A record number of students—9,607—attended Purdue Calumet this past fall.

The total represents a 3.3 percent increase over fall 2006 enrollment of 9,303, while surpassing the previous Purdue Calumet enrollment high of 9,496 recorded in 1992.

Fall 2007 enrollment also included record numbers of African-American (1,619), Hispanic (1,309) and international students (387).

“Our efforts to attract more high quality students are paying off,” Purdue Calumet Assistant Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Services/Registrar Anne Agosto-Severa said. “The higher admission standards we implemented last year, expanded and more strategic recruiting efforts, and continued international student increases have contributed to a growing number of students who desire to earn a Purdue degree at Purdue Calumet.”

Additionally, Purdue Calumet saw the freshman-to-sophomore year retention rate inch up to 61.6 percent from 59.8 percent the previous year.

Within undergraduate academic programs, engineering enrollment increased nearly 28 percent (499 majors, up 109 from fall 2006). Other increases were recorded in Communication & Creative Arts—462 majors, up 56 (13.8 percent); Management—1,401 majors, up 90 (6.9 percent); Behavioral Sciences—1,123 majors, up 43 (4.0 percent); and Nursing—417 majors, up 9 (2.2 percent).

It will take more than classroom and laboratory learning to earn an undergraduate degree at Purdue Calumet. Also required will be an experiential learning component—two, to be exact.

Purdue Calumet officials announced last spring that the university is incorporating within all undergraduate academic degree curricula structured programs of experiential learning. Types of such structured experiential programs include internships, cooperative education, applied research with faculty, cultural immersion (study abroad), design projects, community service learning and practicums. Such experiences will become a graduation requirement for every student enrolling at Purdue Calumet beginning in fall 2008.

“A high quality education should integrate classroom and laboratory learning with learning that takes place in job-related settings—the same settings in which we expect our students to work after they graduate,” Purdue Calumet Chancellor Howard Cohen said. “We think that is a very effective form of learning, and we are pleased to be able to assure all of our graduates that they will leave Purdue Calumet having learned experientially.”

The action follows Purdue Calumet’s receipt in 2006 of a $1.7 million U.S. Dept. of Education Title III grant to develop a comprehensive experiential education program through faculty and curriculum development. The National Society for Experiential Education is helping Purdue Calumet implement the grant during the current 2007-08 academic year.

• Purdue University Calumet closed its five-year, “Plan for Success” fundraising campaign June 30, surpassing its original $10.8 million goal by generating $17.5 million. The campaign raised support for such strategic University initiatives as student scholarships, faculty grants, student housing and Academic Learning Center construction projects, Water Institute development and business training.
• Purdue Calumet awarded nearly 1,300 associate, baccalaureate and master’s degrees during 2007. The total increases to more than 39,500 the number of degrees conferred at Purdue Calumet.
• The open computing laboratories of the past have given way to a new era at Purdue Calumet of virtual classrooms and versatile, personalized computing facilities that can accommodate students across campus and across the world. Purdue Calumet formally introduced its newly-designed, state-of-the-art, computer information technology facilities Oct. 17. The $1.34 million modernization project was in two phases: 1) the creation of four virtual classrooms in the Powers Computer Education Building, providing a setting for School of Technology students to learn on site, remotely or at another time more conducive to their scheduling; and 2) the transformation of yesteryear’s, circa 1980s, large, open computing laboratory into a suite of four distinct computing lab platforms totaling some 90 work stations in the Gyte Science Building.
• Navigating through new, more challenging accreditation waters, Purdue Calumet received continued accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission’s Academic Quality Improvement Program (AQIP) team. A component of the North Central Association, AQIP is a regional accreditation process that helps improve education quality through a system of continuous self-assessment and measurement. An AQIP review team visited Purdue Calumet last spring. The AQIP process goes beyond adherence to minimum standards of compliance; it also requiring comprehensive University improvement in ways beneficial to students, faculty and staff.

• Purdue Calumet Chancellor Howard Cohen received the National Society of Experiential Education’s (NSEE) Higher Education Leader of the Year Award at the NSEE Annual Conference Nov. 2.
• Receiving Purdue Calumet’s Outstanding Faculty Awards for the year were: Associate Professor of Communication Lisa Goodnight (Outstanding Teaching), Professor of Nursing Karen Fontaine (Outstanding Scholar) and Associate Professor of Nursing Dolores Huffman (Outstanding Service).
• Named Designated Professors by the Purdue Board of Trustees were Michael Flannery (White Lodging Professor of Hospitality and Tourism Management), Robert Kramer (NiSource Charitable Foundation Research Professor of Energy and the Environment) and Robert Rivers (Thomas Ray Crowel Professor of Science and Technology Education / Director of the Center for Science and Technology Education).
• Professor of Biological Sciences Charles Tseng, received Purdue Calumet’s Outstanding Sponsored Research Award for his 32-year track record of high quality funded research.
• Each of 24 high school valedictorians and salutatorians—12 from northwest Indiana and 12 from Illinois Chicagoland—received Purdue Calumet’s prestigious Chancellor’s Scholar Award for 2007-08. The award covers 100 percent of tuition and fees; 50 percent of living expenses at Purdue Calumet’s student housing facility, The University Village; and a monetary allowance for books and supplies. It is renewable annually upon satisfying academic requirements.
  Indiana recipients, their hometowns and high schools are as follows: Melissa Dickerson of Lake Station, Edison High School; Jacqueline Ullstam of Hammond, Gavit; Jynece Collins of Gary, Wallace; Joshua Gralewski of Hammond, Morton; Elizabeth Holesapple of Dyer, Calumet Baptist; Dallas Howard of DeMotte, North Newton; Lauren Kaminsky of Whiting, Clark; Mirjana Nikolic of Cedar Lake, Hanover Central; James Scanlon of Lake Station, Edison; Steven Schmidt of Hammond, Gavit; David Warner of Dyer, Heritage Christian; and Joseph Wolff of Hammond, Hammond High.
  Illinois recipients, their hometowns and high schools are: Samantha Bartucci of Steger, Bloom Trail High School; Tuendra Daw of Chicago, Chicago International; Nicole Dempsey of Lynwood, Bloom Trail; Donald Dixon of Crete, Crete-Monee; Cecilia Enriquez of Chicago, Kennedy; DeAndrae Haynes of Lansing, Leo; Joshua Melko of Crete, Crete-Monee; Sylwia Olczak of Chicago, Kennedy High; John Tessling of Glenwood, Bloom Township; Matthew Washington of Chicago, Luther South; Dina Nemri of Chicago, Washington; and Frank Rister Jr. of Joliet, Joliet Central.
• ArcelorMittal Steel Corp. awarded $2,000 ArcelorMittal Scholar Awards to each of five Purdue Calumet freshman engineering students: Eric Giboyeaux of Highland, Anthony Parini of Crown Point, Jacqueline Ullstam of Hammond, Andrew Walker of Cedar Lake and John Pankey of Crete, IL. Recipients who continue to satisfy academic requirements can receive the award for up to four years. Consistent with a Purdue Calumet initiative to cultivate experiential learning opportunities, recipients also will partake in paid internships for two summers at ArcelorMittal Steel.

Named Purdue Calumet Alumni of the Year during Alumni Leaders Day on Campus Nov. 30 were:

• Interdisciplinary engineering graduate (’76) John N. Johnson, vice president of finance and enterprise services and chief information officer at California-based Intel Corp., and
• Electrical engineering graduate (’91) Anthony Bridge, vice president of engineering and technology, United States Steel Corp.

• The Purdue Calumet Water Institute in partnership with Argonne National Laboratory received a $1 million award from BP to research emerging technologies and approaches to minimize discharges into Lake Michigan.
• Purdue Calumet also received a contract to manage the Northwest Indiana Small Business Development Center (SBDC). Administered primarily through Purdue Calumet’s Entrepreneurship Center, the Northwest Indiana SBDC is designed to assist entrepreneurial and other small business owner clients with services that otherwise may be unaffordable.
• In an ongoing effort to advance northwest Indiana specifically and society in general, Purdue Calumet added to its number of centers and institutes during the year. Led by the expertise of Purdue Calumet faculty and administrators, the university offers the following: Energy Efficiency & Reliability Center, Center for Mathematics Teaching & Learning, Northwest Indiana Center for Evidence-Based Nursing Practice, Center for Global Studies, Water Institute, Center for Science & Technology Education, Northwest Indiana Transportation Center, Center for Computational Science, Institute for Social and Policy Research, and Life Sciences Institute.

Richard J. Combs, who served Purdue University Calumet for nearly 36 years, including 15 as chancellor, directing a period of noteworthy campus growth and development during the 1970s and 80s, died Sunday (4/8) following an illness. He was 80.

• After academic ineligibility to eight student athletes and injuries to two others prompted cancellation of the 2007 portion of the 2006-07 men’s basketball season, Purdue Calumet spent the rest of the year reorganizing its athletics program. Veteran athletics/student affairs administrator and coach Robert Bunnell was appointed athletic director/Asst. Vice Chancellor of Health, Recreation and Sports last summer. Grayling Gordon, who led Purdue North Central to its first winning record last season, and longtime, successful local high school (Lake Central) coach Tom Megyesi were appointed head men’s and women’s basketball coaches, respectively.
• A comprehensive internal evaluation and assessment of the university’s athletic program was conducted, resulting in the implementation of a more structured and demanding academic monitoring program for student athletes. The early result: all 2007-08 men’s and women’s basketball players maintained their academic eligibility following the fall 2007 semester.
• For the first time in its history, Purdue Calumet retired the jersey number of one of its former student athletes—the #14 worn by 1980s, three-time Kodak All-America women’s basketball player Lee Ann DeYoung, now DeYoung-Slowik. Purdue Calumet’s all-time leading scorer with 2,592 points (24.5 game average), she was named to the 10-member Kodak Women’s All-America Basketball Team for NAIA institutions in 1986-88. She earned nursing degrees from Purdue Calumet in ’88 and ’92.