Purdue News

October 14, 2003

Purdue to engage South Bend 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 South Bend on Tuesday, Oct. 21, to visit schools and businesses.

Purdue President Martin C. Jischke and other Purdue leaders will visit Schafer Gear Works, the Purdue Cooperative Extension Office and the Purdue School of Technology at IU South Bend, in addition to other locations.

"Our goal with these visits is to listen and to learn," said Don Gentry, 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 fourth year Jischke and university leaders have conducted these daylong visits to Indiana communities. Fifty previous stops – including a trip to South Bend in October 2000 – have ranged from Aurora to Logansport and from Vincennes to the Indiana State Fair. Upcoming visits are being planned for Columbus, Jasper, Bloomington and Gary.

A full day of activities is scheduled for the South Bend visit. Jischke and his party will be at the following locations:

• 10:15 a.m. - Tour of Schafer Gear Works, 4701 Nimitz Parkway. Shafer Gear Works produces high precision, custom engineered gears and machine parts. Company president and CEO Bipin Doshi has served on the Purdue Technical Assistance Program advisory council. TAP connects Indiana businesses with Purdue resources in order to implement state-of-the-art technologies and improve the state economy. The program helped Shafer Gear Works design an efficient production layout for its South Bend facility, which opened in 1999.

• 11:30 a.m. - Lunch with business and community leaders at the Summit Club, 211 W. Washington.

• 1:20 p.m. - Visit the Purdue Cooperative Extension Office, County City Building, Room 336, 227 W. Jefferson Blvd. Rick Podell, county Extension director, will present an overview of Extension programs.

• 3 p.m. - Meeting with researchers from Notre Dame and Purdue at the University of Notre Dame, Main Building, Room 416. The researchers are involved in a joint project with Zimmer Inc. of Warsaw, Ind., through which minimally invasive surgical implants for the hip and spine are developed. The research is funded by a 21st Century Research and Technology Fund grant.

• 4:15 p.m. - Visit with students enrolled in the Purdue School of Technology at IU South Bend, 1733 Northside Blvd. There are 244 students are enrolled in the school. Students have expressed interest in an expansion of four-year degree programs in computer graphics and mechanical engineering.

• 6 p.m. - Attend a reception with Purdue alumni at the Windsor Park Conference Center, 4020 Edison Lakes Parkway, Mishawaka. The reception is sponsored by the Purdue alumni club of South Bend.

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

Sources: Don Gentry, (765) 494-9095, dkgentry@purdue.edu<;

David Petritz, Cooperative Extension Service director, (765) 494-8489, dpetritz@purdue.edu