Podcast Ep. 102: Purdue for Life’s Matt Folk on the Boilermaker Spirit and Community

Kate Young:

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

Matt Folk:

There aren’t many universities that can take the kind of pride that we have in our work ethic, our frozen tuition and the benefits that it gives not only the students, but the families of students. Purdue people are really special and they come through when they’re asked to help.

Kate Young:

In this episode of This is Purdue, we’re talking to Matt Folk, President and CEO of the Purdue for Life Foundation. And I am so excited to share this episode with you all today because this is part of a new podcast series called Boilermaker Bites, where we interview incredible Boilermaker guests at iconic Purdue restaurants. For this interview, we dined at 8Eleven Modern Bistro, part of the Purdue Union Club Hotel inside the historic Purdue Memorial Union. Over a delicious meal of pasta with a French butter sauce and truffle oil topped with grilled scallops, Matt and I discussed Purdue for Life’s goal of helping everyone who is part of the Purdue community stay connected, get involved and give back. From frozen tuition to the establishment of new buildings on campus, to creating life-changing scholarships and more. The funds raised by Purdue for Life help keep the Purdue community we love thriving. And as a Boilermaker himself, Matt knows how deep the Purdue spirit runs, and that it doesn’t end after graduation, it lasts a lifetime. So let’s get into my conversation with Matt. Oh, and a quick warning, this episode will likely make you a bit hungry.

Matt, thank you so much for joining us on the official University podcast. We’re thrilled to have you.

Matt Folk:

I’m thrilled to be here. Thank you.

Kate Young:

This is our first time shooting something in a restaurant that we’re really excited about. Tell us a little bit about your affiliation with 8Eleven really quickly for our listeners and our viewers.

Matt Folk:

8Eleven, the whole upgrade to the hotel was brought to Purdue by the White Lodging and the Bruce White family and the White Foundation. So big league gift to develop this hotel and the restaurants and do all the changes that then led into the whole basement redo and even some work coming on upstairs. So it’s pretty appropriate to be eating here for dinner. And I’m also here all the time with donors, so it’s very familiar to me.

Kate Young:

Absolutely. Okay. So let’s kick it off. You graduated from Purdue. Tell us a little bit about your Purdue journey. How did you first find out about Purdue? What made you want to come here?

Matt Folk:

Oh, I think Purdue is probably one of the first words I heard as a baby. If I remember, my uncle was a Purdue student about the timeframe I was born. My aunt was a professor here, other side of the family. So just had some good ties going all the way back. And my aunt and uncle would bring dad and I and my little sister to football and basketball games as a kid and et cetera. So I’ve got all kinds of memories as a child all the way up through current timeframe.

Kate Young:

So when you graduated high school, you knew you were coming here?

Matt Folk:

Well, I was debating whether to do business at maybe a different business school at that point in time or engineering. I knew that engineering would be better for the career longer term. And frankly engineers can do absolutely anything from a career standpoint, especially electrical engineer. So I chose to do that path.

Kate Young:

So Matt was clearly a Boilermaker since birth. He shares a few of his favorite memories from his time as a student in Purdue University’s Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Do you have a favorite memory? I’m sure there’s a couple from your time as a student, but if you could share one.

Matt Folk:

I’m a big basketball guy, so I loved coming to basketball games. And then I think just the other great memories were to get through electrical engineering, you pretty much have to have a study group of about 15 to 20 guys and gals that are helping everybody gut through the whole thing, because a lot of cases it’s not a lot of fun. But just cracking on each other and having a good time doing the studying. And then of course, the Friday night through about Sunday at noon was the only times we weren’t pretty much studying, but at those point in times we’d go out and have a pretty good time around campus and Chauncey and Perry’s and other places.

Kate Young:

Let’s talk a little bit about your journey from graduation to your current role. I wouldn’t say that your current role involves a lot of electrical engineering.

Matt Folk:

Yeah. I’m probably the only electrical engineer in the country running a university advancement model, so that’s a little strange. I graduated on a Saturday, started working on a Monday. Moved quickly through different job functions at TMC, the Technology Marketing Corporation. Got a big break when Lexmark International sold off from IBM, I moved down to Lexington and took that from a muddling territory to our biggest territory in the country. And was doing really big numbers at that point in time, and that led to then managing divisions and then eventually President of the company and buying out the partners and owning the whole thing, lock, stock and barrel.

Kate Young:

To further set the stage here, I want to describe the look and feel of 8Eleven Modern Bistro. It’s elegant yet also modern as its name suggests, with grand chandeliers and smooth brown leather booths. We were seated at the chef’s table, which overlooks the kitchen so we could watch all of the action. From the steak sizzling and butter, to creamy pasta dishes being whipped up, to fresh salads being topped with homemade dressings. There’s a large crystal chandelier above us. And this special chef’s table is made of beautiful white marble.

Katie:

Hello, good evening. How are we doing today?

Kate Young:

We are great.

Matt Folk:

Great.

Katie:

Awesome. Well, my name is Katie. I will be taking care of you tonight. Have you dined with us before?

Matt Folk:

Tons. Yeah. Yeah.

Katie:

All right.

Kate Young:

I have only been here once. So I’m looking-

Katie:

Really?

Kate Young:

Yes. I’m looking for recommendations.

Katie:

We do have some really good appetizers. The most popular one would be the Crab Croquettes. So those are going to be five little Crab Croquettes. We’ll make them with our mashed potatoes, the crab, and then we fry them and then it comes with a lemon aioli on the side.

Kate Young:

Yum.

Katie:

Super delicious. The other one that’s very popular would be the burrata cheese. So that is going to come with your burrata and I put that jam on the side, truffle honey on top. And then it comes with some sourdough toast on the side so that you can use it as a spread. That’s personally my favorite. But if you would like a few more minutes, I can go over some other things or talk about-

Kate Young:

I heard you have a delicious mocktail that I’m interested in.

Katie:

We do. We have a couple options. So we do have a Strawberry Basil Lemonade. So we make the syrups here in-house. So we have the strawberry basil syrup and it’s mixed with a little bit of a regular lemonade and then we top it off with some soda water. That one’s one option. And then we also have the Trinitian Sage. So that’s going to be our house-made sage with agave and then it comes with pineapple and grapefruit juice, and then we shake it and we pour it over ice. That one’s pretty good as well.

Kate Young:

That sound delicious. Can I do the strawberry basil lemonade?

Katie:

Yes.

Kate Young:

That sounds amazing.

Katie:

And for you?

Matt Folk:

I’ll do a Diet Coke. And do you still have coffee going?

Katie:

We do have coffee.

Matt Folk:

That sounds good.

Katie:

Sounds good. I’ll be right back with that and give you a few minutes.

Matt Folk:

I could make you eat bone marrow. I don’t know if you would like that or not.

Kate Young:

I do not want to do that, but I would for the podcast.

Matt Folk:

Some people panic when I order that.

Kate Young:

Okay. So I wasn’t quite adventurous enough to try the bone marrow, so we settled on the burrata and grilled bread instead. As Katie went to go grab our drinks and appetizer, Matt and I got back to our conversation. Matt owned his own business, but what eventually brought him back to his alma mater… See, at the time, former Purdue University President, Mitch Daniels, and Purdue’s board of trustees were exploring how to take the well-known alumni-facing organizations across campus, including the Purdue Alumni Association, President’s Council, and the John Purdue Club, and bring them together as one. Combining these organizations that had been part of Purdue for so many years would add more ways for alumni to engage, plus add more opportunities for friends and fans too. Matt explains more.

Matt Folk:

I sold the business in ’19 when I was 50 and was going to retire. And that was one of my goals or at least start to look for a different career. I was tired of that one, and stepped back multiple years. There was a group in Indianapolis with Boiler Business Exchange that we put together and helped fundraise and do a lot of events down there. And I had given some scholarships on campus. I’d worked with the Alumni Association. I had been heavily involved with John Purdue Club, named the soccer field after my parents. So multiple folks from the board and Mitch. So they asked me to put together a committee. We put together a small committee. That summer, they asked me to essentially volunteer for a year to do it. We did, all of us together, studied about 45 or 50 other major schools that had different organizational structures, from completely independent alumni associations to completely integrated, and then to completely non-centralized to centralized advancement functions and engagement functions and presented to the board that fall.

We started on March 10th of 2020, I think March 13th the university sent everybody home. And on the 15th or 16th, I think I canceled Day of Giving, which was a big one-day giving event that year. But a few of us just worked through the whole thing, coming up to campus every day and reorganized about 10 different alumni facing organizations across campus. Worked with the Alumni Association to pull them into Purdue for Life Foundation, broadening corporations, foundations, events, MARCOM for Alumni, IT, HR services, broad-based campaigns. We’d never had principal giving before we did that. We beefed up a lot of our planned giving and benefits stuff and really just reorganized the whole thing, put everything together. Worked really hard on changing culture, and I think that whole culture and working together has really paid off.

Kate Young:

Matt walks us through how Purdue for Life Foundation is different from other higher ed institutions. And we discussed how Matt and the team came up with the foundation’s name.

Matt Folk:

No two systems are the same, but I think we’ve gone further than anyone with pulling anything alumni, corporate foundations, sort of that for life. Once you graduate for life through death even, relationship with the university into one group. And it really works well when you consider the university’s in the middle, PRF’s over the left and handles all the businesses of the university and building and land and managing the endowment, managing airports and that sort of thing. So really the technical output of the university and selling that. And then we help manage and build a relationship with the human capital export of the university.

Kate Young:

And Purdue for Life. I love that name. I love how you touched on that. Were there different names on the table or how did that come about?

Matt Folk:

There was four or five that we had thrown out on the table, but that one really stuck we thought, and caught the essence of trying to build a relationship between the university and the alum or the friend or the family member on a lifetime basis from graduation onward.

Kate Young:

So as Matt just touched on Purdue for Life as a name highlights how one’s relationship with Purdue is not limited just to their experience during their years as a student, but rather a connection for life. Matt says the best way for Purdue alums to get involved with Purdue for Life and access their content and information is to check out their newly redesigned website, purdueforlife.org. On the Foundation’s Get involved page, you can explore and join alumni clubs, affinity networks, international networks and other communities. And as for Boilermakers who are spread out across the country and all over the world, Matt says there’s plenty of digital and virtual content available too.

Matt Folk:

For example, we even list all the different clubs across the country when there’s game watches, where they’re going to be, how they can participate when they’re traveling and not even in their home area. We try and do all these courses to make them available for people that don’t necessarily live here and can attend things in person. So we do a lot of things digitally. We’ve even made the magazine digital. So instead of it just going to 30,000 PAA members, it now goes out to all 600,000 living alumni. And we’ve tried to make digital content available for those that want to see it. And at the same point in time try and not bombard people with information they don’t want to see. I’m pretty proud of the fact that when we were doing the study, there was about 17,000 people a year that would say, “Disconnect me from the university. It’s too much. I don’t need four emails a day every day of the year.” We’ve gotten that down now to where I just checked in 37 people had disconnected in the last year. So that’s pretty cool.

Kate Young:

That’s incredible.

Matt Folk:

And you can go to the website and you can log into your portal and look at four, maybe 500 different things the university is doing and tell us what you’re interested in, what you don’t care to hear about or things you really are passionate about.

Katie:

And here I have your burrata.

Kate Young:

Yay.

Matt Folk:

Awesome.

Kate Young:

Thank you.

Katie:

No problem. Would you like to go ahead and enjoy your appetizer first or would you like to order your main entrees at the moment?

Kate Young:

I think we should order. Matt, since you’re-

Matt Folk:

Go ahead.

Kate Young:

Well, you’re such a regular, I want to hear your thoughts and what your go-to is.

Matt Folk:

I’m going to go with the Truffled Bucatini, and I always have Mad Scallops onto it. Do you have them tonight?

Katie:

Good choice. Yes, we do.

Matt Folk:

Their scallops are really good. And the bucatini, it has a mushroom oil base with it. And I think when they’re done with it, they can fry it a little bit on the flat top or something. It’s got a little crispiness to the noodles. It’s really good. Of course, I’ve had everything on this menu and everything’s fantastic.

Kate Young:

I think I’m going to do what Matt’s doing.

Katie:

Okay. So two Truffled Bucatinis, with the scallop spread on top?

Kate Young:

Yes. Perfect.

Matt Folk:

Awesome.

Katie:

[inaudible 00:15:08].

Kate Young:

Thank you.

Katie:

[inaudible 00:15:09] out of the way and I’ll let you enjoy that appetizer.

Kate Young:

Okay.

Matt Folk:

What do you think?

Kate Young:

That is delicious, yes, with that chutney.

Matt Folk:

Yeah. It’s a chutney with a lot of honey in it. I know that.

Kate Young:

It’s so different and unique. That is a good one.

Matt Folk:

And it’s always, the consistency here is always really good.

Kate Young:

As we enjoyed the rest of our appetizer, Matt discussed his role within Purdue for Life. He says no two days are the same as the President and CEO of the foundation. It’s fast-paced, it’s exciting, and there’s a lot of teamwork involved each and every day. He reflects on a few of his favorite events and memories.

Matt Folk:

[inaudible 00:15:50] is a blast. Favorite memories are probably more than anything when you sit down with a donor and talk about their memories of the university and what connects them, and why they feel so passionate about the university. I don’t know if it’s our culture as a university, our grit. I was given tours to some potential students and it was Friday at 5:30, and we were still wrapping up. It might’ve even been at six. And the parents were amazed with… Almost every seat on campus was still filled by a student at that point in time, studying, doing homework on a Friday night at five and six o’clock at night. Not the case for a lot of those parents when they were in college, no matter where they were. So it’s the grit, the endurance, the love of the university, and I think also the passion that people have for the university, knowing that it really moved them forward in their careers and their relationships. And many, many of our alum feel like they really owe a lot of their success back to their days here as a student.

Kate Young:

Yeah, absolutely. You’re touching on it now, but that Boilermaker spirit, you get to see it firsthand every day. Not everyone gets to see that. You went to Purdue, you have that knowledge of the culture and everything.

Matt Folk:

Yeah.

Kate Young:

But what do you think that spirit encapsulates when you boil it all down?

Matt Folk:

It’s hard work, it’s Midwestern hard work and effort, not being afraid to fail and get up and try it again. The collective effort we all had to in every major, I don’t care what it was, that you had to put out to get through the school. There aren’t very many universities that can say that sort of thing. And there aren’t many universities that can take the kind of pride that we have in our work ethic, our frozen tuition and the benefits that it gives not only the students but the families of students, and how they’re not saddled with so much debt once they’re in their early 20s. Alum really buy into that, as do I. And when you look at all we’ve done, all the…

$1.3 billion in buildings going on on campus right now. The excellence at scale that we have throughout the entire university. There aren’t many other schools that do things as well as we do at the volume that we do it at. And I also think one of the ways that we connect, especially students coming through, is we’re set up. It’s just a bunch of small, little high schools if you really think about it. And you really get to know so many folks by the time you graduate and have so many of the same experiences, that it’s a shared community.

Kate Young:

Matt hears many stories about how alumni donations are impacting Boilermakers. He shares a recent story of why this Purdue community is so special when it comes to giving back and paying it forward for future generations of Boilermakers.

Matt Folk:

A incoming freshman just got word for a scholarship Dollars she was going to get. And her father got in touch with me to try and get information about the donor because he wanted to send a thank you letter. It was a donor that actually had passed away in 1961, had donated a small amount of money at that point in time and had set up three partial scholarships for students from Delaware County, Muncie, to come to Purdue. And with the way that PRF has managed that endowment and grown it and the way it’s been stored throughout the years, that endowment is now worth something like 2.5, $2.6 million, and is throwing off about eight or nine full rides, not even partial to students from that county.

The impact that we have, not even just today, but the impact of our alum and even the employees of Purdue for Life, paying it forward for generations to come… We’re talking about this gentleman now 50 some years after he passed away and gave this gift. Hopefully he’s looking down on us and sees the impact that he’s having at the university and with those kids and making sure those kids’ families aren’t burdened with debt coming out of here.

Kate Young:

Purdue for Life’s annual Purdue Day of Giving happens each April, and it will hit its 11th year this coming April of 2024. In 2023, Purdue for Life raised a record $110.8 million with its 24-hour online social media driven fundraising efforts. And Purdue Day of Giving’s cumulative total since its launch in 2014 is $420.5 million. Matt describes why this event is successful year after year and how it really encapsulates the Boilermaker spirit.

Matt Folk:

We were the first major university to really jump on it. Now everybody does it. We even have a small little business inside of Purdue for Life called State of Wow that teaches other universities how to do this. And we really focused on making a digital event, making a one-day event, trying to involve as many people as possible, trying to drive our donor numbers, number of donors. Every donation counts. We just want participation. That overall net production number just keeps going up every year. And a lot of that also has to do with goals of the university, both from Mitch’s term and laying over into now and then Mung’s new ideas on a lot of different areas where we want to really grow the university, that resonated with alum.

People love to participate. We gather as one community that day. And the other thing that we just started, so we have Day of Giving in the spring, we now have Day of Service in the fall. So we actually have three or 400 people that come in every year now in the fall, and we do two, three weeks worth of work from the facilities folks. They tee us up on everything, but we go and plant hundreds of trees, work with mulching and raking and landscaping and try and help beautify the campus from that standpoint. And that’s actually another really fun day.

Kate Young:

Okay. You know the moment when the waiter or waitress is bringing out your food at a restaurant and you’re just staring longingly at it? And this is that moment for Matt and I. 8Eleven Modern Bistro’s head chef Jamie DePaul explains more about our dinner order. And this right here is the part where you may find yourself feeling a bit hungry if you haven’t already.

Jamie DePaul:

I’m the hotel executive chef here. I’ve been here since we opened in August 2020. And I’ll talk to you about your entree that you have. You got a bucatini, which is a pasta. It’s a long noodle, similar to a spaghetti, but it’s got a hole in the middle, so it helps to hold the sauce a little bit better. Inside the sauce is some garlic butter, some beurre monté, which is a French butter sauce. So butter and butter makes for a great dish. Some salt pepper, lemon juice, and then some truffle peelings, and also some truffle oil. So the flavor should be pretty balanced.

A little bit of salt acid. On top, you have some diver scallops. These are some of the biggest size of scallops that we can get. They come from the East Coast. And the diver scallops are unique because the divers actually, the way that they harvest them is better for the environment and it helps to keep the population of scallops continuing instead of using a machine to harvest them all and then there’s no more. And then they shuck them on the boat and we get them fresh typically next day.

Kate Young:

Well, it looks beautiful.

Jamie DePaul:

Awesome. Any questions?

Matt Folk:

I tried copying this recipe a couple of weeks ago at home and I was not nearly as successful as you are.

Kate Young:

I love that you tried.

Jamie DePaul:

I’d be happy to send you home with a copy of the recipe.

Matt Folk:

Oh, now we’re talking.

Jamie DePaul:

Yeah, you can try it out.

Matt Folk:

Now we’re talking.

Kate Young:

Thank you. It was delicious.

Matt Folk:

Thank you very much.

Jamie DePaul:

Yeah. You all enjoy.

Matt Folk:

Tell me what you think. Good?

Kate Young:

It’s so simple, but it’s perfect.

Matt Folk:

Yeah.

Kate Young:

I love it. Great choice.

Matt Folk:

Thank you.

Kate Young:

As we finished up our bucatini, Matt shared more about Purdue for Life’s four-year birthday this coming March of 2024. I asked Matt what he thinks Purdue for Life’s biggest accomplishment has been so far.

Matt Folk:

Supporting donors where they are and family and friend members where they are really helping maintain frozen tuition. When Mitch first came here, I think we typically got a little less than $10 million of student support a year. And now last year we were up to $180 million in one year for student support. So that right there tells you how much people buy into that fact and want their Dollars to help other families elevate their families, especially first generation families, which is what a land grant, flagship university should be doing in a state like this. Moving things forward from that aspect, building buildings, getting all that done with the frozen tuition support, it really always comes down to support of students, supportive faculty, support of the university in general, and moving the university and the state and to a large extent, the country forward.

Kate Young:

Moving the university forward is right. During fiscal year 2023, Purdue for life raised more than $610 million to support the university. So how does Matt feel about the success Purdue for Life has experienced since it was formed in March of 2020?

Matt Folk:

Obviously it makes me feel great because we’re moving the university forward. It’s much, much more of a team effort than it has anything to do with my leadership. The new culture that we’ve instilled in watching people work together on this team basis that we have and doing larger and bigger asks of alum, and really working with alum on what their passion points are and how their passion can help some small area of the university move forward. Whether it’s a small donation to help an athlete through JPC or education student or an engineer to be able to get their masters or PhD or work with military families or whatever.

It’s so cool to be able to see all that move forward and come to fruition. And obviously we’ve grown donation numbers net production by over 50% since ’19, when we had the last year or the last big campaign on apples to apples for Dollars. So that’s working really well. And it’s really impressive when you look… And like last year, higher ed donations fell by over 10%. So we’re doing something right from that standpoint. And it really goes back to donors and their love of the university.

Kate Young:

As for upcoming Purdue for Life events, Matt highlights Grandparents University, an event the foundation hosts on Purdue’s West Lafayette campus, where grandparents and their grandchildren are able to explore and choose from different majors taught by Purdue faculty and staff. My podcast right-hand man and lead video producer, Ted and I, led a session on podcasting and it was one of my favorite experiences of 2023.

Matt Folk:

One of the big events we instituted this year was Grandparents University. It sold out like two hours. I think you were a presenter, a teacher in one of the class lanes. We’re going from 300 to a 1000 in two different groups next year.

Kate Young:

Oh my gosh.

Matt Folk:

It’s a really fun event.

Kate Young:

Oh, I had no idea what to expect. It was so special and meaningful and just heartwarming.

Matt Folk:

The kids and the grandparents had… I don’t know who enjoyed it more, the kids or the grandparents.

Kate Young:

Yes. I think the grandparents honestly might have enjoyed-

Matt Folk:

I think they might have. For those of you don’t know, we bring back for two days, the kids take up different class lanes and the grandparents have to take the classes with them. And there’s anything and everything you could think of, from STEM to acting classes to how to do podcasts. And then at night we had Sharon Hagel, an astronaut come in and talk to the kids and then a movie. And the whole Memorial Mall was full of blow up, kid toys and jump jumps and pizza trailers.

Kate Young:

Delicious food. Yeah.

Matt Folk:

Crazy food. The sugar high these kids had that night was crazy. And then classes the next day. And then just like the big kids do, all the little kids walk across the stage and graduate and get their name read and get a little Purdue letter jacket P and they all got their diplomas. And then when they opened up their diplomas at the end, it was a three-dimensional Purdue Pete that popped out on all of them. So that was cool.

Kate Young:

The reactions to that were incredible.

Matt Folk:

Yeah. Yeah.

Kate Young:

As Matt mentioned, Purdue for Life is now offering two different sessions this coming July of 2024 for Grandparents University, and they’re anticipating around 1000 participants. Grandparents and their grandkids can choose from more than 29 different sessions or majors, as well as embark on a campus field trip, spend the night in a residence hall, enjoy a special block party and cross the stage during a graduation ceremony. And this is Purdue Podcast team will be there again leading a major on how to conduct great interviews and produce your very own podcast episode. If you want to find out more information about this incredible event, please visit Purdue for Life’s website. Registration for this opens March 13th. So as a Boilermaker since birth, why is Matt proud to be part of this Purdue community and culture?

Matt Folk:

Why wouldn’t you be proud to be a Boilermaker? Everything we do and we… Not only everything we do and our rankings and how we’re moving everything forward and the camaraderie that we have and that feeling drives the love for the place. And I can’t hardly put into words how much I care for the place.

Kate Young:

And what role has Purdue played in Matt’s life?

Matt Folk:

Other than choosing to ask Mary to marry me, it’s probably the biggest, best decision I have ever made in my life. And I do love it. I love getting up every day, coming in and doing the job. And it’s the people that are so awesome to work with. Purdue people are really special and they come through when they’re asked to help.

Kate Young:

Well, we can’t thank you enough for joining us. Anything else you want to share with our listeners?

Matt Folk:

No, just thanks for having me. I love this new format. Any of you viewers, obviously, if you want to help support Purdue in any way, get ahold of us and we’ll make that happen for you.

Kate Young:

Special thanks to the 8Eleven Modern Bistro team for hosting us. Our team had so much fun celebrating our first Boilermaker Bites series episode at this gorgeous and not to mention delicious restaurant. You can learn more about this incredible Boilermaker spot and check out the full menu at 8Elevenbistro.com. We’ll also link that in the show notes for you. Plus head over to our podcast YouTube page, YouTube.com/@thisispurdue, and check out all of our videos to get a real taste for 8Eleven’s ambiance, decor, and food. And to learn more about Purdue for Life, please head over to Purdueforlife.org. From there you can check out their Purdue alumnus digital magazine, subscribe to their monthly newsletter, Boiler Update, and so much more. Again, we’ll link that in the show notes for you as well. This is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young.

Our podcast videography for this episode was led by Ted Schellenberger in collaboration with Alli Chaney. Our social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. Our podcast distribution strategy is led by Teresa Walker and Carly Eastman. Our podcast photography for this episode was done by John Underwood. Our podcast design is led by Caitlin Freeville. Our podcast team project manager is Rain Gu. Our podcast YouTube promotion is managed by Megan Hoskins and Kirsten Bauman. Additional writing assistance is led by Sophie Ritz and Maura Klopfenstein. And our This is Purdue intern is Caroline Kime. Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at Purdue.edu/podcasts. There you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review. And as always, boiler up.