This dad of four is driven to protect his people. So he’s earning his master’s degree in cybersecurity with Purdue Global.

Dan Vukobratovich (MS cybersecurity, Purdue Global) isn’t pursuing his master’s degree in cybersecurity simply because he likes tech.  

It’s because protecting loved ones is something he takes very seriously. In fact, he would tell you his drive to protect his people is what informs every single thing he does. 

He’s always been that way. When he first began to consider career paths as a young adult, he dreamed of a job in medicine. But as a dad of young kids at the time, he could tell right away it wasn’t going to work for his family. So he trained as a volunteer EMT and firefighter. In that role, he started to see how getting paid to work triage was not off the table. 

“Once I got involved in emergency services, it drew my attention to cybersecurity because I realized it was actually a lot like medicine,” Vukobratovich says. “It’s the difference between dealing with the organic side of people and dealing with the nuts and bolts and wires. But the mindset is almost identical. You’re trying to figure out what’s wrong. You’re trying to help someone to safety.” 

And when he decided to earn a master’s degree in cybersecurity management with Purdue Global, his understanding of the possibilities expanded beyond what he knew he could do. He could advance his career while holding steady in the day to day. He could teach a valuable lesson to his kids. And he could use his passion for safety to help other people learn how to protect themselves, too. 

When you have a degree backed by Purdue, it’s a stamp of approval for a lot of people.

Dan Vukobratovich
MS cybersecurity, Purdue Global

Pursuing an online master’s degree in cybersecurity 

His drive to protect his loved ones is ultimately what led him to cybersecurity, but being able to provide in the meantime is what made Purdue Global the right choice for him. The dad of four says flexibility was going to have to be central to his experience as a student — and that’s exactly what he got. 

“Sessions are always after work hours,” he says. “It allows me to provide for my family, take care of the needs of my household. The faculty have been wonderful, but the students have, too. My study groups are really accommodating because we all need that.” 

Vukobratovich works as a senior IT security analyst at Purdue Information Technology in West Lafayette, so the curriculum is directly relevant to his everyday life. As he helps the university evaluate the technology for security vulnerbilities, he’s regularly applying what he learns in class in addition to setting himself up for advancement later on. 

“The class I just finished the term before this one was about network defense and penetration testing. With the upgrades to software at work, we have to actually evaluate everything from a criminal point of view — how can this be compromised, and what is our best defense against those compromises?” he says. “I’m able to take that exact, direct knowledge from class and apply it specifically to what I do.” 

Value for his family 

His family may be his primary motivation, but Vukobratovich is quick to note that their unwavering support also enables him to keep going — in particular, his wife, a full-time cardiac nurse.  

“We’ve been married almost two years now and she’s my hero,” he says. “If she knows I have something big coming up or something I need to get done, she’s there saying, ‘Just go. Do it. I’ve got the kids.’” 

And that’s what powers his capacity to model a valuable lesson for his kids in the meantime. His two daughters are now adults, but his sons — ages 10 and 11 — are at a famously challenging academic moment and being able to watch their dad push through it himself is meaningful.

“I want to expand how much I know, but I also want to set an example for my kids. Education is important. They don’t have a long-term vision right now, but I can show them it gets better,” he says. 

He adds, with a laugh, that his wife’s excitement about what he’s doing is contagious. 

“She’ll bend over backwards and then some to help make sure I can do this successfully,” he says. “She checked in with me about how it’s going. I said, ‘It’s going great.’ She said, ‘Cool. Do you think you want to get your doctorate next?’” 

Her enthusiasm is precious to him, but he thinks he’ll get through the next year or so first before he starts considering the next degree. With everything put together, however, it’s grown his passion into something bigger.  

“I want to spread the knowledge, teach people about it, show them how they can keep themselves safe,” he says. 

An opportunity to keep his family safe and other families, too 

Looking ahead, Vukobratovich is enjoying being able to think bigger.  

“My focus is on critical infrastructure protection,” he explains. “Critical infrastructure is the underlying working fields that run our whole nation by running our local communities like the police department, the fire department, the military. But it also affects other things like finance, medical, transportation, logistics. Most people don’t realize how devastating an attack on these things can be. That’s why we’re seeing cyberattacks against electric companies, water companies, and I get to help keep those utilities safe.” 

I want to spread the knowledge, teach people about (online safety), show them how they can keep themselves safe.

Dan Vukobratovich  MS cybersecurity, Purdue Global

And in the age of AI, that unknown weighs heavy on a nervous public. Vukobratovich’s degree and skills allow him to stand in the gap. 

“For a while, I taught some public classes on this material,” he says. “And I’d really like to do more of that when I graduate. I’d like to show people they can be safe online and that keeping their households and businesses safe may be easier than people think.” 

In fact, he encourages those who are interested in educating others in cybersafety to consider Purdue Global. He says this is a field — even more so than most — where a respected name matters. 

“People are worried right now. When they go to someone to learn how to keep themselves and their families safe, they want to know they can trust the person who’s teaching them. When you have a degree backed by Purdue, it’s a stamp of approval for a lot of people. They know the knowledge this educator is sharing is going to be accurate because they got their information from a renowned university,” he says. 

In the meantime, what this degree is doing for him in the here and now is huge. 

“Having the master’s degree can help me advance further within the university and support critical infrastructure,” he says. “But it also helps me work with leadership to better understand how IT and IT security can help the overall environment at Purdue.” 

From here, he has nothing but inspiration and hope for the future. Vukobratovich has a vision that includes being published for his work in cybersecurity and infrastructure protection. He wants to present at a cybersecurity conference. But the possibilities are infinite.  

“I’m proud of myself for discovering who I am, reinventing myself and continuing to pursue my education successfully,” he says. “A lot of men at some point need to evaluate — where am I, where’s my family at in life? — and find where that opportunity is. Your family is the one thing you really can’t replace.”

Go behind the scenes of a VR game creation and learn more about Purdue’s new STEM-focused urban campus. 

The horn sounds. You launch from the starting blocks, and the crowd goes wild. Purdue Pete cheers you on as you race down the pool. Flags are flying, and Boilermaker pride is all around you. Are your Olympic dreams coming true? Close. It’s the Purdue USA Swimming LIVE VR experience.   

Purdue students and faculty in Indianapolis designed the VR experience to celebrate the U.S. Olympic Team Swimming Trials being held in Indiana’s capital city. Game participants are fully immersed in a 3D race in which they swim for a spot on an Olympics-inspired podium. 

How the game is played (and made)

“The Purdue USA Swimming LIVE VR experience is interactive and fast,” says Jason Guy, clinical assistant professor of computer graphics technology. “Our goal is for any person of any age or ability to have fun. People can jump in and out of the game quickly.” 

Creation of the multiplayer game was accelerated, too. It can take years to design a VR experience. But in just four weeks, Guy — along with students Andres Garcia de Quevedo, a junior animation major, and Lukas Wise, a senior computer graphics major — concepted, designed and built Purdue’s VR swim. 

“The process of game creation is complex,” Wise says. “We break it down piece by piece and tackle each component individually. A lot of prep work goes in each step, so you need a solid plan before you start.” 

User experience was a key consideration: Should the camera view be overhead and encompass the entire pool? Should it be a third-person view from behind the swimmer? What action should a player perform to advance their avatar? These are all questions that Guy, Wise and Garcia de Quevedo explored while designing the game. 

“Andres did the menu setup,” Guy says. “This is what the players see when they first load into the game. And Lukas worked on the animations, getting the avatars to swim across the pool.”  

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Purdue Pete cheering you on? That’s all Guy. “I built Pete using Autodesk Maya, which is a 3D computer graphics application,” he explains. “Then I uploaded the screenshots into Unreal Engine 5, which is driving this game.” 

Unreal Engine allowed Guy, Wise and Garcia de Quevedo to control lighting, perspective looping, the cheering animation of Purdue Pete, the Motion P on the bottom of the pool, the soundscape, as well as core functionality. 

“Core functionality — pressing this does that — is always going to be the hardest aspect of game design in my opinion,” Wise says. 

Purdue’s VR experience uses Meta Quest headsets, which go over a player’s eyes and ears. “They’re self-contained,” Guy says. “You don’t need a computer to run the game. It’s all in the headsets themselves.” 

Wise and Garcia de Quevedo built the VR swim experience as part of a summer independent study they are doing with Guy. Hands-on learning experiences such as this are a big part of what drew them to Purdue in Indianapolis. 

Industry experts, career-ready students in Indianapolis

“My professors are excellent,” Garcia de Quevedo says. “And they’re extremely supportive. I had a solid understanding of art and Adobe before I went into college, but my professors showed me how to use those skills to create something meaningful. They have pushed me to be the best I can be.”  

Chris Rogers, site director and associate professor of computer graphics technology, says that having smaller class sizes allows him to forge these types of relationships with students. “I hold one-on-one sessions with students, even if it’s for just 15 minutes, to check in with them about class, but also to review their portfolios or hear about their career goals or internship interests. 

“My area is video production and motion design. I love being able to help students along on their journey, and then, ultimately, hearing that they landed an amazing job and are really excited about what they’re doing.” 

Creating connections between students and industry partners is equally important to Rogers. 

“Conner Prairie is going through a major redesign of their entire experience right now,” he says. “The master planner for that project is one of our graduates, and we’re looking at new projects to do with them going forward.”

The process of game creation is complex. We break it down piece by piece and tackle each component individually. A lot of prep work goes into each step, so you need a solid plan before you start.

Lukas Wise  Purdue computer graphics student in Indianapolis

He also points to recent associations with the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites and the Harrison Center, as well as a long-standing relationship with The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.  

“We are continually exploring opportunities that are unique to Indianapolis,” Rogers says. “Armando Lanuti, president of Creative Works, is on our advisory council. And we have cultivated a close relationship with the leadership of 16 Tech.”  

Purdue’s Indianapolis location plays a key role in experiential learning, which is a point of emphasis for the urban campus. 

“We’ve done many projects where we’ve partnered with outside entities,” Rogers says. “Being in the city, there are so many opportunities around tourism, sports and culture.” 

“I am a huge fan of Indianapolis,” agrees Wise. “I love learning in an urban environment.”  

Garcia de Quevedo says that the city helps him stay focused on outcomes. “I am career oriented and want to get my work done; Indy has been instrumental in that process.” 

Collaborative, hands-on learning

The ability to work closely and creatively with students and faculty who are passionate about their work has been an integral part of Wise and Garcia de Quevedo’s experiences at Purdue in Indianapolis. 

In addition to the Purdue VR swim project, Garcia de Quevedo has collaborated with other students on motion videos, video games and short films. “For a group capstone, I worked with Lukas and another student on a 3D animated short film,” he says.  

“Andres and I met in class,” adds Wise. “At first, we were complete strangers, awkwardly sitting next to each other, but as we worked on group projects together, we ended up becoming friends. The first game that Andres and I developed together was simple: Roll a ball into a goal. Now, we’re creating a VR experience.” 

The VR swim game will be Wise’s last project as a Boilermaker, as the independent study he is building it for fulfills his last graduation requirement. After graduation, he is interested in pursuing environmental design with an eye toward working in game design or the film industry. 

Continuing to innovate and hone his skills is something that Wise says he is well prepared to do: “I feel like a dry sponge being dipped in water, always absorbing new information.” 

Boilermakers pioneer aquatic sports innovation at historic Olympic swim trials event

On May 6, 2024, two days after a packed George Strait concert in Lucas Oil Stadium, trucks loaded full of steel, PVC piping, scaffolding and more lined up to begin the five-week process of building two pools in a place where no pool had ever been constructed before — a football stadium.

Two Olympic-sized (50-meter) swimming pools were constructed on Lucas Oil Stadium’s field for the 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Trials, marking the first time an indoor pool has been constructed in a venue of this size. The pool deck will be constructed approximately 8 feet above the existing field.

The idea to build a pool inside a football stadium is a novel one. But for four Purdue graduates who work at Shiel Sexton, the construction company leading the project management of the trials, every team involved is perfectly suited to bring it to life.

Assembling the dream team

One of the Boilermakers from Shiel Sexton working on the project is Tony Eisenhut (BS construction management technology ’90). As vice president of field operations for Shiel Sexton, he oversees everything that has to do with putting the pools into Lucas Oil Stadium and has been amazed at the coordination and collaboration that has taken place over the two years this project has been in planning.

“Every one of the entities involved in this project is the best of the best. It’s nice working with all ‘A’ players,” Eisenhut says. “If you wanted to build an all-star team, they are all in Lucas Oil today. And you’ve got to have Boilermakers on the team, or we would be behind schedule right now.”

Shiel Sexton regularly works closely with Indiana Sports Corp., a non-profit organization that brings world-class sporting events like USA Swimming LIVE to Indiana. Shiel Sexton collaborates with representatives from Lucas Oil Stadium, Myrtha Pools, Dodd Technologies Inc., Spear Corp. and countless others with a stake in bringing the Olympic swim trials to Indianapolis.

According to Shiel Sexton CEO Mike Dilts (BS construction management technology ’81), Purdue’s role in the Olympic Trials began 20 years ago when former Purdue athletics director Morgan Burke and former Purdue administrator Nancy Cross stepped up to pledge Purdue’s support for the 2004 FINA World Swimming Championships.

That year, Gainbridge Fieldhouse (then Conseco Fieldhouse) in Indianapolis was the first major indoor sports venue to be transformed into a swimming facility. Shiel Sexton worked on that project alongside the Indiana Sports Corp. Twenty years later, Shiel Sexton is once again bringing indoor swimming to Indianapolis, this time at a greater scale and with more innovation than ever before.

“There’s no precedent for putting an Olympic pool in a football stadium, much less two,” Dilts says.

If you wanted to build an all-star team, they are all in Lucas Oil today. And you’ve got to have Boilermakers on the team, or we would be behind schedule right now.

Tony Eisenhut (BS construction management technology ’90)
vice president of field operations, Shiel Sexton

Breaking a record

The swimming trials’ new location will double the seating capacity of the previous Olympic swim trials. And it’s clearly needed.

For this event, Lucas Oil Stadium will be able to house up to 30,000 swimming fans. Shiel Sexton, the Indiana Sports Corp. and USA Swimming hope to break the record for the largest indoor swim meet in history. The previous record of 25,000 was set at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Dave Burchard (BS civil engineering ’82), a project executive at Shiel Sexton, believes that this accomplishment will prove that Indianapolis is equipped to handle large-scale sporting events that require innovation and ingenuity.

“It will be another feather in the cap for Indianapolis, which is the Indiana Sports Corp’s goal — to continue their mission to host world-class sporting events,” Burchard says. “This is another success in that path.”

After all, Indianapolis is already the racing capital of the world. Why not become the swimming capital, too?

“Innovation comes from the front end of the project when we first said how many people could we put in this stadium — positioning these pools so that when the cameras come on, it looks like a natatorium that just happens to have 30,000 people in it,” Dilts says. “We have to think about the sight lines, the ticket pricing and the flow for viewers, officials, competitors, suppliers. There’s a little more ingenuity than you think in just the planning phase.”

Dilts says the experience will also be unique for competitors. “When those swimmers come out, it’s going to blow them away when you walk up the stairs to the newly raised pool deck and all of the sudden 30,000 people are cheering you on,” he says. “That’s going to be quite an adrenaline rush.”

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Boilermakers get it done

According to Nate Moore (BS construction engineering and management ’93), there are three main challenges to be solved when it comes to dealing with the 2 million gallons of water that will end up inside of Lucas Oil Stadium.

The first challenge was how to supply the water. One fire hydrant with a fire hose borrowed from the Indianapolis Fire Dept. would pump water into the pools where it will be treated to the highest standards to make it safe for swimmers.

Not only will the water be professionally cleaned, but it also needs to be heated to the necessary temperature. According to standard regulations, Olympic swimming pools must be between 77 degrees and 82.4 degrees Fahrenheit. In the end, the most cost- and energy-effective solution Shiel Sexton and team developed for this challenge was to use Lucas Oil Stadium’s existing hot water heating system with two new dedicated heat exchangers.

The third challenge related to the water comes after the Olympic trials are over and the pools are deconstructed. The water needs to be dechlorinated and returned to the Indianapolis water system — now cleaner than when it started. Because of this approach, the 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Trials will be a zero-water-loss event.

Each of these challenges requires strategic thinking, innovation and expert planning — skills that the Boilermakers at Shiel Sexton credit to their Purdue education.

Lessons learned from Purdue

“Purdue taught me how to solve problems like this,” Moore says.

Burchard agrees. “Problem solving was a big part of my education. It’s a constant process,” he says. “And now it’s what we do on a daily basis.”

Dilts says that Purdue opened doors for him that wouldn’t otherwise have been available. He says, “You could go anywhere in this country and if you say you have a Purdue degree, especially in engineering and construction, there’s a level of street cred.”

And Eisenhut still holds on to a piece of advice that a professor gave him during his time at Purdue: “You don’t have to know everything. You just need to know where to find it.”

The Purdue swimmer qualified for the Olympic Trials less than a year after undergoing surgery on both hips

For quite some time afterward, Masy Folcik found herself watching and rewatching video of the race where she officially qualified to swim in the 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Trials.

“That was my proudest swimming moment,” says the Purdue senior a year after posting a qualifying time, or cut, necessary to compete in the 100-meter breaststroke in this month’s trials in Indianapolis.

There she is, touching the wall in 1 minute, 10 seconds, beating the necessary time of 1:10.2.

The tone of the event announcer’s voice makes it clear how excited he is over her accomplishment.

Next comes the contingent of Purdue swimmers present at the meet, rushing to share their teammate’s joy. They know she just earned a chance to compete once again in the Olympic Trials, having previously done so in 2021.

“Getting that cut was just insane,” says Folcik, a three-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree who plans to graduate next May with degrees in kinesiology and psychological sciences. “I thought about it for weeks after. Couldn’t sleep that night. I was so excited. When my teammates ran behind my block to give me a hug, I definitely cried. It was just amazing.”

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Such a reaction would be perfectly normal for any athlete who just qualified to compete for Olympic team membership. But it was especially understandable after the challenging journey Folcik endured to get back to the trials.

At the meet where she posted her qualifying time last July — the Indiana Senior State Championships in Indianapolis — Folcik was just 11 months removed from undergoing surgery on both hips. She believes that relentless training in her signature event, the breaststroke, caused the labrums to tear in both hips.

Folcik underwent surgery on her right hip first, in August 2022, then the left hip a month later. The rehabilitation process was grueling, starting with painful exercises that simply required her to pick her legs up off the ground. She worked her way to biking and then jumping before she was finally able to return to swimming the breaststroke four months after the initial surgery.

I don’t know that I’ve ever been so excited for a meet as I am for this one.

Purdue swimmer Masy Folcik,
a senior in kinesiology and psychological sciences

Throughout the process, she dealt with reasonable concerns about her competitive future.

“It was not easy, just constantly having thoughts racing in the back of my brain if I was going to ever be as good as I was or going to be able to qualify for an Olympic Trials after I qualified in 2021,” she says. “That was a big thing for me. In my mind, it was embarrassing if I made it in 2021 and didn’t make it in 2024. So that put a lot of pressure on me.”

She credits John Klinge, the Purdue women’s swimming and diving coach, for guiding her through that period of self-doubt. Klinge pointed out that the extra upper-body strength training she was doing while she couldn’t use her legs would be beneficial when she returned to the pool. And sure enough, her arms felt stronger than ever once she swam her first meet postsurgery — against Illinois in January 2023 — and her confidence slowly began to return.

“My coach is the best person ever. He is my favorite person,” Folcik says of Klinge. “We met probably once every couple of weeks, and he’d be like, ‘How are you doing? You’re gonna be fine. I’m not worried about you.’ He just reassured me that I was going to be OK.”

The recovery process continues even today — Folcik estimates that she’s about 90% of the way back to her previous capabilities — so she’s happy to have one year of college eligibility remaining to make the most of her time as a Purdue swimmer. But first, she’s got one significant piece of business to address, alongside three other Boilermakers who will compete in the trials: Kate Mouser (400 individual medley), Brady Samuels (100 butterfly, 50 freestyle and 100 freestyle) and Coleman Modglin (200 breaststroke). Incoming Purdue freshman Evan Mackesy (400 individual medley) will also be among the men’s competitors.

Oddly enough, Folcik says she feels little pressure entering the biggest individual meet of her life, which will be held in Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever been so excited for a meet as I am for this one,” she says. “But I would say comparatively I feel more pressure during the collegiate season because that is team oriented, and I feel the need to perform for my team, whereas this one is super individualized. You’d expect it to be pretty high-pressure because it’s such a big meet. So maybe it’ll be more high-pressure when I get there because I’ve never swam in a football stadium before in front of thousands of spectators.”

In many ways, though, the pressure is already off. Not only did Folcik overcome her doubts by qualifying for a second Olympic Trials, but she also posted a better qualifying time than she did the first time around. Whatever she accomplishes next against some of the best swimmers in the world will be the icing on the cake.

I thought about it for weeks after. Couldn’t sleep that night. I was so excited. When my teammates ran behind my block to give me a hug, I definitely cried. It was just amazing.

Purdue swimmer Masy Folcik, a senior in kinesiology and psychological sciences

Purdue experts aid effort to prepare virtual sport for its Olympic moment

Picture a group of Olympic cyclists nearing the final incline in a fierce race for a gold medal. As they begin their climb up the steep hill, they must apply more force with each ensuing pedal. A stiff wind blows in the cyclists’ faces, creating additional resistance they must overcome.

The competitors are neck and neck as they push toward the finish line.

However, they are also thousands of miles apart.

How can that be?

It’s possible because their sport is virtual cycling — an event in which competitors can participate from any physical location so long as they have the necessary bicycle, internet connection, software and smart trainer equipment to meet their fellow competitors on the virtual racecourse.

That hill the cyclists climbed was programmed into the race environment, with each competitor needing to exert more torque on their pedals to keep pace with counterparts racing up that same virtual hill from other points on the globe. In this immersive virtual world, everyone engages with the exact same visual imagery and conditions — including the wind resistance they faced during the climb that made pedaling more of a challenge.

Virtual cycling has rapidly gained popularity in the last several years — so much so that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the world governing body for sports cycling, Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), intend to feature it as an exhibition sport in the 2024 Paris Olympics. They believe it could become a full-fledged medal event alongside traditional cycling events in the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Games, and they selected a team of Purdue experts to help the sport achieve that eminent status.

But there remains a set of technical challenges they must first overcome, each of which relates to the same key ingredient: competitive fairness, often referred to as a “level playing field.”

Sharing Purdue expertise

“If you don’t have a level playing field, it will never be Olympic,” explains Jan-Anders Mansson, Distinguished Professor of Materials  and Chemical Engineering and executive director of Purdue’s Ray Ewry Sports Engineering Center (RESEC).

That’s where Mansson and his RESEC team have been able to help, collaborating with the IOC and cycling federation to tackle the sport’s engineering and cybersecurity issues so that the virtual competitive environment is both fair and secure.

That means building a secure network architecture able to withstand hackers’ attempts to tamper with competitors’ digital output. It also means putting the various training models on the market through a rigorous testing and certification (or homologation) process, ensuring that the systems perform comparably and meet the criteria necessary for a fair competition.

“In a traditional sport, you are competing in one environment, whether that be on a track, on the road or on a playing field. All of the participants are subject to the same environmental conditions if they’re in the same location,” says Patrick Cavanaugh (BS aeronautical and astronautical engineering ’23), a research engineer at RESEC and competitive triathlete. “However, when we bring the competition to a virtual world, the environment is no longer an objective variable. The environment has to be created by a collection of the sensor data from wherever it’s coming from.

“In this case, it’s coming from the measurement on the trainer units,” Cavanaugh says. “So if there are inaccuracies or unfairness in how that information is measured or transmitted, then you jeopardize the integrity of the competition, which is something that’s very, very unique to these hybrid sports.”

If you don’t have a level playing field, it will never be Olympic.

Jan-Anders Mansson,
executive director of Purdue’s Ray Ewry Sports Engineering Center

And by jeopardizing the competition’s integrity, you risk having it being met with indifference, both from athletes and from a viewing public whose interest is necessary to sustain the sport.

“I would imagine for the audience of the Olympic Games that integrity and fairness are the utmost important properties. Otherwise, what’s the point, right?” asks Dongyan Xu, the Samuel Conte Professor of Computer Science and director of Purdue’s Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS), whose team enthusiastically joined the project at Mansson’s invitation. “If you have a sport where you cannot effectively detect, control, deter and hopefully eliminate e-doping or hacking, then I will lose confidence and interest.”

Luckily, the Boilermaker researchers have already made considerable headway in these efforts by creating the world’s first homologation system for virtual cycling. A RESEC team — including graduate students Teal Dowd, Diana Heflin and Justin Miller, and later Cavanaugh — created a device and methodology to evaluate smart trainer performance, with their system deducing measurement differences between some models.

“We really have to think closely about how this might affect the podium placing for a race one day,” says Dowd (BS mechanical engineering ’18), who is pursuing a PhD in materials engineering. “It makes you want to assure that the work is correct and that our accuracy in saying what trainer is good or bad is very true.”

The stakes are just as clear on the project’s data security side. Xu says the technical issues the CERIAS team faced in virtual cycling are not unusual. However, the unique domain of this particular assignment — elite competitive sports with a global audience — made this a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“We don’t collaborate or contribute to important causes like the Olympic movement on a regular basis,” Xu says. “My colleagues and I are all excited about this opportunity and honored to contribute.”

Purdue and sports engineering

The virtual cycling project is one of several underway at RESEC, which Purdue established in 2019 as a joint effort between the College of Engineering and Purdue’s Department of Intercollegiate Athletics. Named after Purdue mechanical engineer Ray Ewry, an Olympic gold medalist in the early 20th century, the center focuses on the ever-expanding role that technology plays in sporting endeavors.

Helming the organization is Mansson, who has worked closely with the IOC and International Swimming Federation (World Aquatics, previously known as FINA) for many years in addition to his work in research and development with an America’s Cup sailing team.

Mansson’s worldwide experience with sports technology is so extensive that a crew for a Netflix documentary series, “The Future Of,” visited campus to interview Purdue faculty for an episode on the future of sports innovation.

By prioritizing excitement, integrity and safety in sports, Mansson and the RESEC team believe they can harness Purdue’s unique technical capabilities to make sports more innovative and entertaining and less dangerous.

In 2022 Purdue introduced a one-year professional master’s concentration in sports engineering, making RESEC the only U.S. university sports center with such a graduate degree program. Now Mansson plans to take advantage of Purdue’s growing presence in Indianapolis with its new urban campus there, plus RESEC’s new home in the Indianapolis headquarters of motorsports manufacturer Dallara, to build partnerships that can facilitate noteworthy sports innovation.

“During our initial three years, we managed to establish ourselves on a global level. And now we have to start to build it up in Indianapolis, which is totally exciting,” says Mansson, who is also head of the Manufacturing Design Laboratory (MDLab). “If you look at Indianapolis, it’s a main international stage. We have the (Indianapolis Motor) Speedway; we have the NCAA; we have professional teams and many of the national trials in the U.S. are held in Indianapolis. And Purdue now has a growing infrastructure in Indianapolis. It’s very natural to put an emphasis on our sports center in Indianapolis.”

Reaching new audiences

Of course, successfully shepherding a sport into Olympic competition would also bring attention to the RESEC team’s capabilities. And they appear to be well on their way toward reaching that goal.

“I don’t see that as being too far in the distant future, and that just opens the Olympic Games up to a new generation of people and a bigger audience,” said former Olympic cyclist and Tour de France stage winner Michael Rogers, now innovation manager at the international cycling federation, in a video interview with Purdue Engineering.

For Mansson, the audience engagement opportunity is one of the most exciting aspects of the project. He points out that viewers have never had more entertainment options than they do today, so sport organizers like the IOC must consistently innovate to attract audiences and young people. That’s why digitalization is such an important tool, with broadcasts presenting more and more information from the competition and athletes, in increasingly inventive ways, in an effort to captivate spectators.

This technology can also allow spectators to become competitors themselves.

Mansson pictures an Olympic virtual cycling event where riders may compete from the same physical location, but viewers also may log in from anywhere to test how their riding ability measures up against the world’s best.

I will like to see that event, knowing the work I did played a direct role in the introduction of the sport to more people and that I’ve influenced the outcome of an Olympic champion.

Teal Dowd, RESEC team member and graduate student in materials engineering

“You can imagine 100 athletes on a stage or on a podium competing on the same equipment, and in front of them they have the road and so on coming through the system,” Mansson says. “Then at the same time, you have 3 million people at home competing against them. All of a sudden, you have moved the competition of the Olympics home into the living room with that added dimension of how sport can be part of spreading well-being among people.”

The RESEC team members believe the same homologation standards they developed for virtual cycling can be applied to other virtual events like rowing or running, so we are likely on the verge of a new era of interactivity between viewers and the sports they’re watching.

The technological advances that create such interactivity will also pave the way for new sports to emerge and for new methods of staging competitions to become commonplace.

If all goes according to plan, virtual cycling will be a showcase for the emerging possibilities at the next two Summer Games — and a team of Boilermaker engineers and computer scientists will have helped it get there. “I will like to see that event, knowing the work I did played a direct role in the introduction of the sport to more people and that I’ve influenced the outcome of an Olympic champion,” Dowd says. “Personally, watching that and knowing that I contributed will be extremely rewarding.”

Discover Chrishana and Chrishá’s journey earning their online master’s degrees in health care administration from Purdue Global

Twin sisters Chrishana and Chrishá Jackson do everything together. They both graduated with their bachelor’s degrees in exercise science in 2021, work at the same hospital and even live three minutes apart. 

“We try to separate and then we come right back together,” Chrishá says. 

“The universe just pulls us back together,” Chrishana adds in agreement. 

Their latest endeavor as a dynamic duo: earning their master’s degrees in health care administration from Purdue Global. 

The journey back to school together 

Both Chrishana and Chrishá have been athletes since they were young, and their desire to work in health care extends all the way back to their youth sports days. Only it wasn’t the love for the game but the care they received after being injured that inspired them. 

Chrishana separated her shoulder when she was young and had to undergo physical therapy to recover. “I always liked the feeling I got when I left a physical therapy session. Feeling normal again. Feeling myself. Feeling relief. I could see myself helping people get back to feeling like themselves,” she says. 

After that, she was on a mission to become a physical therapist. 

Chrishá found her passion in a similar fashion.

(The Purdue Global program) has honestly changed my life. 

Chrishana Jackson  MS health care administration ’24, Purdue Global 

“We’re twins, so our story is kind of similar,” she says. Rather than becoming a physical therapist like her sister, Chrishá wanted to be an athletic trainer ever since observing how a trainer tended to an injury she suffered playing basketball. 

“From the time she ran out on the court to come help me, I thought, ‘I love her job; I want to do that,’” she says. “I would love to help other people prevent injury. That’s the athletic trainer’s job.”  

When they entered Saint Peter’s University together to pursue their undergraduate degrees, their plans were set: Chrishana was to become a physical therapist and Chrishá an athletic trainer. But as time passed, their lives went in different directions. 

Chrishá’s life changed when she welcomed her son, Amari, during her sophomore year at Saint Peter’s. “I felt like I was on the right path, but then I got pregnant, I had a baby and I had to change course,” she says. Instead of attending graduate school, she decided to head straight into a career. 

When Amari was 18 months old, he was diagnosed with a speech delay. After graduating in 2021, the same year as Chrishana, Chrishá decided to start working at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Outside of her career at the hospital, she had to take Amari to speech and occupational therapy. As money became a larger factor, Chrishá wondered if getting her master’s and becoming an athletic trainer would ease the financial burden somewhat. Little did she know that her sister was discovering the answer. 

At the time Chrishana earned her undergraduate degree in 2021, she was about four months pregnant. “I always wanted to go to graduate school right after graduating. I didn’t want to take a hiatus, but I had to because I was about to have a baby,” she says. 

The physical therapist she interned with as an undergrad told her it would be difficult to pursue physical therapy with a newborn at home. So instead, she pivoted and started working as a patient coordinator at Mount Sinai, the same hospital where her sister was a float pool nurse. “I liked working there and working in health care,” Chrishana says. “So I thought I should go back to school and expand on what I was doing.” She decided to pursue an online degree since she wouldn’t be able to attend in-person classes while caring for a newborn. 

Chrishana came across Purdue Global and filled out the online form to request an information session. As Chrishana was driving home from the beach, she got a call from a Purdue Global advisor, Kim Zajan. “I wasn’t going to answer, but then I realized where the area code was from and thought that might be somebody from the school,” she says. After a long conversation with Kim, she filled out an application that night and got in.  

Chrishana then told Chrishá about the master’s in health care administration program. She explained that they could go back to school together, and since they both had young sons, they could support each other through it all. Since it is an online program, they were able to keep their jobs at the hospital and squeeze in study time after the kids went to bed, when they got a babysitter or during breaks at work. 

“I trusted Chrishana,” Chrishá says, and she’s so thankful she did.

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Life-changing degrees 

The sisters are excited for the opportunities that their master’s degrees present in their careers at the hospital. 

Chrishá floats between departments to provide assistance wherever it is needed. When she worked in neurosurgery, she found herself acting as the administrative assistant to the surgeon. This was her first taste of the administration aspect of health care before going back for her master’s. While in the master’s program, she frequently experienced situations where the curriculum came in handy.  

“I see all the time what I’m learning in school reflected at work. I always think, ‘My professor just went over this.’ If I find myself in certain situations, I know now how I should handle them,” she says.  

She envisions new opportunities because of the degree, and she even has a promotion in the works. “I do want to move up, so hopefully with the degree, I’ll have the position soon. Fingers crossed,” she says. 

Meanwhile, Chrishana’s master’s degree helped her land a position as administration secretary for the transplant department. “Everything I’ve learned during the master’s program helped me transition from patient coordinator to administration secretary,” she says. “The program prepared me and held my hand as I made the transition.” 

In addition to helping the sisters advance in their health care careers, their journey toward completing their master’s degrees taught them a lot about themselves. 

Chrishana faced a big obstacle while attending Purdue Global, becoming pregnant with her second son, Majesty, in the final semester of her master’s program. She juggled commuting from New Jersey to New York for work, taking care of her toddler Pharaoh, and scheduling prenatal appointments after hours or on weekends. After she gave birth, she found it difficult to not use her spare time to catch up on sleep but stayed committed to finishing her assignments. 

“Completing the program brought a lot of things full circle for me,” Chrishana says. “I am very grateful that I have something to show my kids, as they were my biggest motivators and a part of this journey with me.” 

Chrishana notices how the encouragement she received and the skills she’s gained have translated in both her professional and personal life. She learned how to push past her limits, act as a team player and manage her time — skills she uses in her role at the hospital and at home with her two boys. 

Chrishá also noticed a change in herself while completing her master’s degree. She says her self-esteem and confidence increased while encountering stressful situations at school and succeeding. She became more confident at work, in her relationship and with her family. 

“It has a very positive effect on my life overall. When you have good self-esteem, it makes things so much easier and better for you,” Chrishá says. “So thank you to Purdue Global.” 

As their Purdue Global journey comes to a close, Chrishana reflects on the day she pulled over to speak to a Purdue Global advisor while driving home from the beach.  

“I’m really happy I listened to Kim and sat on the phone with her,” says Chrishana, who remains in touch with Kim — the same advisor who helped her navigate school while pregnant with her second son.  

“I told her I really appreciate that she called me that day and convinced me to join the Purdue Global program,” she says. “Because it has honestly changed my life.” 

I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world besides with her (Chrishá) walking across the stage.

Chrishana Jackson
MS health care administration ’24, Purdue Global 

The love and support of family 

The strong bond and passion for health care in the Jackson family goes beyond the twin sisters.  

The twins, their parents and their siblings are all working within the industry to improve others’ lives. While Chrishá and Chrishana work in administration, their mom and their older sister work in home health care. Their younger sister is a phlebotomist, and their dad is an IT engineer and project manager.  

They even have a big family dream. “Eventually, if we could all get along,” Chrishá says, giggling with her sister, “we could run our own practice. Combine all our skills and knowledge.” 

While the whole family supports the twins’ journey, there is one person who stands out. Their father, Chris Jackson, traveled a similar path to that of Chrishana and Chrishá. 

At around the same age that the Jackson sisters had their sons, he became a young parent to Chrishana and Chrishá. And as a young adult, he had the same passion for education, graduating at 25 with his online master’s, the same age as Chrishana and Chrishá when they walked across the stage together to earn their online master’s degrees.

“Our dad has been our biggest supporter. He’s always laid out that guidance for us,” Chrishá says. “He tells us all the time that our biggest supporter will always be him. Nobody is prouder of us than he is. With his guidance and support, Chrishana and I are going to go far. Very far.” 

Ahead of their May graduation ceremony, the sisters were giddy just thinking about checking in to their hotels, getting ready and finally walking across the stage. “Seeing my dad and my family, I don’t know if I’m going to cry or be happy,” says Chrishá, overwhelmed with emotion. 

Even though these aren’t their first degrees, Chrishá recognizes how monumental it is to earn a master’s degree. During her undergraduate graduation ceremony, she had the feeling of “I did it.” But after years of studying while working at the hospital and raising her son, she says a new feeling accompanies her latest graduation.  

“‘I made it.’ I feel like between undergrad and now, I went through a lot, and it feels like I made it,” Chrishá says. “That’s how I want to feel when I walk across that stage.” 

Chrishana echoes those same feelings but is most grateful she has had her sister by her side through it all.  

“That’s my best friend. We do everything together, and I wouldn’t be able to see myself do it without her,” Chrishana says. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world besides with her walking across the stage.” 

“We made it,” Chrishá says.

Passionate about addressing the personnel shortage in the tech industry, this professor helps her students make their break.  

I’ve been seeing a lot of fearmongering when it comes to AI — about how it’s going to replace us, how it’s going to perpetuate false information. While it’s important to be mindful of what could go wrong, and while we do need legislation to protect against its misuse, it’s truly exciting to see how it’s going to augment what we can do. That’s why I specialize in AI education and focus my research on how AI can work to our advantage.  

There’s so much AI can do to support us. It can serve as a tutor for students. It can create personalized learning plans. It can help with ideas and drive future research as well. It can give parenting advice. Parents who have kids with developmental delays or disabilities don’t always have access to their speech or occupational therapists — artificial intelligence can help find solutions to problems that come up, or it can even help regulate someone in a sensory crisis. 

And the opportunities for building successful careers in a growing field are endless. There are hundreds of thousands of unfilled jobs in tech. For example, it’s hard for local police to catch cybercriminals because of the anonymity of the internet and crossing jurisdictions. But there’s also a lack of human capital and a lack of knowledge in how these systems work, of figuring out what crime actually took place.  

There’s opportunity in the private sector, too. We need people in governance, risk and compliance (GRC); we need people who know how to secure networks, especially for small- to medium-sized businesses. Often, business owners don’t think they’d have any information an attacker would want, which is untrue. But they lack the resources and staff with the expertise necessary to implement adequate security programs. 

I recently spoke at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Office of Privacy and promised that with Rhonda Chicone, another Purdue Global cybersecurity expert, we would help address the cybersecurity workforce shortage. 

And addressing that shortage starts with education. Because here’s the caveat: A lot of these jobs require 5-10 years of experience plus certifications, and these certifications also require experience. For instance, the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) is a certification that requires at least five years of experience. But that experience requirement goes down to three years when you have a master’s degree. So, I encourage people who are trying to find their way into the tech field to start with getting a higher degree and some certifications. 

I try to make myself available to students as much as I can. It’s not just about the course. I also review students’ resumés, connect them to job opportunities, tell them that after the course is finished, I’m here to help with career advice or answer cybersecurity questions. I’m there for them when they need letters of recommendation because I’ve just spent six to 10 weeks deep-diving into their work, talking with them every week. 

It’s important to be mindful of what could go wrong, but it’s truly exciting to see how AI is going to augment what we can do.

Shaila Rana
Professor, Purdue Global 

It’s hard to break into the field, but it’s absolutely possible. I want students to know I’m rooting for them. I want to help keep their spirits up. I want to help them keep their eyes on what they’re trying to accomplish in the long term, because we get granular in class and it’s easy to lose sight of the goal. It makes a difference to remember that the skills they’ve learned in a course can translate to the skills they put on their LinkedIn profile or on their resumé.  

I’m so proud to see them go out into the world and make their contribution for the safety of society. It makes me really happy.

Professors reflect on adventures of motherhood, teaching

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How professor Josef Vice takes on an anti-LGBTQ+ world and shows that love wins

When you first meet him, right away you’d know Purdue Global professor Josef Vice as a vibrant, warm, kind-hearted and hopeful person with a charming southern accent and a joyful laugh. Digging a little deeper, you’d find an unrelenting resilience — a particular kind that’s unique to the brave humans who defended LGBTQ+ rights during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.  

It’s been 40 years since then and he’s still working hard to make sure people have the support of a family, whether it’s one they grew up in or one they chose for themselves. In addition to the English and rhetoric classes he teaches, he also serves as a faculty advisor for the Pride Association — one of Purdue Global’s student organizations. 

“I grew up in a time when you were supposed to keep it quiet and hidden. Most of us didn’t have supportive families and we needed each other because of that,” he says. 

He spent years building a community of loved ones and then watched one after another die from AIDS, many of them abandoned by their families in the final stages of their lives. 

“If they didn’t have friends, they had nobody,” he says. “I saw so many of my friends — young, beautiful, talented people, full of potential — waste away and die. Every single one of us knew someone,” he says. 

Despite all he’s been through as an individual and as part of the LGBTQ+ community, Vice radiates optimism and hope, both for himself and those who will follow. 

His story explains why.

The success of my research makes me really, really happy because it means that the LGBTQ+ folks now have a different and better world than I did, and that’s what it’s all about.

Josef Vice
Professor, Purdue Global

Finding a community of his own 

Growing up in a remote farming community in Alabama, Vice says he didn’t know many people like him until he was working on his master’s degree.  

“In graduate school, I started meeting other people and learning I wasn’t the only gay person. There was just no support system whatsoever,” he says. 

And because students who identify with the LGBTQ+ community are more at risk for bullying, homelessness and suicide, that was a gaping hole.  

“All the studies out there tell us if minoritized students join a group like this, they get the kind of psychological and social support they need, and it can impact their ability to do well in school,” he says. “Having a support system reduces the risks that they face.” 

It’s something he wasn’t afforded until he fought hard and sacrificed for it. But knowing he was a part of making the world better for the next generation was a comfort — and it equips him to encourage them when they’re down. 

“I’m there to let the students know that it gets better,” he says. “Things can change. The difference they can make is tremendous. There’s hope for the future because of the progress that has been made and will continue to be made.” 

‘It gets better’ 

What makes Vice’s optimism even more remarkable is the crushing defeat he experienced. In 1987, he’d completed all his PhD requirements except for his dissertation. 

“I proposed writing about the concept of the ‘outsider’ in medieval literature. I was looking at Chaucer’s ‘The Canterbury Tales’ — some characters have less-binary gender and sexual identities — so maybe there was something there,” he says. “I was shot down immediately. It seemed like what I was interested in was not something to write about academically.” 

Combined with recently having been fired from two jobs for being openly gay and slowly losing his friends to AIDS, Vice felt he couldn’t continue with his PhD and walked away at all-but-dissertation status. He remained in that status for 35 years. 

But times changed.  

“Finally, 2 1/2 years ago, I started meeting with a really strong mentor through another doctoral program. We met every other week for two years, and I got my dissertation written,” he says. “That was my comeback. I felt like it was a reclamation of what should have been. I got to reach back 35 years and finish the doctorate I couldn’t finish back then. It energized me. It gave me a real sense that LGBTQ+ issues (are) something that should be written about, researched and embraced by an academic community.” 

For the dissertation, he conducted a study on LGBTQ+ students, specifically looking at how LGBTQ-related legislation impacts their sense of identity and belonging at college — particularly in first-year writing courses. 

“Those two things, identity and belonging, are two markers that indicate whether or not a student will succeed,” he says. 

I’m there to let the students know that it gets better. Things can change. The difference they can make is tremendous.

Josef Vice Professor, Purdue Global

And he continues to push forward with research in the LGBTQ+ space. Currently, he’s engaged in another study with six Purdue Global scholars from across disciplines, having already interviewed many Purdue Global faculty and looking to understand how identity and sexual orientation are relevant in an online environment. And with that information, Vice and his team are seeking to learn how faculty can best support their students. 

“The success of my research makes me really, really happy because it means that the LGBTQ+ folks now have a different and better world than I did, and that’s what it’s all about,” he says. 

Vice encourages students to be patient as they continue advocating for themselves because eventually, they’ll get results. 

“I’ve enjoyed my work more in the last two years, even though I’m doing more work than I ever have, because it’s given me a chance to share my true self in a way that I’ve never been able to,” he says.  

One of the things that gives him the most hope is seeing Purdue Global recognize its LGBTQ+ community members and how it continually makes an effort to learn about them and give them a voice.  

“Students need to know that we support them. Their identities are important to us. We want them to have a sense of belonging and connection with each other because there is a whole community of people who is like-minded. They have a lot of the same goals, the same concerns and worries, and the same hope for the future,” he says.

Global pride 

Now a long way from the farm in Alabama where he grew up, Vice lives on another farm in Georgia with his husband, Rob. They’ve been together 25 years and raised a son, who is now in his early 20s. They have chickens, turkeys, peacocks, dogs and an old farmhouse home, which may be drafty and chilly during the winter, but makes up for it in vibrant personal decor.  

 While he’s built a triumphant life, Vice never forgets what it was like many years ago and invites students — whether they’re sure of their identity or not — to learn more about Purdue Global’s Pride Association. Because, he says, having a solid support system firmly planted at your side can make all the difference. 

“We’re a chosen family of people who know about each other’s graduations, significant others, their upcoming birthdays, how their classes are going, how their jobs are going,” he says.  

And holding the burden for each other is what they do.  

“Being the faculty advisor of this student organization has been really good for me because it reminds me of the fact that despite everything going on around me (things that can sometimes get me down, too), that there are people out there who are still holding the torch. They’re still there, fighting that fight,” he says. 

“Some of us may have survivor’s guilt, but we’re resilient and we’re able to show the next generation that they, too, can overcome. Whatever comes our way, we’re strong. Where there’s discrimination and exclusion, we create. We create humor. We create beauty. And we’re proud of ourselves for that.” 

To learn more about Purdue Global’s student organization, Pride Association, Josef Vice welcomes inquirers to contact him personally at jvice@purdueglobal.edu.

Noah Pumphrey is building his career on a foundation of hands-on learning and practical experiences

Noah Pumphrey, a Purdue cybersecurity student in Indianapolis, has taken a disciplined approach to his education. The result has been a nationally competitive scholarship, a leadership role in cybersecurity and professional certifications before he even graduates.  

“I enrolled at another university right after high school,” Pumphrey says. “But after taking a variety of classes, I still wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do in the future.” 

Pumphrey pressed pause on his college education and took time off to gain experience. He spent the next four years working full time in the finance industry, which helped him discern his vocation and save money for college. 

“Before transferring to Purdue, I wanted to be really certain of the career I wanted to pursue,” he explains.  

And it became clear to him that cybersecurity was his path. 

A national reputation for excellence 

When Pumphrey was ready to return to college, Purdue in Indianapolis was an easy choice because of the university’s national reputation in cybersecurity. 

“Cybersecurity at Purdue is just different,” Pumphrey says. “It’s the best in the country. I look at my experience and see that they prepare us so well here. You gain fundamental skills that you can actually put to work.” 

The flexibility of the Purdue in Indianapolis program was another important factor in his decision, as he continued to work while taking classes full time.  

He appreciates that the program’s small class sizes have enabled him to form connections with his professors, many of whom are world-class cybersecurity experts. “The professors at Purdue in Indianapolis work hard to set us up for success,” he says. 

Cybersecurity at Purdue is just different. It’s the best in the country. I look at my experience and see that they prepare us so well here.

Noah Pumphrey 
Purdue cybersecurity student in Indianapolis 

National Science Foundation  

Close relationships with professors have also led to incredible opportunities outside of the classroom for Pumphrey, including a National Science Foundation CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (SFS).  

“It’s a full-ride scholarship for those interested in doing cybersecurity for the federal government after graduation,” Pumphrey explains. “And that’s exactly what I want to do.”  

SFS is highly competitive: Only 12 to 16 awards are given out nationally each year. The program provides funds for student scholarships to institutions of higher education, not to students directly. To participate in the program, Purdue in Indianapolis had to provide clearly documented evidence of a strong existing program in cybersecurity.  

“I think it speaks volumes to the kind of faculty we have and the work that we are able to do with them on campus,” Pumphrey says.  

Feng Li, chair of the Department of Computer Information and Graphics Technology, is the primary investigator for the CyberCorps program at Purdue in Indianapolis, and a person with whom Pumphrey works closely.  

“Dr. Li secured funds from the NSF,” Pumphrey says. “And he’s the one responsible for hiring and making sure CyberCorps students are doing what we need to do to get to our full-time and internship positions.” 

The award has made a tremendous difference for Pumphrey, both financially and academically. 

“Since receiving the scholarship, I no longer need outside employment,” he says. “All my time can now be focused on research, academics and certifications.”  

It’s just priceless to be able to put real coding projects on a resume, to tell hiring managers that you have hands-on experience. … You can actually show how you have applied what you’ve learned.

Noah Pumphrey 
Purdue cybersecurity student in Indianapolis 

Hands-on learning, resume building 

Pumphrey starts his academic week with a two-hour Offensive Security class, which teaches him how to use hacking tools. Programming classes in languages including C and MATLAB occupy the bulk of the rest of his schedule.  

“The programming classes are more like engineering classes,” he explains, “but they are also applicable to cybersecurity.” 

The practical nature of what he is learning in class appeals to Pumphrey. He especially appreciates that he is establishing a solid foundation for his future career.  

“I am gaining the fundamental knowledge I need,” he says. “I get to do hands-on things with programming and hacking in the 400-level, and even 300-level, classes that I will be actually doing on the job.” 

As an example, last semester in his Cybersecurity Programming class, Pumphrey used Python to write a program that analyzed a firewall log. A firewall monitors traffic into and out of the environment it was developed to protect; logs provide organizations with information to help investigate after an attack. 

The program Pumphrey wrote parsed a large firewall log. “It would take hours or days for a person to go through that log,” he explains, “whereas I am making it easy to sort through within minutes.” 

Pumphrey put the firewall log program on his GitHub, which was a huge resume builder for him. When he was talking to the federal government about his work, he was able to point them to code he had already written that aligned with projects they are working on.  

“It’s just priceless to be able to put real coding projects on a resume,” Pumphrey says, “to tell hiring managers that you have hands-on experience. You’re not just somebody who has theoretical knowledge stocked up. You can actually show how you have applied what you’ve learned.”

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Cybersecurity club 

The resume building Pumphrey has experienced isn’t limited to the classroom. Cybersecurity students at Purdue in Indianapolis are elevating their knowledge through participation in the cybersecurity club.  

“We have students who really want to go into hacking website applications,” he explains. “There’s not necessarily a specific course for that. Professors will prepare you to do those things, but cybersecurity club is where you will really be able to shine with those skills.” 

Pumphrey is the undergraduate student government senator for the cybersecurity club. The role has opened his eyes to what other clubs and organizations on campus are doing, and helps him see ways in which he can support and promote his own club. 

With many of the cybersecurity club’s officers graduating soon, Pumphrey will be stepping into more of a leadership role. “I’m doing presentations for prospective students or current students that may not know about the club,” he says. “We’re really trying to ramp up our efforts.” 

The club hopes to expand by attending conventions and bringing speakers to campus to talk to students about career opportunities.  

“I am also excited for us to be involved in hands-on cybersecurity activities like Capture the Flag competitions, which are on the attack side, and the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, which is a regional and nationwide competition for the defense side,” he says. 

Pumphrey also is interested in forming connections between cybersecurity clubs on Purdue’s West Lafayette and Indianapolis campuses. “It’s going be an interesting leap for our club,” he says. “I think it’s going to be mutually beneficial. Working together, we can bridge the work we do in our studies and the work we will do in our careers; that is what I’m trying to accomplish with the cybersecurity club.” 

Practical advantages 

In addition to strong academics and extracurricular activities, Pumphrey appreciates the helpful career preparation he has found at Purdue in Indianapolis, especially when it comes to interview skills. He has taken advantage of numerous practice opportunities on campus. 

Another key support has been in resume creation. “Applying for work in the federal government is different,” he explains. “You have to use a federal resume, which can be pages long. Many people, including advisors and staff, have looked over my resume and offered me helpful advice and a second set of eyes.” 

Research alongside world-class cybersecurity experts has been another advantage for Pumphrey.  “I am interested in purple teaming,” he says, “which explores both the attack side (red team) and the defense side (blue team) of cybersecurity.”  

Pumphrey wants to focus on cyber threat intelligence, specifically in a national security setting, which can be hard to do as a college student because the work requires security clearances. Partnering with professors like Li, he is able to gain the knowledge and skills he will need to find threats within a system.  

He also points to the certifications he is earning as a student as a key differentiator. “I have my security-plus certification,” he says. “And I will be working toward the Certified Information Systems Security Professional credential, which is a highly regarded certificate in the cybersecurity domain.” 

Close relationships 

Through classes and the club, Pumphrey has made good friends. And they like to meet at the student center on campus. “Sometimes we’ll just hang out and talk. Sometimes we do homework because we are in a lot of classes together,” he says. “We help each other along the way with the labs and talk about cybersecurity, internships, all the things we’re doing.”  

Pumphrey also has a close relationship with his academic advisor, Kelly Keelan. “I talk to her probably once a week,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll sit in her office for hours and just talk about anything, whether it’s a class, the club or my career.”  

It’s the little things like this that set cybersecurity at Purdue in Indianapolis apart. “The program here is preparing me well for my future,” Pumphrey says. 

Behind-the-scenes experiences at the Indy 500 have inspired Erica Hedrick to consider a career in event management

Erica Hedrick signed up for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s event staff college program last summer hoping to land a fun seasonal job where she could work with her friends. What she didn’t expect was an experience that would cause her to rethink her future career.

Hedrick began her time last summer working on the event staff, where she checked tickets for the Pavilion and Chalets hospitality spaces. In this position, she also had an opportunity to work at the Pagoda Plaza Q&A station, where she interacted with colleagues like the famed “yellow shirt” safety patrol.

Those conversations helped her learn why they loved working at the track. Many of the yellow shirts she met brought energy and passion to their daily tasks, helping her recognize that they all shared the same goal of helping their guests have the best possible experience.

“Everything about the place really stood out to me last year, and I said, ‘I’d so come back and work there again if the opportunity was provided,’” says Hedrick, a senior from Martinsville, Indiana, majoring in selling and sales management in Purdue University’s College of Health and Human Sciences.

Sure enough, another opportunity arose at IMS, and Hedrick happily accepted the chance to learn more about the hospitality industry, a field in which she now hopes to work someday. Since January she has been a client services intern at the track. During her time, she assisted guests at April’s Total Solar Eclipse Event, presented in partnership with Purdue. She will continue to work at IMS throughout the summer — including at events like the iconic Indy 500 on May 26 and NASCAR’s Brickyard 400 in July.

“I get a little more behind the scenes of everything,” Hedrick says during a conversation in early April. “I work a lot with our premium guests. We just finished creating our boxes for guests who will be in our suites or hospitality rooms, and I’ve been putting together their tickets, parking passes and credentials. Since we’ve already handed out most of them for May, I’ve also been going into suite spaces and checking to make sure everything’s ready and clean and everything that needs to be there is there.

“Then, I’ll just be in suite spaces, talking to our guests, making sure that everything’s taken care of — drinks, food, credentials — that they have everything that they need and they’re all well taken care of.”

Hedrick actually got her first taste of event planning and logistical work at Purdue while assisting in event operations with the annual Purdue University Dance Marathon, the largest philanthropic student organization on campus. Assisting at the marathon helped her better understand how large events should be run, but nothing could fully prepare her for the massive scale of race day at IMS, when hundreds of thousands of spectators are at the track.

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She describes the experience as somewhat “overwhelming,” but credits her bosses for having plans in place that helped workers tackle whatever issues arose as easily as possible.

“They gave us really good rules and layouts and the time frames of everything,” she says. “So it made it really easy to do the job, and I loved it. I think they did a great job of explaining everything and it was never super, super overwhelming. They gave us a lot of good resources if we ever did have problems.”

She still had a lot to learn, however — for instance, the identity of one of the most famous drivers in motor sports history.

Hedrick has interacted with a handful of current drivers at IMS events, as well as with the recently retired Tony Kanaan, winner of the 2013 Indy 500. But it wasn’t until moments after a conversation with an older gentleman outside the track’s “Legends Day” autograph tent that she learned who Mario Andretti is.

“He just stopped and started talking to me and my friend in casual conversation because we were working. So I was like, ‘Oh, he’s just a part of the team. He was just in there helping one of the legends to make sure they made it to their spot,’” Hedrick recalls with a laugh. “And then he starts walking to this golf cart and people are running up to him asking for his signature. They were saying, ‘Mario, Mario,’ and I was like, ‘Who is Mario?’ And then I went home and told my parents, and they were like, ‘He’s kind of a big deal.’”

Thankfully, knowledge of IndyCar history is not a prerequisite for a successful event services internship. Caring that guests have a pleasant experience is a much more important attribute, and Hedrick feels she has discovered a true calling in that area.

Everything about the place really stood out to me last year, and I said, ‘I’d so come back and work there again if the opportunity was provided.’

Erica Hedrick, senior in selling and sales management

She anticipates an extremely busy month of May while running errands and attending to suite guests’ needs in Gasoline Alley, Hulman Terrace Club and Tower Terrace Suites, but she can’t wait for that exhausting-yet-thrilling work to arrive.

“I’ve really loved getting to know how event operations works and the behind the scenes and planning of it,” Hedrick says. “It’s really valuable to be able to help with one of the largest sporting events in the world and understand the steps it takes to make sure that everyone has what they need to be prepared and know where they’re going on the day of the race.

“I think that’s what I’m taking from it and hope to apply in the future.”

Former Purdue basketball players happy to see Matt Painter, program make long-awaited trip to the Final Four

Matt Painter is not a crier.

Matter of fact, relative to his profession, Purdue’s men’s basketball coach is as emotionless as they come, at least within public view.

He’s an analytic-minded, process-oriented, even-keeled thinker who’s seemed to grow more and more stoic the older and more experienced he’s gotten, always professorial in his approach to his job. Rarely does his emotion show, let alone overtake him.

However, shortly after his team secured its first Final Four berth since 1980 by beating Tennessee in Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena on March 31, he broke. It was the sight of Robbie Hummel that did it.

“He was already crying and that got me crying,” Painter says. “I don’t cry very much, maybe just funerals, not happy moments. I laugh during happy moments.

“But it was just something where seeing how much it meant to him … To know that somebody cares that much was pretty cool from my standpoint.”

Hummel, as personally invested a Purdue basketball alumnus as there is and one of the program’s true favorite sons, was calling the game for Westwood One. Sitting courtside as the Boilermakers salted away the final moments of arguably the most monumental win in school history, Hummel himself choked up, brought to tears by the magnitude of the moment, live on radio.

Family bonds

It was a moment that beautifully encapsulated the bonds that have always existed between the Purdue program’s present and its past, connections the program has always prioritized and worked to build and maintain with those interested in remaining part of its close-knit community.

“It’s the type of people they recruit into the program,” former standout Dakota Mathias says of that collective closeness. “The sort of guys you’re bringing into the program are all very similar in that they’re blue-collar, very hard-working, good people and caring about others.

“We share those values and it’s easy to have (those bonds) that way.”

When Painter — modestly maligned through the course of this season after a “catastrophic,” as he puts it, first-round NCAA Tournament loss the year prior — had shaken Tennessee coach Rick Barnes’ hand (but not before being intercepted by a bear hug from the top player in his sport, Zach Edey), he worked his way over to Hummel to be interviewed for national radio.

At that time, Painter was reminded of 2006 or so, when Hummel and classmates E’Twaun Moore and JaJuan Johnson invested in a struggling Purdue program, a reclamation project taken on by Painter, an alumnus himself. Those players could have gone to any number of other more established winners at that time.

A week after Purdue cut down those nets to win the Midwest Regional, Moore would join many former players — and the tens of thousands of fans — who overtook Glendale, Arizona, for the Final Four. It was a moment Purdue had so long waited for and come so close to so often before finally breaking through.

“It was good to go support the school after all Purdue did for me,” says Moore, now 35 and freshly retired after a decade playing in the NBA. “It helped me achieve my dreams and my goals.

“I know when I was playing (at Purdue), I used to love seeing guys who played before come back, guys I grew up watching on TV, like Kenny Lowe, Brian Cardinal, Brad Miller and David Teague. That they were coming back and sharing some of their knowledge of the game, it was priceless.”

FaceTime from Israel

Back to that scene in Detroit, though.

After the confetti had all fallen and the tears dried, Hummel visited Purdue’s locker room, huddling with former teammate Bobby Riddell (part of the local radio team) and various Purdue coaches when a FaceTime call came in from halfway across the globe. In Israel, where he’s playing professionally, Johnson had been streaming his alma mater’s Elite Eight game.

He called Hummel to share in the celebration with his former teammate and whoever else he may pass the phone to.

“JaJuan was his usual smiley, bubbly self,” Riddell says.

Indeed.

“I was so happy for Coach Painter, for the fans, the staff, pretty much anyone affiliated with Purdue,” Johnson says from Israel. “Having been a part of it, from our (Class of 2007) Baby Boilers to what it is now, it’s incredible with Coach Painter and all those guys to see the work they’ve put in. It was a great feeling to see them get there.

“Losing in the first round last year and all the adversity those guys had to face all season long, it essentially didn’t matter what these guys did; all that mattered was what happened during the NCAA Tournament. They responded.”

Redemption for the near misses

Johnson’s classmate and longtime friend Hummel was one of the faces of Purdue’s redemption on this day. Staff members Paul Lusk and Elliot Bloom postponed their own personal revelry after the Tennessee game to take a moment to recognize the former All-American. Hummel has long been haunted by the thought of what might have been for not just himself but for Purdue had he not suffered major knee injuries his third and fourth seasons in the program, doing irreparable harm to those teams’ credible Final Four hopes.

Those transformational Hummel-Moore-Johnson teams were denied their best shots to earn this moment themselves.

Those were two of the near misses that not only stung Purdue but also created a sense that it was only a matter of time before the glass ceiling broke.

Ryan Cline was part of the team that finished on the wrong end of one of the most improbable outcomes the tournament has ever seen. Purdue was a split second from beating eventual national champion Virginia in the Elite Eight in 2019.

For Cline, at least, he would have loved to play in the Final Four, but it was nevertheless cathartic for him to see his alma mater do it a few years later. It was a feeling of redemption.

Cline says he’s always felt a deep sense of pride toward Purdue and its championship-laden history, but now that the Final Four is part of that (modern) history, he’s walking a little taller around his native Carmel.

“I am definitely walking around with a little more swagger knowing that Matt Painter finally got what he deserved,” Cline says.

Common thread is Painter, Keady

A consensus easily prospered among these former Boilermakers who were part of those signature moments in Purdue’s postseason history. They wanted this for their college coach more than anything. And that’s been part of Purdue’s collective identity — wanting to achieve for the whole and not just the individual.

“We all kind of had that same reaction (as Hummel),” says Mathias, one of the many former Purdue players who traveled to Phoenix for the Final Four. “I think we all probably kind of teared up, just with all we’ve been through the past 10-15 years, the heartbreaks in the Tournament and all Coach Painter’s been through.”

Mathias’ senior year ended in the Round of 16 after classmate and key player Isaac Haas broke his elbow in the tournament opener, undercutting that team’s Final Four chances.

Any coach or player will say that it’s difficult to win in the NCAA Tournament.

So often, it comes down to the simplest element: luck.

To that end, Purdue has generally left much to be desired.

This year, though, it removed luck from the equation. Until its national semifinal meeting with 11th-seeded North Carolina State, the seeds all held around Purdue. To reach the national title game, it beat the best teams in its bracket, mostly decidedly.

And in so doing, it exorcised those demons of the past.

“The best thing about it was seeing it for Coach Paint,” Mathias says. “He’s caught heat for no reason from people who don’t know basketball. I think it was huge for him to be validated, which he never needed. It was awesome to see it for him, but also for the guys on that team. They’re all real Purdue guys. They play hard, they play the right way and they’re good dudes. It was the right group to do it.”

But the redemption dates back generations.

When Painter took over, he succeeded his college coach, newly minted Hall of Famer Gene Keady. It was particularly meaningful that Keady, who turned 88 on May 21, was there to be part of the moment. After Edey cut down his piece of the net, he ceremoniously brought a shred of it to Keady, another nod to the ties that have bound this program together for many years.

Keady came close during his quarter-century at Purdue. In 2000, no one wanted it more for Keady than Brian Cardinal, the consummate heart-and-soul sort of Purdue player who always spoke of Keady as a father figure.

Purdue fell a game short that year.

“It meant the world to me that he got to be there and be part of it,” says Cardinal, a standout from 1997-2000. “I messaged Paint and told him that one of my biggest regrets was not being able to get him there, and I’m so grateful he was able to do it and get him there.”

Former players were invested in this Purdue season as if they were still part of the program. That’s exactly how Purdue wants them to feel. They do.

The common thread among them: Wanting this achievement for Painter, the same way Cardinal long wanted it for Keady.

“He does things the right way, he’s a good person and he cares about his players in a way that’s more than just, ‘I need you to win games for me,’” says Hummel, who once lived in Painter’s house post-graduation while recovering from an injury. “That doesn’t sound like it should be that hard, but in the current landscape of college basketball, that’s definitely not the norm.

“He’s gone above and beyond for so many guys behind the scenes and done so much for the guys he’s coached. When you look at him as a basketball mind, he’s brilliant. The way he thinks (of) the game, he just lives it. … I think he was meant to be this. He was meant to be the coach at Purdue.

“This was something that was always in the cards for him. He’s unbelievable as a coach but even better as a person. And when you treat people the right way, people root for you, and there’s no doubt people were rooting for him and Purdue to do this.”

By Brian Neubert, BNeubert@GoldandBlack.com

Alumni artist Justin Vining believes the bonds people build during the month of May tie into the meaning of life

Artist Justin Vining wasn’t exactly a racing fanatic when he first sought an opportunity to paint at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the month of May.

Vining was aware from the very beginning that the Indianapolis 500, one of the world’s most prominent auto races, shapes the identity of the city where he resides and the state where he was born and raised. He correctly believed that it would be a successful business venture to sell the artwork he creates at the racetrack.

What he didn’t understand was how much the work would mean to him — because of how much being at the track matters to those who have shared “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” with friends and family.

“I find a really deep sense of purpose and meaning when I paint out there,” says Vining (BA visual arts teaching K-12 ’04; BA fine arts/drawing ’04). “In a way, it has nothing to do with the paintings themselves and everything to do with the culture of what that place is.”

Vining walks through an RV lot on the way to a practice session and passes a family where a grandfather who has attended the race annually for 60 years is now sharing that tradition with his grandkids.

He overhears a man asking security guards to allow him to sit in some roped-off seats during a practice session. It turns out that the man’s father recently died, and he flew in specifically to sit in the seats where he sat as a child when his dad would bring him to the race.

“I tear up every time I tell that story,” Vining says. “He just sat there all practice by himself in his childhood seats because his dad just passed. And that’s one story that I happened to catch. Hundreds of thousands of people go through that facility every single year. The saying that it’s so much more than racing is so true. The power of that place goes so far beyond cars driving in a circle. It ties much more into, to me, the meaning of life.”

Building a legacy

Perhaps that explains why Indy 500 day has become Vining’s “single favorite day of painting all year, hands down” — as well as why his excitement seems to grow each year.

“The more I do it, the deeper it gets,” he says. “I guarantee I will get chills the first time I walk into that place this year. It seems cheesy, but I’m going to be pumped.”

Since 2018, Vining has been in attendance to paint each time the IMS gates open in May. He carries his materials into the grandstand to paint during practices where available seating is plentiful. For race day, when crowds are much larger, IMS sets him up in an inactive press box to ensure he has dedicated space for his work.

The day after the race each year, he puts the 10 to 15 pieces he painted during the practice sessions up for sale on his website. They sell out immediately.

As for the two pieces he paints each year on race day: one of sunrise on the Pagoda when the cannon blast signals that the gates are open and one of the winning driver crossing the yard of bricks? He’s never sold any of those.

“It’s not lost on me this could all go away. I hope it doesn’t, but right now I feel very, very lucky that I get to do this each year,” says Vining, who has kept those paintings to document his full body of race-day work from the event. “I wouldn’t want that legacy to be spread out amongst random places. I feel like it needs to be protected.”

An unorthodox path

The story of how Vining became an artist who specializes in painting at live events like the Indy 500 is somewhat unusual, full of early career decisions that don’t quite seem to connect. But today he recognizes bits and pieces from each experience that contribute to his current success as a full-time artist.

Vining enhanced his artistic skills at Purdue, where a degree in art education prepared him to teach elementary art for three years in Pendleton, Indiana.

He attended Valparaiso University Law School alongside his brother, Nathan, with plans to start their own practice. Money was tight throughout law school, so Vining sold paintings to classmates to make ends meet, spawning a hustle mentality that still drives him today.

He set an aggressive goal in 2024 to sell 200 paintings in the first 200 days of the year. By early May, he had already sold 175 thanks in large part to an art show where he sold 108 pieces — including 82 on opening night.

“I adopted this mindset (last) year: I could make an excuse every single day not to make a painting, and I just don’t,” Vining says. “It’s not for the faint of heart.”

I adopted this mindset this year: I could make an excuse every single day not to make a painting, and I just don’t.

Justin Vining
BA visual arts teaching K-12 ’04;
BA fine arts/drawing ’04 

The power of networking

Law school also taught Vining about the power of networking — because you never know what promising opportunity might arise once you put yourself out there. Following that mantra actually led to his first opportunity to paint a big, live event.

Back when he occupied a studio space in Indianapolis’ Harrison Center for the Arts, he heard that basketball legend Tamika Catchings was walking through the building. He decided to take advantage of the opportunity to meet the Indiana Fever legend and future Hall of Famer.

Justin Vining’s artwork was on display multiple times in the Indianapolis-based HGTV home-remodeling show “Good Bones.” (Photo courtesy of Justin Vining)

Vining struck up a conversation and learned that Catchings was preparing to open a café, Tea’s Me, just a few blocks from his house. And she just so happened to be looking for a featured artist whose work she could display in the cafe.

“I was like, ‘Hey, that can be me,’” Vining recalls. “I was the first featured artist ever in her cafe, and I helped her source the person (who) installed the hanging system there.”

A short time later, Vining accepted an opportunity to paint live from Catchings’ jersey-retirement ceremony as the Fever raised her No. 24 banner into the rafters of Bankers Life (now Gainbridge) Fieldhouse.

Vining tells a similar tale about how he and his artwork made the first of many appearances on the HGTV home-remodeling TV show “Good Bones.” Producers from the Indianapolis-based show were visiting artist Kyle Ragsdale at his Harrison Center studio, which was across the hall from Vining’s studio at the time.

“I started talking to the producers and next thing you know, I’m an extra on Season One with Kyle in one of the episodes,” Vining says. “I was actually cut out of that whole episode — I don’t think I made TV at all — but then they started using my paintings and they started putting me on TV. Then their designer MJ (Coyle) became one of my friends. MJ’s design office now is in the building I own.”

An entrepreneurial mentality

Barely a year had elapsed between the brothers passing the bar exam in 2010 and Vining deciding to pursue a career as a full-time artist. But a lot happened in a short time.

For one thing, he met his wife, Halie, who was then a junior at Butler University. He also took a professional left turn that helped him build entrepreneurial skills that directly contributed to the success of his art business.

Instead of following through on a plan to open a law practice with Nathan in Warsaw, Indiana, Vining instead accepted a lucrative opportunity to work as an account executive at Protis Executive Innovations (now Protis Global) and helped Nathan land a position there, as well.

Vining’s seven months at Protis, an Indianapolis-based headhunting firm, involved recruiting salespeople in the food and beverage industry. It was at Protis that he gained a direct understanding of the data that moves business forward.

“When we sold 82 paintings on opening night, all of that was from using a data-driven sales pricing that I learned at Protis,” Vining says.

Strategic thinking

It should come as no surprise that Vining is an avid chess player, always trying to think a few steps ahead.

Just as strategic thinking is imperative to succeed at that game, so too is it an essential ingredient in entrepreneurial success. How else could someone who grew up on a farm in tiny Etna Green, Indiana, wind up painting at major sporting events like an Indianapolis Colts football game or at the Indy 500, having his work featured on cable TV and building a successful art business after changing directions multiple times early in his professional life?

Vining acknowledges that he wouldn’t be the artist he is today without the disparate experiences that motivated him to embrace professional opportunities — and occasionally create some himself — and put in the long hours necessary to build an audience for his work.

“How I think about it in the context of my career is whether any singular thing defines my success,” Vining says. “IMS, Indiana Pacers organization, painting at Lucas Oil Stadium, all my work with HGTV — you take any one of these legs from an eight-legged table off and the table still stands. To me, it’s the compounding effect of all of these things individually starting to make real impact on people’s perception of my success.”

Connect with Justin online:
Website
Facebook
Instagram

The power of that place goes so far beyond cars driving in a circle. It ties much more into, to me, the meaning of life.

Justin Vining BA visual arts teaching K-12 ’04;
BA fine arts/drawing ’04