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March 11, 2004

Purdue to engage Bloomington in all-day visit

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Purdue University leaders, who are traveling the state to meet and learn from its citizens, will stop next in Bloomington on Tuesday, March 23, to visit schools and businesses.

Martin C. Jischke

Purdue President Martin C. Jischke and other Purdue leaders will visit Cook Group Inc., Baxter Pharmaceutical Solutions LLC and Fairview Elementary School, in addition to other locations. Jischke and Indiana University President Adam Herbert also will address business leaders at a luncheon co-sponsored by Purdue and IU.

"Our goal with these visits is to listen and to learn," said Don K. Gentry, Purdue's vice provost for engagement. "Purdue really wants to know how to best help our state, and to do that we need to experience it firsthand and meet its people."

This is the fifth year Jischke and university leaders have conducted these daylong visits to Indiana communities. More than 50 previous stops have ranged from Aurora to Logansport and from Vincennes to the Indiana State Fair. An upcoming visit is being planned for Gary.

Several activities are scheduled for the Bloomington visit:

• 8:30 a.m. – Tour Cook Group Inc., 750 Daniels Way. The Cook Group, which also owns Cook Biotech in the Purdue Research Park, is a leading designer, manufacturer and global distributor of minimally invasive medical device technology for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Since its founding in 1963, Cook has created innovative technologies for stents and stent-grafts, catheters, wire guides, introducer needles and sheaths, embolization coils, tissue-engineered medical biomaterials, vena cava filters, implanted cardiac lead extraction equipment, and other minimally invasive medical devices.

• 10 a.m. – Tour Baxter Pharmaceutical Solutions LLC, 927 Curry Park. Baxter manufactures prefilled syringes, vials and cartridges for the packaging of vaccines and drugs to treat chronic conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. The company is engaged in a $100 million expansion of its manufacturing facility, adding 120,000 square feet at its Bloomington plant. The first phase of the expansion is scheduled to open in 2005.

• 11:30 a.m. – Lunch with community and business leaders at Chapman's Restaurant & Banquet Center, 300 S.R. 445. Jischke and Herbert will speak about a research university's role in state economic development.

• 1:45 p.m. – Visit Fairview Elementary School, 627 W. Eighth St. Jeff Holland, Extension educator, will review a youth program on gang prevention entitled, "The Gang's All Here." The program, which will be presented Monday, March 22, to fifth-graders, educates students on the harmful effects of gangs and shows them how to identify gang signs and features. A decline in gang activity has been attributed to the program, which has been administered for 12 years. Jischke will question students about what they learned about gangs during the previous day's presentation.

Jischke, who came to Purdue in August 2000, is the university's 10th president. He previously served for nine years as president of Iowa State University, another land-grant institution. His experience in higher education also includes 17 years as professor and dean at the University of Oklahoma and five years at the University of Missouri-Rolla.

Jischke was the founding president of the Global Consortium of Higher Education and Research for Agriculture. He served as chairman and board member of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges and as a board member of the American Council on Education, National Merit Scholarship Corporation and Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities. He is on the boards of directors of the Association of American Universities and the American Council on Competitiveness.

After receiving his doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968, Jischke joined the faculty of the University of Oklahoma's School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering. During his 17 years at Oklahoma, he served in multiple capacities. He became director of the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering in 1977. He served as dean of the College of Engineering from 1981 to 1986, and he was named the university's interim president in 1985.

Writer: Marydell Forbes, (765) 496-7704, mforbes@purdue.edu

Source: Don K. Gentry, (765) 494-9095, dkgentry@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

Note to Journalists: The media may attend any of the events. To make arrangements, contact Dave Petritz, Cooperative Extension Service director, at (765) 494-8489, dpetritz@purdue.edu.


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