bonus video content from both Brandon and Nusrat on our YouTube page. They walk through more details and suggest useful tools you can use to improve your air quality at home. Trust me, you don’t want to miss it. And of course, be sure to follow, This is Purdue on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts as we continue rolling out new episodes this season. This is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young. Our podcast videography for this episode was led by Ted Schellenberger. Our social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. Our podcast distribution strategy is led by Carly Eastman. Our podcast design is led by Caitlin Freeville. Our podcast photography is led by John Underwood. 

Our podcast team project manager is Raine Gu. Our podcast, YouTube Promotions is managed by Kristen Bowman. Additional writing and research assistance is led by Sophie Ritz and Ashwini Malshi. Our video production assistant is Delaney Young. Our This is Purdue intern is Caroline Keim. And Kayla Elbert is the author of several Purdue news articles featuring Brandon and Nusrat’s Research, which you can check out in our show notes. Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcast. There you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review. And as always, boiler up.

Renee Thomas: This is Renee Thomas and you’re listening to This is Purdue. 

Kate Young: Hi, I’m Kate Young and you are listening to This is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking. Who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators? Who are these boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty and alumni, taking small steps toward their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same. 

Renee Thomas: Sometimes I think that as new students we may be a little bit shy and bashful and not stretch ourselves in terms of relationship building. I think it’s important to stretch yourself. And I think that they will develop community and that sense of belonging by reaching beyond their inner circle. Whenever we come to a university, we tend to congregate with folks that look like us and think like us, and I would encourage them to be that rubber band and stretch outside of their boundaries and take advantage of everything that the university has to offer. 

Kate Young: In this episode of This is Purdue, we are talking to Renee Thomas. As Purdue’s Associate Vice Provost for Student Access and Community Engagement and the former director of the Black Cultural Center, Renee has made a lasting impact in countless boilermaker lives. In 2024, Renee was awarded with two incredible honors. First, the Special Boilermaker Award, which honors a member of the Purdue faculty or staff who has contributed significantly to the improvement of the quality of life or the betterment of the educational experience for Purdue students. She also won the Indiana Civil Rights Commission’s Achievement and Education Award, which recognizes an educator who has used innovative strategies to promote growth and achievement for their students. We dig into both of these honors and what they mean to Renee, plus she shares more about her 35-year Boilermaker journey and how it feels to increase opportunities for students throughout Indiana, especially for Purdue students in both West Lafayette and Indianapolis. 

Our team was so honored to talk to Renee, so let’s get to it. Here’s our conversation. Renee, thank you so much for joining us on. This is Purdue, our official university podcast. We’re just excited because you’ve made such an impact on so many Boilermaker lives over the years, so we’re excited to dig into your journey at Purdue and the legacy that you have. So let’s get right to it. We’ll start at the beginning because you are very well versed in higher ed. Tell us how you got to Purdue and what drew you into the Purdue community back in 1990. 

Renee Thomas: Certainly. Well, first of all, I want to say thank you for this opportunity to share more about my experiences and my commitment to the university as well, so it’s a joy to be here. I came to Purdue back in 1990. Higher education was a field that I wasn’t even aware of at one point that was a professional field that you could go into, so as an undergrad, I worked as an RA in the residence halls and that’s when I first got my exposure to student affairs. I left the university and went to… Ohio University is where I had my first full-time career and it was in the affirmative action office and we were doing some multicultural student programming, and as we were developing that program, Purdue Black Cultural Center was one of the ones that we benchmarked and after I visited, I thought, “Man, that would be a wonderful place to work on a full-time basis.” Lo and behold, an opportunity became available and I accepted it, and 30 years later, I’m still here at Purdue University. 

Kate Young: Creating community and a sense of belonging for students is incredibly important here at Purdue. So how does Renee and her team work to achieve this? 

Renee Thomas: Belonging is so important. We know that students who have a sense of belonging tend to have higher retention at the university and they also tend to perform better academically. It’s important that we provide spaces at the university in which connections can be made because we know that part of the college experience is making lifelong friendships, so connections are important. And then it’s also important to have culturally relevant events and programs and activities and to have a very supportive environment. 

Kate Young: Absolutely. I still have friends from my time at Purdue, so usually in college you do make those lifelong connections I feel like. I know you talked about Purdue’s Black Cultural Center and you admiring it from afar in your first role and it’s nationally recognized as one of the best collegiate cultural centers in the country. So tell me a little bit more about your role when it came to expanding the Black Cultural Center and nurturing it to what it is today. 

Renee Thomas: From a facility standpoint, I’m very excited that we were one of the first freestanding cultural centers in the country and I was very much involved in the securing philanthropic support for the creation of the freestanding facility, and I tell people all the time, it’s not just about the bricks and mortar, but it’s about what happens inside the doors of the BCC and that we have a very robust performing arts ensemble program where they travel all over the country and world doing performance engagements. It’s a way in which the students have that sense of balance. Being a STEM focused campus, the arts is something that is critical in terms of the student having a holistic experience while they’re at the university. 

We also have introduced study abroad programs and research tours at the Black Cultural Center, and it provides students to become global citizens. We are rich institutionally as it relates to our international student population, and not only do students have an opportunity to interact with the international students here, but they also have opportunities to go abroad and get exposure on a global context as well. So we’re really proud about the performing arts ensemble program, which we have five different ensembles to share about the African-American experience through the arts, and it’s not just for African-American students. All students are engaged and actively participating in the Black Cultural Center. 

Kate Young: I know we had a Stephen McKinley Henderson on and he talked about being a citizen of the world and how much the Black Cultural Center and to him during his time at Purdue, so it was cool to see you using some of his language that he also mentioned. 

Renee Thomas: Yes, and it’s interesting because I always tell people that homecoming is usually my favorite time of the year in which alumni come back to the university and have time to reflect about what was important to them as an undergraduate or even a graduate student, and it’s just so affirming to hear the role that the Black Cultural Center has played in student development. It’s a joy to see the impact that many of our alumni are making and they always talk about how they got their start at Purdue University and through the Black Cultural Center programs and activities. 

Kate Young: I asked Renee about other examples of roles that Purdue’s Cultural Centers play in creating a sense of belonging for students. 

Renee Thomas: The cultural centers, not just the Black Cultural Center, but all five cultural centers play a huge role in creating a sense of belonging on campus. Representation is important and the cultural centers provide individuals on their team and staff that represent the populations that they’re serving. They provide culturally relevant programming to affirm our students in terms of their various ethnic identities on campus and it also is a congregating place, a place… We call it sometimes a home away from home for our students, where they can come in and, quote, unquote, “be themselves,” let their hair down and really just hang out with one another and have that sense of community. It builds a strong community and then leadership development as well. Our goal is to nurture the students in such a way that they develop some skills, abilities, and then whenever they leave Purdue, and even during their tenure at Purdue, is that they grow as it relates to their leadership. 

Kate Young: Renee discusses how her role has expanded since the announcements and official opening of Purdue University in Indianapolis on July 1st, 2024. 

Renee Thomas: I think that the primary area in which I’ve seen some expansion are that I’m really involved in some robust engagement initiatives with the city of Indianapolis and organizations throughout the community, and we’re looking to create some very strong partnerships through our outreach efforts, and in turn, we hope that those partnerships and we anticipate that those partnerships will turn into recruitment efforts so that we continue to bring in a very diverse set of students coming to the university and that we recognize too that we are coming into an existing community. Even though Purdue is new to the community, we are the new kids on the block, so we are also recognizing that we have a strong need to continue to familiarize ourselves with the local community and develop the necessary knowledge to engage them in meaningful ways. 

Kate Young: As we discussed earlier, Renee is the associate vice provost for student access and community engagement at Purdue. She discusses how it felt stepping into this role and how she used the three pillars of her work to ensure belonging for all boilermaker students. 

Renee Thomas: This role really was a unique opportunity and I am just so delighted that I have been able to transition into a full-time position. About a year ago, whenever Purdue and IU announced the separation of the two institutions, one of the things that was very paramount is the location of Purdue in Indianapolis. It sits on Indiana Avenue, which is a very historical and vibrant… African-American community existed there prior to the emergence of IUPUI 50 years ago. And as we moved into the community, we wanted to ensure that we were developing positive relationships with the community and because it was a predominantly African-American community, it made natural sense in terms of my passion for African-American culture and history to be able to network and familiarize myself with the local community and develop increased level of knowledge of the community. And that has been great. As I look at the position as associate vice provost for student access and community engagement, I tell people, “I like to look at it from a stool with three legs.” 

One of the legs is community engagement, one of the legs is K through 12 initiatives, and the other leg is student experience. Being able to have impact in each of those areas has been a joy. We’ve done several programming with their students who are currently enrolled as new boilermakers first-year students at Purdue University in Indianapolis and are continuing students. Again, creating that sense of community and sense of belonging. As it relates to the K through 12 area, that’s our pipeline. We know that we want to have more residents from the state of Indiana attending Purdue University and developing those pipeline programs with local school systems, whether it be with the principals, counseling staff and teachers at the various school systems. 

Kate Young: Community engagement is an important part of any student’s journey. With the Purdue and Indianapolis campuses proximity to Indiana Avenue, the Madam C.J. Walker Theater and other institutions of great importance to Indiana’s black community. Renee believes it’s essential to connect boilermakers students and alumni with this historical community. Renee discusses how she and her team are working to do this. 

Renee Thomas: We plan to do that through a variety of ways. We actually started out with BGR, the Boiler Gold Rush, which is the freshman orientation program. We were very intentional in that as we were hosting BGR activities, the main gathering space was the Madam C.J. Walker Center. And as you mentioned, Madam C.J. Walker was a very prominent African-American woman who started a hair care product business in Indianapolis and became the first African-American self-made millionaire and first female millionaire as well. So we actually had BGR at the Madam walker Center. We didn’t just host it at the Madam Walker Center, but we were able to share a video and share information about who Madam C.J. Walker was in the vibrancy of Indiana Avenue. 

As we look at Purdue in Indianapolis, we recognized that we are Purdue’s first urban campus and we want to take advantage of what the entire city has to offer our students at Purdue. Madam C.J. Walker is one example. Another example is the Eiteljorg Museum is right at the back door of Purdue in Indianapolis. We also have the Indiana State Museum and the zoo and so many other areas in which we are doing programming so that our students can be fully integrated into the entire… Not only campus community, but the city as well. 

Kate Young: Absolutely. I love everything around the canal, what you’re talking about, those different museums. It’s such a special place with that urban downtown feel, right? 

Renee Thomas: Exactly. 

Kate Young: Renee shares another example of how she works to help students find that sense of belonging in Indianapolis. 

Renee Thomas: We actually… Back in November, we did what we call a Friendsgiving activity. 

Kate Young: Oh, fun. 

Renee Thomas: And that was one of the largest gatherings that we had sponsored by our office in which we invited students to come into a space on campus and provided them Thanksgiving spread dinner, but not only did we do the dinner, we did a workshop on gratefulness and the importance of asset framing and affirming who we are as students at the university. So that’s just one example of many programming activities that we’ve done to create that sense of community and we’re continuing to leverage the ideas that students are coming to us with and asking them to get their input in terms of programmatic support, what is it that they need, and developing programs and response to them. 

Kate Young: Renee mentioned earlier how important that sense of belonging is during your college experience. It not only leads to higher retention and better academic performance, but it also can form lifelong bonds and connections. So what advice would Renee give to students at both the West Lafayette and Indy campuses when it comes to finding their fit and that sense of belonging during their college experience? 

Renee Thomas: Sometimes I think that as new students, we may be a little bit shy and bashful and not stretch yourselves in terms of relationship building. I think it’s important to stretch yourself on relationship building and stretch yourself as it relates to your academic goals, and I think that they will develop community in that sense of belonging by reaching beyond their inner circle. Whenever we come to a university, we tend to congregate with folks that look like us and think like us, and I would encourage them to be that rubber band and stretch outside of their boundaries and take advantage of everything that the university has to offer. 

Try something new, try something different that you haven’t done before and introduce yourselves. It’s amazing to me sometimes how students say, “Oh, well, I don’t feel comfortable just going up to someone and introducing myself or saying hi.” I think a lot of students have that feeling and if you break the ice, I think that relationships will be developed and that you will have that sense of community. And it may even be that you are walking through one of the buildings at Purdue in Indianapolis and say, “You know what? There’s a flyer advertising a trip to the zoo, or there’s a flyer advertising that the LGBTQ community is doing something at the Phoenix Theater.” Don’t just read those flyers, but stretch yourself like that rubber band and actually go to that program or that activity that you see promoted, and again, introduce yourself while you’re there. 

Kate Young: I love that analogy of the rubber band and I think that’s so true because even as adults in networking situations or at a wedding or at a party, the worst part is the anticipation of going up and introducing yourself, but as soon as you break the ice, like you said, it’s very natural and you feel so proud of yourself for doing that, right? 

Renee Thomas: Exactly. Yes. 

Kate Young: Renee has been at Purdue for 35 years now. I asked her about a few key moments that she’s most proud of when it comes to creating a welcoming environment and fostering this Boilermaker community. 

Renee Thomas: Well, that’s hard to narrow it down to just one or two things. I think one of my proudest moments was whenever we opened the doors of the new black Cultural Center Facility. And again, it wasn’t necessarily about the bricks and mortar, but it was about the activities that happen in there. Another proud moment has been some of our research tours that we’ve taken in which we’ve gone to various cities and really dived into the African-American experience with the arts. Another proud moment has just been the people that I’ve met here at Purdue University. We are a world-class institution and we attract some of the best and brightest minds, not only in the nation, but the best and brightest in the world, and to be able to have relationships with those individuals has been a proud moment. And as I mentioned earlier, homecoming is always a proud moment for me to know that some of the work that I’ve done over the years has played a very positive impact on the success of students in terms of developing their self-confidence and their self-advocacy and their willingness to be their authentic selves. 

Kate Young: Speaking of the boilermaker community and its people being special, in the fall of 2024, Renee was awarded the Special Boilermaker Award, which honors a member of the Purdue faculty or staff who has contributed significantly to the improvement of the quality of life or the betterment of the educational experience for Purdue students. You may remember our recent This is Purdue podcast guest, Antony Cawdron, was also a recipient of this award. Renee shares what this honor meant to her. 

Renee Thomas: That was one of the most humbling and emotional experiences I’ve had at Purdue. The actual award was announced by the Alumni Association at a family dinner, which is a gathering that the Office of Diversity Inclusion and Belonging does on an annual basis, and I was emceeing that dinner and at the very end of the dinner they announced this Special Boilermaker Award, and I was thinking that it was… I wasn’t sure what was going on in terms of the program, and to hear my name announced, it was just overwhelming. And then to have the honor bestowed at the football game, which was sold out, and it was just an incredible fan experience that intercollegiate athletics has created. I had not been in the stadium probably a couple of years prior to COVID, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, I have to get season tickets now. This is just such incredible, vibrant, over-the-top experience.” So it’s been very humbling and also a time of reflection for me. 

Kate Young: That’s an interesting twist that you were emceeing the event and then they said that you won it. That’s awesome. 

Renee Thomas: It was quite an emotional time and totally unexpected. It was more than I could have ever imagined. 

Kate Young: Renee also received the Indiana Civil Rights Commission’s Achievement and Education Award in 2024. This award recognizes an educator who has used innovative strategies to promote growth and achievement for their students. Renee explains more about this incredible honor and what it means to her, plus she reflects on her career and those initial goals she had coming into the Boilermaker community. 

Renee Thomas: That award was presented by the Indiana Civil Rights Commission, and I must say I saw this award as being a community-wide award. Yes, I was named as the recipient, but I recognize that I stand on the shoulders of so many that come before me and have paved the way, and I just felt that it was a pinnacle moment in my career and one that I know that it was a result of a community-wide efforts in terms of the importance of educating individuals within the state of Indiana. It was just very pivotal and one in which, again, I think that sometimes we don’t always recognize tireless efforts of others and how that has played a critical role in catapulting us to our successes, and there’s many esteemed leaders on campus that I admire and feel that they are part of the receipt of this award as well. 

Kate Young: Absolutely. How does it feel to be a leader who’s increasing opportunity for all different types of students throughout the state of Indiana? 

Renee Thomas: I feel that education has the potential to transform people, to create opportunities that they may or may not have had otherwise, and the fact that I can play a small part of that transformation has been very rewarding. The testimonials that I hear from students and the brilliance that they bring to the campus as well, I think that sometimes we don’t always asset frame our students and recognizing that they have so much to give and that we are educating individuals that will discover a cure for cancer. We’re educating individuals that will be role models and mentors to youth. We are educating individuals that hopefully will cure climate issues in our world, and it is just amazing to have some small part in the many, many attributes that Purdue alumni carry forward. 

Kate Young: I love that. You talked about reflecting back on your career when you won these two different massive awards this year. When you look back on your career when you first started, was it always a goal for you to be creating this sense of community, increasing opportunities for students? What would you say when you look back? 

Renee Thomas: I would say that Purdue has created an environment in which I have been able to flourish and thrive, and I am so appreciative of that. When I first came to the institution, I came here thinking, “Oh, three to five years, I’ll move on to the next opportunity, whatever it happens to be.” Little did I know I will be putting a number behind that three. It wouldn’t be just 3, but 30 plus years, and that really speaks to the environment that exists here that we work at an institution that is dedicated to excellence. We work at an institution that embraces creativity. We work at an institution that wants everyone to be better than their former selves, and in talking with some of my colleagues at other institutions and other professions, not everybody has that opportunity to work in such a supportive environment. I am grateful for that and I am appreciative of it as well. 

Kate Young: Renee also reflects on her personal mentors and how they’ve impacted her career and how she approaches her role here at Purdue. 

Renee Thomas: When I think about my mentors, one in particular was a faculty member at my undergraduate institution. She believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself, and I think that that is something that I try to instill upon students today because some of the students that come here, Purdue is a challenging environment, and I think that some students have doubts and fears whenever they come, and it’s important to see them successful even before they see themselves as being successful. That’s something that I have carried with me. And then even here at Purdue, there are several mentors and role models that I look to that I think some of them are not even aware that I see them as role models and mentors, but the way in which they carry themselves, the way in which they engage in very complex and challenging conversations and still maintain their integrity and authenticity is something that I always look towards and find that is an inspiration. 

Kate Young: Finally, I asked Renee why she’s continued to stay at Purdue for the past three and a half decades. What does this special boilermaker community mean to her? 

Renee Thomas: At the end of the day, the boilermaker community means to me, possibilities. Purdue’s community is a place in which you can come and explore all kinds of possibilities and not only explore those possibilities, but to make them become reality. And that’s the beauty of the institution, is that it creates an environment in which you can explore a variety of possibilities and not only do the exploration, but also implement those possibilities and come to the realization that those possibilities become achievable goals. 

Kate Young: Well, Renee, we can’t thank you enough for joining us today. Is there anything else that you think is important to share with our listeners? 

Renee Thomas: I just want to share with the listeners to take full advantage of the opportunities that exist here on campus and recognizing that collaboration is absolutely critical. We don’t do it alone, and it’s important that we continue to dedicate ourselves to the work that exists here. 

Kate Young: Absolutely. Well, again, we so appreciate your time and we’re excited to share this episode out with the world. 

Renee Thomas: Thank you so much, Kate. I appreciate the opportunity. 

Kate Young: We’re so thankful Renee joined us on This is Purdue to discuss her impactful career. Our boilermaker students are lucky to have a leader like Renee. You can watch Renee and learn how students can find involvement and connection at Purdue on our podcast YouTube page, YouTube.com/@thisispurdue. And remember to follow This is Purdue on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts, as we continue to roll out new episodes for our Spring 2025 season. This is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young. Our podcast videography for this episode was led by Ted Schellenberger and Thad Boone. Our social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. 

Our podcast distribution strategy is led by Teresa Walker and Carly Eastman. Our podcast design is led by Caitlyn Freville. Our podcast photography is led by John Underwood. Our podcast team project manager is Rain Gu. Our podcast team YouTube Promotions is managed by Kierstin Bauman. Additional writing and research assistance is led by Sophie Ritz and Ashvini Malshe. And our This is Purdue intern is Caroline Kime. Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcasts. There you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review. And as always, boiler up. 

Mike Berghoff: 

This is Mike Berghoff and you’re listening to This is Purdue. 

Kate Young: 

Hi, I’m Kate Young and you are listening to This is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking. Who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators? Who are these Boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty and alumni taking small steps toward their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same. 

Mike Berghoff: 

It’s been really fun to watch an idea get formulated and implemented by people who are talented and fired up. It’s the part I’m going to miss a lot. 

Kate Young: 

In this episode of This is Purdue, we are talking to Mike Berghoff, chair of the Purdue University Board of Trustees. Mike is a Boilermaker alum who is passionate about all of the many things that make Purdue Purdue. He bleeds Gold and Black as do his wife and three kids who all attended Purdue as well. A 1985 graduate with a bachelor’s degree in industrial management, Mike has helped lead the university through incredible growth and success while managing significant challenges in the higher education landscape and operating through a global pandemic. During his time as chair, things like enrollment, national and global rankings, fundraising, research breakthroughs and partnerships have all seen significant increases. He served under two presidents, Mitch Daniels and Mung Chiang and has helped raise Purdue’s reputation and standing among the world’s top institutions of higher education. In October, Mike announced his retirement as chair of the Board of Trustees, effective January 1st, 2025. 

So in this special episode, we’re celebrating and reflecting on his 15 plus years of service. During his time as trustee, Mike has served as liaison to Purdue Athletics, chair of the Purdue Global Board, chair of the Physical Facilities Committee, chair of the 2012 Presidential Search Committee, chair of the 2016 search committee for the Director of Intercollegiate Athletics and member of the Purdue Research Foundation Board and Purdue Fort Wayne transition team. He’s been busy, right? 

He also promoted the design and creation of a university master plan that led to a student success corridor, pedestrian walkway, and new gateways to Purdue’s main campus. As we dive into initiatives Mike has overseen, like Purdue’s Unprecedented 13-year tuition freeze, the recent launch of Purdue’s expansion into Indianapolis, the return of commercial air service and a planned new terminal for Purdue University airport, and so much more, you’ll see Mike’s passions and emotions for his beloved alma mater. Thanks for joining us for our last This is Purdue episode of 2024 as we celebrate the Mike Berghoff. Okay, Mike, thank you so much for joining us on This is Purdue. We’re so excited to celebrate you, reflect back on all your time. We’re really excited for this interview, so thank you. 

Mike Berghoff: 

I’m a little apprehensive, a little nervous. I hope I can do a really good job of capturing the best things that happened in those 15 years to Purdue. 

Kate Young: 

And we’re just excited. We know how passionate you are about Purdue. You’re a Boilermaker yourself. Okay, so you’re going to retire as chairman of Purdue’s Board of Trustees come January 1. But let’s go back to the beginning because you went to Purdue as a student. What first drew you to Purdue? What attracted you to coming to Purdue? 

Mike Berghoff: 

I would say the primary reason occurred late in April, hadn’t made a decision about a college and I was planning on playing football and that required me to go to a smaller school, until a former Purdue football star from Fort Wayne, Roosevelt Barnes, happened to be working out in a gym that I was working out at. It was at Dwenger High School because they had an advanced weight room and everything. And so Roosevelt Barnes was a four-year starter in basketball and in his fifth year decided to play football and ended up getting drafted by the Lions and played in the NFL for a number of years, so that tells you what kind of talent he was. 

And one time while we were in the gym together, I was slow but I was strong and I weighed more than I do now. He said, I am going to make a phone call. You need to call the folks at Purdue, the coaching staff and you need to go there. I let that be the deciding factor and off I went. And my football experience was short. It was two years. The first year was better than the second year because I was in better shape than a lot of the student athletes who didn’t have the same kind of gym as we did, but talent wins and they were way more talented. So it was the best pivot, last-minute pivot I’ve probably ever made for something like that. 

Kate Young: 

It changed the trajectory of your life. 

Mike Berghoff: 

Changed everything. 

Kate Young: 

Tell us about your student experience. You were a proud fraternity member with Theta Chi, you played football two years. What are some of your favorite memories from your time as a student? 

Mike Berghoff: 

At the beginning, let’s start with what that entry experience was because I accepted to go to Purdue late. I didn’t have any housing, so I show up and I have to get an apartment. So I am in an apartment with my brother and a goofy friend of his and I slept on the couch and that was about two to three weeks or maybe four weeks and an opening in one of the dorms became available. So I move in to Owen Hall Northeast 449 and it was an eight person, was an eight man. There were four rooms, two students each except it was a 10 because the need for rooms exceeded supply. So they put three mans and I was the 10. I wasn’t very welcome initially because I crowded out the space, but it turned out to be one of an incredible experience because I keep in touch with all nine. 

We were on top of each other for a whole year and I was a Owen Hall dormer and it was great. It provided really the first time ever for such a significant difference in each of the students you met, background, interests. And then the other thing that stayed with me was how the second semester there was a lot more room in the dorm than the first semester and a lot of people went bye-bye. And so sharpen the saw and don’t let that happen to you. So it was a great start. And then I guess just the second half of that was rushing and a good number of the guys in the dorm room, we all rushed together and the Theta Chi fraternity is just down the hill and that whole experience was terrific and lent a lot of other meaningful things to me. 

Kate Young: 

I’m a proud Delta Zeta right next door. 

Mike Berghoff: 

Oh yeah. The Acres. 

Kate Young: 

Mike shares more about a few professors and mentors who significantly influenced his college experience and career path. 

Mike Berghoff: 

A couple of folks come to mind. One was a physics professor named Professor Schluter and he was German and I thought, this is perfect. It’s like a movie, a German physics professor. He just had the most simplistic way of describing complex concepts, not really concepts in physics, they’re like laws, this is how it works. It was the first time I was so impressed about transferring knowledge in a teacher-student relationship that and partly because of the numbers were so big, I remember him very clearly. The second person was the alumni advisor at Theta Chi fraternity, Father Phil Bowers. He was the first person I ever met at Theta Chi, and it was in the summertime. He was a Maryknoll priest and he started out his priesthood in the Philippines in some of the most remote regions of the country. He was just an incredible advocate for life, for growth, for tolerance, and we became really close friends. One academic, Phil was campus-wide. He used to say Purdue has more Catholics than Notre Dame. We did. It was 10,000, but Notre Dame is only like 7,500. 

Kate Young: 

Mike was appointed a Purdue trustee in 2009 and has served as chair since July 2015. And by now you know that he’s a proud Boilermaker alum. So how did his values and experiences as a student shape his approach to serving his university? Mike digs into Purdue’s a well-recognized and admired tuition freeze. Plus, he shares an interesting story about reconnecting with the Boilermaker community post-graduation, which involved a job interview with Purdue Athletics. 

Mike Berghoff: 

It really opened my eyes to making sure the Purdue experience is attainable for all different sorts of students and you get reminded about the difference. Every time I ever went up there, there was some reminder about how different students are and what pathway they’ve sometimes had to take to make it work. Some students work full-time, some are really shy and they don’t get in a dorm they want or a fraternity they want. And then the financial part of it, that was a very important piece. 

So we started increasing scholarship opportunities and we decided to maybe make some more sense to expand more rapidly than we ever contemplated. And then of course the tuition freeze. It was a classic. Mitch came in and it’s really his very first meeting and Mitch’s way, well, I know this probably won’t work and folks will think it’s a bad idea and it might be a bad idea. Not sure we should do it, but boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Here’s the reasons why. That was an important piece of it and we thought it would only maybe last a year and here it is, 13, 14 years later. 

Kate Young: 

When you graduated, were you still involved in the Boilermaker community? What brought you back to serve in these roles for Purdue? 

Mike Berghoff: 

I had my first job was in Detroit, made it a little bit more difficult, but I found ways to come to campus. Also Kristin was working. I was working. We were in our first jobs, then we started having some kids, so it made it difficult. But anytime Purdue played at Michigan State or Michigan, we’d find an excuse and there are a lot of Purdue people in Detroit. I didn’t follow two closely about the important things at Purdue, but mostly what was happening in athletics and I had a burning fire for something to do there and I didn’t work very hard at trying to make it work for me until I read this post. 

I don’t even know where it was, couldn’t have been on social media because I wasn’t there. But that Morgan Burke, the athletic director at the time, which I’m going to say was probably 1992 or three or four, had made a decision to hire an in-house marketing person that would handle all of the marketing for Purdue athletics. And I’m reading this, I’m like, perfect for me. I’m going to apply. I told Kristin, I said, hey, look at this. Can you believe this? This job is hardwired for me. 

Kate Young: 

Dream job. 

Mike Berghoff: 

Yeah, I can’t believe it. She goes, well, how much are you going to make? Who cares? So it was a bad number. But anyway, so I interviewed and I was told there were a hundred people who had applied for the position. The short list had a one-on-one interview with Morgan. So I made the short list and it turns out there were only two of us is what they told me. So I had come down and I’m sitting in Morgan’s lobby in the same building that’s there today. It was new at the time. I go in for my interview and it went really well. I was pretty certain I nailed it. I was already thinking about, okay, where am I going to live? And as he ushers me out the door, the second candidate was a fraternity brother of mine at the same time. 

And the search was confidential and we had no idea. So it was like kidding me. So he goes into the interview and he ends up getting the job and he deserved it. He had a much better profile of experience that was suited for it. He was in sales and working for a medical company, but his name is Bob Bernard. I will not, I forgive him for it, but having made it all the way there, I started thinking about, well, maybe I have some influence over whether or not I get involved. And so I just started to stay close and then we moved to Indianapolis and then the connectivity kicked in. 

Kate Young: 

Mike takes us back to the moment he received the call about potentially serving as a Purdue Trustee, which ultimately changed the course of his life. 

Mike Berghoff: 

I was in Chicago with Kristin and we were at some mart. We had just bought a house and we were redoing it and I got a phone call and it was Earl Goode and he introduces himself and he says, my name is Earl Goode. He’s a southerner, comes from southern Indiana. And he was working in the governor’s office, explained that he wanted to talk to me if I had any interest in being a trustee. I knew who Earl was, but I didn’t know much about him. I knew enough that I needed to pay attention to the call. He was the chief of staff of the governor and thinking Trustee? Isn’t that what, when people die, don’t you have, is that what it is? No, I don’t have any experience, I didn’t even know what it was. He said, okay, well, I just wanted to know if you’re interested and maybe we’ll get back to you. 

And then about a month later, we were celebrating Kristin’s birthday at Ruth’s Chris at Keystone, and I’m getting out of the car and Earl calls again and he said, I’d like you to come in for an interview. I said where? I need you to come down to the State House and we’d like you to meet the governor. I went, okay. So I tell Kristin, the only trustee I really knew was Bill Osterling. I go, do I need to wear a suit down there? And he goes, yeah, I recommend you wear a suit. 

So I went down and Mitch was having a press conference and the room was full and there was a lot of hustle. And right when I got there, his executive assistant said, oh, did you get my message? And I thought, that means the governor’s going to be delayed. He’s got this press conference. I said, I can wait. Mitch came out, grabbed me, says, I’d like you to sit in on this one. Okay. It’s the first time I really met him. So we went through the press conference and I watched him work and it was remarkable. I won’t go into what the press conference was about, but it was a battle between him and the state legislature about the budget. So they clear it all out. We sit down and he interviews me for about two hours, which for Mitch is a long time. 

I didn’t know that at the time, but I got up, it was over. Walking out the door and I was kind of like, maybe there’s somebody else out there. And he looked at me and he says, you’re my guy. That’s how it began. 

Kate Young: 

Take us back 15 years ago. What were you thinking when you first came in as a trustee? What were some of your goals and how did that vision evolve to today? 

Mike Berghoff: 

Once the trigger got pulled, I started, I’m pretty active about thinking about how I can help, and one area that was close to me that Purdue was failing in was on the whole physical facilities department was not well-liked by any engineers or contractors in the state. In fact, I had significant numbers of Purdue people say they’d rather work for the physical facilities department in Indiana than Purdue, and I knew it because we had considered doing work up there too, and it needed an overhaul. It was a 50-year overdue overhaul. 

And so that was the first thing I started on. I remember one of our very well-known alums, Bob Bowen, you probably have had one with him. He came over and he says, you’re never going to get it fixed. I said, okay. We got at it, made some changes, and now Mike Cline, Jay Wasson, the entire team over there is preferred. We went from deferred to preferred. That was the primary thing. The second thing was athletics. We were in a very bad spot. Nobody was happy. I wasn’t happy and I knew that we needed to elevate that because that’s the front door for many people. That became a high priority. Keith Krach appointed me the first liaison to athletics, and that’s what I started focusing on. 

Kate Young: 

It’s your background. 

Mike Berghoff: 

Right. 

Kate Young: 

What were those early days like? Do you remember? 

Mike Berghoff: 

They were with Morgan. He was frustrated and he had a couple of things that he wanted to get accomplished. One of them was the baseball stadium, the women’s softball and the women’s soccer field. I think we had progress on those. There was resistance. I wasn’t the only one, but I helped get those out of the way and we got them all built. And that was the first time people started to realize, ooh, maybe we got something here. The next big thing, which I think was a big, big deal, was a football complex. Mitch and I went at it for a while. He just didn’t want to spend the money, but he knew internally it was important and just kept pounding him and pounding him and pounding him. He had some very good points. I had some very good points. And one point in his office, he grabbed his napkin and he said, I surrender. Let’s get this thing done. And so when that building went up, it sent a signal. Everything’s changed. Those were two really big steps for me and I think we’re partway the pathway to advancing in the board. 

Kate Young: 

For those who don’t know, leading Purdue’s board of trustees is not Mike’s only gig. He is also the founder and president of Lenex Steel, a steel fabrication company based in Indianapolis. We actually shot our interview with Mike right inside his office at Lenex. Mike shares how he’s managed to balance his full-time role at Lenex with working for the board of trustees over all of these years. 

Mike Berghoff: 

It’s an exercise for sure. I spent more time at Purdue than here by a large margin, made possible by the staff we have here. It was a challenge to them, and so they answered the challenge. I let them run. Nothing but growth occurred, so I didn’t have many knobs to turn. Now it does prevent some very significant decisions from being made that only the president or CEO can make, and that’s how I’m going to spend my time starting January 1st. We’re going to start addressing those types of topics. 

Kate Young: 

How did this position here and all of the work that you’ve done with your company influenced how you work and collaborate with people within Purdue and key stakeholders? 

Mike Berghoff: 

The role of Purdue helped me network with my industry folks. They would communicate with me. They’d call if they had a problem or ideas. Lots of them have ideas, really good ideas. So that was one way. Culturally here, for me, it’s all about the people and then the customer. That’s something I took to Purdue. I wasn’t exclusively that, but I wanted to make sure that that was the mentality we had and I think that existed and got better. But I also probably benefited more from the exchange about what we’re doing at Purdue here. I got to watch a lot more people and I got so many different departments and it’s a complicated place. It’s a complex place. So I got a lot of exposure that most business people don’t have and that helped us here. 

Kate Young: 

Purdue University is the number one most recognized public university in the country. What moments stand out to Mike as pivotal in shaping our university’s legacy over the years? 

Mike Berghoff: 

I think it was confirmation that all that we had allowed us to attain that level, and I think we kept a cover on it too long because of humility. And that is one of the things that I worked on really heavy is promoting them as a board strategy is we needed a comprehensive marketing strategy. And it started with Dan Hasler making a position for him and investing in that, and that’s what happened. And so I think the roots for that being the most, well-known Purdue University were there, but they were undercover and all we did was turn the light on. People noticed. 

Kate Young: 

As chair, you’ve supported the 13-year tuition freeze. We talked about that a little bit, so rare in higher education. How have you seen this impact Purdue students and families? You said previously that’s one of the most important things that you’ve gotten to work on, and it was so important to your heart. 

Mike Berghoff: 

Walking around, seeing students working in all economic backgrounds, it hit you there. The number of parents who refer to that as one of the main reasons their children are going to Purdue, it’s another key factor. And plus I think it showed innovation and an appetite for risk that we were willing to do something that hardly anybody was willing to do. We took the complexity out of it, made it really simple. We just said, as long as our revenues exceed our expenses, why would we raise tuition? And so we had a surplus and we said, when the surplus goes away, we’ll raise tuition. Well, here we are. It’s been 13 years of surplus and 13 years of flat tuition. 

Kate Young: 

The Purdue Moves initiative in 2013 and Purdue’s next moves in 2021 were transformative for the university. Mike shares more about the impact of these initiatives on Purdue’s community and reputation and his role in shaping them. 

Mike Berghoff: 

I think for the board, Mitch hatched the idea and it was a signal that we’re on the move. We will set some bold initiatives and targets to go with them and we have the people to do it. That’s how it started. It’s been really fun to watch an idea get formulated and implemented by people who are talented and fired up. That made the 150th an easy decision, and we had an excuse to even go bolder, which was the anniversary, and that helped highlight the university. So maybe we got another one coming. 

Kate Young: 

And then more recently we have the Mitch Daniels School of Business. We have Purdue Computes, One Health. All of these initiatives are emerging. What excites you about these and what it means to the future of Purdue? 

Mike Berghoff: 

The most exciting for me personally was the Daniels School of Business. Our business school in the sixties and seventies were highly regarded, lost our way in the eighties and nineties, didn’t really have the identity. And so Gary Layman, Mike Klipsch and I all came out of that program and decided that we wanted to have a look at what could we do differently at the Daniels School. When Mitch came on board, it was really the leverage we needed. He said, this is a perfect justification, let’s name it after him and totally rebuild the school in a different way with combination of engineering and business. Build a new building so we can handle the growth. That’s a big one. And then the One Health, it’s just so practical. Animal, people and plant health and to partner with folks in Indianapolis downtown at the same time Purdue University Indianapolis, it’s a great fit and we’re going to expand our footprint. 

Kate Young: 

You’ve also overseen the return of commercial flights. We recently did a podcast about that and all these different partnerships, Rolls-Royce, etc. What do these developments mean to you that had such a big role in that? 

Mike Berghoff: 

The best thing about this is it builds a stronger web, geographic web around campus for people like Saab and Rolls-Royce, and to bring their folks and now SK hynix. And that web ideally is going to build a stronger, more interesting West Lafayette, which brings all sorts of things, entertainment, retail, food and beverage, new residents. And that’s what I’m excited to watch. Our downtown really isn’t, the boundaries aren’t perfectly suited, and with this expansion, there’s going to be more room and there’s going to be more people who are going to be looking for housing in West Lafayette. And I think that’s the neatest thing. And when an airline comes, if it’s successful, it’s another visual tool that people say, wow, they’re on the move. 

Kate Young: 

I even look back when I was a student, we never went to downtown Lafayette. I’m trying to think of how long ago I was a student. Anyway, doesn’t matter. But now I love downtown Lafayette and there’s so much more vibrancy and things to do and cute little streets and shops and restaurants. So that’s been really fun for me to see when I came back to work for Purdue. 

Mike Berghoff: 

Yeah, there’s a lot to like down there. 

Kate Young: 

Purdue is frequently part of national conversations on innovation, affordability and workforce development. So what does Mike see for the future of Purdue when it comes to our reputation continuing to evolve both nationally and internationally? 

Mike Berghoff: 

I think people expect us to continue to be innovators. They’re looking for routine improvements that nobody else thought of, our peers haven’t thought of, and create them to be followers. And we’re the leader, and I think that’s what Purdue people want. That’s what the state legislature would like. It’s what the state deserves and I have an appetite for that. I just can’t stand still and let it go. That requires investment and I’m confident the board will continue to see that as a primary objective for. 

Kate Young: 

You talked a little bit about how you had to balance between your full-time job and being chairman. With all the different projects and these complex decisions you had to make, how did you adapt to that? How did you face these challenges and overcome them throughout your time on the board? 

Mike Berghoff: 

Well, most of them made sense, but not all of them were supported. My primary approach as board chair was to seek understanding of all 10 and make sure everybody understands what the subject is and why it’s important. And then if I did enough to make sure they could communicate together, the outcomes came easier and almost always were the right decision. And that’s just the style I deployed. I’m not a, this is what I think we should do. I save that. It’s more like, hey, I’d like to get your opinion on this, this, and this. And we have a really strong board who’s unselfish, not power seeking, and they’re just really collaborative. That was very fortunate for me. 

Kate Young: 

They’re all passionate about Purdue. 

Mike Berghoff: 

Very passionate. 

Kate Young: 

You used a word earlier that I loved, fired up. They’re fired up to serve Purdue, right? 

Mike Berghoff: 

Fired up and restless with good intent. 

Kate Young: 

When Mike announced his retirement in October, former Purdue President Mitch Daniels said, “I’ve been trying for days to sum up concisely how massive a contribution Mike Berghoff has made to the success of Purdue during his chairmanship of our board. It’s beyond me. The record is too huge.” And Purdue, president Mung Chiang said, “Every moment Mike has the best interest of Purdue and his heart, and every moment he pours his heart into Purdue. Our university is blessed to have Mike Berghoff as one of the best Boilermakers ever.” I asked Mike how working so closely with these two remarkable Boilermaker leaders has impacted his life. 

Mike Berghoff: 

First of all, when you’re leaving, people say that stuff about you, whether it’s true or not. So don’t get too excited about that. It’s the part I’m going to miss a lot. Mitch’s leadership is something to watch. Look at his success and where he started. So it was a real privilege. It helped that I chaired the search for Mitch in 2012. That helped a lot because we were recruiting him. So there was a lot of conversation between the first request, hey, do you have an interest? And him saying yes. 

And so I had to work that and Keith Krach had to work that. We had a search team that was on a separate path. Those were my very first observations with him, and that set me up pretty well I think once the board decided I was going to be the board chair. And then with Mung, it’s a whole different kind of a talent. He’s one of the most talented persons I’ve ever met. Just his intellectual skills, his high motor, his compassion, sensitive person, wonderful family who just took on a big job. I like being with his family. I learned something from him and he learns a lot from me because we both have those gaps and we fill them together. We’re in really, really, really good hands. It’s going to be an exceptional run for him. It’ll get better every year. 

Kate Young: 

Mike shares a few more stories from his time on the board that have deeply impacted him. 

Mike Berghoff: 

There’s been so many, some that are comical that occurred when Bob Bowen learned that I was chairing the search. He called me up and he said, I’ll be at your office in five minutes. I have a list of prospective candidates. His office is like a half a mile. Shows up here. First guy you should get, but you never will, Mitch Daniels. So number two was some general in the Navy or Army, you’re probably not going to get him either. Then he had three or four. 

Kate Young: 

He seemed to challenge you a lot throughout the year. 

Mike Berghoff: 

Yeah, that’s the way is it, flies in and flies out. And the other thing I’ve been struck by since making the announcement is it’s really moving. How many people have come up to me and said, when I’m at the basketball game last week, I’m going up the aisle and a couple of folks that don’t even know stop me and look at me in the eye and say, thank you. They’re like, for what? There’s just a lot of great stories like that, hearing about students interactions with certain faculty and they say, the person changed my whole life. Just so many different avenues you can go. Oh, and with alumni, donors, you hear why donors give. It’s really moving and the numbers, they’re huge, it opened my eyes. There are a lot of people that have a lot of money and have interest in some really cool causes. There’s never been an interaction. Almost every trip I’d take up there, there’s some sort of interaction that reinforces why it’s been worth it. 

Kate Young: 

So as Mike prepares to step down as chairman in 2025, what legacy does he hope to leave at Purdue? 

Mike Berghoff: 

The board is, I don’t worry about it at all. I want them to be hungry and restless and be number one, be the reason why we’re on national news because of innovative ideas and because we’re doing different things. I want parents to call and say what great experience their kids have and can’t believe it exceeded their expectations. I want it to be a more significant part of the state, play a broader role nationwide. I know we’re the most recognized public university in the country. That’s an important thing to sustain because it means you’re relevant. You have some purchasing power. I don’t want to be quiet. We need to compete at a high level at athletics, need to keep proving our facilities, the master plan. I’m certain it’s going to happen. If it doesn’t, maybe I’ll come back. 

Kate Young: 

Famous last words. What advice would you share with alumni or anyone in the Boilermaker community? How can they get involved and maybe stay involved? 

Mike Berghoff: 

One, I would say stay in touch with trustees if you know them because it makes a difference. People call and make suggestions, folks who never heard or you’re on a trip and you meet them and I start registering. A person has some skills, some background, maybe they’d be a good board member or maybe we should hire them or maybe we can give them a special assignment to do. There’s a lot of that. Obviously the alumni association, connectivity helps. Stay engaged, follow and something good’s going to come out of it. 

Kate Young: 

Okay. A little behind the scenes moment here. Mike said that he met his wife Kristin, also a Boilermaker, at Sgt. Preston’s in downtown Lafayette. Mike shares more about how he and Kristin have kept it all in the family when it comes to bleeding gold and black. I want to get to the personal side of Mike Berghoff. I know you have three kids. They all went to Purdue. 

Mike Berghoff: 

They did. 

Kate Young: 

What does that mean to you to watch them grow up, follow in your footsteps at Purdue and probably some of the time you were on the board while they were students, I imagine? 

Mike Berghoff: 

What makes you think they had a choice? Lauren was the oldest and I said, you can go to any place you want and reason as long as you have a compelling reason. She came back, she says, dad, I’ve looked far and wide and I want to go to the University of Colorado in Boulder. I said, what’s your compelling reason? She says, they don’t have school on Fridays in the winter so we can all ski. Said, you got the colors right, you’re going to Purdue. And then she quickly discovered that having a dad who is a board chair had some advantages. So she got pretty comfortable. And then my second daughter followed her sister and I was on the board and my son was kind of the same thing. Everybody had a great experience, so that helped. 

Kate Young: 

What does that mean to you to have this big Boilermaker family now? 

Mike Berghoff: 

Yeah, I love it. Kristin mostly loves it except when it invades personal life. A lot of our travel was centered around Purdue travel. Hey, kids, Thanksgiving is going to be in Dayton Ohio this year. Why’s that? Well, first round of the tournament. It’ll be new and fresh us to do some other things, and I’m excited about, and she is too. I’m excited. I’ll be around more. I’ll be here more in the office, and I’m really looking forward to that. 

Kate Young: 

Finally, Mike shares his next giant leap with us and sums up what this entire experience as both a trustee and chair as meant to him throughout the years. 

Mike Berghoff: 

I think on the professional side, I’ve labeled this next decade is where we’ve completed two decades. First decade was about survival. Second decade was about growth. The third decade, which we started in February, is about transformational change that’s within the company. I don’t need to go in what that means, but it means growth and transformation of systems and our production facilities, and that can’t happen without me. So I’m excited about that. Personally, I don’t know. It’s going to be tough. I’m going to miss going up there, coming over the bridge, seeing the tower, going over the Wabash River. That’s when I start to get off the phone and change my gear and parking spots. I’m going to miss it. Maybe I’ll be a relaxed fan. 

Kate Young: 

You’ve been at Purdue for so many pivotal moments and a couple leadership changes. What has this whole experience meant to you, to sum it all up? 

Mike Berghoff: 

I wildly underestimated what it would mean to me. Well, I didn’t know what to think of it until I walked in the door for my first board meeting, and so I also got to thank Bill Osterley. He was deceased. He was on the board at the time, and I never asked him, but was pretty clear he was the one who recommended me to Mitch and he was a fraternity brother. He was a better friend with my brother John than he was with me. But when I walked in, my whole world changed, and it sounds phony or corny, but it fills up a lot, fills up a lot of your calendar. It fills up a lot of your energy, it’s a complicated complex place. I really enjoyed that piece of it. 

Kate Young: 

We can’t thank you enough for joining us and sharing your stories. Is there anything I missed that you want to share with our listeners? 

Mike Berghoff: 

I hope not. I would like to thank you with all the listeners, and I know you have a lot of them for being supportive, being positive, thoughtful, inquisitive, eager to let the spotlight shine on Purdue and be a great example to other universities, and I really appreciate that opportunity that I was able to help make that possible and it’ll carry on. 

Kate Young: 

Well, we can’t thank you enough again. It was a pleasure. 

Mike Berghoff: 

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for bringing me into the famous circles of this podcast gate. 

Kate Young: 

Thank you. 

We are so thankful Mike joined us on the podcast. He is a legendary Boilermaker whose service at Purdue has impacted thousands of people throughout the years. By the way, Mike has quite a fun office at Lenex Steel, and you can check out a tour of his office wall adorned with some fun Boilermaker tributes on our podcast YouTube page, YouTube.com/@thisisPurdue. You can also watch Mike’s full video interview while you’re there. Finally, I have an exciting update for our This is Purdue listeners as we approach the holidays and very soon, 2025. This podcast will be moving to a new seasonal approach with fresh new episodes coming in early February for the spring 2025 semester season. We are featuring a major league baseball groundskeeper, an engineer who plays a huge role in the iconic fireworks shows at Disney, a scientist who uses AI to maximize the benefits of donated food and so many more incredible Boilermakers next year. 

Our team is also thrilled to settle into our very own brand new podcast studio in 2025, so keep an eye out for that on our YouTube channel. With all of these updates, it’s never been more important to follow This is Purdue on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or wherever you get your podcasts. Trust us, you don’t want to miss any of these episodes. Happy Holidays, Boilermakers, and we’ll catch you in 2025. 

This is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young. Our podcast videography for this episode was led by Ted Schellenberger in collaboration with John Garcia, Thad Boone, Zach Mogensen and Alli Chaney. Our video production assistant is Dalani Young. Our social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. Our podcast distribution strategy is led by Teresa Walker and Carly Eastman. Our podcast design is led by Caitlin Freville. Our podcast photography is led by John Underwood. Our podcast team project manager is Rain Gu. Our podcast YouTube promotions is managed by Kirsten Bauman. Additional Writing and research assistance is led by Sophie Ritz. And our This is Purdue intern is Caroline Keim. Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcast. There you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review. And as always, boiler up.

Anthony Cawdron: 

This is Anthony Cawdron and you are listening to This is Purdue. 

Kate Young: 

Hi, I’m Kate Young and you are listening to This is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking who are the next game-changers, difference-makers, ceiling-breakers, innovators, who are these Boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty and alumni taking small steps toward their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Your resume says a lot about you, but it’s only two-dimensional. I mean, the way people present themselves. If you look like you are looking after your own clothes and your shoes are shined, it’s likely to tell me that you’re going to look after someone else’s assets just as well. I do start out by saying a lot of this is common sense. The problem is that sense isn’t that common anymore. And it’s not rocket science, but it does help rocket scientists get better jobs. 

Kate Young: 

In this episode of This is Purdue, we are talking to Anthony Cawdron, Westwood Event Coordinator and Estate Manager. Westwood is the official home to Purdue’s presidents since the 1970s and currently President Mung Chiang and his family reside in this historic home. Now, if you’ve ever had the chance to go to Westwood for an event or dinner as either a student, alumni or staff or faculty member, you likely know Anthony, but just in case, here’s a quick bit of background on him before we dive into our conversation. Anthony has been at Purdue for 24 years now, but he’s originally from the UK. He’s lived all over the world and has even worked in a few European castles. And he also teaches a business etiquette course here at Purdue. So from job interviews to networking events to holiday parties, Anthony is sharing his best etiquette tips with us in this episode. 

Well, what’s a great way to spur small talk? What should you order for an interview over lunch? And what’s a polite way to leave a party? Hint, it is not the Irish exit, okay. Plus this conversation is the latest episode in our Boilermaker Bites series where we get to know Purdue Boilermakers while sharing a meal. And today, we’re chatting over some tea and other English goodies, which is especially fitting for Anthony’s background. And there’s really no better place for Anthony to tell us about his Boilermaker journey than within the walls of Westwood. To set the stage for you all briefly, Anthony and I had our interview in the smaller, more intimate dining room. It has a very classic traditional look with dark wood furniture. Anthony set the table with a gold pattern tablecloth and some black and gold China, including a teapot and matching teacups. The full video interview is also on our This is Purdue YouTube page if you’d like to check out this beautiful setup on there. 

Okay. So without further delay, let’s get into my conversation with Anthony. Oh, and a quick warning, this episode is likely to make you a bit hungry. Anthony, thank you so much for joining us today on This is Purdue. We’re thrilled to talk to you. This is the latest episode of our Boilermaker Bites series. So we have some lovely snacks and tea that are set up. Tell us a little bit about this before we dig into Westwood and your journey. Okay. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes. So we have the classic English cucumber sandwiches. So the cucumbers on thin sliced bread with no crusts. Then we have some profiteroles with some gold dust of course, and then some macarons with poppy seeds and key lime, and then we have some homemade scones. 

Kate Young: 

And you made them, right? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

I made them, yes I made them this morning. There’s a big debate on how you pronounce it. Some people say scones, some people say scones. I’m a scone side. And then when we eat them, there’s a big debate as to which you put on first, is the jam or the cream? And I’m jam first, then cream. So that’s just the way I do it, but a lot of people are wrong. 

Kate Young: 

Well, thank you so much for having us here. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

You’re welcome. Thank you for coming. 

Kate Young: 

And for making this lovely arrangement. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes, absolutely. 

Kate Young: 

We’re at Westwood, this is the home to Purdue’s presidents. You’ve been here as the estate manager and event coordinator for over 20 years. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes, 24 last week, or last month. 

Kate Young: 

Oh my goodness, congratulations. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Thank you. 

Kate Young: 

So you’re actually from the UK though. I’m sure our listeners can tell. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Sometimes. Everyone in England thinks I have an American accent. 

Kate Young: 

Okay, well we’re excited to get into your journey. Like I said, this property is so beautiful. I’m sure no day is the same for you. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

No, which is actually one of the good things at 24 years is, if the days were all the same, you wouldn’t be able to do it. So I think that having variety and different events and different things going on and different people coming in and out and projects that don’t involve guests as well, all of that type of thing, keeping the outside looking good and redoing the driveways and all those type of things. 

Kate Young: 

Yes. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes. 

Kate Young: 

Absolutely. Tell us about your journey to West Lafayette since we do know you’re from the UK. How does your experiences overseas kind of set you up for success here? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yeah, so my father was in the Air Force, so I was a military brat, if you’d like it that way. So we moved a lot when I was growing up and we lived in Hong Kong, Singapore, then returned to England where I finished my high school and then did catering college for two years, and then went to work in Switzerland for a year and then came back and finished my degree at Oxford Brookes University. Then got into, almost by accident, working at Blenheim Palace that then turned into Sutton Place, being the butler there at 21, which was a little bit daunting. My first guest was Prince Philip, and so it was a little overwhelming at times, but did that and then went back into the restaurant industry. 

Then had a call from somebody who said, “Would you like to teach?” And so I moved to Switzerland again and taught in a hotel school there. And then had an opportunity to do a work abroad project with Iowa State ostensibly for a year. And so I left Switzerland intending to come back, and I haven’t gone back yet. So that was 34 years ago. So I think that overall travel and just being involved in international hotels and restaurants and seeing things from that perspective is really what started me interested in the events, business and catering type of thing. 

Kate Young: 

Anthony explains how his experiences working within the Blenheim Palace and Sutton Place in England ignited his passion for event planning and etiquette. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

I think it gave me the opportunity to see exactly how things should be done, and just the attention to detail and how to look after people and working with people from higher ranks, if you like, and royalty and all those type of things. So I think it set me up quite well as being able to handle guests of every caliber and every background. 

Kate Young: 

As Anthony previously mentioned, he left Switzerland for a work abroad project in the US at Iowa States in Ames, Iowa. It was there that he met former Purdue president Martin Jischke, and his wife Patty. Anthony discusses how being at Iowa State and meeting this couple changed the trajectory of his career. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

So I was there, as I said, for a year. And then during that year, I think for the first time people really tried to nurture me in continuing my education. And so it was suggested I take my master’s degree there at Iowa State, which I did. And then the Jischke’s arrived during that period and certainly were well aware that they needed somebody to be more involved with the event side of things because the previous president had not done as much entertaining as they wanted. And so they asked me to do a couple of things just to help out to start with, and then it developed into part-time, full-time, and then eight years working with them at Iowa State. And yes, it was a wonderful opportunity. 

Kate Young: 

So how did they ask you to come to Purdue? How did you finally end up here? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

There was a big debate in Iowa, in Ames, as to whether I would or whether I wouldn’t go. And it was actually the Des Moines Register put more interest in my leaving than them. So it was was, will he go, won’t he go, will he go, won’t he go? And so I flew here with Patty and Martin on a couple of occasions to look around and see. And so it was a pleasant surprise and so I said, “Okay, I’ll come for six months and see how it is.” So I lived in the apartment above the garage for six months and got used to being here and decided I liked it and said I’d stay. And that was, as I said, 24 years ago. 

Kate Young: 

24 years ago. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes. 

Kate Young: 

So tell us about your role at Westwood. I know every day is different, but what are some of your duties and responsibilities here? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

So basically keeping the house looking as good as it can. I have a team of wonderful housekeepers, Sheila and Tammy. And they do a fantastic job of making sure that the house is always ready because you never know when the president’s office may call and say if somebody’s coming over, and you can’t be just suddenly rushing around. So keeping the house ready, and then obviously with the events, working with the president’s office in making sure that we’re up-to-date on what’s happening, who’s coming, making name tags, making place cards. And then obviously working with the chef probably once a week to see what events we have coming up. There are weeks when we have fewer events, and then there are weeks where we have lots of different things. 

Kate Young: 

Every night. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes. And no, also during the day. I’d say that Mitch used to entertain more at breakfast time because there was no family and people getting to school and things like that. So we did more entertaining in the mornings with him. But as I said, the variety is what keeps it interesting. And obviously the seasons and the things inside outside the house as well. 

Kate Young: 

What is one of your earliest memories of Westwood? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

I think the first time when, as I said, Patty and I traveled with Martin to come to see what West Lafayette was like, and I remember driving through the gates. Iowa State’s president’s house is like many Big 10 schools in campus, and we had parking for about five cars in the driveway. And I drove in here and you’ve got almost a mile of drive. And so just the setting was very, very different from what we were used to and just a sort of a sense of a big house. And then seeing the spaces that we had to work with was wonderful because again, the Iowa State house was Victorian, and so it wasn’t necessarily designed or easy to use as Westwood is. Westwood is very versatile as we’ve hosted events for eight people or 250 people. So it’s a lot of things like that. Can I pour you some tea? 

Kate Young: 

Yes. Oh my gosh, please do. And we have to try one of the homemade scones. Did I say it right? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

You did. And so this teapot is actually from China that was given to the house back in the 1990s, and we have some pieces, unfortunately it’s aging and so it does need some care and it’s not always leaking, but this one is not. So good, so far. 

Kate Young: 

It’s beautiful. Now, do you enjoy milk with your tea? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

I do take milk in my tea. 

Kate Young: 

Okay. I do too. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

And we’re doing it the right way, because if you put milk in first, then that’s very- 

Kate Young: 

Good to know. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

And that’s where the phrase MIF comes from. M-I-F, milk in first. And people who put milk in first are second class. 

Kate Young: 

We’re learning all types of things on this podcast. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

All right, I’ll give you a sandwich. 

Kate Young: 

Thank you so much. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

You’re very welcome. 

Kate Young: 

Okay, so fast-forward, President Jischke leaves in 2007. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes. 

Kate Young: 

What made you want to stay here at Purdue? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

And we knew that Dr. Jischke was going to retire in 2007, so that was all expected. And then when Dr. Cordova and Chris Foster came here on a sort of a sightseeing trip visit, I was obviously here and was cooking breakfast for them, and then they sort of said, “Will you stay?” And I said, again, “Yes, we’ll give it a try.” And so it’s sort of become a hand-me-down thing. I think you get the house, you get him too. 

Kate Young: 

I think they’re thrilled to have you though with the house. So what has it been like for you to experience the Midwest? Back when you lived in the UK, could you ever picture yourself where you are now? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

No, I really didn’t. And when I was in Switzerland, some of my students there said, “You’ll absolutely hate it. You won’t fit in. It would be awful and you won’t like it and you’ll be back in… You won’t even stay a year.” So I was somewhat not worried, but trepidation I’d say, because I called a bank in London and said, “Can I set up an account in America?” And they went, “Ooh, not sure. Where are you going to live?” And I said, “Iowa.” They said, “Ooh.” They said, “We think there’s a bank in Des Moines.” And I thought, well, I have to drive 20 miles to a bank. That’s not the worst thing in the world. And then you arrive in Ames and there are multi-story hotels, a huge stadium and massive, massive buildings. You think, we’ll be okay. 

Kate Young: 

Absolutely. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes. 

Kate Young: 

What are a few of your most significant memories from your 24 years here? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Gosh, I think entertaining some… We’ve had three Secretaries of State come to dinner, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. They’ve been wonderful. The Secretary of the Navy, so I think it’s guests. Laura Bush, when the convocation happened for her and the two girls. So that was interesting, especially the time constraints placed on us for that event were amazing because they wanted a three-course meal in 37 minutes. 

Kate Young: 

Oh my goodness. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

So it was very, very tight timing. But we pulled it off and everyone went away happy. But I think, so it’s the guests and the different personalities of people. And the nice thing about Westwood is that it is, as many people call it, the front door to the university. And so we have students, we host the Reamer Club, come on an annual tour, the freshman Reamers, and so they come on a tour of the house so that they know when they drive the train around what is behind those doors, if people ask. And then we have faculty. So we have a faculty event, we have deans tonight, we have faculty events most months. So it’s a nice use of the house for people who are on campus and then obviously alums coming back, and we entertain many, many people. So I think that variety is great. 

Kate Young: 

We’ve discussed, you’ve lived through several presidents here. Do you have any fun behind-the-scenes stories, anything that would surprise our listeners maybe? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

You’ll have to wait for the book. No, no. I think things just happen, and in 24 years it drifts away. But I suppose the cats coming in by mistake is interesting, that suddenly somebody comes to me and says, “Here’s a cat.” Because they live outside and keep our mouse population down. But occasionally, they managed to sneak in just because when we had a dog. So that was also a challenge at times. 

Kate Young: 

Was he or she in the way? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

She. No, she was never in the way, but she would sometimes escape from the kitchen and be in places that she wasn’t supposed to be. And also like to get out and go and find the dirtiest muddiest places to roll, as dogs do. I’m trying to think of anything else. Obviously, the gates have been an issue when power goes out. I’d get phone calls from the president saying, “I’m stuck outside the gate.” So I’d have to drive over and climb the gate in the rain and release the hydraulics on the gates and open the gates so that they could come in. One time we had a power outage and the president at the time was trying to pack for a trip, and so we had to get the Purdue fire department to bring one of their fire engines, or the fire trucks, right? I’m not in England anymore. A fire truck up here and plug it in so that they ran their generator so we could have a light in the packing area so that they could pack the suitcases. 

Kate Young: 

Wow. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Other than that, I don’t think we’ve… We’ve managed to keep it pretty sane. 

Kate Young: 

How have you seen this iconic home change over the years? We were chatting before this and there’s been all types of renovations. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yeah, so the house has morphed from a two-bedroom cottage when it was built in 1934 into the 17,000 square feet that it is now. When we came in 2000, the house footprint was pretty much as it is. And so we’ve made some tweaks, we’ve changed some things. We added a different porch last summer. So we’ve made alterations. The house I think is pretty much at its maximum footprint now. There’s really not much more room for anything, but it works well. And what was put in, especially with the big addition the Beering’s did, has made the house incredibly functional. The catering kitchen and the big dining room that we can seat 104 in if we have to, it’s tight, but we can get in. And so it is a very workable house. So I think that’s really the biggest change. And people, when they drive up, they don’t realize just how much house there is at the back really. 

Kate Young: 

It’s so stately and beautiful, but yes, you don’t really see the… When you haven’t been inside before, you haven’t seen the depth of the house. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes. 

Kate Young: 

The day that our podcast team had the pleasure of visiting Anthony at Westwood, he and his team were setting up for a Purdue Dean’s dinner that evening. I asked Anthony what a typical day of managing Westwood looks like when planning for an event like this? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

We usually have a fair amount of notice about when these events are happening. So obviously we know what the room’s going to look like. Depending on the table, we’ll see the table on odd occasion. But the table is fairly versatile in that we can seat up to 22 at one table, and the president seems to like that feel of everyone being at one table. 

Kate Young: 

More intimate. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Because once you separate people, and if the first lady is there, she can host one table and he can host another, but it still separates the guests. So we’ve done a lot more events with the big, long table. And I will already have talked to chef and we’ve planned a menu, and we do try and feature as much Indiana food as possible just because people like it. And we’re using the student farms produce at the moment as well. So we’ve already planned the menu. So then prior to that, I will give our two housekeepers, as I said, Tammy and Sheila, a list of what China we’re using. We have five different sets of China, so depending on the time of day and maybe the type of guests that are coming, we make a choice of which China pattern we’re going to use. And so they’ll get that ready for me, and then I’ll put up the tables, put out the chairs, and then start laying tables. And typically, if we have a big event, then I’ll have set the tables up the day before just to… 

And if we’ve got flowers to be done, I’ll try and get those done and put in the cooler ahead of time. Another nice thing about Westwood is it does have a lot of garden space. And so we try, in the spring, when we’re planting the gardens, we try and have things that can be cut flowers and Patty Jischke was instrumental in starting the cut flower idea so that we can harvest a lot from the gardens as long as we can. And so getting the flowers ready and then having everything on the tables. And then our staff arrive usually about an hour prior to the event. By that time, we’ve probably got name tags out, I’ve done place cards. So it’s that arrangement, that finalizing, and then getting the final bits out so the glass is ready for the arrival drinks. And then always being ready for changes. 

Kate Young: 

Yes, pivoting? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes. Yes. That is the key to this game. 

Kate Young: 

So speaking of that, a lot of our listeners and viewers probably don’t know all of the behind the scenes details that go into event planning. It’s a lot more than one might think. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes. 

Kate Young: 

What are some things that you’ve learned over the years when it comes to event planning and facing some challenges or having to make those pivots? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

You definitely get to have a Plan B, a Plan C, and hopefully never have to use it, but a Plan D just in case. So there’s always that backup, and being ready for those changes even if you don’t want them to happen. It’s just, you know that these things are going to take place. So I think that’s always the key, is trying to predict the unlikeliness of things. And that does sometimes get to be a challenge when we’re doing the one long table because it fits 22, not 23. So if a 23rd guest comes, we have a real problem. 

We have had issues where the room has been full, and so we’ve had to suddenly grab a small table from another area in the house and just throw some food and some silverware at it and go, “There we go.” But I think anticipating what might happen, so we’ve always got extra food, we’ve always got an extra place setting sitting somewhere so that it’s, as fast as we can, to get it in. People’s diets, halfway through a meal, they become vegetarian. So you, “Oh, all right, we’re going with that… All right. Yes, that’ll be fine.” So just adapting. And when I teach my classes, I always say two of the key elements to being good is adaptability and flexibility. You’ve got to read the situation, work out what’s going to make it happen, and then be ready for something not happening right. 

Kate Young: 

Beyond working at Westwood, Anthony also teaches a business etiquette course at Purdue in the White Lodging-J.W. Marriott, Jr. School of Hospitality and Tourism Management within the College of Health and Human Sciences. I asked him more about this course and what role he believes etiquette plays in modern society. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

As I got into it, when I was at Iowa State, a fraternity approached me and asked me if I would go in and do a presentation for a fraternity. And I thought it’s a one-off. And I would say that over 24, well now 34 years, of doing these, how many thousand times I’ve actually given the presentation. So it’s still popular, I still travel. I was in New Orleans in August, giving it to a fraternity conference there. I’m speaking next week and the week after to various agronomy classes. So that’s also good. But I think it’s something that people realize they should need. Many people may have been told by an aunt or a grandmother at some point, “Do this, do this.” And they go, “Yeah, whatever.” And then they suddenly realized that perhaps that was useful and that they might find it helpful. 

My classes are usually full, which is great. So we have about 60, 65 students every semester. This is an eight-week class. And I do start out by saying, “A lot of this is common sense. The problem is that sense isn’t that common anymore.” And it’s not rocket science, but it does help rocket scientists get better jobs. I think what we’re trying to do is make the students as comfortable as they could be in an environment that they’re not necessarily used to. And being with your peers all the time and eating in the dining court, eating quickly, not worrying about things. And then suddenly you’re placed in this situation where you do have silver, you do have plates, you do have glasses, and you’re being watched. 

Kate Young: 

Absolutely. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

That’s the deal. Your resume says a lot about you, but it’s only but it’s only two-dimensional. When you walk in the door and I sit you down and I watch you eat, I think, I don’t think this is going to work. That’s why we do it. And I’m pleased that professors do ask me to go to the classes and give a presentation. I mean, what they remember of it is entirely up to them. I’ve done it for the ROTC, and that one is a challenge in and of itself because they meet at six o’clock in the morning. So doing a presentation for people in uniform at six in the morning is interesting. 

Kate Young: 

Tell us some of these tips that you’re telling the students when it comes to networking, interviews over a meal. That’s something I have always struggled with. I don’t necessarily want to be eating and worrying if I have something on my face or eating too slow, eating too fast, right? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Right. And that is the challenge, and that’s why they put them into that position, is they want to see, can you deal with this? And so one of the key things I say is, “When you go to a meal, if it’s somewhere that you’re not familiar with, ask people what they recommend.” And you can gain from that information whether or not these people even have an appetizer course. So if they don’t recommend any appetizers, I probably won’t be able to order an appetizer. Choosing foods that you can eat without using your hands, choosing foods that you can eat easily while still maintaining a conversation. So ordering something because you’re trying to show off or think, oh yes, I’ll take advantage of this menu because somebody else is paying, is generally going to backfire on you. So making wise choices at the table, keeping pace with the rest of the table. 

And I do tell people, if they’re hosting and the guest of honor is being bombarded with questions, it is their job to step in and say, “Let’s have our guest eat a little bit and somebody else talk about their research project or what they’re going to be doing this coming semester.” Whatever it happens to be, so that there’s an opportunity for people to catch up. The other thing is to be aware of other people’s needs. A lot of people are focused on their own little space. We do live in a selfish world and it’s all about me, so they don’t think about other people. So passing things that are in front of them, seeing that somebody needs something, you’ve got a cup of coffee, the cream and sugar’s next to me, “Would you like some cream and sugar? Could I pass this to you?” Or just keeping an eye on what’s going around. 

I mean, they may be the guest, but if they’re going to be hired by that company and they have taken an interest and said, “Could we get you some more water? Would you like another bread roll?” All of those types of things show me that you are looking outside your own comfort zone and you are willing to take care of other people. So if I do hire you, I won’t have any worries about sending you to a restaurant with our guests because I know that you can do it. Balancing conversation and eating, taking time to actually take the food and then answer the question. Don’t try and do both. We have a lot of weaponizing of silverware at the moment, making it look pleasant for other people. And I tell students, “Put yourself in front of a camera and watch yourself eat. And if you don’t like it, this is why you’re sitting in front of a camera.” 

Kate Young: 

Humbling. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes. So just little details like that because it can come down to the fact you are a better ambassador for yourself at the table. And that may be the key to me saying, “You get the job, you don’t.” 

Kate Young: 

I love that. It’s like if you’re attending to people’s needs, you’re going to be a team player. You’re going to care for your coworkers. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Similarly, I mean the way people present themselves, if you look like you are looking after your own clothes and your shoes are shined, it’s likely to tell me that you’re going to look after someone else’s assets just as well. So even though your suit may not be the newest, if it’s taken care of and it looks good, then it says to me, you can take care of things. Again, little details like that, shaking hands, making eye contact when you talk to people, speaking clearly. Especially for introductions, people are so nervous they speak so quickly. And then you have to repeat it and say, really, slow it down, slow it down. 

Kate Young: 

Slow it down. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

And if you have to, say it again, it’s fine. Or ask somebody their name again, type of thing. So we’re trying to make them as comfortable as possible and feel like their education is the starting point, but what they make out of their lives is something that they have to do and have a wide range of topics to talk about. Because if all you can talk about is your school, it’s fine. But there’s a bigger world out there. 

And I also tell people to do some research before you go. If your interview’s in Seattle, get the Seattle paper off the internet, read it, find out what’s going on so that when you go there, you can talk to people who live in Seattle about things that are happening in Seattle. They feel that you have tried to integrate yourself already rather than just assuming that everything is… And I ask my students in class, “Can you name me the mayor of Lafayette?” “No.” Can you name me the mayor of West Lafayette?” “No.” I say, “You’ve lived here four years. You have to be able to know it, because if you go to something here and you can’t do that, people are going to think you really are so distanced from reality.” 

Kate Young: 

Have you ever had students, I’m sure you have, come back to you and say, “I was in a really tricky interview”? Or, “Hey, I was at this networking event and I thought back to your class and what you told us.” 

Anthony Cawdron: 

I’d say that the thing that I’ve had most people comment on after the fact is the ability to hold a glass, a plate, and a fork in one hand. So you’ve got your plate, your glass, and your fork, and so your right hand is still free to shake hands and you are able to deal with all of the food and drink in one hand, and you look sophisticated. 

Kate Young: 

Polished doing it. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

And you’re polished. And you can multitask, and you didn’t have to write it on your resume. But I’ve had several students come back to me and say, “I was the only one who could do it.” Or, “I felt so comfortable because I knew what I was supposed to do, whereas everyone else was juggling things.” So yeah, so that one’s probably the one that I get the most. So would you like one of these scones now? 

Kate Young: 

Yes. I’m so excited because I don’t think I’ve ever tried one with this cream. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes. 

Kate Young: 

So tell us. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

So English scones typically, and you always split them, you never cut them. 

Kate Young: 

Okay. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

And usually you have red jam, we call it jam, you call it jelly. We call it jam. So you take some jam and put it onto your plate. Come off. And then you have some cream. And in England, you’ll probably find it’s clotted cream, which is hard to find here, which is a heated cream. So it’s a little bit more weighty and fat content. Pass that over to you. 

Kate Young: 

Thank you. Okay, so you’re not taking the knife and directly putting it on I’ve noticed. Okay. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

No. Sometimes when we do reception events here, chef makes wonderful scones. We will actually split them and spread them so that people don’t have to work with that. Because again, when you’re designing food for large groups, you have to have things that are easy to eat, quick and easy to pick up. So then the key is to take a little bit of jam and put it on about a bite-size piece of the scone. 

Kate Young: 

So not the whole thing? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

No. 

Kate Young: 

Okay. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

So complicated being English. And then you put some cream on the top. 

Kate Young: 

Okay. And we did jam first, like you said. Okay. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Some people will even put butter first, then jam, then cream. 

Kate Young: 

That’s a lot. The cream is insanely delicious. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Good. 

Kate Young: 

And so is the scone. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Whipped this morning. 

Kate Young: 

Oh my goodness. Okay. Now see how I was taking both hands? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

You’ll see people do that as sometimes… That’s another thing I tell students is, when I go around the class at the beginning of the semester, I ask them what their worst habit is. 75% of them say procrastination, which I can’t do anything about. 

Kate Young: 

Sounds like a college student. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

And then the next one is fidgeting, because they’re always playing with things that probably from growing up, they were always playing with a phone or a game or something. So sometimes that has now secured both of my hands and I’m not doing anything silly with them. Whereas, if I have one and I’m free, people start to play with things or they fiddle or they play with their hair, or they chew their nails. 

Kate Young: 

Which, in a job interview, it’s just such a turn-off. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

So it’s distracting. So sometimes adding that extra hand just gives your hand something to do. But generally, you would only hold with one. And stirring too, stir quietly. 

Kate Young: 

In October, Anthony received the Special Boilermaker Award, which honors members of the Purdue faculty or staff who have contributed significantly to the improvement of the quality of life or the betterment of the educational experience for Purdue students. Anthony shares what this award means to him. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

It was a very special moment, and it was quite a surprise being told I had it because I was at a meeting in Hovde and we were leaving the meeting and Teresa Cadwallader, who is Mung’s executive assistant said, “Oh, could you just pop in here?” And I thought, what is this? And so she opened the door, and ta-da. And so that was a big surprise. And then obviously going down onto the field last, or to receive it, was a very special honor. It was a wonderful honor. And obviously my co-recipients, we had a great time. And so it was very, very special. 

I guess it’s… I don’t know whether there’s a bingo card of things that if you’re at Purdue this long, you get one of these. And if you get this long, you get one of these. So I was in Reamer, I was in Iron Key, Mortar Board, Old Master, so my bingo card’s getting full. But yes, no, it was a very nice honor, very nice. And I’ve had many, many messages, and 450 messages on Facebook after it was Eric Barker, Dean Eric Barker, took some really nice pictures and so they were on Facebook, so a lot of people responded to that. And then I had people text me from who were in the Buchanan Club saying, “Oh yep, three of us up here are also Boilermaker Award recipients in the past, and we’re here cheering for you and thanks for joining our ranks, if you like.” So it was very, very nice. 

Kate Young: 

I can tell Purdue means a lot to you. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes, it does. 

Kate Young: 

Why have you stayed here this many years? Why? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

I sometimes ask myself the same question. I don’t always give myself the same answer. It has worked out really well. As I say, I started out expecting to be in the US for a year, and that turned into 34. I do love the variety of the US, obviously we are here in the Midwest and we have our wonderful seasonal changes, which I really do enjoy. I think it’s nice to still have winter. Having lived in Switzerland and being in the snow for three or four months a year, you miss things like that if you were in a warmer state. So I really do like the seasonal changes, and particularly I enjoy gardening and things outside, so it’s nice to see and to be able to make changes and not that the landscape is going to be the same day-in, day-out as if you were in some other states to the west maybe. So it’s nice having that variety. 

The ability to travel relatively easily. I do miss public transport, I do miss European trains, but you get around here, but it is an easy place to move from and to go and see different parts of the country and travel. So I think the Midwest is, and many people who travel from here after they graduate, go and live in metropolitan areas, but then eventually return to the Midwest because they say it’s just a better place to live and to bring up families and things like that. So people are very warm. It’s a very accepting and very welcoming community. And I think that that’s why I ended up staying at Iowa State is that people probably said, “We’re interested in making you do something different and getting on with the master’s degree and then this.” 

So that also goes back to one of the things I tell students is that, “Yes, your degree may be in biomechanical engineering or whatever it happens, biomedical engineering. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to stay in that field. And if something comes along that says to you, ‘That sounds interesting, let me try that.'” And I say, “At 22, you have nothing to lose. If you don’t like it, great, you can try something else.” And you can, at that point, probably still fit all your belongings into one vehicle. So if you need to travel, you can do it now because as life gets more complicated- 

Kate Young: 

You’re tied down more. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

… it’s a lot harder to make those changes. And I think when I first took my first job at Blenheim Palace, I didn’t know that that would lead to this. I mean, it was a one-off, three-week job for the Christmas holidays with the Duke and Duchess, and then, “Would you come back full-time?” “Yes. Why not?” And then everything just sort of transitions. So you can never actually predict what’s going to happen next. And so I think I’ve enjoyed the fact that, having worked for four presidents, each one comes with a different background, different sets of needs, different requirements. So that has, in a way, I haven’t really worked here for 24 years, I’ve worked here for two and a half and I’ve worked here for 10 and I’ve worked here for five and I worked here for seven, with each of the four different presidents. So that’s I think has sort of kept things fresh. To have stayed in one place, one person, one job, routine might not have been the case. 

I’m not saying that people have tried to take me away from here. Purdue may be known as the Cradle of Quarterbacks, but it’s also the Cradle of Presidents, in that we’ve had three provosts go on to be wonderful presidents of big schools. Sally Mason, Randy Woodson and Tim Sands have all made wonderful presidents in their own right. And all three have asked me to go with them. 

Kate Young: 

There’s a behind-the-scenes story. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yeah. 

Kate Young: 

What does this Boilermaker community, and being part of it, mean to you? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

I do really like living in Lafayette, West Lafayette. I live downtown, and when friends come to visit from England particularly, we’ll walk around downtown or go to a restaurant. People know you, they come up to you, they recognize you, they talk to you. I’ll sit on my porch and people will say hello or stop and chat on the porch. And so it has a very nice feel that you don’t always get in other countries because people are either too busy or they feel that they can’t talk to people because they don’t know them yet or they’re not familiar with them. So there’s a lot to the Midwestern warmth and welcoming feel. 

And as you know, and I know, when we travel to different states, it’s not always the same. You feel like an outsider in some states. So the community itself is wonderful. Made lots and lots of friends, either from guests coming here or from working relationships. And then alumni and donors and people and having traveled with Purdue as well, that’s another really good way of establishing a bond of friendship with people that you may not normally have had a chance to meet. 

Kate Young: 

Okay. With the holiday season in full swing, we couldn’t let Anthony go without asking some burning questions when it comes to etiquette. So for our listeners who may be preparing for holiday events, whether you’re hosting or attending as a guest, Anthony shares his top advice, including avoiding the rather popular Irish exit strategy. Are you guilty of doing this a time or two? I know I am. Here’s Anthony. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

A little more tea? 

Kate Young: 

Yes, actually. It’s delicious, thank you. So for people hosting events or maybe attending events, what is a small, thoughtful gift that you could give to the host of a dinner party, let’s say? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes. And the whole notion of giving gifts is changing. Gift-giving, certainly in the corporate world, is now almost frowned upon because it’s a difficult gray area. One thing to remember is that the host has asked you there because they want you there, they didn’t necessarily want you to bring anything. So there was, I think in the past, almost an obligation that people felt that, I have to take a gift. And that’s not the case. If you feel like taking something, that’s fine. The host will appreciate it, but don’t feel that you can’t go empty-handed. 

Kate Young: 

Okay. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

The other thing to think about is something, particularly if the host is greeting you and you hand them this, then they’ve got to deal with it. So giving them something that they can easily say, “Oh, that’s lovely, thank you.” And put it down and then it’s out… They don’t have to… So when people bring flowers, it’s very, very pleasant, it’s very nice. But if they’re not already arranged or in some container, then, oh, I’ve got to deal with these now, let me put them down. Or, they should probably go in water, oh, oh, oh, oh. And if you’ve got someone at your event coordinator standing right there, yes you can probably hand off a gift, but it makes it awkward for people. So particularly around the holidays, I think a small ornament or a handmade ornament or if… There are lots of little arts and crafts shops here in town that sell small gestures, those are nice. Commemorative ornaments are nice. Homemade food, if you’re somebody who’s very good at making chocolates or something like that, just a little gesture. 

If you are going to take flowers, as I say, take them already in a vase or in something that the host doesn’t have to then deal with them immediately, that they can just be placed. And also, people have probably done their own decorating. They’ve probably already got flowers on the table, they’ve probably already got most of that. So unless you know them very well and you’re just taking something that you know will fit in with the theme or the decor, it can be a little bit of a juxtaposition. A lot of people take bottles of wine. 

Kate Young: 

Yes, I’ve done that. How do you feel about that? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Which is fine. That’s fine. The expectation is that you take the bottle of wine and it’s really a gift, don’t expect to drink it. 

Kate Young: 

Right. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

If you have particular wine, so if we were planning a dinner party and you were hooking and I said, “Let me bring the wine.” I would ask you what you’re making, and then I would bring a wine that was appropriate and we would both know ahead of time, I would bring the wine in a way that it was ready to be served by you, but you already knew about it. So if I bring a bottle of wine and I expect you to drink or to serve it and it doesn’t go with the food that you planned or you’ve already planned your wines, again, that can be a little awkward. So if you bring it just as a gift, perfectly fine. But don’t, as I say, expect to drink it. And I’ve seen some people awkwardly, if it hasn’t been served, take it away with them at the end. 

Kate Young: 

What? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes. 

Kate Young: 

Okay, that’s… 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Well, they didn’t drink it, so I’ll take it back. Oh, all right. 

Kate Young: 

I think it’s awkward when they open it up and have it at this event. I was like, “Oh no, that was a gift for you.” But if they want to open it… 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes. And again, I think it requires you, as a guest, if we knew each other well enough and I’d been to your house several times, I’d say, “Oh, let me bring some of the wine that we had last time.” Or, “I know that you really like this Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand, let me bring some.” If you choose to serve it, entirely your choice. But if you don’t use it, then it’s yours for the rest. You keep it. 

Kate Young: 

And you do not take it home. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

And sometimes a host gifts, if they’re wrapped, don’t expect that the host is going to unwrap it then. 

Kate Young: 

Oh, okay, that’s a good tip. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

So sometimes if it is a little ornament, just bringing it unadorned so that they can see it immediately so that they don’t have to then unwrap it and then thank you. They can say, “Oh, that’s pretty, that’s lovely. I’ll put it on the tree.” Something like that. 

Kate Young: 

Right, because they have enough going on. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yeah, so you don’t want to confuse things. And that’s why we have at weddings and big events, a table for gifts that you can just put them on, and a basket for cards if people bring them, there’s no absolute necessity to physically hand it to me and then you can retrieve them and then thank people later. 

Kate Young: 

Okay, small talk. Some people hate it, some people are gifted at it. What are some small talk dinner conversation starters? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Right. So again, part of it, doing your homework. You don’t have to be the NSA, but you can do a little bit of background. The other thing that people don’t do particularly well is actively listen. So while a conversation is going on, you may have said something that didn’t then get developed into a further conversation, but I picked it up. And so then when you and I are sitting somewhere, I say, “Didn’t I hear that you just say that you were going to The Bahamas for Christmas? Oh, that’ll be nice.” Or, “Did you just come back from the Maldives?” And anytime that you can ask people things that make them want to talk is a good way because it’s a conversation. It’s not me lecturing, it’s you listening and then adding in and back and forth. 

So having actively listened or found out some details or that you just got a new puppy or that I saw in the newspaper that you just received the Special Boilermaker Award or you just became small business of the year. All of those things I have stored that I can bring out and use if I need to. We’ve talked a lot about the change of seasons, and is fall your favorite season? And it’s giving people an open-ended question allows them to express, and then it should also then lead to further topics of things that we can talk about. Because as I listen, I can hear that you’re someone who loves fall, “Have you been to Maine or the East Coast?” “Oh, actually we’re planning that next year.” “Oh, well how are you going to do it, by train or are you going on a cruise?” Blah, blah, blah. 

And so it generates itself, but it needs someone to start the ball rolling. And people are afraid to just start a conversation because they don’t know. It sounds mundane, but the weather is a great way to start. “Did you have trouble getting here? I saw that it was stormy in Colorado? How was your journey?” And people have then the incentive to give more information and make you feel that this is a conversation. And I sometimes equate it to a tennis match. 

Kate Young: 

Sure. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

In that your first topic is the serve, and you send it over the net and you hope that someone on the other side of the net will hit it back, and then you hit it back and it’s back and forth, back and forth. And we’re adding to this conversation. We’ve all unfortunately been in a position where we start a conversation and people will not. And it’s, okay, try again. Let’s go this way. And we’re going to try that, and if that one didn’t work, all right, anyone else have anything interesting? So sometimes it is difficult and some people just don’t want to engage in that. 

But small talk is really important because small talk leads you to big talk. The ability, and the students on interviews, when they go, I say, “You won’t be spending all the time with the interviewer, you’ll be spending time with assistants, with other departments, other areas, and you have to be nice to all these people and you have to talk to them. When you’re transitioning from this office to the HR department, we’re walking, you have to be talking. You can’t just leave it blank. Even though this person may not be the person who is interviewing me, I’m going to ask them afterwards.” And we’ve all seen Undercover Boss. I tell them that. I say, “The person that you go in to see who’s sitting behind a desk isn’t necessarily the person that you think it is. 

Kate Young: 

Or being rude to a waiter or receptionist, right? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Especially at the CEO level, a lot of times when the dinner interview, the people are looking to see how you treat service. And if you treat them well, there’s a very good chance that you’ll treat employees lower down the totem pole than you well. 

Kate Young: 

Okay, the Irish exit. Are you familiar, the Irish goodbye maybe? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

That’s not really a goodbye, you just disappear? 

Kate Young: 

Yes, you just simply disappear. What is a polite way to… Maybe the host is busy talking to someone else. Maybe you just want to get out of there as fast as possible. What’s a polite way to leave a party? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Particularly a stand-up event or a reception style event where it is a lot of mix and mingle, drift and round, and you may have commitments to other things at different times. The key is to try and make sure that your host knew you came. So making it not necessarily a beeline for them, but making sure that when you arrive, you see your hosts quickly so that they’re aware that you did come. Even if you’re not going to stay very long, then do a circuit through the room as best you can, and then always try, even if the host is talking to someone else as you have to leave, try and make eye contact. Just something that signals that they are again aware of the fact that you have left rather than, “Oh, I don’t know where she went, I’m not sure. She was here just now.” 

If you can, just try and make, even if you have to slip away early, just try and make some contact with the host to say, “This has been wonderful, but I do have to dash. Let’s catch up next week.” Or something like that, if you can. Or, “Sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to say, great party, thanks for having me. We’ll see you at the theater on Saturday or something like that.” It makes them feel that it was a good idea to have you at the event, even though you couldn’t stay for the full length. 

Kate Young: 

And you appreciated the invite. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Mm-hmm, you made an impression. So as I say, “Try and meet them when you first get there and try and at least acknowledge the fact that you’ve had a good time and you’re heading out now.” 

Kate Young: 

To wrap it up, the biggest dos and don’ts, what’s like a top, do this to impress people at an event and a top, do not do this at an event? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Well, you shouldn’t necessarily be just out to impress people. You should be doing things well, but not necessarily standing out- 

Kate Young: 

Like showboating? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

… by showing off. 

Kate Young: 

Okay. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

So keep it subtle, keep it light. I think we do find people who dominate the table. And I do tell people when you’re planning an event, think of the personalities that you’ve got. Because if you’ve got a strong personality and you are hosting and we’re doing a long table rather than a round table as we’re at today, but if you have a long table and you’ve put somebody with a strong personality halfway down the table, that person will take over. And you have no way of controlling that. If you have a strong personality, seat them next to you because you can physically rein them in if you have to because they’re right there. So again, that’s a good way of working out where you’re going to place people and who would be a good conversation group. Do these people have something in common? So it does that. 

Try not to dominate. If you realize that I’ve done all the talking or nobody’s had a chance to eat, again, try not to do that. Also, good manners can spoil good food. So waiting or listening to somebody talk and the food’s there, stop somebody, don’t just let the food spoil. And that’s also brings up the buffet rule. That if you go to a buffet, it’s very likely that the rest of the people at the table are not immediately behind you in line. And so when you get to the table, if there are three of you or more, you can start eating because those three people may not even arrive. Or those two seats may be empty or unoccupied and you’ve been sitting there waiting for them to fill and your food is spoiling. So I always encourage people to use the buffet rule, three or more, start. 

Chewing with your mouth open. I don’t need to see your food. Eating noisily, sometimes it’s overwhelming. All right. Yes. And these people are automatically getting a no for the next invitation list because I can’t, you’re just not going to have people watch that again. Overindulging. There may be very nice things offered to you, but you don’t have to necessarily take them all. And one thing I do tell students about events is that because when you arrive, it’s likely hospitality is going to be offered quite quickly. Your choice of whether to take it then or not. You are perfectly able to walk away and say, “I’ll be right back. Let me do some introductions.” Because yes, you might be able to hold a plate and a glass in one hand, but if you don’t have to, don’t do it. So go around, make some introductions, and then circle back and get your drink, circle back and get some food. And so again, sometimes that is a test to see whether people have the ability to say, “No, I think I’ll wait.” 

Using the buffet as your own private dining space. Take some food and move away. If there’s something on the buffet you don’t like, don’t put it back. Appetizers are not easy to eat standing up. We, in hospitality, love to watch people fail. That’s why we design food like that. Things will crumble. So look at the food and say, “Can I deal with that?” 

Kate Young: 

That’s exactly what I do at weddings. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes. 

Kate Young: 

Can I eat this? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Neatly, cleanly, easily. Yes? Go. No? I think I’ll pass. Take two bites. A whole egg roll is offered to you. Yes, it would fit in in one go. Should it? No. Again, just dipping, one dip, one dip only. Not turning the carrot stick over and dipping the other end in. Taking things to a plate, to a vessel, rather than just eating them out of the bowl. And sometimes events aren’t set up in the way that makes that easy that you’ve got to find the plates or the plates and the napkins are in the wrong place and you really want to get a plate, go down and then at the last minute pick up a napkin and a piece of silverware because you don’t need that for walking through the buffet. Just again, I think a lot of it is learned, but unfortunately we don’t see the opportunities to learn anymore. 

I mean, I will set a table with a tablecloth and people suddenly, “Ah, it’s so formal.” Because they’re just not to seeing tablecloths anymore. Sitting down before everyone else arrives, not good, because then anyone else who arrives at the table, even if they’re on time, they feel like they’re late. So in a restaurant situation, you are hosting, you’re waiting in the lobby, try and wait for all your guests in the lobby before you go to the table, even though the restaurant wants you to sit down straight away. If I arrive at 12:30, which is when I’m supposed to be there, and you’re already at the table, and I’m the last there, I say, “Oh, am I late?’ Because it’s a psychological feeling that I didn’t make the right call. And if somebody does arrive late, get up and greet them and help them to their chair. It makes them, again, feel less conscious, self-conscious, about being late. 

Kate Young: 

This has been fascinating. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Thank you. Thank you. 

Kate Young: 

Is there anything I missed? Is there anything else that you want to tell our listeners and viewers? 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Gosh, no. Listen, learn, and copying in school, not a good thing. Somebody does something outside of school that looks good, do exactly the same thing. You can learn a lot by watching people. Oh, and when you split a check evenly, don’t argue. No divisions of, “Well, you had two glasses of wine, so you… Oh, plus tax.” And then- 

Kate Young: 

That’s so uncomfortable. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Yes. You see people having this wonderful meal, great conversation, and then they’re arguing about $26 at the end. It’s like, really? That’s all I’m going to remember when I walk out, is that you were trying to short me for $2. Not worth it. 

Kate Young: 

That’s a great tip to end on. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

Thank you very much. 

Kate Young: 

Thank you. Oh, it’s been a pleasure. 

Anthony Cawdron: 

It’s been wonderful. Thank you. 

Kate Young: 

I’m sure you all learned at least one tip from Anthony throughout this interview. I know I did. We’re so thankful Anthony joined us on the podcast. He has such an interesting background and his love for this Boilermaker community truly shines. If you haven’t been to Westwood, or maybe it’s been years since you’ve been in there, you can check out this beautiful home on our podcast YouTube page, YouTube.com/@thisisPurdue. We have some incredible bonus content with Anthony, he discusses the importance of name tag etiquette, his biggest pet peeve when it comes to modern day etiquette, and so much more. And you can also watch Anthony’s full video interview in the Westwood dining room, complete with tea, scones and sandwiches while you’re there. Plus, be sure to follow This is Purdue on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts, so you never miss an episode. 

This is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young. Our podcast videography for this episode was led by Ted Schellenberger in collaboration with Jon Garcia and Zach Mogensen. Our video production assistant is Dalani Young. Our social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. Our podcast distribution strategy is led by Teresa Walker and Carly Eastman. Our podcast design is led by Caitlyn Freville. Our podcast photography is led by John Underwood. Our podcast team project manager is Rain Gu. Our podcast YouTube promotions is managed by Kirsten Bauman. Additional writing and research assistance is led by Sophie Ritz. And our This is Purdue intern is Caroline Kime. Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcasts. There, you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review. And as always, Boiler up. 

Karen Plaut: 

This is Karen Plaut, and you are listening to This is Purdue. 

Kate Young: 

Hi, I’m Kate Young and you are listening to This is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators, who are these boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty, and alumni taking small steps toward their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same. 

Karen Plaut: 

Purdue is an economic engine. It’s an economic engine for the state, and it has a local and a global impact. What we do impacts so many people, so many businesses. And I want people to understand we make an impact. We make an impact around the world. We make an impact in Indiana. We make an impact in every county in the state by some of our local efforts, too. 

Kate Young: 

In this episode of This is Purdue, we are talking to Karen Plaut, executive vice president for research at Purdue University. Karen oversees an expanding $600 million research enterprise, and is responsible for university-wide strategic initiatives, and bringing together researchers and resources to drive interdisciplinary discoveries that have both a local and a global impact. She became a boilermaker back in 2010 when she joined Purdue as the associate dean for research for the College of Agriculture, and later became the Glenn W. Sample Dean of the College of Agriculture. Before that, Karen’s background spans academia at other notable higher education institutions, space flight, animal sciences, and being a lead scientist for NASA’s International Space Station, biological research. 

And as a researcher at heart, we knew Karen would be the perfect guest for our research series. In this third episode of our 2024 research series, you’ll hear more about Karen’s leadership at Purdue as she continues to oversee research breakthroughs that truly make an impact on society. Okay, let’s get to it. Here’s my conversation with Karen. 

Karen, thank you so much for joining us on This is Purdue, our official university podcast. We’re excited to dig into all things Purdue research. It’s such a hot topic now and you’re the perfect person to guide us through that. So, today we’re in Purdue’s data science and artificial intelligence building, which ties into a lot of Purdue’s research initiatives, so we’ll get into that with you as well. But as the executive vice president for research at Purdue, you’re responsible for so many strategic initiatives, bringing together researchers, resources, and all of this impacts the whole world. So, to start off, share a little bit about your journey to Purdue. How did you come here and why Purdue? 

Karen Plaut: 

Sure. And thanks for having me on the podcast. I started my career actually on the East Coast. I did my BS at University of Vermont, my master’s at Penn State and my PhD at Cornell. I then went to the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute, and did a postdoc in mammary gland biology. It’s lactation biology. Then started a career at the University of Vermont in lactation biology. Was there for quite a number of years and did a sabbatical or took a leave and went to NASA, which we’ll talk about later. 

And then from there, I went to Michigan State as chair of their animal science department. I had been chair at the University of Vermont. And then I saw the ad for the position as associate dean for research at Purdue University for the College of Agriculture and said, “That seems like fun.” And so, went ahead and applied for that job and got it. And that started my career at Purdue in 2010. 

Kate Young: 

Amazing. Yeah. We do want to get into your background in animal science and the time that you spent at NASA. So, tell us a little bit more about that. 

Karen Plaut: 

Sure. So, my background is animal science. I’m a lactation biologist, so I work with mammals in general, many different kinds of mammals. Those are animals that make milk. And been doing it for quite a few years. And then at the University of Vermont as an assistant professor, actually a professor from Indiana University called me. And he was doing some work in space and needed a lactation biologist, so he asked me if I was interested. A few people had referred him to me and I said, “Sure, that sounds like fun.” And as a result of that, we started a research project where we sent rats to space and actually brought them back to earth. And we’re looking at how lactation changed. He had some other things he was looking at, but my group particularly looked at how milk production was changing in these animals as a result of going to space when they were pregnant. 

Kate Young: 

Wow, that is super interesting. What drew you back into higher ed and then specifically to come to Purdue? 

Karen Plaut: 

So, that was my experiment in NASA. I actually was with NASA two different times. So, that was as a researcher and that led me to my interest in it. So, I then had the opportunity to go to NASA as the lead scientist for the International Space Station for the biological research project. And there we actually were looking at all the habitats for space. And I worked with engineers and all different people. And there we had lots of different facilities, and we’re looking at how do we build them for the space station. And it was a complex project, because it’s both the life scientists and the engineers working together to design these habitats for space. 

So, I did that for a few years, but I really missed the academic environment and so I decided to come back to academia. And I did that. That’s when I came back to the University of Vermont as chair of their department, then to Michigan State and then to Purdue. That’s how I got back into academia. Really have enjoyed being in the research space. That’s sort of my love, also getting to work with undergraduates in undergraduate research and other projects like that. 

Kate Young: 

As I mentioned earlier, Karen held various roles within Purdue before becoming the executive vice president for research. I asked Karen what it was like to lead Purdue’s prestigious College of Agriculture, which is ranked number four in the country and number six in the world. 

Karen Plaut: 

It’s wonderful to be at a world-class institution with a world-class agricultural college. And it was a great opportunity to move some things forward. One of them is digital agriculture, which refers to the types of things happening in this building. So, we’re able to build a number of faculty in that area and really move that area forward. We were also lucky enough, both when I was associate dean of research and dean, to get the plant sciences Purdue moves under Mitch Daniels. We got two moves that really moved plant sciences forward, and that was lots and lots of fun. So, I had the opportunity to do both research as well as work with undergraduates, which I really enjoy. 

And then also, the College of Agriculture really plays an important role in the communities in Indiana. So, we have people in all 92 counties. So, I was able to work with people, and find out their needs at the local level and how we can help people at the local level, as well as global. We have a world food prize winner who also won the National Medal of Science. That’s Gebisa Ejeta. I’m able to work with people that are making a difference around the world and looking at how do we feed the world. How do we make a difference for the future? 

Kate Young: 

Absolutely. We had two food science professors as part of our research series last year, who talked about how do we feed the world. The biggest problem that one could face is hunger. 

Karen Plaut: 

Absolutely. And hunger and food security affects every single person on the planet, so it’s one of the few areas where everybody is affected. 

Kate Young: 

So, in January of 2023, you transitioned into the Office of Research. How did serving as dean of the College of Agriculture help tee you up and prepare you to become the executive vice president of research? 

Karen Plaut: 

Well, and I think both jobs, dean and before that, the associate dean for research, both prepared me for the job I’m in today. The dean’s job, you get to see the big picture. You get to see what’s happening at the whole university. You get to work with your colleagues and really think about what does it mean at the university level, as well as for your college. As associate dean for research, you help move the research mission forward in the college. You’ve also worked with all the other associate deans, which have changed over time, but the basic functions haven’t. And it helps you understand what kind of tools do we need for research support for our faculty. How do we help our faculty move forward? 

So, you have these two that really help prepare me. As well as my time on NASA, because particularly when I worked with NASA, I worked with so many engineers, and so got a real chance to look at how those things work together. And then our plant sciences initiative, which was very interdisciplinary. So, got a chance to work with many different people in different departments and I think that prepared me well for my job now. 

Kate Young: 

As a lifelong researcher, Karen brings unique insights to leading research and creating an environment conducive to innovation. So, how is she fostering this environment in her role as EVP of research at Purdue? 

Karen Plaut: 

I think one of the important things is seeing the connections and seeing how you can build relationships between departments. It’s always surprising to me when I go places, how few of our scientists necessarily know somebody from a different discipline. So, one of the areas that we really help faculty is, how do you find collaborators that’ll make a difference for them? This week, I put some people with quantum, with some drug discovery, with some AI people. Building those relationships are what really make a difference. And it’s one of the things that’s really special at Purdue, that you can build those interdisciplinary relationships that really make our science excel and soar. 

Kate Young: 

Your background we’ve talked about a little bit. Animal sciences, space flight. You talked about NASA’s International Space Station, biological research. How did all of these incredible experiences influence your approach to your role now with Purdue? 

Karen Plaut: 

All of them add pieces to it. I think all of us know as you move from job to job, there’s pieces you learn in different settings that you can bring to your new job. That spirit of collaboration is something that’s happened through many of those jobs in different ways, and learning things like engineers do science a little bit different than life scientists. And so, I learned those types of things. Which groups really collaborate and like to work together? Where is the fundamental science advances? How can we move those forward? All those different jobs teach you many of those different types of things. 

Kate Young: 

Through all these experiences and working in research, you’ve probably had so many unique experiences. Do you have any particular stories or memories that really stand out to you with all of your research work? 

Karen Plaut: 

I actually have a lot of them. 

Kate Young: 

Share them all. We have all day. 

Karen Plaut: 

I thought one of the fun ones… So ,the projects we did at NASA, we actually worked down in Cape Canaveral when the animals come off the shuttle. First of all, seeing the shuttle land and knowing your animals are on that shuttle, and that you’re going to then work with them after they land, and working with different groups around that is really fun. But particularly, all of our animal work involved a lot of undergraduates. And bringing undergraduates out to Cape Canaveral, we had also the backup site, Edwards Air Force Base. So, I had a full team in California, full team in Florida, all of them working for the same goal and to figure out what difference did space make for these animals. And actually, the kind of findings we found from that are something that are unique and it’s a whole field that’s moved forward in circadian rhythms. 

And our NASA work contributed to our understanding of how that works in lactation, and with animals, and has implications for humans and other species. But I just remember the undergraduates, one of the rules, because we went various times, was you cannot have any exams on Monday morning if we’re going out. And of course, they all said no. And then we’re flying out Sunday and our plane broke. And what do you think happened? We finally made it out of California, but we went to Iowa or somewhere. That was the only place they could get… 

And the students tell me, “Well, we have an exam in the morning.” And I’m like, “Wait a minute, you weren’t supposed to come if you had an exam.” And we got it all worked out with their professors and things, but just that kind of interaction. And they were so enthusiastic about going, they weren’t going to tell me they had an exam. 

Kate Young: 

They were not going to miss that experience. 

Karen Plaut: 

Exactly. So, lots of fun things, and watching how those students have now grown, and that their careers are now accelerating is really fun to watch and see. 

Kate Young: 

Have you had students come back to you and say, “Hey, you made this huge impact on me?” 

Karen Plaut: 

Oh, yeah. Quite often. 

Kate Young: 

That’s so fun. 

Karen Plaut: 

To be honest, I don’t want to sound braggy. I don’t know if that’s a word. 

Kate Young: 

No. That has to be special for you. 

Karen Plaut: 

It’s really special when students come back and say, “Hey, you made a huge impact.” It made a big difference in my life. 

Kate Young: 

With your role as EBP of research at Purdue, what brings you fulfillment? What is maybe a special memory from your time leading research at Purdue right now? 

Karen Plaut: 

Seeing some of the big wins, seeing some of these teams that have incredible success. Some of the ones all the way back from the College of Agriculture in our digital forestry, which is part of plant science moves, they’ve had quite a number of large grants. And it’s great to see them win these large grants that allows us to move that whole field forward. It’s a fairly new field. And we’re pioneers, so that would be an example of it. Some of the stuff we’re doing in autonomous systems and watching that move forward has been really exciting. Shaoxing Mu who runs Icon had recently a story about combining not only the autonomous car, but ChatGPT together to help the car understand what you’re thinking. Those are so fun and so amazing that we can do those kind of things and move forward in that kind of direction. 

Kate Young: 

What is your vision for the future of Purdue research? What are some of those really big priority areas? 

Karen Plaut: 

One of them is increasing our large multidisciplinary grants, so continuing to move forward in some of those areas. And also, we don’t have what’s called like a U-arc, a university affiliated research center or federally funded research and development center. These are other ways to bring resources to Purdue, so looking at how we can leverage those opportunities and move those types of things forward. And then, obviously, making sure all of our areas have the chance to excel, and move forward, and taking advantage of new buildings like this, and what it can do for AI and various things. 

Kate Young: 

Absolutely. So, speaking of this and AI, we’ve heard a lot about AI as part of Purdue Computes. Tell us a little bit about the areas of AI that Purdue is really focused on. 

Karen Plaut: 

Yeah. So, our focus is really physical AI. And physical AI, let me break that down into a couple different categories. So, one of them is we make. So, this is about making things. And I think most people know our states of manufacturing, say, “How do we improve some of those processes using AI, including semiconductors that so many people hear about?” So that’s one of them. The next one would be we move, which is transportation. And when you think of transportation, you think about autonomous vehicles, it’s not just on the ground. It’s in the air and making things move forward. It’s robotics. We have a researcher working on… I think it’s so cool. Robots right now do really well on smooth surfaces, but they’re making a robot that has sort of sea legs, where it actually is sensing the ground so it can walk on a rocking ship and help the Navy, for example. So, all of those kind of things are part of we move. 

We grow, which is agriculture. I mentioned before the digital agriculture. Really looking how we can use AI and robotics to put the right nutrients in the right place at the right time. It saves money, it helps the environment, and it helps the farmer. So, looking at how we can increase productivity in those areas. And then the last area is we thrive, which is about healthcare, really, and what we can do. And we have some great researchers looking at AI assisted drug development and some of those kind of things to really help us move forward in healthcare. 

Kate Young: 

That’s incredible. And speaking of healthcare, another big initiative for Purdue is One Health. Why is Purdue poised and set up to lead in that specific area? 

Karen Plaut: 

One Health is a really exciting opportunity because it’s the intersection. It’s the intersection of humans, plants, animals, and environmental health. And we have expertise in all of those areas. Obviously, we have a veterinary school that really helps us move forward in terms of animals, as well as an animal science department. We have environmental programs. We have the Institute for Sustainable Future, which focuses on the environment. We have many aspects in health and human sciences and in Discovery Park District, that work on health and healthcare. And so, lots of opportunities with that. 

And then the plant sciences, we have all of those kind of things. And when you start putting these areas together and look at new initiatives, so one of the areas would be comparative genetics and genomics. Every animal has their own set of genes, but we have similarities that do similar functions. So, if you start looking at that across species, you can make some findings that we may have never seen before. So, really exciting things like that. And then you may have heard about our microbiome, which is the microbes that live… some in our gut, some on our hands, some are out there on the plants. 

And they all serve different purposes, but we can start using them to our advantage, either for the environment. We have good microbes that help the environment. We have good microbes in our stomach when things are going well. And looking at which ones really make a difference, how we can work together to figure out their function and figure out how do we maximize the system, the interconnected system, so that our animals benefit our plants, benefit our environment, and us as humans also benefit. 

Kate Young: 

We’ve had a few This is Purdue podcast episodes that have highlighted Purdue’s expansion into Indianapolis, which is one of Purdue President Mung Chiang’s strategic initiatives. I ask Karen what Purdue and Indianapolis means for Purdue research, and how students in Indianapolis will contribute to and benefit from this vision. 

Karen Plaut: 

Purdue in India is a really exciting opportunity for the future. We already have the start of some of those areas. Motorsports being one of them, certainly in engineering. That’s one. What they’re doing in autonomous systems is really exciting. We have a big center, DESI, down there, that’s doing some really cool things in that space. And then in healthcare, we already do work with IU Health and we work with IU School of Medicine, the VA Hospital, starting to look at what we can do in healthcare and in biomedical engineering, which is one of our strengths. Start putting that all together, and the opportunities are endless. 

Then I think I mentioned for my own research, the benefit of having those undergraduates. They contribute to these processes. It allows them to figure out where their careers are, and they also come into the lab often with no preconceived notion about what you’re doing. So, they ask really insightful questions. Really help you move forward and can help you discover whole new areas of research. And so, for those students, I think it’s going to be a game changer. And the fact that we’ll have those opportunities as we move forward will be really powerful. And they can work with Lilly. So they also get game changing research that’s changing human health and some things like that. So, really, I’m excited about the potential. 

Kate Young: 

From computer science and life sciences to artificial intelligence, to engineering and aviation, Purdue’s research areas are extensive. I ask Karen how she navigates the complexity of overseeing such diverse research areas. 

Karen Plaut: 

Great fun, but sometimes overwhelming. 

Kate Young: 

Sure. 

Karen Plaut: 

Because you go from learning about nuclear power, we have a digital nuclear reactor, the only one in the country, to learning about hypersonics, to thinking about audiology and hearing disease, to thinking about how you put fertilizer in a field, to all different things. So, it provides lots of opportunities and lots of opportunities to connect people. But some days, you’re running from one to the other and trying to keep up, “Okay, what’s this one about again? What’s this person doing?” It makes it really exciting. 

Kate Young: 

Yeah. You never have a boring day, I would imagine. 

Karen Plaut: 

That’s right. 

Kate Young: 

As a public institution, Purdue’s research significantly impacts everyone in Indiana, our economy. What are some of the key examples of this, and what do you wish more people and maybe lawmakers understood about Purdue research overall? 

Karen Plaut: 

Purdue is an economic engine. It’s an economic engine for the state, and it has a local and a global impact. What we do impacts so many people, so many businesses. And over the years, there’s so many different examples of where we made an impact. Hoover Dam, Meade is a Purdue grad. That’s just one example. The most current one is Pluvicto, which is the prostate cancer drug that is saving lives for many, many people that Phil Low invented. That’s incredible what he’s done. He’s saving lives across the country. Gebisa Ejeta work in Ethiopia and other developing countries, to develop a Striga-resistant sorghum and sorghum that can feed the world, that can help people that had no means to eat because Striga, which is a weed, was killing those things. And then what we do in national security, so opportunities to make sure that we have the deterrents we need. 

Everywhere you look, we’ve developed new popcorn varieties. Who knew that our apples, the most eaten apple in France was developed by Jules Janick at Purdue? Who would’ve known? You shouldn’t have asked me this question because I can’t stop, but the FDA was actually started by a person at Purdue. Harvey Wiley started the FDA. Before that, nothing you ate was regulated, and so lots of people were getting sick. And he started the Pure Foods Act, which started then the formation of the FDA and everything else. And that’s why we all have safe food. Who would’ve thought? 

Kate Young: 

I’m thinking of all these new podcast ideas. That’s incredible. 

Karen Plaut: 

I want people to understand we make an impact. We make an impact around the world. We make an impact in Indiana. We make an impact in every county in the state by some of our local efforts, too. I talked more about the global things people know about, but we also locally make an impact. And we’re an economic driver for workforce. The talent we develop here, it’s the talent that our Indiana businesses higher. It is fantastic to be training students in a way that they can go out and achieve their own dreams because we’ve created that opportunity here for them to do that. And I think when you look at talent development, when you look at economic development, there’s also new startups that all come from this innovation engine. And that’s really what we are. 

Kate Young: 

We’ve talked about your incredible career, NASA, other huge higher ed institutions. How does Purdue stand out to you when it comes to fostering innovation and research? 

Karen Plaut: 

It is the most collaborative place I’ve ever worked. In terms of working together, I always tell people, “Other places say they collaborate, but not the way Purdue does.” You can go to anybody in any discipline and say, “Oh, you should go meet so-and-so in this other discipline.” And they never say, “Oh, they do that. Don’t want to work.” They say, “Great. Oh, I can’t wait to meet them.” And so, you can put people together and make amazing connections that you can’t at other places. People just act like average people and like each other. And it’s not just true at Purdue, it’s actually the State of Indiana. Working across the state, we all work together. We believe in working together to make things happen. And that’s not true in many, many other states and other places that I’ve been. 

Kate Young: 

We’ve had other guests remark on that on the podcast as well. We touched on this a couple minutes ago, but how does this research at Purdue impact the world? What would happen if Purdue wasn’t doing all of this incredible research? 

Karen Plaut: 

People would actually starve. I hate to sound dramatic, but some of the inventions and the things we’ve done in local communities around the world have made it so people can have a proper life. We host the Mandela Washington Fellows every year, who are innovation fellows, who then go back to Africa and help develop the innovation ecosystem there. There are so many different types of things. We’ve had remarkable success in areas like Ai. We’ve had a couple Nobel Prize winners, which you know about. All of these inventions just make a difference. 

Now, having said that, there are obviously other universities doing lots of good things, too, so I don’t want to make it sound like it would be cataclysmic because that’s not true. But it would have a significant impact. I really do think it would have an impact on the world if we didn’t exist. It’s terrible we didn’t exist. 

Kate Young: 

I can’t think about that. What does it mean to you to be a boilermaker and support Purdue research? 

Karen Plaut: 

I’m proud of what we do. It’s really fun to do what we do, and that’s partly because of the people we work with. We work with people that care, that have a passion, and that makes it just really, really fun to support Purdue and be a boilermaker. 

Kate Young: 

Karen shares a few of her most memorable boilermaker experiences and gives some final advice to those interested in pursuing a career in research. 

Karen Plaut: 

I think anytime you go to a basketball game… I sound crazy. 

Kate Young: 

Absolutely. 

Karen Plaut: 

But when you’re in the arena, and the noise and the pride is fantastic. My husband and I, we often support the international students who come. And so, we’ll bring them over to our house. And they are so proud to be at Purdue and makes you proud to be a boilermaker. And it’s really fun what we take for granted to see what it means to them. And one of them, this weekend, we met with them and we asked, “What did you find that was amazing at Purdue?” And one of the things they said, “Security.” And we’re like, “What does that mean? What are you talking…” “Secure to walk up the street. Secure to be at the university?” We don’t even think of some of these things. That’s for him, was the most amazing thing, was that you could go anywhere and do anything and it was safe. 

Kate Young: 

Anyone who’s interested in research, what advice would you give to them? 

Karen Plaut: 

Pursue your dreams. And I would say, don’t get stuck if you don’t like something. And this is even if you’re not interested in research. It’s any student. And I loved my graduate students too, so just to be clear. I happen to focus on undergrad. Pursue your dreams. Don’t let things get in your way. I’m a woman in a field that was very male oriented. 

Kate Young: 

Absolutely. 

Karen Plaut: 

If I let the fact that I was a woman or some of the things that were said to me along the way get in my way, I wouldn’t be where I am today. So, be resilient. Think about what you want. Try different things. You never know what’s interesting until you try it, and then just keep moving forward. When you find those things, say, “Okay, I want to do that.” If you had asked me as a student, would I be working for NASA, I would’ve have been… That wouldn’t happen. If you had asked me if I would’ve been the executive vice president for Purdue, I would’ve went, “Of course, not.” So, you never know what can happen in life. Just pursue those things that make you happy and you’ll be successful. 

Kate Young: 

I love that. That’s great advice. Well, Karen, is there anything I missed? Anything else you want to share with our listeners? 

Karen Plaut: 

I think we covered quite a bit of ground. I could talk for three hours if you wanted, but I don’t think that’s what we need to do. So thank you very much. 

Kate Young: 

Well, we appreciate it. 

Karen Plaut: 

I appreciate it. 

Kate Young: 

It was wonderful. Thank you. 

Karen Plaut: 

Thank you. 

Kate Young: 

We can’t thank Karen enough for joining us for our final research series episode of the year. She had such wonderful insights and advice. And her passion for research was so evident during our conversation. Now, Purdue University is an R1 research institution. And there are less than 150 universities in the entire country that classify as one. What exactly does this mean, though? You can watch Karen explain more about Purdue’s status as an R1 university on our This is Purdue YouTube page. YouTube.com/@thisispurdue. And you can also check out Karen’s full video interview in Purdue’s data science and AI building as well while you’re over there. Plus, be sure to follow This is Purdue on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or wherever you get your podcasts, so you never miss an episode. 

This is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young. Our podcast videography for this episode was led by Ted Schellenberger in collaboration with Jon Garcia, Thad Boone and Zach Mogensen. Our social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. Our podcast distribution strategy is led by Teresa Walker and Carly Eastman. Our podcast design is led by Caitlin Freeville. Our podcast photography is led by John Underwood. Our podcast team project manager is Rain Gu. Our podcast YouTube promotions is managed by Kirsten Bauman. Additional writing and research assistance is led by Sophie Ritz. And our This is Purdue intern is Caroline Keim. 

Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcasts. There you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review. And as always, boiler up.

Jennifer Pyrz: 

This is Jennifer Pyrz and you’re listening to This is Purdue. 

Kate Young: 

Hi, I’m Kate Young and you are listening to This is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators? Who are these Boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty and alumni, taking small steps toward their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

I really wanted to just see the world and I knew that Purdue would allow me to do that. I think that was the biggest thing for me was the name recognition, the rigor of the curriculum. I knew that when I graduated I’d be able to go anywhere in the world. 

Kate Young: 

In this episode of This is Purdue, we are talking to Jennifer Pyrz, President and CEO of IndyGo. A Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering alumna, Jennifer was appointed president and CEO of Indiana’s largest public transit agency in May of 2024. You’ll hear more from Jennifer about how Purdue students in Indianapolis can take full advantage of the IndyGo bus lines to greater benefit their student experience, explore different parts of the city and expand their access to internship and job opportunities. You’ll also learn more about Jennifer’s vision for the future of public transportation in Indianapolis, including the recent opening of IndyGo’s Purple Line and the upcoming opening of the Blue Line in 2027. 

And how do large events in downtown Indy, such as the recent 2024 NBA All-Star Game in February, or the biggest pop star in the world touring the city for three nights helped to grow IndyGo ridership. She shares more on all of this as well. Plus we dig into how Jennifer’s civil engineering degrees from Purdue helped prepare her for her role leading IndyGo. 

Okay, let’s get to it. Here’s my conversation with Jennifer. Jennifer, thank you so much for joining This is Purdue. This is our official university podcast. We’re excited to dive into your past Purdue journey, your current journey leading IndyGo, which is Indiana’s largest public transit agency. So we’re excited to get started. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

Me too. Thank you for having me. 

Kate Young: 

Absolutely. Recently in May you were appointed to president and CEO of IndyGo, and this just benefits so much of the Indianapolis community and now it’s supporting our Purdue students in Indianapolis as well. Tell us a little bit about your background with IndyGo and how has it felt taking on this new leadership role? 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

I started working with IndyGo as my client when I was in the engineering consulting industry. I think it was back in 2004. So I’ve been working with IndyGo for a long time and just got the pleasure of working for IndyGo starting in 2020. So I started in April 2020, height of the pandemic I had, gosh, so let me go backwards again. The things that I’d worked on with IndyGo, the first job that I had working with IndyGo was to identify bus stops throughout the city and find places where we could put shelters in. So it’s always a goal of IndyGo is to make our stops more accessible and more comfortable for our passengers. So that was our job. We had to find a hundred places to put shelters on the street and it sounded easy at the time. I came quickly to learn about the challenges of public transportation. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

So that was first job. Did a number of things over the years, worked on facility, HVAC improvements, lighting, security, did the alternatives’ analysis for the Red Line, which was the original study to help identify what streets the Red Line should run on, where the station should be. And so was super thrilled when IndyGo called me and asked if I would come over in the role of chief development officer. So that was in charge of all of the planning and engineering for not only our bus infrastructure, but also our facility infrastructure. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

So again, did that in April 2020 started, there was nobody in the office. We were working from home for a very short period. When you compare it to other businesses, I want to say it was only five or six weeks, but I started during those five or six weeks and got right to work. So did that role for about four years when I was asked to jump in as the interim CEO when our previous CEO departed. So it’s been great. There’s so much to learn. I’ve always really gotten a lot of energy from learning new things and exploring new things, and so this has been just tremendously fun getting to learn all the different pieces of the work that we do, digging in a little bit deeper than I did in my previous role and getting to meet so many new people. So it’s been great. 

Kate Young: 

I want to go back to engineering. You got your bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 1995 from Purdue, and then your master’s in civil engineering in 1997. Let’s talk a little bit about your Purdue experience. Why did you decide to pursue civil engineering and why Purdue? 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin and really was just looking for an opportunity to see what was outside of the borders. We were just outside of Minneapolis, St. Paul, so University of Minnesota was an option. University of Wisconsin was an option, but I really wanted to just see the world and I knew that Purdue would allow me to do that. I think that was the biggest thing for me was the name recognition, the rigor of the curriculum. I knew that when I graduated I’d be able to go anywhere in the world, and so that was exciting to me. I envisioned myself a big city on the coast somewhere, mountains, ocean, all of that. That’s why I picked Purdue. I actually started out in aeronautical engineering and I look back, I think that was how I convinced my parents to let me go to Purdue with out-of-state tuition was, I’m going to be an astronaut mom. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

But I quickly learned that I gravitated to something a little bit, I say concrete, which is kind of funny because it’s not meant to be a pun, but something that I can see and feel and touch felt a little bit more comfortable to me. And then I also just felt like civil engineering gave me more flexibility on where I could live and the different options of what I could do. I think I came to civil engineering or engineering in general, not really knowing what I was getting into, but liking math and thinking that that was a good career for women to be in. And then I just sort of found my way from there, just little steps at a time. So I started to narrow, and then I went into civil and I picked structural, and then I moved into transportation. So just sort of narrowing and finding my groove along the way. 

Kate Young: 

Yeah, and that makes sense. Civil engineering has a few more career paths probably than some of the other engineering verticals. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

It felt like it to me at least. Yes. 

Kate Young: 

Yeah, absolutely. Reflecting back on your time at Purdue, are you able to share any favorite memories, classes, mentors, professors who influenced your career path today? 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

So many. So many. I’ll try to keep it brief. I’d say the biggest thing that influenced me and my time at Purdue was being part of the Purdue Engineering Student Council. I met so many friends there, met my husband there. We were both on the council together and just had an opportunity to try out leadership roles, kind of peek the creative juices that I might not get in statics and dynamics classes. So that time and the things that I learned and the people I met stay with me of course today. Absolutely a couple professors who jumped to mine, first of all is John Fricker. He taught the transportation classes and sort of showed me the softer side of civil engineering, so more of the transportation planning, the studies, which really spoke to me. I, like I said, was good at math and I liked the math end of engineering, but I’m probably not the traditional sit behind a computer, do research, that type of thing. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

So it was nice to see ways in which I could build my career in sort of the gray areas. So it wasn’t all calculations. There’s not always a right or wrong answer. There’s a lot of trade-offs, and I liked that about the work. So John Fricker unfortunately passed away a few years ago, so I think I got to tell him a little bit about how much he meant to me, but I’ll take this opportunity to reinforce that. And then Kumares Sinha was another one. He was my advisor in graduate school, and I think he’s still maybe haunting the halls of civil engineering. I hope so. But great guy, fabulous mentor, was especially in my graduate career, really important to my development. 

Kate Young: 

So as a Boilermaker, how did Jennifer’s Purdue education prepare her for her role at IndyGo? I asked her about any specific skills or experiences from Purdue that she’s found especially valuable in her current role. Plus we dive into how IndyGo supports Purdue students in Indianapolis by providing accessible and efficient transportation options. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

Oh gosh, lots of ways. I would say the leadership opportunities of Purdue Engineering Student Council, I was in Chi Epsilon. Having a chance to lead initiatives, be creative, work directly with faculty was important. And then I think the overall rigor of the program. I was chatting with my husband about this last night because he’s also a civil engineer, and I think that Purdue sets the expectation of success. And so I think we both agreed that that meant a lot. You were expected to show up at that first industrial roundtable and be in a suit and have a resume, and you’re 18 years old and this is all foreign, but they really kind of throw you into things and expect that you will figure it out and succeed. And I think those skills work all the way through your life. 

Kate Young: 

Absolutely. Our biggest Boilermaker development right now is in Indy, and we’re really excited about our expansion with our new urban campus in Indianapolis. How will these Purdue students benefit from IndyGo’s transportation options? 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

We have a wonderful network, and Indianapolis is a walkable downtown. It is one of the reasons why we draw so many conventions. It’s easy to get around, and the campus is right on the edge of so many great parts of our community. The transit system connects the campus with the downtown. I like to think it just gets us a little bit further. It will allow students to access housing that maybe is a little bit further away than they would be able to get otherwise. Will allow them access to employers not only in the downtown, but all of the areas of Indianapolis. We’re a pretty big spread out city, and we have employment in so many different areas of the community, and so by having transportation, I hope students will take advantage of that and get out and explore a little bit. There’s so many great opportunities, not only in the downtown area, but all of the different parts, Broad Ripple, and Fountain Square, and Greenwood, and Beech Grove, Motor Speedway. 

Kate Young: 

Absolutely, yep. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

It’s a way to connect and I think a way to save a little bit of money and still get where we need to be. 

Kate Young: 

Absolutely. I’m a proud former Fountain Square resident, so I love that area. I love downtown Indy. What advice would you offer to Purdue students about navigating and making the most of the transportation? You kind of just touched on that, but how can they really make the most of this great option that they have? 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

It’s so accessible and it can feel maybe a little intimidating at first. So I would encourage them to check out our website, there is information about how to ride that is very helpful. They also should sign up for our social media channels and follow those because we have a lot of fun social media content that not only teaches them about how to ride, but how to pay for our service and then also how to connect with our community. So definitely sign up for our social media channels and then get a buddy and explore a little bit. I also want to encourage people to reach out to the operators when they get on the bus. The operators know the city better than anyone else. We don’t have operators who are assigned to specific routes. They drive all the routes, so they will know their way around. They’ll be able to help the students connect to not only different parts of the city, but to different routes and certainly start up a conversation, make a new friend. 

Kate Young: 

As a Boilermaker yourself, how does it feel to contribute to the accessibility, the convenience of public transportation for current and future generations of Purdue students? 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

It feels great. Our Bus Rapid Transit lines are so exciting to be a part of. They are really groundbreaking. It’s surprising, we have had so many agencies from all over the country come and learn about our Bus Rapid Transit. So being able to provide that premium service to community and to the students, really excited about. So I hope students will take advantage of that. I’m confident it will be a great experience for them. 

Kate Young: 

One of the biggest projects the IndyGo team has been working on is the Purple Line, which recently started service on October 13th, 2024. The Purple Line travels 15.2 miles and connects Indianapolis to the city of Lawrence. It also brings major infrastructure improvements, including nearly 10 miles of sidewalks, more than 350 ADA curb ramps, new street paving, a multi-use path, storm sewer separation, and much more to advance the community. Jennifer shares more insights into the Purple Line project and its anticipated impact on Indianapolis. Plus, she discusses the meaning behind Bus Rapid Transit or BRT and how IndyGo has been a trailblazer when it comes to BRTs after launching one of the longest BRT routes, the Red Line back in 2019. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

The Purple Line is our second Bus Rapid Transit line. It is 15 miles and it goes out of downtown and follows the Red Line north to 38th Street, and then it continues east on 38th Street to Post Road to the city of Lawrence. It will largely replace our Route 39, which is one of our highest ridership routes. So our three BRT lines will be creating three overall, all three of them are along our highest ridership areas. Employment density, residential density are important to supporting Bus Rapid Transit. So 30 stations, about 18 of them are exclusive to the Purple Line, but the rest are shared with the Red Line, and about 90% of them are in dedicated lanes, which means that the service will be faster and more reliable because they will not be competing with cars. Also, safer by not having cars in the same lane as the buses. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

Significant infrastructure improvements. So that’s one of the things that we talk about a lot is even if you are not a transit user, you will benefit from the work that these Bus Rapid Transit lines are moving forward. So curb ramps, sidewalks, paths, pavement resurfacing, it’s an absolute transformation how that corridor looks today versus how it looked three years ago before we started construction. We’re also seeing tremendous economic development along the line. There’s a new healthcare center that’s open, there’s a new grocery store, there’s a manufacturing facility for Cook Medical. All of these are things that help that community grow, and it’s been tremendous to watch. And it’s one of the things that makes BRT really so special, is the opportunity there to draw economic development to a community. 

Kate Young: 

And when you talk about Rapid, that’s because it has its own dedicated lanes? 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

That’s one of the reasons. So our Bus Rapid Transit has got a number of things that make it transit. Dedicated lanes is an important one. The stations are also important, so we have fewer stations than we did stops. So the bus is stopping less frequently, and they’re raised platform, so when the bus pulls up there, it’s faster and easier for people of all abilities to get on. We also have something called off-board fare collection. So on a typical bus, the bus would stop and people would queue up and walk past the driver and pay their fare. Whereas on our BRT systems, people board multiple doors. They pay off-board at the station, they board multiple doors and the bus just carries on. We also have transit signal priority along all of our Bus Rapid Transit systems. So the bus is talking to the signal and either extending the green a little bit to allow the bus to get through, or sometimes truncating a red, shortening a red light. So lots of different ways in which we make sure that we speed things up and are competitive with the personal vehicle. 

Kate Young: 

Along with the Purple Line, IndyGo is also working on another Bus Rapid Transit route, the Blue Line, which is scheduled to launch in 2027. Between the Red Line, Purple Line and Blue Line, these three BRTs will bring more than $400 million in safety enhancements and infrastructure improvements to the city of Indianapolis. 

Kate Young: 

And you’ve said the Blue Line is one of your favorite projects. So what sets that apart and what excites you most about that project? 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

I guess maybe I love a good challenge. I mentioned that earlier. I love to learn new things- 

Kate Young: 

Because you’re a boiler maker, you love a good challenge. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

Yeah, the Blue Line has been a challenge. Some of it was the timing of it with COVID. We had some significant cost challenges that we had to sort out. Prices increased dramatically, supply chain, labor prices have increased, and that impacted our budget quite a bit. So we worked through that. We’ve also had a number of legislative challenges with the Blue Line, so that was just something else. And it feels good. I consider them to be hurdles. It feels good to jump over each of those hurdles and find a way forward, and I’m really confident that we are going to find a way forward. We are super close. The design’s almost done, and we’ll be putting it out for bid here and hope to be under construction by the time that the snow melts next year, so hopefully February or March. We’re really excited about it. It’s probably the project I’ve been working on the longest. I was involved kind of alongside of it when it was going through the alternatives’ analysis stage. That was in 2013. 

Kate Young: 

Wow. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

And we will start construction in 2025 and be done in 2027 or 2028. So a dozen years of my life working on the Blue Line. A lot of people are super excited because it connects to the airport. It’s 24 miles long east, west, and it’s the culmination of our vision. 

Kate Young: 

Tell us a little bit about how it differs from the Purple Line? You said it goes through the airport, that’s really important, obviously. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

Yeah, so the Red Line is our first one, and it goes north-south through downtown. The Purple Line is entirely north of downtown and goes off to the northeast. And then, yeah, the Blue Line is east-west. So all together they’re intended to form the spine or the backbone of our system and the local routes weave into it. So all of the local routes are also being improved through our Marion County Transit plan, and people will be able to go between the local routes and the BRTs free transfers between the lines to get where they need to go. So overall, once the Marion County Transit plan is completely implemented, we will have vastly improved service from where we were when we started. 

Kate Young: 

We just talked about challenges. Is there another specific challenge you’ve faced throughout your time at IndyGo and how did you persist and work through it? 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

I hate to dwell on it, but my biggest challenge was probably the legislative challenge that faced us this year. We have, over multiple years faced legislative challenges and I think people not entirely understanding the benefits that public transportation can bring to a community. I’ll narrow it down to that. The bill that was brought forward this year, I had only been in this role for a month, month and a half when that bill was introduced, and it had the potential to kill the Blue Line altogether. So I worked with our government affairs team, with our government affairs consultants, got to know the legislators who had a stake in the game and had influence and just worked on educating them. And that’s really all it was. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

I think it helped that I was an engineer to be able to just lay out the facts and talk about it from a technical perspective and take the emotion out of it, take the passion and agenda out of it. It’s just this is what it is and these are the challenges that we face and this is why we think it’s important. And thankfully, we came out at the end of that legislative session with the project able to move forward. So we’re excited about that. But certainly it was a challenge. I think just persistence and being honest and speaking the facts were what got us through. 

Kate Young: 

I know a lot of our podcast guests too, say, obviously Purdue prepared me with all these technical components and that the educational things, but also those soft skills and being able to have conversations like you were saying with people and why it’s important and- 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

Absolutely. 

Kate Young: 

I asked Jennifer more about the future of IndyGo from expanding transportation accessibility even further to thinking more globally across the entire enterprise. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

I mentioned our Marion County Transit plan, so we are not quite done building that out. We rule out certain components of it as we go along. So this October when we open up the Purple Line, we’ll be increasing service on a number of other lines, making some other changes to our local route system to align with that opening and then moving along as we get towards opening the Blue Line again. Some additional tweaks, overall increasing the frequency on many of our routes, aligning our routes better with where development is and making sure that our stops are more accessible. Every year we spend a good amount of attention on making sure our stops are accessible for people of all abilities, and that includes sidewalks and it includes boarding pads, which when the bus pulls up at a stop, if somebody is in a wheelchair and a device, they’re exiting and entering the bus from a solid, safe place. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

So usually it’s a concrete pad. They’re not getting off onto a piece of grass. So those are called boarding pads. Sometimes we’re putting in crosswalks or pedestrian signals, things like that, shelters, benches in some locations, all of these things just helping make transit easier to use and just helping the overall environment. Everybody starts and ends a transit trip by walking so we want to make sure that those walking facilities help our customers as well. So yeah, so all of those things are on the books and we’re just working the plan right now, getting that all built. 

Kate Young: 

Yeah, that’s a great point about starting and ending with walking, because even from Fountain Square, I would walk to that stop, which had a great overhang for protection and benches. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

Very good, very good. We do our best. Not all places can accommodate it. That goes back to my original conversation about trying to find places to put a hundred shelters. It’s not as easy as it seems, right of way and electricity for lighting and on and on, but do our best. 

Kate Young: 

All of these things that you wouldn’t think of. So those are great points. You previously mentioned you are thinking more globally across IndyGo. What does that mean for the future of IndyGo? 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

We will, always under my leadership, but I’m sure pretty much anyone’s leadership strive to be a world-class transit system. We are looking to always find ways to improve, connect our community, be innovative, be collaborative, be cooperative. So that will continue. And I really want to involve our entire workforce in that. I think there’s lots of ways that everyone in this building and our campuses can contribute to making sure that we’re providing best service to our customers. And the people that are out on the street every day or at our transit center for hours a day know better than me most of the time. So we’re going to work together to find ways to improve value to our customers. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

I believe very strongly in being adaptable, being accountable. We take tremendous pride in the work we do, and I want to make sure that the community sees that. I really love meeting people, and it happens over and over and over again, meeting people who work for us. They’re so proud of the work that they do, and I want to make sure that that is felt and that they feel the pride that we have in the work that they do as well. So also looking at ways in which we connect maybe with other city agencies, regional partners, elected officials to just continue to bring our customers increased value. 

Kate Young: 

I was reading a couple articles that when we’re having these huge events in downtown Indy, the recent NBA All-Star Game, that really helps boost IndyGo ridership. We have the biggest pop star in the world coming to downtown Indy in November. What are your goals for continuing to grow ridership, especially during these popular events? 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

Ridership is critical, of course to our business. It is why we exist. It’s also a source of revenue for us. So ridership is one of the key things that we focus on growing. We largely gain ridership by being reliable, and so our reliability is important, and that means having operators ready, working through issues like traffic congestion, that’s where the dedicated lanes come in, but also working on a transit signal priority, working with IMPD in the city of Indianapolis to prioritize transit when we can. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

When there’s closures around the city we always try to, and the city’s been really great working with us, trying to at least keep transit able to go through an area. We are always looking at the comfort of our facilities, if we can be reliable, sort of that base level of need. People need to be able to know that they’re getting to where they need to go when they expect to be there, and then the comfort comes into it. So continuing to improve our stops and our stations and making sure that our buses are comfortable. And then frequency of course is important too. It’s a lot easier to schedule your life around a bus that’s coming every 10 minutes versus every 30 or 60. So frequency is super important to us and part of our Marion County Transit plan objectives. 

Kate Young: 

Are there any other specific goals for IndyGo over the next few years? I know the Blue Line is a big one, like we talked about. Anything else? 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

Sure is, yes. So of course, building out all of the things that we’ve promised, but we are also working on an update of our strategic plan, and there’s three things that I really am going to focus the agency on over the next few years. One of them is ridership, building the ridership. We talk about finding that hidden demand and capitalizing on that. So the MBA All-Star weekend is like that, where that hidden demand is and how do we draw it out. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

Another one is protecting our operators and frontline workers. The world is changing and our operators and the folks that work at the CTC with the public are running into some challenging situations sometimes, and we want to make sure that we give them the tools and the support that they need. So that is one of our strategic objectives. And then the third thing is focusing on the long-term future. Obviously, we have been spending a lot of time building and focusing on maintaining, is our next step. So making sure that for the long run we’re fiscally responsible that we continue to bring value to our customers and that we’re ready to meet the needs. 

Kate Young: 

What legacy do you hope to leave at IndyGo, but also within the city of Indianapolis? 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

I don’t think a lot about my legacy, but I guess I want to make sure I leave things better than when I started. So always looking for ways in which to improve, small ways, big ways. I guess the other thing, well, leaving the agency ready for the long-term, so back to that fiscal sustainability, long-term future that I mentioned. And then I think probably the big thing that I am hoping to do is sort of change the conversation about the value of public transportation. I’d like for our community to really understand how important it is to have a well-funded accessible public transportation system for the city. Every dollar that is invested in public transportation, this is a study that the American Public Transportation Association and numerous others have done. Every dollar that is put into the public transportation system reaps three to $5 depending on what study you look at. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

Three to $5 in benefit, and that comes from lots of things. Public transportation is sort of the great equalizer. It connects people to economic opportunity. It is safer way to travel than my car. It’s also healthier. Some of that is that walking to and from gets people active. It also reduces mental stress. It connects people with each other. People can save money, reduce gas consumption, reduces traffic congestion on the roads. We tend to, I think, underestimate, undervalue the impact that public transportation can have on communities. Another thing it does that we don’t talk about very much is it allows us to build more densely, which then reduces the sprawl that eats up farmland and requires us to build highways and more roads. It allows us to use our resources more wisely and efficiently if we can be more dense. This is kind of big picture, but it’s something if I were to leave a legacy, I would love to shift that conversation a little bit and help people just be more, I guess, understanding of what it is we offer. 

Kate Young: 

Yeah. I love the conversation around why public transportation is important, especially for people in Indiana who have maybe lived in the suburbs or out in the country a lot of their lives. I don’t think unless you’re going to New York City or Chicago, you really grasp we have a great public transportation system in Indy too. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

And it benefits them even if they don’t live, if you live out in the country and you want a peaceful, quiet country place to live. I lived out in the country growing up, and so I understand how valuable that is. But it benefits them to have a nice dense urban center that is supported by public transportation so that we’re not building low-density housing on their pristine farmland. 

Kate Young: 

According to a new ranking by strategists, Purdue is a number one public university for producing Fortune 500 CEOs. I asked Jennifer what she thinks makes Boilermaker leaders so unique. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

Hard to put my finger on. I think some of it maybe goes back to the things I was talking about before about the rigor of the education, the expectation for success. I think the size of Purdue and the level of opportunity that it provides to find what drives every individual, the leadership opportunities, opportunities to get involved. I remember when I went to Purdue and a lot of my friends went to very small schools from Little River Falls, Wisconsin, and Purdue seemed so big and far away, and I often said to them, it is what you make it, and it is as small as you want it to be once you find your group. And I could walk across campus any given day, and I’d see three people that I knew in between classes no matter what part of the campus I was at. But the big part of Purdue was so valuable to me in that there was something for absolutely everyone. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

And I encourage, when I meet with students nowadays, I encourage them to get involved in anything. If I’m hiring a civil engineer, they don’t have to be the leader of the ASCE or SWE or one of the engineering related organizations. They can be the head of the bowling team or they can be the head of the Grand Prix stuff. There are so many opportunities. Anything you want is available to you. So I think that helps build a lot, as you were saying too. A lot of skills that you don’t necessarily get in the classroom. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

But certainly the classroom, the way that we are taught to think, especially in engineering, but I am assuming it’s broad across Purdue, but the way that we’re taught to think is really important too. We know that we’re not always going to get it right the first time. So that scientific method thing, right, is we learn to put out a hypothesis and test it and then not get discouraged when it doesn’t work. We know how to find the tweaks that need to be made to make it better, better, better, better until we get it right. That’s my theory. 

Kate Young: 

Jennifer ends with her next giant leap. And one last note on the value and importance of public transportation. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

Opening the Purple Line in October and getting the Blue Line under construction are huge focuses for me. We also are going to be building a new fleet terminal and maintenance facility. So those I would consider giant leaps in the future of IndyGo, at least. As for me personally, I kind of learned not to plan it all out. I used to be a big planner and I had my whole life mapped out. I mentioned I was going to live in this big city and mountains and oceans and everything else, and my life turned out different than I imagined when I was 18, but probably way better also. I’ve just, as I get older, realize that sometimes you just got to take life as it comes and you’ll be rewarded with all sorts of unexpected wonderful things. So I’m thrilled to be in the position I’m at. I have no idea what will be next. I would love to retire from here. So maybe my next giant leap is going to be retiring and spending time with some future grandkids. That would be awesome. 

Kate Young: 

I love that. I love that. 

Kate Young: 

Well, we can’t thank you enough for joining us today. Is there anything else that you think is important to share with our listeners? 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

I could stress, again, the importance anything of the public transportation industry, and that I hope that the work that we do really can be recognized, employs hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. We have 800 people here in Indianapolis. There are 96, I learned different businesses in Indiana that support the public transportation industry, from the companies that build and assemble buses to wheelchair lifts, all of the systems, materials, supplies. So it is a far-reaching industry, even if you don’t live in Indianapolis. I think most people that are listening to this podcast are touched in some way and benefit in some way from public transportation. So I’ll maybe leave it with that. That’s perfect. 

Kate Young: 

That’s perfect. Well, thank you again. It was a pleasure talking to you. 

Jennifer Pyrz: 

Thank you, Kate. I really had a lot of fun. Thanks for inviting me. 

Kate Young: 

The, This is Purdue podcast team took a field trip to visit Jennifer and her team at the IndyGo headquarters in downtown Indianapolis for this special episode. We got to experience what it’s like being part of Indiana’s largest public transportation provider, and we even had the chance to ride on an IndyGo bus. You can watch our team’s experience on the bus and check out a rapid-fire Q&A with Jennifer while we’re riding an IndyGo bus on our, This is Purdue podcast YouTube page, youtube.com/@ThisisPurdue, and as always, be sure to follow This is Purdue on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Kate Young: 

This is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young. Our podcast videography for this episode was led by Ted Schellenberger in collaboration with Thad Boone and Zach Mogensen. Our social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. Our podcast distribution strategy is led by Teresa Walker and Carly Eastman. Our podcast design is led by Caitlin Freeville. Our podcast photography is led by John Underwood. Our podcast team project manager is Rain Gu. Our podcast YouTube Promotions is managed by Kirsten Bauman. Additional writing and research assistance is led by Sophie Ritz. And our This is Purdue intern is Caroline Keim. Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode visit our website at purdue.edu/podcast. There you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review. And as always, Boiler up.

Kate Young: 

Hi. I’m Kate Young, and you are listening to This is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking. Who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators, who are these Boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty and alumni taking small steps toward their giant leaps, and inspiring others to do the same. 

Drew Feustel: 

I still remember the moment I got my acceptance letter to Purdue, and when I saw that film, I literally started crying when I saw that scene, because that moment for me was so impactful in my life, and I knew that it was going to lead to many amazing things, and it has. The fact that I’m sitting here now sharing this story with you means that it did make a difference, and I hope that all of you believe in the reason you’re here, and that you remember the moment you were accepted to Purdue, and that you’re here to make giant leaps, because you will. This is the place to do it, and we all commend you for being here and taking those steps. 

Kate Young: 

On September 12th, 2024, Purdue University premiered a first of its kind short film called Boilers to Mars, in front of a sold-out crowd in Fowler Hall. And in this episode of This is Purdue, we are featuring a special panel we recorded live at this incredible event. Designated as the Cradle of Astronauts, Purdue University knows what it takes to travel to space. And chances are when humankind makes its way to Mars, a Boilermaker will be in the lead. Boilers to Mars is a 10-minute film designed to explore what it will take to go first, to take the small steps that lead to the giant leap, and each character’s persistence in this short film was inspired by our very own Boilermaker students, faculty, and alumni. So before you tune into this episode, I highly recommend checking out the first ever short film produced by Purdue, on boilerstomars.com. 

Then come right back here and listen to our panel conversation. See, during this event, the audience was able to view a special screening of the film, and then afterwards experience a conversation between five Purdue space experts. Former NASA Astronaut and Boilermaker alum, Drew Feustel; Purdue professors and NASA contributors, Briony Horgan and Marshall Porterfield; and SpaceKids Global founders, Mark and Sharon Hagle. I had the honor of moderating this panel and I’m really excited you all now get to hear these panelists discuss the future of space exploration. Here’s our live panel conversation from the Boilers to Mars movie premiere. But first, a quick word from this short film supporting partner, SpaceKids Global, an organization with Boilermaker ties that is advancing space awareness and exploration opportunities for the next generation. 

Mark Hagle: 

The short film Boilers to Mars is supported by SpaceKids Global, an organization dedicated to the future of space exploration. SpaceKids Global inspires and empowers young people by introducing them to the wide range of careers available in space exploration and technology. 

Sharon Hagle: 

Discover how we are shaping the future of space exploration one young mind at a time. Visit BoilersToMars.com. 

Kate Young: 

That was incredible. There’s just so many moments in that, that give me goosebumps. I’m sure you all felt that in the crowd too. My name is Kate Young, I’m the host of This is Purdue, the official university podcast. Any podcast listeners out there? All right. Okay. Well, I am so excited and honored to be here tonight to lead this panel and we have some incredible panelists with us. I know you all will enjoy it. So I’m going to start off by introducing them and we are going to have that conversation of what it takes to go first. So first up, we have former NASA astronaut Drew Feustel. 

He is a Purdue University presidential ambassador and proud Boilermaker College of Science alum. He’s also part of Purdue’s esteemed Cradle of Astronauts. Okay, next up we have Mark and Sharon Hagle, founder of SpaceKids Global, a supporting partner for Boilers to Mars Tonight. Now they are space pioneers in their own right. Mark and Sharon made history after becoming the first married couple on a commercial space flight in 2022, and they also brought with them Saba the Space Dog as you can see here. And now, Mark is a proud Purdue alum. He’s a leading advocate for space exploration. Sharon is the CEO of SpaceKids Global, which is an organization that introduces kids to the diversity of careers in space exploration and technology, and it has a special focus on empowering young girls. The couple was also the lead donor of Mark and Sharon Hagle Hall, the home of Purdue bands and orchestras. 

Next up we have Briony Horgan, a professor of planetary science in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Briony specializes in Martian geology, so super fitting for us tonight. She’s also a co-investigator and long-term planner on NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover mission. We also have a podcast about Perseverance Rover and Briony, so be sure to check that out. That rover has been collecting core samples of rocks on Mars since 2021, with the hopes of bringing it back to earth for further study. 

Okay, and finally we have Marshall Porterfield. Marshall is a professor of agricultural and biological engineering in Purdue’s College of Agriculture, and former division director for Space Life and Physical Sciences at NASA. Marshall has been studying life in space for over 30 years, so he’s going to be a great panelist to join us tonight. And Marshall and his team’s LEAF project was recently selected by NASA for the Artemis III mission. This project will explore cultivating crops in space with the goal to grow plants on the moon by 2026. So give another round of applause for our panelists. Thank you all for being here. We just watched that film. What’d you guys think? 

Drew Feustel: 

I think it’s amazing. 

Kate Young: 

So to kick this panel off, Boilers to Mars has host a crew of people that all help together to take this mission and be the first. So with your all experiences within the space industry, what did it take for you to go first? We’ll start with Drew and we’re going to go down the line. 

Drew Feustel: 

I don’t think I was first at anything. I was just following the long tradition of astronauts coming from Purdue and we always say that we stand on the shoulder of giants, those that came before us, that’s certainly been true in NASA. And I think now with the private space sector building capabilities, those individuals and those companies are standing on the shoulders of the giants that came before them, and the heritage that as a university like Purdue has created to allow that to happen. So it’s just amazing to be associated with such great institution and history, and just pleasure to be here. And I want to thank everybody for coming out, and I did think the show is amazing. I just really love that film. 

Kate Young: 

Mark and Sharon for you both. What themes in Boilers to Mars resonated with your experience going up in space as the first married couple? 

Mark Hagle: 

First of all, you guys are so lucky and so fortunate to be at such a wonderful university. What this university has to offer is just incredible. And the opportunities, the opportunities it gives you in life is just amazing. And it said in the thing not to be afraid to be first. Richard Branson said it a little differently. If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough. So think of what the future could be for you, think what the opportunities are and what the benefits could be with an education that you get such a wonderful university. So my congratulations to you for being here and we were very fortunate to be the first married couple to go on a commercial flight to space, and probably the first legal kiss in space. I’m not sure about that. 

Sharon Hagle: 

And we’re still talking. No, what better way to venture into space? We are so grateful for the opportunity to be a part of the space industry so early on, as it starts to take flight. We did have an opportunity to meet with some people and I always like to say there’s three things that can change your trajectory. It’s education, opportunity and experience, and being at the right place. And I think you guys did an excellent job, because I’ve always told people when I’m speaking, that going to space is the most emotional and spiritual journey you will ever take, and I think this film pokes you on how emotional it is and how it’s so exciting. 

Mark Hagle: 

Saba, do you have anything to add? 

Sharon Hagle: 

By popular demand, anybody that follows SpaceKids Global knows that Saba is always there. Blue Origin made him a flight suit to match ours, so every time we go into schools or science centers, he has his space suit on. And the first question Q&A is can we see your dog again? 

Kate Young: 

Briony and Marshall, same with you too. How did you resonate with Boilers to Mars on a personal level? 

Briony Horgan: 

Yeah, I mean it’s amazing seeing what Purdue students can do, right? We’re giving them all these amazing opportunities and skills, but it’s really up to the students to take them and do an incredible thing with them. And so, for me it was just so rewarding to think about maybe some of our first planetary science graduating class of students who graduated just about 10 years ago, might be some of the first astronauts on Mars, using some of the things they learned in our classes about the planets, about the geology of Mars to actually go study things on Mars, which is just really, really uplifting for me. 

Marshall Porterfield: 

For me it looked like home, because the students in the greenhouse, those were my students in the greenhouse just this morning to me, so it looked like home. But no, how do you go first? You have to prove that you’re ready for that, and how do you prove? You prepare yourself, you have to learn. And really, learning requires making mistakes, so you have to be not afraid of making mistakes, and learning from those mistakes, and that’s how you learn to move forward. That’s how you become the first, to get the chance to go first. 

Kate Young: 

And that persistence after you make a mistake to keep going, right? 

Marshall Porterfield: 

That’s right. 

Kate Young: 

Each of you have worked closely with government agencies like NASA and commercial entities like Blue Origin. Can you share some of your professional experiences when it comes to working towards traveling to and sustaining life in space? Drew, we’ll start with you. 

Drew Feustel: 

Of course NASA has been working for decades to put humans in space and one of the mandates of NASA is to enable low earth orbit economy ultimately, and assist lunar economy, to see that not only government agencies are sponsoring human space, flight and space travel, but also private industry. So what’s been amazing is to see very recently, I mean, over the last decade, is how the private companies are coming online. We see that SpaceX has been very successful in providing access to the International Space Station and the idea is that we’ll keep developing those capabilities, allow NASA to focus on returning to the surface of the moon, and ultimately going on to Mars with the support of these private industries. And those industries with government funding right now are enabling or creating spacecraft and vehicles to get us there, and that allows NASA to do more with less budget, but also focus on the longer term, bigger picture projects and allow companies to be service providers for that access to space. 

So it’s been incredible to watch that happen. I was speaking with Mark just earlier about the idea that I have that we’re at an inflection point in human space exploration, where our technologies and capabilities are finally catching up with our desires and intentions in space, and that to me is really exciting. This is the most dynamic period of human spaceflight in its entirety of the entire program, since we started sending people into space in the late ’50s and early ’60s. So this is incredible time. We look forward to more advancements and really, we’re still at the infancy stage of human exploration. This is just the beginning and in 20 years or 50 years, we’re going to look back at the shuttle era, the Apollo era, the Gemini era, even the SpaceX Dragon era, and think how these were humble beginnings that led to all the great advances that we’re going to see I think in the next few decades. It’s just incredible. 

Mark Hagle: 

To amplify on that, the public-private partnership has been such a dramatic change to the space industry, and its ability to excel and move forward, and move forward at a pace that’s never been seen before in the history of the world. It’s incredible the accomplishments that have been made in the past years. And if we look to sustainability, if we look to the future of that, what it really means, the future isn’t necessarily the people that are sitting in this room, because we’re looking at going to Mars in sometime in the 2030s. The future of the young kids today and the education of the people that are 16 and younger, those are the people that are probably going to be on those first missions. And to encourage them to go into the STEM fields and to encourage them to get educations that are transformable into what is needed to go to Mars, not just as an astronaut, but as Sharon I’m sure will expand on, other professions. That’s what it’s really all about. That’s the sustainability for the future. 

Marshall Porterfield: 

Drew, when you were talking the way you were explaining it made me think about us outgrowing our logistics capabilities. That’s essentially what you’ve explained, and that means how do we provide food, water, sustainable human life? How are we going to sustain humans on these long duration missions? That’s going to require bioregenerative technologies, and that’s where we’re at now in terms of the gap. It’s the gap is biological, and so that’s why we’re really looking at developing the foundations for Bioastronautics, to create what comes next here at Purdue. 

Mark Hagle: 

But if I might expand on that and you’re exactly on point, and that is that problems that have existed on earth and problems that have existed in what do we do tomorrow? How do we solve the problem? They’re done by imagineers. They’re done by people that have the wherewithal and the capability of solving technological problems in advancements and discoveries for the future. The average age of the person that worked on the flight to the Moon was 26 years old. Sharon and I had the opportunity to tour SpaceX’s facility in Los Angeles, and the gentleman that designed the spacesuit, if you were watching what was happening today in space, where they had the spacewalk with the commercial astronauts, that spacesuit was designed by a graduate from MIT whose first job was working for SpaceX to design that spacesuit. Why is that? Young people don’t have boundaries. They don’t have preconceived notions on what should be and the way it should be. They’re problem solvers. That’s our future. 

Sharon Hagle: 

So in 2016, NASA graduated the first crew that was 50% women, 50% men. That was unheard of. At SpaceKids Global, we focus on elementary schools, getting the students excited about living off planet and preparing them for their futures in space. When they asked the astronauts when they knew they wanted to be in the space industry, nine times out of 10 it was a first grade teacher. That’s why it’s critical that we get students in early ages, from five years old to 12 years old, to participate and get them engaged. 

Briony Horgan: 

I’ll say the thing I’m most excited about, looking ahead to having humans on Mars is the amazing science we’re going to get to do. As it’s true, right? Because we’re going not just for exploration, but to learn new things, to push the frontiers of science, to learn basic things, like is there life in the universe beyond earth? And we’re trying to do that right now with our Rover, with the Perseverance Rover. We’re searching for signs of ancient microbial life on Mars, trying to collect samples to bring them back to earth, hopefully one day. But that’s the first step, right? But what’s really great is watching how things have evolved at NASA in terms of integrating science into the exploration, right? It’s not just flags and footprints anymore. It really is about where’s the best place we can go on the, back to the moon or to Mars, or we can learn the most to really help advance our science. And just watching that get closer and closer, as our little Rover gradually climbs up the giant crater rim of Jezero crater. It’s just getting closer every day. 

Kate Young: 

In Boilers to Mars, as we talked about sustainability, the crew tackles one of the toughest challenges the world is facing, is maintaining a sustainable presence to be on space. Drew, why do you think traveling to Mars is an important mission? Not just for Boilermakers, but for the whole world? 

Drew Feustel: 

In the words of John Young, “Single-planet species don’t last forever, just ask the dinosaurs.” And right now we are a single-planet species, and I truly believe as an astronaut that it’s really important for us to learn to live off of the planet, but also in attempting to live off the planet, we will create and understand technologies and capabilities that will allow us to survive on this planet. The regenerative life support systems and biogenetics, and all those things that are going to be important for us as we use resources on our planet, sometimes responsibly, sometimes irresponsibly. Those technologies that we create and the way we understand what it will take to live in the hostile environments of space will also provide opportunities for us to continue to live and thrive on this planet, which is going to be really important in our near term. 

Marshall Porterfield: 

Yeah, the sustainability issue is, really that is the gap. If you think about the cost of these missions and the mass issues, you buy down that mass by making everything recyclable. Now all of a sudden these missions are possible both in terms of the human life support, but also economically too. So we can actually buy it down that way. But what we’re trying to do in space is solve all the problems that are already a problem here on earth, but they’re harder in space. So it’s kind of ironic in that way too, but it’s also profoundly interdisciplinary. It’s not just an aerospace problem, it’s agriculture, biology, medicine. All the disciplines of life have to become together, and you think about an engineered system that brings together all the disciplines of life and of humanity, and that’s really the challenge. It’s a major challenge for humanity. We need to create the technology to be sustainable here. At the same time, that’s going to enable us to be able to project humanity out into this universe. 

Kate Young: 

Briony and Marshall, as professors at Purdue, what do you think it will take Boilermakers specifically to go first with this? 

Briony Horgan: 

I think they’re already doing it, to be honest, right? I think we’ve got some of the best students in the country thinking about these exact problems, right? Really putting their minds to this. And already we have student groups there, Marshall was telling you about student groups that are trying to build the first to Habitat at a university to test living on Mars. We have students group trying to fly small stats in the space. It’s really, really incredible what Boilermakers students can do and they’re already doing it. So all you have to do is graduate and keep doing amazing things. 

Marshall Porterfield: 

And there’s so much energy and excitement right now with some of the students, and students groups are starting to respond to these opportunities, and starting to organize themselves. In some ways they’re actually ahead of NASA and trying to build a habitat here to actually do that kind of work. So yeah, it’s really important. We can do it here too. 

Kate Young: 

Mark and Sharon, what motivated you two to be so involved in inspiring the next generation? You’ve talked a lot about that with SpaceKids Global. What makes you two really inspired to have kids think that they’ll be the first, right? 

Sharon Hagle: 

Well, it all started a while ago when we were with Richard Branson. We signed up, what, 20 years ago to be Virgin Galactic Future Astronauts. And by the way, space, you have to have patience. It’s not an overnight success. We’ve founded SpaceKids Global based on three things. At the time I was reading the International Educational Forum, where it stated that the US students had fallen to 38 in math and 71 in science out of 71 countries. Then I was at a college where Dr. Michio Kaku was speaking, the physicist, and he said, “If you don’t have kids hooked in math and science by six and seven, you’re going to lose them.” 

And then when we were speaking to Richard, Richard kind of pushed me and said, “Sharon, if your dreams don’t scare you, they’re too small.” 

So I think the universe wanted me to start this. What’s so exciting about our mission is we’re inspiring elementary school kids in STEM, education, plus environment, but ensuring that girls are equally represented. There are 3.5 million STEM job vacancies predicted by 2025. Three years ago that sounded like a long time away, but it’s just right around the corner. The thing that we’re doing at SpaceKids is we’re bringing hands-on projects through the partnerships of our space companies, and we’ve been able through that program to send 21 science projects to the ISS. Remember, these kids are only five to 12 years old. Through our partnership with Zero G, we had a national essay competition on why I want to go to space. Interesting reactions to that. Some kids wanted to go to space, others said, “No way. I’ll stay on the ground and help you design the rockets.” 

And then we bring Title One students over to Kennedy Space Center. But the project that I’m really excited about is the one we just released, the winners of our SpaceKids Press Squad. And these are kids across the country between the ages of eight and 12, and they are going to come to Kennedy Space Center, two day all expenses paid. They are going to be space reporters. They’ll come to Blue Origin, they’ll get a behind the scene tour, New Glenn. They’ll be interviewing scientists, engineers, everyone that it takes to put a trip together, a launch together. We’re really excited about this, because these kids have no idea, seven of them have never been to Kennedy Space Center. So by bringing these hands-on projects to kids across the country, we’re making them participators, not spectators. The big thing is we’re making learning fun again. Did you want to add anything? 

Mark Hagle: 

Yeah. SpaceKids was originally designed as Sharon said, to encourage the young children to get excited about the possibilities of STEM education as it relates to space, and other scientific and environmental fields. The ultimate goal of SpaceKids, and it’s on its mission to get there now, is to expand that program and partner with other people that have the same vision that we have, but then go vertically integrated. It’s my Purdue education talking, go vertically integrated and start partnering with companies that take the kids once they get past the elementary age, and take them up through the junior high school and the high school, and the college age, and eventually into internships and jobs with industry, and inventions that they might have going in the future. That part of the program is presently in process in, there’s nothing more important than education. Education is what solves the problems in the world. Education is what’s going to keep humanity alive on earth. 

Sharon Hagle: 

That’s what we’re trying to do is bringing the possibility of space to kids everywhere. 

Kate Young: 

This is something we touched on throughout this whole panel. We look out on our audience tonight. We have so many students out here. There may be future space researchers, maybe even a future astronaut or two out there. So what advice would you all give to these Boilermakers who are trying to tackle the world’s toughest challenges? 

Drew Feustel: 

My advice is to do what you love. And also, something that people told me growing up and that we’ve all heard is that okay, you can do anything you want to do. Anything you can imagine. I grew up really thinking, okay, maybe that’s a cliche, like, okay, sure you can do anything you want, but guess what? Actually you can. Your mind is very powerful thing, and that subconscious programming and goal that you have in your head, you may not realize the mechanics required or the events that are going to transpire in your life that will get you to the place you want to be. But if you have that drive in your mind and in your soul, you will end up where you need to be. Just pursue the things that are important to you and that are meaningful, and you’ll achieve the goals that you set out in front of you. 

It can happen and it will happen. And I know, because it happened for me and I had a rocky start. And I owe a lot of it to my wife, Indra, who’s here today as well. A lot of your success depends on who you align with, your friends, your family, in my case, my spouse, to create those successes and those opportunities. So just remember that you’ll never walk through a door if you don’t knock on it first. So don’t leave any doors closed and try to walk through all of them that you have an opportunity to. If you have a chance, why not? Because you only have so many chances to be able to say no to something. So take the opportunity to make decisions and take those chances in life, but believe in yourself so you can get there. 

Mark Hagle: 

Boy, that’s hard to follow. You’re getting an education that gives you the background and the understanding of how to face problems, and how to solve problems, and that’s important. And as Drew said, make sure you do something that you’re excited about. If you’re excited about it, guess what? If you keep your eyes open and listen to the world, opportunities are going to present themselves to you. They always do. I had no idea where I was going to be in life when I was taking my education at Purdue. 

I started out majoring in physics, changed to electrical engineering and graduated in that, but I had an opportunity my junior year to take a small business management class, and that opened my eyes to the possibilities of combining my engineering education with a business education, and that’s what gave me the capability of being able to do what I’m doing today. Opportunities will present themselves. The person that is able to identify those opportunities, face them, solve the problems associated with them, take the challenge associated with them, and move forward. You’re going to have so much fun in your life and you’re going to enjoy what you’re doing, and it’s going to be a benefit to everybody. 

Sharon Hagle: 

What excites me today is this basis for everyone. It’s people like you and me that are getting the opportunity to go to space. I can tell you as a sixth grader and listening to a PA system in a class in West Virginia, back in 1961 when Alan Shepard did his suborbital, that had never been done before. I mean, you guys are used to watching launches every week, but for that little girl, she had no idea how that was going to affect her, because it’s a long way away from West Virginia to Kennedy Space Center. But little did I know 61 years later, I would be launched on a vehicle named after him. My point is, the curiosity, the hope, that’s the changes. Mark and I are getting ready to be launched again next month. We’ll be making our second trip into space, and now when I go outside and look at the moon, it’s the hope. Maybe I can go there. 

Kate Young: 

Briony and Marshall, what do you have to say to people out there who want to go up in space one day? 

Briony Horgan: 

Start small. It really is at the first step. The first step leads to a giant leap later. It’s as I think Drew was saying really nicely, it’s just go for every opportunity you can. Don’t tell yourself no. I always tell people, especially women have a tendency to say, “Oh no, I’m not qualified for that. I’m not going to apply.” 

Let the people looking at your application or whatever tell you no, don’t tell yourself no. It’s so important, because once you get one thing funded, awarded, one group you’ve joined and had a good time, the next thing comes so much more easily. It just keeps snowballing and that’s how you get to have an amazing life doing amazing things, because you went for that first shot and just didn’t give up. 

Mark Hagle: 

But if I may, let me add to that. If you do get a no answer, don’t accept it. I understand the problem associated with that no answer and solve the problem, and do it again. It’s going to happen 

Sharon Hagle: 

To be this age, the possibilities that you guys are going to have, and who knows? The person sitting next to you might be that first person on Mars. 

Marshall Porterfield: 

I identified with one of the characters in the movie and grew up with fathers in the military. So I moved around a lot and I think that made me more open to diversity, more creative in how I thought about things. But I think right now for the students to realize if you’re really interested in space and the opportunities in space, that there’s a huge gap in terms of life support. It is the last unsolved problem on bioregenerative life support. How are we going to accomplish that? So there’s going to be so many opportunities for students across all different disciplines and walks of life to contribute to what comes next in space, because it’s really about what life on earth. We are working to get, a group of faculty and I are working together right now to try to develop a new curriculum program in Bioastronautics, so keep your eyes open for that in the next year. We’re hoping that we’re going to create more curriculum opportunities for students to really get involved on the front line. 

Kate Young: 

We can’t thank you enough for being here. This was incredible. Thank you. Thank you all for coming out tonight. I hope you had a wonderful time. I know I did sitting up here. 

Drew Feustel: 

Can I add something? 

Kate Young: 

Sure. 

Drew Feustel: 

I just want to say this, because I didn’t get a chance to say it earlier. I should have. I still remember the moment I got my acceptance letter to Purdue. And when I saw that film, I literally started crying when I saw that scene, because that moment for me was so impactful in my life and I knew that it was going to lead to many amazing things. And it has. The fact that I’m sitting here now sharing this story with you means that it did make a difference. And I hope that all of you believe in the reason you’re here and that you remember the moment you were accepted to Purdue, and that you’re here to make giant leaps, because you will. This is the place to do it, and we all commend you for being here and taking those steps. Just keep up the great work and make us proud, because it’s an amazing journey. This is the best time of your life. 

Kate Young: 

Thank you, Drew for just doing my outro for me. I can’t compete with that, but be sure to check out This is Purdue. You can listen to this panel conversation. We’re going to turn it into an episode. Be sure to check out our gold carpet out there. You got to get a photo out there. #BoilerstoMars. There’s some photo props outside as well, so be sure to share the love on social. And again, thank you to our wonderful panelists. It was an incredible evening, and Boiler up. 

What an incredible experience and event for our entire Purdue brand studio team to be a part of. This short film was more than a year and a half in the making, and it was so meaningful to watch our fellow team members experience the joy and excitement of this project, making its official debut to the public. Remember, you can check out this short film, learn more about its inspiration, and even buy merch anytime on BoilersToMars.com. Trust me, you’ll want to check out the T-shirts we have on there. And if you enjoy this episode, you’ll definitely want to check out our behind the scenes videos from this movie premiere event on our podcast YouTube page, YouTube.com/@thisisPurdue. 

And of course, be sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young. Our podcast videography for this episode was led by Ted Schellenberger, in collaboration with Thad Boone, Jon Garcia, Alli Chaney, and Zach Mogensen. Our social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. Our podcast distribution strategy is led by Teresa Walker and Carly Eastman. Our podcast design is led by Caitlin Freeville and Cheryl Glotzbach. Our podcast photography for this episode was led by John Underwood. Our podcast team project manager is Rain Gu. Our podcast YouTube promotions is managed by Kirsten Bauman. Additional Writing and research assistance is led by Sophie Ritz. And our This is Purdue intern is Caroline Keim. Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcast. There, you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review. And as always, Boiler up.

George Karlaftis: 

This is George Karlaftis and you’re listening to This is Purdue. 

Kate Young: 

Hi, I’m Kate Young and you’re listening to This is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking. Who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators? Who are these Boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty, and alumni taking small steps toward their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same. 

George Karlaftis: 

Playing at West Lafayette and then obviously committing to Purdue and going on and playing at Purdue was awesome. You have people, even nowadays, that care about me and support me for who I am, regardless of if I’m with the Kansas City Chiefs or anyone else. I feel genuinely supported by a lot of people, so that’s been awesome. 

NFL TV Announcer 1: 

Paul is on the ground, the ball is out. Karlaftis is there for Kansas City. The first signal is a Chief recovery. 

NFL TV Announcer 2: 

Well, the ball’s definitely out. Karlaftis does come up with it. These coaches know how huge turnovers are and this gets the Chiefs off to the start they were really looking for. 

Kate Young: 

In this episode of This Is Purdue, we’re talking to George Karlaftis, former Purdue football player, current defensive end for the Kansas City Chiefs, and two-time Super Bowl champion. That’s right, in his two years of playing in the NFL, George is two for two in Super Bowl wins. 

Now, This Is Purdue has had a number of incredible professional football players on the podcast. Jim Everett was our first one. Our team just loved that interview. We’ve also talked to Mike Phipps, Akin Ayodele, and Mark Herrmann. And more recently, we had Boilermaker quarterback greats Kyle Orton and Curtis Painter on the podcast. But George gracing us with his presence on the pod marked our first time chatting with a current NFL player. 

I spoke with George in late August as he was preparing for his third season as a Kansas City chief. We discussed his goals for the season, what it’s been like for him playing in the midst of the Chiefs massive popularity coming off two back-to-back Super Bowl wins, and even his recent cameo in the upcoming Hallmark Channel movie Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story. I wonder what or rather who inspired this movie? 

Plus, George digs into the beginning of his football career. And for anyone who is unfamiliar, he had quite a unique start. See, George is from Athens, Greece and grew up playing water polo. He navigated an international move to West Lafayette, Indiana and didn’t start playing football until he was in the eighth grade. This episode is jam packed with stories of persistence and we hope both our Boilermaker fans and Kansas City Chiefs fans will get to know George on a whole new level after this one. Here’s my conversation with George. 

All right, George, we are so excited you’re joining us on This is Purdue. This is the official university podcast. You’ve had quite a career at Purdue and also in the NFL. You’re actually our first current NFL player to join us. We’ve had some former NFL players, but- 

George Karlaftis: 

Awesome. 

Kate Young: 

… thank you again for taking the time. We appreciate it. 

George Karlaftis: 

Absolutely. Yeah, thank you for having me. 

Kate Young: 

Of course. Okay, so to kick it off, we’ll go straight into your NFL career. So many football players play their whole careers and never get to play in a Super Bowl, let alone win one. You’ve started every game so far, you’ve won two super Bowls so early on in your career. What have those experiences felt like for you? Is it just like a whirlwind still? 

George Karlaftis: 

To me, it’s been amazing. Kind of came to terms with it. Now we’re onto to new season and trying to do something that nobody’s ever done before. But it’s been amazing, it’s been a blessing and it’s been a whole lot of fun, so I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. 

Kate Young: 

Okay, so two years ago, you’re preparing for your first Super Bowl. You’re a rookie. Did you feel a ton of pressure? Did you go in knowing you were prepared? How do you approach those massive games 

George Karlaftis: 

Going into your first Super Bowl, I know it sounds kind of crazy talking about first, second Super Bowl, that kind of stuff, but for your first Super Bowl, your first playoff game, your first game at any level, really, your first experience of anything, you’re pretty nervous for that. I was pretty nervous, but I know I had put the time in, the work in. And I was also with guys that had done it and had that experience, so that gave me confidence. So we went in and we got the job done and that’s all that matters at the end of the day. 

Kate Young: 

Absolutely. You just talked about a lot of your teammates had that experience. Is there a particular player on the Kansas City Chiefs that really kind of mentored you and helped you grow as an athlete so far? 

George Karlaftis: 

There’s been a bunch of guys and there’s a great team culture and chemistry that we’ve had. We have a core group of guys really that have been here since I’ve been here and it’s kind of all been stuck together. I can mention guys, guys that I talk to on a daily basis like Chris Jones, a guy that’s not with us anymore, but he was a huge part when I was younger in my career. Frank Clark and Carlos Dunlap, those two guys are great. But also a guy now that’s taken kind of the world by storm, but Travis Kelce, those are just guys that are great role models, one, but also been phenomenal friends and teammates. 

Kate Young: 

I do want to ask, because you started and became part of the Chiefs kind of at the height of this most recent popularity, coming off of the two Super Bowl wins, but also because of Travis Kelce a little bit, right? 

George Karlaftis: 

Yeah. 

Kate Young: 

What has that been like for you? 

George Karlaftis: 

It’s been awesome. Now it’s like whenever the team starts becoming more and more successful, more and more people start to dislike them or hate them. Hate’s kind of a strong word. So it’s been fun to be a villain almost or to start to have that role, but it’s been a lot of fun for this recent craze and all this success we’ve had, it’s a lot of fun. There’s been a lot of naysayers in the past couple of years, but we like proving people wrong, so it’s been awesome. 

Kate Young: 

Yeah, and you’ve done it two years in a row. 

George Karlaftis: 

Yeah. 

Kate Young: 

Take us back to this past Superbowl, Superbowl 58. Christian McCaffrey fumbled the ball, you jumped on it. How did you put yourself in that position? What did making that play feel like? 

George Karlaftis: 

Well, actually, it was a bad play by me because there was some miscommunication at the line and I was out of position actually. But sometimes you’re out of position and that puts you in the perfect position. The ball’s on the ground, I got on it first and yeah, now I have the ball at my house, sometimes my dog even plays with it. 

Kate Young: 

Oh my gosh. 

George Karlaftis: 

Yeah, sometimes you’re at the right place at the right time. 

Kate Young: 

Yes, for sure. Okay, so when the confetti’s falling on the field after a Superbowl win, tell us what that feeling is like. 

George Karlaftis: 

It’s amazing. I remember the first time we won, there was no feeling like it. It was a win where a lot of the time, your personal performance, you care about how you did and all this and that. It’s like nobody really cares you when you win, when you have that big of a team award, of a team victory and all that kind of stuff. So it was just awesome to win. It was amazing, indescribable really. Then the second time you win, it’s like I’m hungry for more, almost immediately. It’s funny and it’s awesome to see how the mindset and the mentality shifts. 

Kate Young: 

Do you have any behind the scenes stories? How does one celebrate a Superbowl win? 

George Karlaftis: 

There’s a lot of stuff that goes on in those Superbowl celebrations, some that are maybe not to be shared in public. 

Kate Young: 

Not podcast appropriate? 

George Karlaftis: 

Yeah, not to be repeated, keep it at that. But for me, this past Superbowl, we went out a little bit and then just hung out with a great group of friends and some family had a rental house there. We just spent the whole night just celebrating. 

Kate Young: 

After winning that second Superbowl, George became the 10th Boilermaker to win multiple Superbowl titles. I asked him how it felt to know that he’s part of such a legendary group of Purdue athletes that have left such a lasting impression on our university. 

George Karlaftis: 

I didn’t realize that. Well, that’s pretty cool, I guess. There’s not a lot of guys that have done that. Aiming to get more obviously as the years go on, and it’s just an incredible honor. When you win a Superbowl, you’re a part of an elite group of people that have not done it. There’s been guys that have been playing for 15 or 20 years that have never won one, so to be a part of any group of guys that have won multiple, it’s just a huge honor. 

Kate Young: 

And speaking of Boilermakers with NFL careers, what is it like for George to play against other Purdue athletes like Aidan O’Connell? 

George Karlaftis: 

It’s awesome. Sometimes you play against guys, like I played against Raheem. He was with Miami last year and he’s still with them now, obviously, but we didn’t play with each other at Purdue. We know each other just because the whole Purdue connection. So that was kind of cool, but we didn’t know each other basically, anything other than that. 

But then playing against a guy like Aidan, who I’ve known since I’m 17 years old and is a great and dear friend of mine, it’s awesome. Not just him, I know I’ll go against Payne this year and David and all those guys. So it’s cool, it’s kind of surreal, especially with Aidan being a quarterback and me, my job in part being to get after the quarterback, it made it a lot of fun and I got him down once, so that was awesome. 

Kate Young: 

As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, George had a later start to his football career than most NFL athletes. He wasn’t practicing with pads on in his front yard at five years old or even at 10 years old. Instead, George was playing goalkeeper in water polo and was a member of Greece’s under-16 national team. George shares more about his personal family journey, from growing up in Greece to moving to West Lafayette after his dad’s passing in 2014. 

I want to go back to the beginning of your football career and for anyone who’s unfamiliar listening to this, you had quite a unique start. Can you share a little bit about your journey growing up in Greece? You played water polo. You didn’t start playing football until you moved to West Lafayette in eighth grade, so tell us a little bit of that story. 

George Karlaftis: 

My parents met at Purdue, actually, at the CoRec, and they decided to raise… My mom’s from West Lafayette. My dad was from Greece, so me and my three other siblings were raised in Athens, Greece, a little bit outside Athens, up until 2014. And then we had some stuff that happened in the family, my dad passing and all that stuff, and all my mom’s family, her support system and all of that was in Indiana and is in Indiana, so we just made a family decision to move to West Lafayette. That was a great one at that, just seeing not just myself, but how great it’s been for my siblings and my mom and all that kind of stuff too. It’s been great. 

So moved to West Lafayette and then started playing football around the eighth grade. I was kind of worried or nervous to play at first and then kind of realized the game, because most people grow up with it, most people know what a first down is, what a touchdown is and that kind of stuff. I grew up playing water polo and soccer, track and field and different kinds of sports, so football was new to me and I’ve learned more and more as the years have gone on. Everybody’s got to start somewhere, I guess. 

Kate Young: 

What made you want to start playing football? What made you so passionate about it? 

George Karlaftis: 

I guess all my friends were doing it, so it seemed cool. I saw my friends, and not to down any of them, but I was like, “Well, I’m bigger and I’m faster than them, I’m probably stronger than all of them, so I’m just going to give it a try.” And they were all doing it, so I was like, “It’ll be fun. I think I could make something out of myself.” I always knew I was going to be an athlete to a certain extent, so I decided to try it and I guess the rest is history for the most part. Obviously, there’s trials and tribulations through everything, but- 

Kate Young: 

Well, and your parents were both big athletes too, right? 

George Karlaftis: 

Yep, absolutely. Yeah, my dad was a track and field and football at the University of Miami, and then my mom was a stud in high school. She could have gone and done basketball at Brown, but she had an injury, so she didn’t end up doing that, but I guess I wouldn’t be here without that. 

Kate Young: 

Yeah. You said your mom’s from West Lafayette, your parents met at Purdue. Were you a big Purdue fan when you were growing up in Greece? Was that on your radar? 

George Karlaftis: 

No, that was not a thing really. 

Kate Young: 

Okay. 

George Karlaftis: 

I had a Purdue basketball jersey and stuff like that. I had went to Purdue games. It was one of the only universities I knew in America, and I went to games and basketball games mainly, and I knew, all right, this is where my family has all gone, this is who they support. It wasn’t like I was following Purdue games from Greece and that kind of stuff. But yeah, that’s all I knew. So I guess a little bit, but not like a passionate Purdue fan or that kind of stuff, not growing up at least when I was- 

Kate Young: 

Not a super fan of [inaudible 00:12:35]? 

George Karlaftis: 

Not when I was very young. No, no. 

Kate Young: 

So after playing at West Lafayette High School, you decided to stay in town, play for Purdue. What was the determining factor for that? 

George Karlaftis: 

I think a few things for me and my situation. And everybody’s situation’s different as an athlete, going to college and making that decision. The biggest thing, and a lot of people, my mom, my family, my grandpa especially, they’re all like, “You know what? Coach Brohm is a real legit dude.” And just the way he carried himself and spoke, and there was a certain level of trust, which doesn’t often develop between a head coach and a recruit. That trust and that respect developed. He was a big part, if not the biggest, in determining decision behind me choosing Purdue at the end of the day. 

But something that I’ve talked to with guys now in the locker room and guys go across the country, some guys stay closer to home and that kind of stuff. I got to see my siblings grow up a little bit. A lot of guys, they leave and they have younger siblings, they get to see them maybe once or twice, and then they have to call them all the time and that kind of stuff. I got to see my siblings as much as I possibly could. That was awesome to do and obviously, to be around my family and that kind of stuff. 

Kate Young: 

Yeah, and your little brother now plays for Purdue? 

George Karlaftis: 

Yeah, I got a brother that plays for Purdue. My sister goes to Purdue and my youngest brother, he’s at West Lafayette High School. 

Kate Young: 

Oh, awesome. And do you think your brother was like, “Ooh, I want to follow in my big brother’s footsteps”? Or did you play a role in that? 

George Karlaftis: 

I don’t necessarily think that was the case for him. Just like I said, everybody’s situation is different. He always just leaned on me and asked for my advice, but I was like, “You don’t have to go to Purdue just because I did and that kind of stuff. Figure it out for yourself and look and see what’s out there.” At the end of the day, I think he made the right decision, and I think Purdue’s been a great fit for him, but just everybody’s path and everybody’s situation is different. 

Then you got to figure it out for yourself or else you got, in the back of your mind, “Oh, what if I had done this or what if I had done that?” So just for Yanni, being able to figure it out on his own and ultimately come to that decision without anyone pushing him to do that was awesome. And to see all the stuff he’s done and he’s willing to do, it’s been great. 

Kate Young: 

What were some of the advantages of playing high school football and college football in the same town? 

George Karlaftis: 

It was awesome. I talked about this a little bit. Playing, in the grand scheme of things, would be like small school ball or like 3A, for example, as opposed to like 6A. I think for me, for my development was huge because it’s a little slower than playing against, like I had friends of mine that played at Mater Dei High School, it’s like the biggest high school in the country, and they’re basically going against college competition. I don’t know if I would’ve been ready for that. But for me to be able to grow in, and the coaches at West Lafayette did a great job just being patient with me and teaching me the game and that kind of stuff. 

So that was great, but playing in West Lafayette and then obviously committing to Purdue and going on and playing at Purdue was awesome. You have people even nowadays that care about me and support me for who I am, regardless of if I’m with the Kansas City Chiefs or anyone else. I feel genuinely supported by a lot of people, so that’s been awesome. 

Kate Young: 

When you were in high school and then even as you made your way to Purdue, was it always your goal to play in the NFL? 

George Karlaftis: 

Yeah, I think as soon as I really even learned what football was, I kind of arrogantly almost like, “Yeah, I think I’m going to go to the NFL,” honestly, without really knowing what that would require and what that would entail, but that was really my goal. I started doing it and I almost became obsessed and that that’s kind of where I’m at still, it’s been amazing. And yeah, once I learned what it is, and once I really learned the game, I’m like, “There’s nothing like it.” 

Kate Young: 

The persistence paid off. 

George Karlaftis: 

Yeah, absolutely. Always does. 

Kate Young: 

George earned his degree in selling and sales management, part of Purdue’s College of Health and Human Sciences, in 2021, but how did he balance student life and academics with athletics? George discusses his student experience as a Boilermaker and the impact his Purdue education has made on his life. 

George Karlaftis: 

I graduated high school and enrolled into Purdue early, so I would’ve been going into my second year academically into Purdue when COVID hit. I’ve always been a guy that loved doing stuff online and remotely. I like doing stuff on my own time. If I had recorded lectures, I’m great with technology and being able to do stuff online. Still to this day, I don’t really carry around notebooks and stuff like that, I just have my iPad. 

So having COVID, it was a struggle for a lot of people and I can understand why. But for me, it kind of played into what I liked from a teaching standpoint. I took all my classes online and I kind of loaded up on credits, which was one of the reasons why I was able to graduate so early. It was awesome because I had football, I had school, I had some time with my family, so it was a great balance. 

Kate Young: 

How do you think that your experiences at Purdue on the field, in the classroom, how has that shaped who you are today? 

George Karlaftis: 

At the end of the day, it’s all about becoming a well-rounded individual, in everything that you do, really. Coach Brohm was always big about, he would talk about the three F’s, which is faith, family, and football, which was always huge to me. And just being able to be a well-rounded individual, I think Purdue helped me with that. And now that I’m kind of, I guess in the real world, that ultimately prepared me for that. And whatever success I’ve had, the stepping stone, if you will, of Purdue has really helped me with that. 

Kate Young: 

So outside of football, talk about life as a Boilermaker. What were some of your favorite things to do on campus? 

George Karlaftis: 

Well, my experience is a little different than most people’s because I already knew my way around campus in high school. My experience, I guess, would be a lot different than most people. My cousin and I lived together, my best friend. That was really special. I spent a lot, a good amount of time with my family, actually. I’d probably, not that I’d gotten tired of a lot of the restaurants on campus because I’d got them so much in high school, but I’d venture out to Lafayette a lot. I’m a big foodie, so going to a lot of different restaurants and stuff like that. 

But yeah, for me, it was my whole, I guess, time at Purdue was really focused around how I could achieve my goal of graduating and getting to the NFL, with not a lot of time for other activities. So different than a lot of people’s, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. 

Kate Young: 

Absolutely. You’ve talked about the coaching staff at Purdue, your teammates. Is there any particular moment or piece of advice that stuck with you into your NFL career that came from Purdue? 

George Karlaftis: 

From a football perspective, I went through a lot of change, obviously having the same head coach, but I had three different, in three years of playing, I had three different position coaches and three different defensive coordinators, which can be a struggle for a lot of guys. I tried to learn something from every single person that I was around. I guess that constant, not constant, but that change really helped me prepare for the NFL where it’s every week is different. Every week there’s a different playbook, and just being able to be adaptive and to adapt to a bunch of different situations, I guess that kind of helped me out. 

And then my position coach in college, Coach Hagen, who’s been, he was at Purdue for many, many years, and he’s at Louisville now, but he’s like, “Look, I have one rule. If you do that, [inaudible 00:19:47] just fine.” It’s like, “Do what you’re supposed to do when you’re supposed to do it the way it’s supposed to be done and do it that way every time and we’ll have no problem.” So I guess that’s the one little piece of advice that I take with me every single day. 

Kate Young: 

A little slogan, I love it. 

George Karlaftis: 

Yeah. 

Kate Young: 

What advice would you give to Purdue student athletes between football, volleyball, basketball, who want to make it to a professional level? 

George Karlaftis: 

I’ve always been a very goal-oriented person. Coach Reid here with the Chiefs and having whatever experience I’ve had in the NFL, it’s all about eliminating distractions. If you’re truly serious about a goal, eliminate your distractions. Become, to a certain part, obsessed. Do everything you can to reach that goal. It’s obviously not the reality for a lot of people, but if you want to reach the professional level, there’s everybody in the world is trying to do that. I would just say become obsessed with your craft. Work as hard as you possibly can. 

And it’s just almost counterintuitive, but always try to have fun and never take it too seriously. When you take stuff too seriously, you usually get in a little bit of trouble. So while you’re working as hard as you possibly can, make sure you’re still having fun and being lighthearted. 

Kate Young: 

George shares some of his best memories from his time at Purdue. 

George Karlaftis: 

I had a lot of great moments, obviously. We had two big wins my junior year, my last year. We beat Iowa, we beat Michigan State, and then we finished off the season, we beat IU. 

Kate Young: 

Always good. 

George Karlaftis: 

That was great. Obviously, graduating because that’s something that nobody can take away from you. I’d say the combination of those two moments would be for me. 

Kate Young: 

In the 2022 NFL draft, George was drafted number 30 overall and was a first round pick by the Chiefs. He reflects on that night, which ultimately kicked off his extremely successful NFL career. 

Okay, so take us through that 2022 NFL draft night. What are you feeling? How did you feel when you got the official call? 

George Karlaftis: 

It was a lot. I had a lot of people that are extremely important to me with me at the draft. It was a unique experience. You have an idea of what you’re think is going to happen, but at the end of the day, you never know because the decision’s not up to you. And to kind of, now it’s like, “All right, I want to know where I’m going.” So just being able to now know, “All right, I’m going to Kansas City, I’m going to be with the Chiefs,” and that was awesome. 

There’s some nerves, there’s some anxiety that goes into that for sure. But at the end of the day, it’s all part of the process. Everybody has to go through it. At the end of the day, it makes for a great story, to get that call, to go to a first class organization like where I’m at right now has been a blessing. I wouldn’t trade this experience I have for the world, and I’m doing it with some great people too. 

Kate Young: 

Over the years, George has not only made the Purdue community proud, he’s also made his Greek community incredibly proud. This past spring, George served as Grand Marshal in the Greek Independence Day Parade in New York City. I asked him what this element of his professional career means to him and his family. Plus, George shares what’s next for him as he heads into his third season in the NFL. 

George Karlaftis: 

A lot of people ask me where I’m from, and most people assume because I went to high school in Indiana, I’m from Indiana, I’m from West… I’m not really from there. I went to high school there. I love West Lafayette, the people there and all that stuff. But I’m from Athens, I’m from Greece. 

So coming from a proud Greek family is very important to me. My roots, my family there, my heritage is extremely important to me. I’m proud to be Greek and doing as much as I can to help out in any capacity I can has been extremely important to me. 

Kate Young: 

Has your family in Greece been able to watch you at- 

George Karlaftis: 

Oh, yeah. 

Kate Young: 

… an NFL game? Okay, good. 

George Karlaftis: 

They’re able to watch the games that are earlier, like a three o’clock game maybe. The night game is tough unless it’s the Super Bowl, obviously. But they’ve been able to watch, they have these streaming services, because the game’s growing so much. So they have these streaming services in Europe and really all across the world to make the game really accessible for everyone. They’ve enjoyed it, and I go and visit them a couple times a year, and it’s been great. 

Kate Young: 

Greece is on my bucket list. Oh my goodness. 

George Karlaftis: 

Yeah. Oh, yeah, it’s the best. 

Kate Young: 

You said during your college career that one of your mottos is, I was watching this in a video earlier this morning too, but it’s that prove them wrong motto. 

George Karlaftis: 

Always. Always. 

Kate Young: 

Do you still think this rings true? 

George Karlaftis: 

No matter what level, no matter who you are, people are always going to doubt you for some reason. I play with maybe arguably the greatest quarterback to ever live, or one of them at that, and people still seem to doubt what he can do, so I’ve seen it with all-time greats. And it’s really all about proving people wrong. 

When you have success at any capacity, that’s when jealousy and other people starts to kick in. That’s when people want to see you fail. That’s when you have to prove them wrong. So for me, it’s always going to be a motto, kind of something to intrinsically motivate me. So it’s been great. 

Kate Young: 

Your career has been super inspirational, it’s unique. Do you think, looking back, that the 13-year-old George who moved to West Lafayette from Greece would be surprised? Or do you think he knew that you were destined for this career and these great things? 

George Karlaftis: 

When I was 13, my family, my friends, my girlfriend that we’ve been together for all these years, all of them could probably attest to this, but when I was younger, maybe a little arrogant or maybe a little cocky to a certain extent, but I always knew I was going to do something, especially in sports. Now, tell me I had the success I’ve had, I’d be a little surprised to see myself do the things I’m doing, but I was raised by parents and been around a family that, at the end of the day, works really hard, so I think hard work always pays off. 

Kate Young: 

Absolutely. What would you say your next giant leap is as you start your third NFL season? 

George Karlaftis: 

I think for me, we play in two weeks from today that we’re talking now, I think it’s starting the year off strong for us and for this team and striving to achieve something that no NFL team has accomplished ever in winning three super Bowls in a row. You got to start with winning the first game and taking it one week at a time, but having that goal in sight has always been important to us ever since we won too. So I guess that’d be the next giant leap for me, and then kind of taking things from there. 

Kate Young: 

Okay, I couldn’t let George go without asking him about his cameo in that Hallmark Channel movie I mentioned earlier. He’s already a two-time Super Bowl champ, so is he going to add movie star to his resume now too? 

Super curious about your upcoming movie cameo in a Hallmark Channel movie. How did you become a part of Holiday Touchdown: A Chief’s Love Story? 

George Karlaftis: 

It was started in Kansas City. The opportunity presented itself to me and a few other guys on the team. I was like, I couldn’t pass it down. So it was a lot of fun to do something like that. I can’t wait to see how it actually turns out, and it was awesome. 

Kate Young: 

Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story premieres on Saturday, November 30th at 8:00 PM Eastern on the Hallmark Channel, if anyone else is interested in tuning in as well. We also asked George a few rapid fire questions from his time at Purdue, to his journey as a professional athlete, to how he unwinds in the off season. Favorite Purdue memory? 

George Karlaftis: 

I’d say beating Iowa. 

Kate Young: 

Favorite Purdue football tradition? 

George Karlaftis: 

The bucket. The bucket, the old Oakland bucket where we beat Indiana. I’d say that. 

Kate Young: 

Perfect, love it. Favorite campus restaurant? We talked about this a little bit. 

George Karlaftis: 

Oh, jeez. Yeah, that’s really tough. Every time I go back to West Lafayette, I have to get Dog n Suds, so I’ll say that. 

Kate Young: 

Love it. What’s the thing you miss most about West Lafayette? 

George Karlaftis: 

My family. 

Kate Young: 

What is your favorite place to visit? 

George Karlaftis: 

In the world? 

Kate Young: 

Yeah. 

George Karlaftis: 

Or in the West Lafayette? 

Kate Young: 

Oh, no, no. 

George Karlaftis: 

In the world? There’s a lot of places out there. I’d say Greece, not only because of my family, but it’s awesome and I can truly relax there. 

Kate Young: 

Favorite way to spend the off season? 

George Karlaftis: 

Favorite way to spend the off season. A little bit of downtime, but also a little bit of training. 

Kate Young: 

Something that would surprise people about being an NFL player? 

George Karlaftis: 

The hours are extremely long. I’m there at least 12 hours a day at work. 

Kate Young: 

Oh, wow. Okay. 

George Karlaftis: 

Yeah. 

Kate Young: 

Favorite memory with the Kansas City Chiefs? 

George Karlaftis: 

Winning two super Bowls. That’s pretty easy. 

Kate Young: 

Do you have a special place where you keep your Super Bowl rings? 

George Karlaftis: 

I’m not going to reveal that. They’re at my house somewhere, but yeah. 

Kate Young: 

Touche, all right. That’s fair. What are you looking forward to most in the 2024-2025 season? 

George Karlaftis: 

Just seeing how this team, every team is different, so just seeing this team’s identity and how we attack the season and try to do something special. 

Kate Young: 

We are so thankful George took the time to chat with us, especially as he was going into full on football season mode. Best of luck to George and the Kansas City Chiefs this season. I can’t tell you how much we appreciated it. It was so nice to talk to you. 

George Karlaftis: 

Absolutely. Thank you so much. 

Kate Young: 

We have a few more behind the scenes videos with George that you can watch on our This is Purdue YouTube page. For example, which quarterback does George think is the hardest to sack in the NFL right now? Just head over to youtube.com/@thisispurdue, and click that subscribe button from there so you never miss any of our content. 

And by the way, if you are interested in hearing more from our Purdue football greats, you can check out our episodes with Kyle Orton, Jim Everett, Curtis Painter, and more by searching for those names in our podcast feed. And as always, be sure to follow This Is Purdue on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

This Is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young. Our podcast videography for this episode was led by Ted Schellenberger, in collaboration with Thad Boone. Our social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. Our podcast distribution strategy is led by Teresa Walker and Carly Eastman. Our podcast design is led by Caitlin Freeville. Our podcast photography is led by John Underwood. Our podcast team project manager is Rain Gou. Our podcast YouTube promotions is managed by Kirsten Bauman. Additional Writing and research assistant is led by Sophie Ritz. Our This Is Purdue intern is Caroline Keim. And special thanks to the NFL and Purdue Athletics for sharing photos and video with us for this incredible episode. 

Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcasts. There, you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review. And as always, Boiler up.

Jay Gephart: 

This is Jay Gephart, director of the “All-American” Marching Band, and you are listening to This is Purdue. 

Kate Young: 

Hi, I’m Kate Young and you are listening to This is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking. Who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators? Who are these boiler makers. Join me as we feature students, faculty, and alumni taking small steps toward their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same. 

Jay Gephart: 

Being part of this department and part of the marching band program has been the joy of my life. I never dreamed that I would be standing in front of that “All-American” marching band as its conductor. It means the world to me. When I look back at the incredible memories we’ve made, I can think about individual students I’ve taught throughout the years that were part of the marching band. So if that sums up what this program means to me, I would tell you that it has been the joy of my life to be part of this. 

Speaker 4: 

The Purdue University Band. 

Speaker 5: 

The biggest band in the parade of 2018. It’s their second time coming to Dublin. They were here five years ago as well. The Purdue “All-American” Marching Band from Indiana. 

Speaker 6: 

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the grand arrival of the 84th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. 

Speaker 7: 

Please welcome, the pride of the Boilermakers, the Purdue “All-American” Marching Band. 

Kate Young: 

In this episode of This is Purdue, we’re talking to Jay Gephart, the Al G. Wright chair of Purdue Bands and Orchestra, conductor of the wind ensemble and director of the iconic Purdue “All-American” Marching Band. 

From their annual appearance at the Indianapolis 500, to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, to performing at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin, Ireland, the “All-American” Marching Band is part of famous celebrations across the world. And with alumni like Astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, and popcorn legend Orville Redenbacher, the strong, devoted alumni base for this organization is unlike any other. The band is truly a pride point for Purdue University, and in this episode, we are celebrating Jay, the fifth director of the Purdue “All-American” Marching Band, as he steps down at the end of the fall 2024 semester. 

He’s stepping down from the marching band position following the band’s final performance at the end of this year, but he will continue to chair at the band’s and orchestra’s department, direct the Purdue University Wind Ensemble, and conduct other indoor ensembles. You’ll hear Jay discuss how it feels to reflect on his legacy as band director, among other legendary former directors like Paul Spotts-Emerick, and Al Wright. Plus, he shares some of his favorite memories and performances from over the years, the stories behind the Rich history and traditions of the “All-American” Marching Band, and what makes this Boilermaker community so special and unique. Here’s my conversation with Jay. 

Jay, thank you so much for joining us on This is Purdue. We are so thrilled to have you. You’re an iconic guest for our podcast and we know that our audience is just going to love this interview. 

Jay Gephart: 

Thank you. 

Kate Young: 

Let’s go back to the beginning. Tell us a little bit about your journey to Purdue. I’ve heard that you did not go to Purdue. 

Jay Gephart: 

That is correct. I think it’s a well-known fact that I’m an Indiana University grad. To be quite honest, the School of Music at Indiana University is one of the greatest schools of music in the world. So I got a great education at IU and it prepared me very well to do what I’m doing for a living. But initially I started teaching public school. I was a high school band director in South Georgia. That was my first job at a school called Hardaway High School. Then for the next nine years, I taught public school in Hobart, Indiana, in Wheeling, Illinois, and then at North Central High School in Indianapolis. That’s where I was before I came to Purdue. 

Kate Young: 

What led you here to Purdue in 1995? 

Jay Gephart: 

Well, I had always wanted to teach in higher education. Purdue’s in my backyard. I grew up in Montgomery County, about 40 minutes south of here, and so I knew the Purdue Band program. I’ve known about it my whole life. Just the opportunity for me to be part of such an historic program like we have at Purdue was a dream come true for me. So the appeal also to the position was that I was going to come to Purdue to conduct the Symphonic Band, which is the top concert band and the Symphony Orchestra, both of which I had a passion for. I never dreamed that I would stand in front of the “All-American” Marching band at some point during my tenure at Purdue. But that’s how I ended up here. It was, to me, being part of the Purdue Band program was just one of those iconic positions that I always dreamed of. 

Kate Young: 

So in 2006, you became the fifth director of the “All-American” Marching Band. 

Jay Gephart: 

Right. 

Kate Young: 

You said that that wasn’t your expectations when you first came to Purdue. So how did that come about? How did you feel when you attained that role? 

Jay Gephart: 

I taught at Purdue for 11 years before I became the director of the “All-American” Band. And so through those years I had the opportunity to work with marching band students during band camp. I taught many of those students in my concert bands during the second semester, so I knew a lot of the kids. But in 2006, two of my colleagues retired from Purdue and they were both directors with the “All-American” Marching Band. Bill Kissinger and Dave Lepla. When I was appointed director of bands, I spoke to my vice provost, Tom Robinson, and told him I’d really like to step into the role as the director of the “All-American” Marching Band. This college marching band was something that I thought would be a good fit for me, and I thought I would be a good fit for the band. I love college athletics, I love college marching bands. When I was a high school band director I was not a competition band director, which is something we don’t do at Purdue. So anyway, I thought it would be a good fit for me, and lo and behold, I found myself standing in front of the “All-American” Marching Band in the fall of 2006. 

Kate Young: 

What were your goals at the time when you stepped into this role in 2006? 

Jay Gephart: 

My number one goal was to maintain the rich traditions of the “All-American” Marching Band. At band camp one year, one of the first exercises we did with our student leadership team is had them populate a whiteboard with all the traditions of the Purdue “All-American” Marching Band, and in about five minutes we had over 50 traditions on the whiteboard. 

Kate Young: 

Wow. 

Jay Gephart: 

And so tradition is very important to this band program. So that was my number one priority, was to maintain these traditions. 

Second priority was to make sure that the “All-American” Marching Band was an incredibly fine playing band. I wanted this college marching band to sound like a college marching band. And it’s not that they didn’t before, but with my background as a concert band director and an orchestral conductor, I thought maybe I brought maybe a different perspective to the music. And so that was a priority for me. My third priority was to make the “All-American” Marching Band nationally and internationally visible. And this was something that my predecessor Al Wright did beautifully. Al took the band to South America and Europe and Canada. The marching band was known throughout the world as one of the greatest college marching bands, and I wanted to do that as well. So we did. We started traveling nationally and internationally, and the rest is history. It’s been a great run. 

Kate Young: 

Tell us about some of those traditions that you saw as the students were writing them on the whiteboard. 

Jay Gephart: 

You can divide some of our traditions by the director who created them. 

Okay. So you go back to our first director, and his name was Paul Spotts Emrick, and Spotts was an incredible innovator, even though his degree was in engineering. So he started as a student conductor of the “All-American” Marching Band. Then he became the conductor of the marching band and an engineering faculty member. But while Spotts was here, he brought things to the band like the Big 10 Flags, so we were carrying a flag representing the colors of every Big 10 school. And of course, back in those days there were 10. There were 10, and I believe University of Chicago was one of the original Big 10 schools. 

Spotts was also responsible for purchasing the world’s largest drum in 1921. So throughout our history, the world’s largest drum had been an icon for Purdue and also part of the brand of the “All-American” Marching band. When Al Wright came to Purdue, Al created the Golden Girl twirling position. He also created the other solo twirling positions like the Girl in Black and the Silver Twins. He brought to our pregame show, what is known as I Am an American, and those are just a few of, I think, the more significant traditions that we had at Purdue that I knew I had to maintain moving forward. Those are too important to our fans. 

Kate Young: 

Well, and football would not be the same without the “All-American” Marching Band. So what is your personal favorite part of these home football games? 

Jay Gephart: 

My personal favorite is the pregame show, because the pregame show is where you find all the rich traditions. The marching style, all the traditional formations we’ve done for years and years like The Block P. We were the first band to break ranks from a military band to create a formation on the field, and that formation was the Block P. When you watch our pregame show, not a lot has changed over the years. We do the same Block P, the same floating Purdue formation. We create the Boilermaker special on the field, and of course, we’ve been doing I’m an American since the late ’60s, so I love our pregame show. That’s one of my favorites. 

Kate Young: 

Jay goes on to explain more about how the band members breaking rank to form that Block P back in 1907 changed everything for marching bands across the country. 

Jay Gephart: 

The band back in those days performed for the ROTC program here, and so whenever the ROTC members were on the march the band played military marches and they would march up and down the street or up and down the commons or whatever you wanted to call it. And then when we broke ranks and created the Block P, everything changed. 

The story goes that Spotts looked up and he saw a flock of geese flying overhead in a V formation, and he thought, “Well, if the geese can fly in a perfect V formation, why can’t the band create a formation on the field?” And so we did. We made the Block P. Then other university programs on the heels of Purdue started to do the same thing. Every time I watch any competitive marching band or college marching band, I think about the impact that Spotts Emrick had on the world of marching bands by creating that Block P the first time he did it. 

Kate Young: 

By the way, as I was gathering some research from the book Heartbeat of the University, 125 years of Purdue Bands by John Norberg, I noticed that the Block P has been formed in more places than just on Purdue’s campus. It’s been recreated by band members and alumni in some interesting spots such as the Grand Canyon, underneath the ocean and Hawaii, and even on top of Mount Fuji in Japan. You’ve talked about the legacy, the tradition, but you’ve also brought a lot of new things to the band. Tell us a little bit about those new things that you added and why you thought that was important. 

Jay Gephart: 

I’ll start this discussion with the Big 10 flags, and remember Spotts Emrick brought the Big 10 flights to the band back in the 1920s, then they went away for quite a long time. I brought those back to the band because I thought just the visual pageantry of all the colors of the Big 10 flags in front of the band was spectacular, and I wanted those to exist again. 

In the pregame show we started a formation that represents our net tillers boiler up that wasn’t part of our pregame show. So during Fighting Varsity we spell “Boiler Up.” We also now create a formation of the world’s largest drum in our pregame show, which is a very unique tradition for Purdue. And of course there’s a backstory to that about when we traveled to Notre Dame just a few years ago and we couldn’t bring the drum into the stadium, so now we just put it on the field. 

Kate Young: 

We remember that well. 

Jay Gephart: 

Yeah, I’m glad. Well, that big bass drum is such an important icon that we thought it would be appropriate to put a formation of that onto the field. So those are some new things I brought to the table with regard to our pregame show. As far as halftime is concerned, when my team and I get together to design halftime shows for the “All-American” Marching band, I tell them virtually nothing is off the table. We bring up great ideas and we bring up wacky ideas, and then we vet these ideas and try to think about what music would be appropriate. So during my 19 years, we’ve had some incredibly fun and innovative halftime shows that I think I would consider to be a hallmark of my tenure here as the marching band director. 

Kate Young: 

Can you tell us about a wacky idea that was maybe cut? 

Jay Gephart: 

Well, actually there was a wacky idea that we ended up doing, but we had to do a lot of work to make it happen. We wanted to do a spoof on Star Wars. Okay, so we did. 

Speaker 4: 

Pete Skywalker. Since 1869, the Boilermakers have been the guardians of peace and justice in the Republic of Indiana, but recently, denizens of the evil empire have reared their cream and crimson heads. Our nemesis, Darth Hoosier has captured our golden Princess Alexa and imprisoned her in the Death Sphere. Use the force, Pete Skywalker. Save our Golden Gold from Darth Hoosier. 

Speaker 8: 

Pete Skywalker, hear my challenge. The Empire’s banners are flying, and your petty resistance is meaningless to Emperor Tom Palpacream. Give up now, or your girl of gold is as good as gone. 

Speaker 9: 

Pete Skywalker, you’re my only hope. 

Jay Gephart: 

The creator of the Death Star was a character by the name of Darth Hoosier, and so the spoof was an Indiana University spoof when we had some good laughs with that. But we had to tread lightly when it came to poking fun at my alma mater a little bit, but it was a fun halftime show. 

Kate Young: 

I am telling you all, you have to see the Star Wars performance on YouTube. Purdue Pete is fighting Darth Hoosier with lightsabers, and the Golden Girl is inside the big bass drum with Princess Leia-style earmuffs on her head. It is incredible. We’ll link this YouTube video in the show notes for you. 

Jay shares more about other memorable performances during his time as director and reflects on his career as both a teacher and band director. 

Jay Gephart: 

I also wanted to do a Marvel Comics halftime show, but I wanted all the superheroes to come from the Purdue West Division, and I wanted all the villains to come from the Purdue East, and we just couldn’t quite make that work. So that was another wacky idea. We also wanted to do a halftime show based on the game show The Price is Right, and so we had to decide which segments of The Price is Right would really work. But we ended up putting that halftime show on the field with Plinko and all the other Price Is Right components, and the crowd absolutely loved it. But I would tell you that we also poked a little at our Hoosier friends during that halftime show too. 

Kate Young: 

You have to. 

Jay Gephart: 

Yeah, of course. Right. 

Kate Young: 

So you’re approaching this fall 2024 semester will be your last as the director of the band. How do you think you’ll feel that first football game you’re on the field? Kind of the first of the last. 

Jay Gephart: 

It’s just been an emotion-filled summer. 

Kate Young: 

I bet. 

Jay Gephart: 

I broke the news to my faculty last spring, and then I told my students on the weekend of the Indianapolis 500, and that was a difficult discussion. Very emotional for me. When I think about my tenure in this position and I think about it lasting 19 years, it went by just like that. This year is not only my final year as the director of the “All-American” Marching Band. This represents my 30th year at Purdue and my 40th year as a teacher. As I was discussing this recently with my wife, I told her, “I can remember vividly my first day of teaching in 1983.” So time goes by quickly, and I think when I stand on that ladder and conduct the Purdue Fanfare pregame, I think the memories will flood back. I look forward to that to some degree, but also I’m sure this season is going to be filled with some melancholy feelings, quite frankly. 

Kate Young: 

Jay shares some of his favorite traditions as the Purdue “All-American” Marching Band’s director, including how the band became a household name at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, first performing at the Indianapolis 500 back in 1919, and he goes on to discuss some of the incredible places and iconic events the band has traveled to both nationally and internationally. 

Jay Gephart: 

My favorite tradition as the director, I think is the Block P. That’s my favorite tradition. Every marching band you look at today that creates a formation on the field from every high school band to college marching band had its roots here at Purdue. So we’ve been forming that Block P for well over 100 years. The reason I think it’s my favorite is during our alumni band reunion, that’s the final formation we make with the undergraduate band on the inside of the P, and then all the alumni come around and form the Block P, and they’re thrilled. The alumni are thrilled to come back and create that formation on the field with the undergrads. It means so much to our students. And one other tradition that I think is probably a close second for me is our affiliation with the Indianapolis 500. We’ve been the official band of the Indianapolis 500 for over 100 years. I have spent 28 Memorial Days at the racetrack. It was funny, during COVID when they didn’t run the race, my wife said, “Well, what do we do this weekend?” And I said, “Well, we’ll do like everybody else. We’ll have a cookout, and those kind of things.” We hadn’t experienced it for almost 30 years. But what a rich tradition that is to be part of something so unique. What other college marching band in the country has something like the Indianapolis 500 they they’re associated with? 

Kate Young: 

Yeah, it’s a staple of that race. What do the students think about being part of that? 

Jay Gephart: 

Just to show you the commitment on the part of our students, they have to pay their own way back to participate in the 500. Final exams are typically two to three weeks before the 500, and this past year we had I think 300 of the 390 students come back for the 500, paying out of their own pocket. They love the experience, but they also know how important that tradition is to Purdue, and they want to keep that going. 

Kate Young: 

They want to keep it perfect. 

Jay Gephart: 

They do. They do. 

Kate Young: 

So the Indy 500 is closer to home here in Indiana, but you’ve had performances all over the world. In 2008, the All American Marching Band performed at the Olympics in Beijing. 

Jay Gephart: 

We were part of the pre-ceremonies for the Olympics in Beijing. That was our first major travel. 

Kate Young: 

How did all that come about? 

Jay Gephart: 

I knew the opportunity existed, and so I wrote a letter and applied and they accepted us. They invited us to come. 

Prior to that, whenever Al took bands abroad, he would take a small component of the marching band to places like Venezuela and Colombia. He might take 100 students. And so I decided we’re going to open this up to anyone who wants to go. And lo and behold, that first trip to China, we had 275 students. 

Kate Young: 

Wow. 

Jay Gephart: 

Sign up to go on that trip. And that was the beginning of our brainstorming about different locations we might take this band. That China trip was indescribable. It really was. We performed in a concert hall in front of hundreds of military musicians from China, and the first piece we played was the Chinese national anthem. And so of course, all these military men and women stood at attention during their national anthem, and then we played the National Anthem of the United States. 

Kate Young: 

Oh, wow. 

Jay Gephart: 

And all of these Chinese military continued standing at attention while we played our national anthem. It was powerful. It really was. And then we performed a concert at the Great Wall of China, which is also spectacular. 

Kate Young: 

That’s incredible. You got to go to LA 2028, right? 

Jay Gephart: 

Yeah, that would be great, wouldn’t it? 

Kate Young: 

You can go as a volunteer. 

Jay Gephart: 

Yeah. 

Kate Young: 

Okay. So in 2010, Purdue became the first Big 10 school to perform at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. Tell us how that came about and how you were able to organize that big trip. 

Jay Gephart: 

Well, one of my colleagues at the time is a man by the name of Max Jones, and Max was an assistant director at Purdue. But prior to coming to campus, he was the director of bands at Concord High School in Elkhart, Indiana, and the Concord Band was a perennial state champion marching band. They had participated in the Macy’s Parade on two or three occasions, and Max encouraged me to think about applying to perform at Macy’s, and I thought, “Well, no other Big 10 school’s done this. What would it take for us to go?” So I submitted an application and lo and behold, we were accepted. 

Kate Young: 

These stories keep happening. 

Jay Gephart: 

I know. We were accepted. But the application was two years before the actual parade. That’s how the Macy’s Parade works. So we had two years really to plan and prepare for this performance. So on Monday before Thanksgiving we loaded buses here in West Lafayette and we headed east. We drove through the night, ended up in New Jersey early in the morning Tuesday, the students started doing their touring of New York, and Wednesday night before the parade, the students got in their uniforms and we loaded our buses. We drove to the Macy’s store on 34th Street, and we had a 3:00 A.M. rehearsal. 

Kate Young: 

Oh my goodness. 

Jay Gephart: 

Now, the NBC requires all the participating bands to rehearse in front of the store in the middle of the night. I think what they’re looking for, there’s that emblem, that Macy’s emblem on the street, and I think simply they just want to make sure each band is centered on that logo. So we did our routine one time and we hit our marks and so forth, and the producer said, “Purdue, that’s all I need.” And I turned to the producer and I said, “Don’t we have 20 minutes to rehearse?” And he said, “Sure.” And so I yelled, “Run it back.” And so we did the Macy’s routine as many times as we could in 20 minutes. We loaded the buses, slept on 8th Avenue for a while, and then we led the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade the next day. That’s probably one of the highlights of my life, is to be part of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with this band. It was just a very special moment for all of us. 

Kate Young: 

That’s incredible. We’ve talked about all these different places. Tell us about the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin, Ireland. 

Jay Gephart: 

We have been in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade three times now. 2013 was our first adventure to Ireland. So during spring break, the band traveled around the Republic of Ireland the first part of the week and then we landed in Dublin. The St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin is, I think, unlike most St. Patrick’s Day parades anywhere in the world. It’s a very intimate parade. The crowd is really right down on top of the parade participants. We were the final group in the parade. So as we were marching we had, I think, 375 students in that parade. The last four minutes of the national broadcast, the broadcaster said, “Let’s just sit back and listen to this brilliant performance by this band from Purdue University.” And so for four minutes we had national coverage without any kind of commentary or talking. Just listening to and watching the “All-American” Marching Band perform in that parade in front of hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world. All over Europe, they come to Dublin for that parade. So we had such a successful time in 2013 we wanted to do it again, so we went again in 2018, we went again in 2023. I wouldn’t be surprised to see our band in the parade in 2027. This is the beginnings of another one of those traditions that I think we’d like to keep going. 

Kate Young: 

Ireland, Indianapolis, China. What is your favorite place that you’ve taken the band and why? 

Jay Gephart: 

Well, my favorite place is New York. It’s to the Macy’s Parade, for all the reasons I mentioned, but it’s a very different experience. You march the parade before you see the national television broadcast. So we started the parade at 9:00 A.M. and we marched throughout the streets of New York and we ended up down on 34th Street. Then everybody breaks ranks and we get organized and we line up right there in front of the Macy’s store. They literally give you a green flag when it’s your turn to march, and we had a minute and 20 seconds to do our performance. So we stormed down the street and we played our performance, and as we’re marching off the street, we’re playing Hail Purdue, and I felt in my pocket my cell phone started to explode. It was buzzing left and right, and people were sending me text messages from all over the world about our performance at Macy’s. I think the national audience for the Macy’s Parade is 50 million people. That was a very special performance for us, for sure. 

Close seconds for me have been each one of the bowl performances we have done with Purdue football. I’ve traveled with the band and Purdue football to Orlando. We’ve been to San Francisco, of course, we’ve been to Detroit twice. We’ve been to Texas. Those bowl experiences are very special, especially for the students. Those would be close seconds behind our Macy’s performance. 

Kate Young: 

I love it getting the band out there on the national and international stage. 

Jay Gephart: 

Yeah, you’re right, for sure. 

Kate Young: 

We’ve talked about the band, we talked about traditions. It’s just such an iconic thing at Purdue University. Why do you think Purdue’s Band is different from other universities across the country? 

Jay Gephart: 

I’ve had that conversation with many of my colleagues throughout the country. What makes Purdue so unique? You can talk about the fact that we have no school of music here. We do have a music degree at Purdue now, but there’s not a full-blown school of music. Everyone who’s been in our department, every participant of the “All-American” Marching Band does it just because they want to and they love it. I think that plays into the success of our program, but I also think we can do some things with our band at Purdue that other universities can’t. 

So beginning back in the Spotts era and the Al Wright era, the band started traveling. They took trips to South America, and as I mentioned, to Japan and Canada and Europe. And we have all of these rich traditions that many bands in the country, they’re lucky if they have won. So I think that’s what really sets our band apart from the other college marching bands in the country, and what makes it so special to become a member of the “All-American” Marching Band. I think that’s the most important part of it is just the rich tradition of this department. 

Kate Young: 

We’ve discussed your teaching career. What does it mean to you to teach Boilermakers in music? What is your favorite part about leading the students, interacting with them, that mentorship element that you have as the director? 

Jay Gephart: 

Well, our students, they’re participating in music as an avocation. And with that, if we do our job right here, if we teach music and we teach the value of the arts to our students, they will be the school board members and the members of symphony and community bands and boards of directors and so forth that can really make an impact on the arts. I think that that’s the future. Teaching the non-major. 

I wish many of my colleagues around the country could understand the importance of that, especially in those locations where they have schools of music, because I think the proof is in the pudding, and at Purdue our students go out and they become members of these community bands and orchestras, and they want to continue playing music throughout their lives. That’s what’s important to me about teaching our students at Purdue. 

Now, we also give some pretty tremendous concerts here, so just the thrill of performance is also another element of that. But I would be very disappointed if our Purdue students left here and did not become strong advocates for the arts wherever they land. 

Kate Young: 

While we’re on this topic of Boilermaker students, the Purdue “All-American” Marching Band alumni are some of the most devoted Purdue alumni, and they’re always among some of the biggest donors during Purdue Day of Giving. I asked Jay why he thinks these alums are so committed to Purdue. 

Jay Gephart: 

I’ve never seen anything like it at another university, quite frankly. I was a member of the Indiana University Marching Hundred for three years when I was a student. At IU they have an alumni band that happens every year, and they may get a 100-150 people to come back. But at Purdue we get hundreds of alumni to come back to our alumni marching band reunion every other year. The thing about our alumni that probably hit home with me more than anything was 2009, my wife Carolyn died of breast cancer. We talk about the Purdue Band family regularly, but it isn’t until something like that happens that you realize what that really means. And in the days following her death, I received email messages and phone calls and then received cards in the mail from Purdue Band alumni that I knew and many that I had never met in my life. That’s what the alumni base means to me. It truly is a family here. They really showed it in 2009 when I went through that tragedy. 

Kate Young: 

It’s a special base that’s just so committed to Purdue and the band. 

Jay Gephart: 

They are. They’re committed to this band. Their experiences in the “All-American” marching band were such that as they’ve gotten older, they want to come back and relive that at homecoming, but our alumni are also very generous. We’re sitting here in Hagel Hall right now, and this facility would never have happened had it not been for the generosity of alumni from Purdue bands. 

Kate Young: 

Our podcast team interviewed Jay inside the Mark and Sharon Hagel Hall. The four-story building which opened in 2022, is named for Mark and Sharon in honor of their $10 million leadership gift. Mark was a member of the “All-American” Marching Band during his time at Purdue. Jay expands on the importance of this new home for Purdue bands and orchestras, which also proudly displays the world’s largest drum. 

Jay Gephart: 

When Purdue bands moved into the Elliott Hall of Music over 80 years ago, the department was still part of the military. I think we had maybe 120 men in the department. Through the decades, the department just continued to grow and grow and grow and course offerings were more than just marching band. We had jazz program and we had orchestras and concert bands. When I came to Purdue in 1995 there were about 600 students in our department, and by 2013 we had grown to almost 1000 students. 

It became apparent that the Elliott Hall of Music facilities could not accommodate our continued growth. The facilities were very dated. We needed space not just to grow as a department, but we needed modern facilities that could provide us the best environment to teach. That’s why it was important for us to pursue Hagel Hall. Our enrollment this fall, in 2024, we anticipate will be close to 1400 students. So to grow from 600 in 1995 to nearly 1400 students today, I think that demonstrates why we needed to bust out of the Hall of Music and come to this beautiful space. 

Kate Young: 

What has been the impact of this new home over the past couple of years for the students? 

Jay Gephart: 

I think it’s been immeasurable. The sheer fact that we can have rehearsals in state-of-the-art facilities, that are acoustically designed specifically for orchestra or for concert band, I think that’s important. So I believe the quality of our performances is increasing year after year now that we’ve been in this space. 

We also have 14 practice rooms in this building. When we were at the Hall of Music, we had two. 

Kate Young: 

Quite the difference. 

Jay Gephart: 

Yeah, when it comes time for auditions, ensemble auditions for the next semester, the practice rooms are busting to overflowing. There are kids in there throughout every day, well into the evening. As part of the Hagel Hall Construction, we also have the Hall “All-American” Marching Band Complex located on West Third Street across the street from Shreve, and that also has transformed the “All-American” Marching Band’s ability to rehearse. We house the entire marching band at Hall. We’ve added 26 minutes to our rehearsal every day by breaking the tradition of having to march from the Hall of Music down to the drill field and back. The campus community was pretty disappointed by that, but to have 26 extra minutes of rehearsal every day has changed our marching band for the better. 

Kate Young: 

You’re so beloved in this community. Everyone knows your name even if you were in the band or not. What do you hope that your legacy will be as you step down as director? 

Jay Gephart: 

As the director of the “All-American” Marching Band and director of bands here, I’m merely a steward of this program. I want my students, of course, to remember the wonderful musical experiences they had and the great halftime shows we performed. But most importantly, I want them to remember this beautiful family that is Purdue bands and orchestras. What I want my legacy to be is that I fostered an environment of caring, of this kind of family atmosphere, that I want to be part of. When I leave here as the steward of the “All-American” Marching Band, I hope my successor will continue to do that very thing because I know how important it is to my students. 

Kate Young: 

Tell us about your plans for the future. How do you want to continue to impact Purdue? 

Jay Gephart: 

I will step down as the director of the “All-American” Marching Band, but I will continue as the Al G. Wright chair of Purdue University Bands and Orchestras, and I will also continue to conduct the Purdue Wind Ensemble. I’m approaching official retirement age soon, and I have six grandchildren. 

Kate Young: 

Oh. 

Jay Gephart: 

I want to give myself more time to spend with my grandkids and free up my schedule a little bit in the fall. Remove some of the physical and mental demands that the marching band program brings to the table for me, because as you can imagine, going on a trip with 400 students, that can be a little stressful at times. 

Kate Young: 

I can imagine, yeah. 

Jay Gephart: 

Those kinds of things I look forward to. The thing that I will miss is my day-to-day interaction with all of these students. They’re such incredible young men and women. They’re just incredible representatives of Purdue, and I will miss the day-to-day interaction with them. 

Kate Young: 

Are you going to take your grandkids to a football game and sit in the stands for the first time? 

Jay Gephart: 

I will. I’ll take them to a football game. One thing I’ll continue to do though, and this is what other directors of bands in the country do. I’ll attend every home football game and I’ll conduct the Star Spangled Banner and the alma mater, and then the staff will do all the rest, but that is an opportunity afforded to the director of bands in most every institution in the country. They have the opportunity to conduct the banner and their school’s alma mater, so I’ll continue to do that. 

Kate Young: 

What a cool tidbit. I did not know that. That’s interesting. 

We’ve talked about you’ve traveled all over the world representing Purdue. What does this Boilermaker spirit and community mean to you? 

Jay Gephart: 

Being part of this department and part of the marching band program has been the joy of my life. As I said earlier, I never dreamed that I would be standing in front of that “All-American” marching band as its conductor. It means the world to me. When I look back at the incredible memories we’ve made, I can think about individual students I’ve taught throughout the years that were part of the marching band. So if that sums up what this program means to me, I would tell you that it has been a joy of my life to be part of this. 

Kate Young: 

So your last football season is coming up quickly. What are you looking forward to most this fall? 

Jay Gephart: 

I’m looking forward to business as usual. I am. Ever since I made my announcement it truly has been business as usual. We had to plan halftime shows and we had to prepare students to return to campus next week for Band Camp, and all the details that accompany an organization like the Marching Band. 

But as far as specific things, I’m looking forward to, I look forward to every pre-game show, because it’s my favorite. I look forward to a great Boilermaker football season. I’m very hopeful for our fighting Boilermakers that they’ll have a great season. But of course we also have a brand new class of rookie members coming into the “All-American” Marching Band, and one of the greatest moments for those rookie members is the first time they march into Ross-Ade Stadium. 

Kate Young: 

Oh, I bet. 

Jay Gephart: 

I remember my first march into a memorial Stadium in Bloomington. I couldn’t believe I was there, and I was so nervous, and I know our students feel the same way, but the minute they set foot onto that football field at Ross-Ade Stadium, it all changes. They’re a member of the “All-American” Marching Band, and here they are. Their dream come true to be out there on that football field. That’s probably the thing that I’ll look forward the most. Those rookie members taking the field for the first time. 

Kate Young: 

I bet that’s so surreal. 

Jay Gephart: 

It is, and it’s a very special moment, for sure. 

Kate Young: 

What would you say your next giant leap is? It can be personally or professionally. It sounds like being a grandpa is up there. 

Jay Gephart: 

That is. That’s at the top of my list. I will continue to work in music. Music is not just something I do. It’s who I am. I talked to my students last spring and I just asked them, “Why are you here? Why do you play?” We agreed that it wasn’t just that they needed an hour break from their academic classes, or those are the kind of the pet answers we get about why students play music at Purdue. They play because music is such a part of who they are. It will always be that way to me. So every opportunity I have to guest conduct, or I’m the conductor of the Kokomo Park Band, it’s an adult community band, I’m the conductor of the Indiana Wind Symphony at Carmel, that affords me opportunities hopefully deep into my retirement, and so I’ll continue to do those kinds of things. 

Because of the high profile of this position and the work related to it, I’d like to spend more time taking care of me. Just doing whatever it takes for me to have a long, productive, and healthy retirement. 

Kate Young: 

I love that. 

Jay Gephart: 

That’s what I’d like to do. 

Kate Young: 

That sounds great. Well, Jay, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Is there anything else you want to share with our listeners or our viewers? 

Jay Gephart: 

I think probably my parting comments would be about the incredible staff and faculty we have at Purdue University in our band and orchestra department. These individuals, I think, have the same kind of passion for teaching non-majors that I do. I think we share that passion together. I think this department will be in great hands moving forward. Not only do we continue to grow, but the education our students receive from this world-class faculty and these wonderful staff members is unlike any I see anywhere. My hat’s off to my colleagues, and I just hope the very best for them as they continue their careers at Purdue. Hopefully they’ll see a 30 year anniversary sometime down the road. 

Kate Young: 

Well, it was such a pleasure. I had so much fun talking to you. I know our audience will love it too. 

Jay Gephart: 

Well, thank you. I appreciate it. 

Kate Young: 

Thank you. 

Celebrating Jay and his legacy at Purdue is just so easy. He’s made an incredible impact on our incredible “All-American” Marching Band. 

We have a behind-the-scenes Rapid-Fire Q&A with Jay on our YouTube channel. He shares which songs he would add into the band’s if he could do it all over again, and what he tells his students in his pep talks before a big game. Yeah. You can watch these special YouTube shorts on our This is Purdue YouTube page. Just head over to YouTube.com/@thisispurdue. 

A lot of the research in this episode you just heard came from the book Heartbeat of the University: 125 Years of Purdue Bands by John Norberg, with contributions by Kathy Matter. There are some amazing stories and photos in this book, and we linked it in our show notes for you. And by the way, if you are interested in hearing more about the band and Purdue’s big bass drum, also known as the world’s largest drum, we have another podcast episode for you. Our This is Purdue podcast celebrated 100 years of the big bass drum back in 2021, and you can check out episode number 40 to hear more. 

Finally, be sure to follow This is Purdue on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

This is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young. Our podcast videography for this episode was led by Ted Schellenberger in collaboration with Thad Boone, John Garcia, Zach Mogenson, and Allie Cheney. Our social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. Our podcast distribution strategy is led by Teresa Walker and Carly Eastman. Our podcast design is led by Caitlin Freeville. Our podcast photography is led by John Underwood. Our podcast team project manager is Rain Gu. Our podcast YouTube Promotions is managed by Kirsten Bowman. Additional writing and research assistance is led by Sophie Ritz, and our This is Purdue intern is Caroline Keim. 

Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcasts. There you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review. And as always, boiler up.