Welcome to the PNW Pridecast
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Episode Script
Greetings, colleagues of Purdue University Northwest!
Cheers to the beginning of a new academic year at the university. My name is Kale Wilk, and I serve as Communications Specialist with PNW Marketing and Communications. I welcome you, dear listeners, to the PNW Pridecast. I will be your host and guide as we take the first step on this new journey together.
The PNW Pridecast is a new initiative from Marketing and Communications to reimagine how internal news is disseminated at PNW. Modeled as a podcast-style communication, the Pridecast helps compile noteworthy and important information from all areas of PNW to deliver to you, the faculty and staff audience. Moreover, it’s meant to be consumed in a way that is easy for you. You can listen to this while you’re at work, while you’re commuting to and from campus, or maybe even while you’re at home preparing your dinner.
To listen to all Pridecast installments, just head over to our website at pnw.edu/pridecast. The website is a valuable location where you can find the information pertinent to you. In the main section, you can browse Pridecast episodes, with new installments expected to be produced every three weeks. If you prefer the reading route, word-for-word episode scripts will also be available.
You can also find additional resources such as internal faculty and staff memos, event calendar highlights, campus news highlights, and connections back to the “For Faculty and Staff” web page.
Now that we’ve had the introduction, how about we get to some news and recap the summer?
In early June, PNW hosted the Roaring Ahead Scholarship Gala, the culminating event of our 5.75 recognition celebrating five years as PNW and 75 years of our legacy campuses. During a grand dinner hosted at Hard Rock Casino Northern Indiana in Gary, two people were recognized for their accomplishments.
First, David Roberts, a 1974 alumnus, was inducted as the inaugural member of the PNW Alumni Hall of Fame. During his recognition, David and his wife Susan, pledged $100,000 to support PNW scholarships to match the $100,000 already raised ahead of the gala.
Chancellor Keon was recognized with the Sagamore of the Wabash, the highest civilian honor bestowed by a sitting Indiana governor in recognition of service to the state or the governor. In receiving the prestigious honor, Chancellor Keon was lauded for his transformational leadership in helping PNW reach new heights in academic excellence and really become a regional leader in Northwest Indiana’s growth.
What if you could take leftover food and transform it into renewable energy? That’s what PNW professor of Physics Robert Kramer and associate professor of Chemistry Libbie Pelter have shown in their research, which involves biologically producing hydrogen from food waste. The process has far-reaching implications as an energy source for electricity and other chemical and industrial processes.
During the summer the Purdue Research Foundation facilitated a licensing agreement with an international energy company for the commercialization of this process discovered at PNW. Kramer and Pelter also worked with John Patterson, an associate professor in Purdue West Lafayette’s Department of Animal Sciences.
Kramer, the principal investigator, said more than 30% of all food, which amounts to about $48 billion, is wasted annually in the U.S. This process, he says, also is environmentally-friendly because hydrogen combustion results in water vapor as its only byproduct.
Two startups affiliated with PNW’s Commercialization and Manufacturing Excellence Center, including one spearheaded by two PNW faculty and staff members, earned investment agreements from Elevate Ventures’ Elevate Nexus regional pitch competitions to help grow and scale their respective entrepreneurial pursuits.
Startups Plantennas and Paradise Spreads collectively earned $100,000 in the Elevate Nexus Northern Indiana regional competition. Following their applications and business presentations, Plantennas received $80,000 in seed funding and Paradise Spreads received $20,000 in pre-seed funding.
Plantennas is led by clinical instructor of Entrepreneurship Alexandra Moran and entrepreneur in residence and associate director of CMEC Mont Handley. Paradise Spreads is a product from Emily’s Foods, LLC, which is led by Emily Edwards, who took second place in the 2021 PNW Big Sell Competition.
As a part of the Indiana Department of Health’s Health Issues and Challenges program, PNW’s Integrative Physiology and Health Sciences center received a grant for local efforts to promote and improve cardiovascular health.
John Durocher, Nils K. Nelson associate professor of Integrative Human Health, said the IPHS center will conduct outreach to Lake and LaPorte county residents with free educational and screening sessions. He also said a limited number of free at-home screening devices will be distributed to session attendees, including pulse oximeters, pedometers, and automated blood pressure cuffs.
Looking ahead, there are a few calendar items to be aware of.
First, faculty and staff are encouraged to attend the annual Year Ahead address. Chancellor Keon and Provost Holford will detail what’s to come in this academic year for PNW. The address takes place August 19 from 1:30 to 3 p.m. in Alumni Hall at the Student Union & Library building on the Hammond campus.
The Sinai Forum at PNW announced its 69th season lineup, which will feature five speakers presenting on topics including mental health, creativity, fine arts, domestic politics and the geopolitical climate.
From approximately mid-September through early December 2022, you can catch writer Elizabeth Gilbert, special effects designer and TV personality Adam Savage, former U.S. representative and CIA operative Will Hurd, retired General David H. Petraeus, and musician Rachel Barton Pine.
To learn more about how to secure your tickets, event times, and locations, please visit pnw.edu/sinai-forum.
Finally, the Power Onward Conference returns on August 25 and 26. Now in its second year, under the theme “Keep Roaring: Sustained Success Requires Teamwork,” the conference, sponsored by the office of Information Services, is a collaboration between units and leaders across PNW to bring faculty and staff together to share and learn from each other.
Emily Hixon, director of the Center for Faculty Excellence and professor of Education, says the conference committee seeks to address a collective goal of ensuring a sense of belonging for all and best practices to support student success. It’s a meeting of the minds to best collaborate on meeting students’ contemporary needs.
“I think we have a lot in here of really trying to better understand who our students are, how we can really understand our students so we can meet their needs,” said Hixon. “The Center for Faculty Excellence has been focusing a lot on inclusive teaching practices and I think we’re that reflected in some of this as well. It’s a really great way to extend some of the things that the (participating) units are doing, like OIT (Office of Instructional Technology) and the Center for Faculty Excellence, and then faculty colleagues in general, the Leadership Institute, and the Society of Innovators. All these different pieces, this kind of pulls them together in a unique way, I think, to really showcase what the units are doing, but also what individuals are doing based on their experiences with those units.”
Across the two days of the conference, you can catch sessions, whether in-person or virtually, on topics that help refresh knowledge on technology available for the classroom, intersectional pedagogy for student success, conversations on diversity and equity, and talks about mental health and wellness.
Katie Brown, senior educational technologist in the Office of Instructional Technology in Information Services, says the conference reveals all the support systems faculty and staff have with each other to truly Power Onward when individual challenges arise.
“The goal is that you start the year with this, coming together, and we keep that in mind as we go throughout the term, fall semester and spring,” said Brown. “We know that these units are still here to support us, whether it’s academic or staff, or whatever it may be. So that’s really what I think of as the message: that this conference is the start of a new academic year so that we can all remain connected together beyond what they learn in the sessions and from colleagues, the persistence of roaring ahead throughout.”
To learn more information and register, visit pnw.edu/power-onward-conference.
Thank you to everyone for listening to this first episode of the PNW Pridecast. We look forward to engaging you with more news and interviews from around the university. Once again, please visit pnw.edu/pridecast to find out how you can submit your own faculty and staff news and connect with resources tailored for you.
Do you have information that might be shared in a future Pridecast segment? At pnw.edu/pridecast, you will find a link to a Qualtrics form to submit suggestions.
I’m Kale Wilk, signing off. Thank you very much for listening, and we look forward to sharing more news with you.