While Jane Liedtke was still a full professor, and a year after she adopted her daughter from China, she founded Our Chinese Daughters Foundation (OCDF). The organization provides Chinese culture programs to children adopted from China and their families, schools, and communities. The organization has offices in Beijing, China, and Bloomington, Illinois.
Randall Ket
Randall Ket feels a tremendous amount of gratitude to the faculty of Purdue’s building construction management (BCM) program, especially program founder D. Dorsey Moss.
“He accepted me in the program and convinced Hunt to hire me,” Ket recounts. “His influence was enormous.”
Thomas Hjertquist
After graduating from high school, Thomas Hjertquist immediately started a career in construction as an apprentice. An accident on the job kept him from returning to “the trade,” he says, so he enrolled in the industrial education program at Purdue. At the urging of friends, he used his educational background and Purdue degree to begin his career outside of the school systems.
Jen Bahan
Jen Bahan’s job description changes depending on the project. One day, she may work on creature development for flying characters in The Golden Compass. Another day, she may assist in creating fur and fat simulations for the dancing penguins in Happy Feet. No matter what her task, she knows she is where she is meant to be.
“I’ve wanted to work in animated films practically since birth,” she says. Her focused career goals led her to Purdue in the mid-1990s for the emerging computer graphics program.
Students study unmanned aerial vehicles
Students are learning how to operate unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in the first class at Purdue University focused on drones.
The course, taught by Michael Leasure, associate professor of aviation technology, touches on several technologies that work together to allow an aircraft to fly on its own. This is the first time he has been able to offer the course because the technology has finally advanced enough to make it feasible and legal.
Donald Malackowski
Don Malackowski’s parents made sure he had access to “a never- ending supply of spare parts and components” with which to build and invent things. That hands-on environment, he says, helped him choose the College of Technology for his electrical engineering education.
Ken Harness
Ken Harness credits his early successes in the aviation industry to the College of Technology’s applied approach to learning. While others were learning on the job, he says, “I was making things happen out of the box.”
Daniel Dimond
Growing up, Dan Dimond had many passions: tinkering with anything mechanical, race cars, engines, and racing in general. While these interests led him to the College of Technology, it was his professors who motivated him to follow his father’s career path in HVAC design.
With guidance from professors Charles Thomas, Frederick Emshousen, and Hal Roach, Dimond learned how to break down complex problems and to be concise, logical, and practical. He uses these same lessons today as a professional engineer and businessman.
David Bozell
With an interest in architecture, David Bozell started looking for colleges based on their architecture programs. What he found were programs steeped in traditional methods. While meeting with Prof. Terry Burton at Purdue, however, Bozell began to see how new technologies could be applied to such a program.
His success in the classroom — as a student, teaching assistant, and professor — has created a solid foundation for his Lafayette-based business, CG Visions Inc.
Dan Post
Dan Post always enjoyed using math and problem-solving skills to help people develop new solutions. For him, Purdue’s Department of Computer and Information Technology was a perfect choice because it allowed him to apply what he learned in the classroom to real-world situations that impact people’s lives.