Hall of Fame, 2019
Marleen Durr Troyer
Marleen Durr Troyer is a 1971 Purdue graduate in vocational home economics. As an academic advisor in this department, she often told prospective students and advisees that, “A Purdue degree is a launching pad for lifelong learning, as well as a door opener to unforeseeable opportunities. Though many careers develop predictably as outcomes of a college major; just as often, career pathways are an unexpected combination of training, the individual’s skills and abilities, and the opportunities and circumstance life presents.” This has certainly been true for Marleen. Through the years, she has had three seasons of “career.”
As a stay-at-home mom, Marleen participated in numerous volunteer activities both at church and in schools, some of which were administrative and preparatory for later work at Purdue. She served as a childcare coordinator, a deacon and as director of a large vacation Bible school. At Klondike Middle School she headed concessions. Additionally she was a children’s choir director for both Covenant and Bethel churches.
When her children were almost grown, Marleen began a ceramic jewelry business, which her older son named ‘Higherart’. The business grew to supply ten venues, including Gretchen’s Closet and the Lafayette Art Museum locally. Multiple sites in Indianapolis, Brookston, Jerome and Louisville were among those ten venues. The business was active from 1987-1997.
In August of 1996, an interest in academic advising intersected with a maternity leave opening in this department. In the 21-plus years she served as Assistant to Head in Foods & Nutrition/Nutrition Science, it was always her goal to help the department be successful.
This was an unusual job at Purdue because, as half-academic advising and half-administrative, it bridged two areas. This position dealt with day-to-day administrative issues, permitting the head to maintain an active research program and travel. Her complex knowledge of academic and administrative activities in the Department was a wonderful asset for departmental newsletters and reports, curriculum support, development activities, and communication with department stakeholders and other departments in the University. It was even useful for the multiple renovation and construction projects for which she served as department liaison.
Working with a large group of support staff and faculty is a highlight and privilege of her years at Purdue. She led many special events in the Department including: Corporate Affiliates, May Conference, Hall of Fame.
The opportunity to work with students for a successful outcome academically and personally was her greatest satisfaction, along with student recruitment. Advising for study abroad and providing continuity for departmental study abroad programs were significant contributions to student success, as was her initiation of broader summer school offerings for the department.
Marleen served on the Teaching Committee and the Space Committee for the department and on the original Multicultural and Diversity Committee for the College of Consumer & Family Science, which created the CFS 2020 Learning Community as a multicultural experience for incoming first year students. She initiated the Joan Krupinski Scholarship and helped to support it. She recommends this scholarship or others as an opportunity to accomplish “a lot for a little” through small payroll deductions.
Marleen and her husband Leon have two children, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. She retired in 2018 and is enjoying a fourth life-season of availability to help others, to travel with her husband, reconnect with friends and rekindle set aside interests. Some of her interests are writing, studying, serving, reading, cooking, gardening and quilting.
For her 21 years of commitment to making the Department of Nutrition Science one of the very best in the University and Nationally, it is well deserved honor that Marleen Troyer is inducted into the Nutrition Science Hall of Fame.
Michael Kelley
Michael Kelley, PhD, RD graduated from the University of California, in Berkley with a BS in nutrition and received an MS from Colorado State University in Foods and Nutrition. He received his PhD from Purdue University where he studied dietary fibers effect on cholesterol metabolism under Dr. Jon Story. Post-doctoral work took Michael to Harvard for a few years and then onto Boston University School of Medicine where he focused on laboratory methods and research design. Michael began his teaching career at Emory University School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor in Atlanta where he focused on multiple areas of clinical nutrition. In 1988, Michael moved to San Diego where he served the next seven years as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Education. He taught nutrition and food science courses and performed research in heart disease, nutrition education, and physical performance.
In 1995 Abbot Laboratories lured Michael out of academia to the industrial sector for the next 10 years. He served as a senior scientist where he worked with multi-disciplinary teams for clinical studies, developed monographs, educational modules, and supported marketing and regulatory departments. He accepted a role with Melaleuca and relocated to Idaho where he served as director of Bio Science and then an industry consultant. Chicago and WM Wrigley came calling in 2007 and Michael made a move back to the Midwest as a senior principal scientist. Michael’s tenure at Wrigley found him focusing on clinical research programs in weight management, systemic health, and oral care. He developed six successful health claim applications, designed and implemented online systems for reviews, and approval of global product claims. He worked with submissions for the USDA, 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory committee and Healthy People 2020 to name a few.
In 2015, Michael started his own consulting firm where he utilizes his expertise in diet and behavior change, weight management, food addiction, oral health, nutrition and cognitive function, athletic performance, and health and wellness. As a scientific consultant, he works with companies, scientific societies and industry associations. He also coaches young professionals and practitioners to achieve success in their careers.
When Michael is not consulting he serves as a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatric Dentistry at the University of Illinois, Chicago as this appealed to Michael’s love of teaching and learning. He provides expertise in nutrition, health and wellness, along with oral health through presentations and interactions in research with faculty and students. Michael has taught numerous graduate and undergraduate courses and seminars.
Michael has a diverse career spanning from research, academia, industry, public speaking, and consulting. He has spoken on the topics of nutrition and dental health, neurocognition and food intake, translation of science regarding the latest topics, career growth and advancement. He has collaborated with numerous investigators on a multitude of published articles.
Michael met his wife Karen in Boston. They have been married for 34 years and have 2 children, James and Joanna, and a beloved third furry child, Maggie. Michael and Karen currently reside in Wauwatosa, WI. Michael is an avid fitness enthusiast, enjoys group fitness classes and personally experimenting with different exercise regimes and diets. His latest pursuit is encouraging others and in some cases, helping them get to the next stage of their career or other development.
Berdine R. Martin
Berdine R. Martin, PhD, is an alumna of the Purdue Foods and Nutrition Graduate Program, earning a PhD in 1986. She also earned an M.S. Ed. From Purdue in 1972. She began an amazingly stellar research and mentoring career in the laboratory of Dr. Connie Weaver in 1986 as a Senior Research Scientist and Laboratory Director, where she remained until her retirement in the winter of 2019. Prior to working with Dr. Weaver, she was a Teaching and Research Assistant with Dr. Dorothy Morre, developed instructional materials for the University of Sao Paulo Piracicaba, in Brazil.She developed, taught and directed a Vocational Home Economics Program in Bolivia focusing on strategies to improve the severe child malnutrition and poor sanitation and hygiene resulting in disease and death.
Berdine has directed and coordinated 25 clinical projects involving nearly 400 individuals designed to measure different aspects of calcium bioavailability and metabolism and bone health in individuals ages 9-70. She has also collaborated on multiple studies studying the effect of exercise on iron status and bone health involving over 250 young women. These studies varied in length from 10 day outpatient absorption studies to 2 year exercise intervention studies including three week calcium balance studies. Her skill set in research is remarkably broad including both stable and radioisotopic tracer techniques to measure calcium absorption as well as other kinetic parameters of calcium metabolism, delivery of isotopic iv doses, atomic absorption, inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry, and UV spectrophotometry, radiological and immunological methods, and chromatography to quantitate various physiological and biochemical parameters related to mineral metabolism and bioavailability and Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry used to quantitate bone density. Other experiences include use of hydroponics to intrinsically label plants to measure mineral bioavailability; the design and conduct of animal studies to measure mineral bioavailability and various parameters of mineral metabolism; subcellular fractionation of animal tissue, enzymatic studies, and electron microscopy techniques. The result of this research effort is over 200 refereed publications and research abstracts along with numerous invited lectures.
Berdine has served as a mentor to a multitude of graduate and undergraduate students, Nutrition Department staff and faculty, and campus research staff over her distinguished career at Purdue. Not only has Berdine mentored hundreds, if not thousands of students, staff and faculty, she also has regularly taught and guest lectured in Nutrition courses ranging from Nutrition and Behavior to Life Cycle Nutrition to Maternal, Infant and Child Nutrition to Mineral Metabolism.
Berdine’s daily gifts of unselfish assistance to all around her that were largely invisible to most constitutes the essence of who she is. Berdine’s sense of civic duty not only made the Department such a good environment, but made the Department a good ambassador for outreach. Some of the groups that counted on Berdine’s generous service and talents included extension agents, 4-H, schools, numerous campus groups, professional organizations, and other departments on campus.
She was awarded a David Ross Grant, a Sigma Xi Professional Staff Research Award and is a member of Sigma Xi, Gamma Sigma Delta, Omicron Nu, Phi Kappa Phi, the American Society of Nutrition, and the American Society for Bone Mineral Research.
Outside of her career at Purdue, she owns and operates a blueberry farm with her husband Marshall. Berdine and Marshall have a daughter and son and 4 grandchildren. Berdine continues to be engaged in various community, and regional efforts focusing on food security, nutrition and child health.
Jon Story
Jon Story, PhD, came to the Purdue Department of Foods and Nutrition in September of 1977 as an Associate Professor and was quickly promoted to Professor in 1980. Jon earned BS, MS and PhD degrees from Iowa State in Zoology, completed a post-doctoral fellowship and was appointed as a Research Assistant and Assistant Professor at the Wistar Institute. During Jon’s productive career at Purdue, he served in multiple important administrative roles including Associate Dean of the School of Consumer and Family Sciences and Associate Director of the Agricultural Research Program, Acting Dean of Consumer and Family Sciences, Director of the Interdepartmental Nutrition Program, Associate Dean, Senior Associate Dean and Interim Dean of the Graduate School, and Director of the Clinical and Translational Sciences Predoctoral Program for the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute.
Jon’s work in graduate education resulted in formation of the Office of Interdisciplinary Graduate Programs within the Graduate School at Purdue, which currently oversees 16 programs across campus. These programs include several which were initiated under his leadership including PULSe, an interdisciplinary life science program which includes nearly 200 faculty and 150 students from 27+ departments. Jon’s work with the Indiana-CTSI began in 2008 and is supported by NIH/NCATS funds as well as funds from industry and the involved universities, including IU School of Medicine, Indiana University-Bloomington, Notre Dame University, and Purdue University. He has overseen the support of 90 PhD and MD/PhD students for up to 2 years during the duration of the grant.
Jon’s research interests have focused on the regulation of cholesterol and bile acid metabolism by dietary components including:
- Changes in bile acid metabolism as a mechanism for prevention of cholesterol accumulation by some sources of dietary fiber.- Modification of bile acid excretion by dietary fiber and the relation of these changes to susceptibility to colon cancer.
He first demonstrated an increase of bile acid excretion in response to oat bran in humans. That work progressed to a series of human studies including one of the first measurements of bile acid pool size and turnover in humans fed various dietary fiber sources. He also collaborated on a number of studies, some supported by NIH and Health Canada, including a human study measuring bile acid turnover and pool size in response to psyllium carried. Work examining the relationship between dietary fiber sources and bile acid excretion in relation to colon cancer risk followed. He was involved with studies measuring changes in colon polyp formation in response to wheat bran supplementation in humans and studies of dietary lipids and cholesterol. These studies examined the role of dietary lipid saturation in chylomicron size and metabolism. Results from these studies are published in nearly 100 refereed research publications and were supported by a wide variety of government and industry grants. During his career, Jon has mentored over 20 graduate students in his research program, many going on to academic or industry research careers, including Michael Kelley, who we honor today, and our own Professor Kim Buhman.
Jon has received numerous honors and awards including being elected a Member, Book of Great Teachers, Purdue University. Jon has taught almost every semester despite very significant administrative obligations. He views interaction with students as an essential part of “being a professor.” Jon is also the recipient of the Award of Merit in Research from Gamma Sigma Delta, Purdue University Chapter, the recipient of the Wellcome Visiting Professorship in the Basic Medical Sciences, at North Dakota State University and the recipient of the Mary L. Matthews Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award from Consumer and Family Sciences at Purdue.
Jon is a member of Society of the Sigma Xi, American Society for Nutritional Sciences, The Nutrition Society, the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, Kappa Omicron Nu, and Gamma Sigma Delta and has served on a multitude on national, international and local editorial, advisory boards, commissions, and scientific panels. He has also presented his work in many venues across the world. Listing all his scientific community service work, and research presentations would keep us here until midnight.
Jon and Margie have been married for almost 50 years and together they have 3 children, 4 grandchildren and 2 corgi fur babies. His family has titled him as King pancake maker, a doting grandfather, and an expert in turf management (AKA his yard). Jon is retiring this year from Purdue where he is looking forward to traveling, reconnecting with friends, and picking up the game of golf again. It is most fitting that the Department of Nutrition Science recognize him for his invaluable contributions to the Department, the University and the scientific community.
