What coins remember
How Purdue alumnus Mike Moran’s love for coins grew into scholarship, public service and opportunities for Boilermakers.
When Mike Moran talks about coins, he is talking about much more.
For him, a conversation about coins is about power, policy, art, economics and ambition. A silver dollar is never just a silver dollar and dimes aren’t just change. Whether newly struck by the U.S. Mint or passed from hand to hand, each piece carries evidence of the country that produced it. In Moran’s hands, coins become a way to read American history.
That makes him a fitting Purdue voice for America’s 250th anniversary. Moran, who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Purdue, has built a career by seeing what small details can reveal about large systems. At Purdue, he says, he learned to solve problems. That skill stayed with him through business, writing, public service and a legislative achievement that brought two classic American coins back into production.
A problem solver on a large scale
When a young Moran transferred to Purdue in January 1967, he worked toward his civil engineering degree within what today is the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering, and then moved into what Purdue then called industrial administration — a master’s program in business that predated the MBA and gave him the business grounding he wanted.
The combination suited him. Engineering taught structure; business taught judgment. And his extracurricular involvement at Theta Chi Fraternity taught him that he could lead. Later, as an officer in what was then Ashland Coal Inc., Moran helped guide more than $2 billion in mergers and acquisitions. He says the work let him build something. By the time he left the company, the operation he helped grow was producing one of every 10 tons of steam coal mined in the United States.
For his second act, he invested in a wholesale building-products supplier in western Colorado, growing it into a chain and steering it through the brutal housing downturn of 2008-09.
The same discipline shows up in his research of coins. Moran is an award-winning author, lecturer and researcher whose latest book, “When Coins Were King: The Coins, Power Struggles, and Personalities That Defined a Nation,” treats coinage as financial history in miniature.
It comes disguised as a coin book, but it is a full financial history of the United States from the Civil War brought to life through coins.
Mike Moran
Purdue alumnus and author of “When Coins Were King: The Coins, Power Struggles, and Personalities That Defined a Nation”
Inspiring and advocating on a big stage
Moran’s influence extends beyond business and bookshelves.
As a member of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC), a federal advisory committee that collaborates with the U.S. Mint, he advises on designs for U.S. coins and medals.
In preparation for the nation’s 250th birthday, he got a special assignment.
“I was in a working group within the mint that was pulled from the CCAC membership. We started meeting in late 2022,” he says.
There was no single coin minted to represent the nation’s 250th birthday. To carry out the provisions of the law authorizing special coinage for the 250th, the working group took a lead role in developing themes that would embody 250 years of American ideals.
That work required knowing what a coin can hold — visually, legally and historically.
Moran’s most consequential contribution, though, may be the 1921 Silver Dollar Coin Anniversary Act. Moran helped push the legislation that authorized the U.S. Mint to issue new Morgan and Peace silver dollars, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the end of one classic silver dollar and the beginning of another.
It took two years. There was House and Senate maneuvering, crowded congressional offices, pandemic delays, and timing so tight that Moran feared the bill might die at the end of the session. Instead, it became law Jan. 5, 2021.
“For me, it was a major accomplishment,” Moran says. “It took all my business and leadership skills to get it done.”
A wider world for students
Moran’s giving to Purdue follows the same logic that runs through his life: Understand the system and learn how the world works. He now helps others see more broadly.
He has generously funded a study-abroad scholarship for engineering students through Purdue’s GEARE program because his own business experience taught him that the American way of doing business is not the only way. International partners from Germany and Spain showed him how differently decisions could be made across cultures.
His GEARE scholarship is meant to get students “across the pond” so they can study in Europe, encounter other cultures and understand how other people live, think and work.
The best returns
For all Moran has built, written and influenced, Purdue remains personal. He credits his Purdue years with shaping the foundation of his life — including the relationship with his wife, Dee Dee, whom he married the summer after they reconnected during his time as a student.
That devotion is still visible. At the time of this writing, in the summer of 2026, Moran was rearranging his days around her recovery from shoulder replacement surgery: the schedule of a busy man organized around care.
That care extends to students he may never meet. He provides them with a scholarship gift that is more than financial; it extends his conviction that a wider world rewards those who study carefully, think clearly and keep showing up until the work is done.
Coins may be the artifacts that first taught Moran to read history in miniature. But his Purdue legacy is minted in something more lasting than metal — in the students whose lives are changed by the opportunities he and his wife have made possible.
