Past Awardees

2022 - Emma Gausman

Psychological Sciences and Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences

Emma was member of the National Student Speech Language Hearing Association and a Purdue College of Health and Human Sciences (HHS) ambassador. She joined Mental Health America’s Crisis Center in Lafayette as a specialist during the COVID-19 pandemic and after six months was a trainer at the center. While learning speech-language pathology along with the neuroscience side of the field in her psychology classes, she picked up American Sign Language (ASL), after which she was hired as a teaching assistant in lecturer Sharon Brickowski’s ASL classes in the Purdue College of Liberal Arts. With a career goal of becoming a speech-language pathologist in the works, she explained that helping those with speech and language difficulties improve their skills in communication is an unforgettable feeling. She experienced this early in her Purdue career when she volunteered in Lafayette schools as a speech-language pathologist classroom assistant. 

Learn more about Emma and her experiences at Purdue (opens in new window).

Words of Wisdom from Emma:

1. Connect with faculty and staff! They can become a strong support system and a guide for you when trying to navigate through your undergraduate studies. They are also experts in the field and want to help you discover your passions for your future career.
2. Become involved, but find things you truly care about! Activities and organizations on- and off-campus are great ways to build skills and relationships applicable to many different aspects of your life, but to continue to have the drive needed to be successful in these areas, it is important to be genuinely enthusiastic about where you are expending your time and energy.
3. Prioritize time for yourself! Everyone needs and deserves a break. To truly perform at your best, you need time to recharge physically, emotionally, and socially. I try my hardest to avoid schoolwork on the weekends as I use this time to hang out with friends, sleep in, etc., and it helps me be ready to take on the busyness of the week to come.

2021

Sasha Kipnis
Computer Science with concentration of Machine Intellignence

2020

Emily Sagstetter
Athletic Training

2019

Olivia Glowacki
College of Health & Human Sciences

2018

Claire G. Lee
College of Liberal Arts and Honors College

2017

Cameron S. Mann
College of Agriculture

2016

Dana C. Smith
College of Science

Previous G.A. Ross Award Winner

2022 - Roy Ramirez

Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering

He has shown himself to make the most of limited resources. He successfully built a rocket engine over the summer in 2019 despite not yet taking courses on propulsion, aerodynamics or fluid mechanics. His liquid-fueled rocket engine, which he called the P5, earned him airtime on Costa Rica TV networks and was the first in Central America and the Caribbean Region. In the Global Engineering Alliance for Research & Education (GEARE) study abroad program, what was meant to be a semester in France the spring of 2020 turned into a whole year of cultural immersion due to a stolen passport and closed embassies right as the COVID-19 pandemic began. During that time, he studied French language and culture while interning at the French startup, Thrust Me, and brainstorming ideas for AREX, his own startup company. Ramirez is also giving time to his home country as a new board member of the Costa Rica Aerospace Cluster.

Learn more about Roy and his experiences at Purdue (opens in new window).

Words of Wisdom from Roy:

2021

Zach Marshall
Aero & Astro Egnineering, and Aerospace Financial Analysis

2020

Stephen Scwartz
Agribusiness and Agronomy

2019

Justin L. Couetil
Biochemistry

2018

Daniel J. Romary
Biomedical Engineering

2017

Peter C. Boyd
College of Science

2016

Quinton T. Nannet
College of Agriculture