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At the age of 11, Bill Pappas saved enough money to attend his first-ever Indianapolis 500. Since then, he has turned his dreams into a reality, along the way working with some of the biggest names in racing — Juan Pablo Montoya, Emerson Fittipaldi and A.J. Foyt.

Like all good ideas, Junobie was created out of necessity. As a traveling working mother of two, Nickey Ramsey became frustrated with the few options available at the time to store her breastmilk — or, as she calls it, “liquid gold” — while on-the-go.

Whatever your idea of a typical classroom experience looks like, it’s certainly not The Data Mine. This unique living-learning community offers boundary-breaking learning for students from all backgrounds and gives students the chance to work on real-world projects with major corporations like Beck’s Hybrids, Cummins and Microsoft.

It’s the coolest moment when we turn the corner of the Indy 500 track, and you see all of the people in the stands lined up, and you are the first thing they’re all looking at.

The 500 Festival Princess Program started out as a pageant, but there’s so much more to what it means to be a leader and a princess. I fell in love with community service my freshman year building an assistive fishing device for a 7-year-old boy.

At the Indy 500, a lot of the drum major’s role is the showmanship of it all — wearing the big, tall bear hats, leading the band through the parades, but there is also the logistics.

Being from a small town, there’s not a whole lot of diversity. There wasn’t anybody that looked like me. I got pointed out a lot, and I just knew from a very early age I was not the same as everybody else.

One year ago, Asumani Gregoire used a computer for the very first time. In May, the freshman at Purdue Polytechnic High School will compete against 800 other teams at the VEX Robotics World Championship in Dallas, Texas.

The Purdue Memorial Union’s renovated ground floor looks like an entirely different space to most visitors. But when they see the many nods to Purdue and PMU history embedded within the new layout, even staunch Purdue traditionalists can find elements to appreciate about the additions to the century-old building.

For Joanne Troutner, Purdue University is more than her alma mater. It’s a family. She describes Purdue as a launchpad — “A place where I was allowed to be excellent.”
“How could I not want to give back?” she asks, voice ripe with sincerity.