The “real world” can be as relentless as it is rewarding. Once hired into their respective fields, even the most astute and talented new graduates have been known to be dealt harsh criticism, get sent back to the drawing board, face impossible deadlines and make mistakes. They learn the harsh reality that the principles they learned in school don’t always apply in exactly the same way in which they were taught.Those with degree in hand, yet struggling to get hired, face other obstacles. The employer wants someone with “experience,” but how can one have experience when pursuing that first, post-graduation job? It’s all part of the real world of employment. Wouldn’t it be better to face obstacles like these while still in school and with a professor to look to for advice and guidance? Wouldn’t it be better if graduates walked away from their university already equipped with the “experience” that employers demand?

The solution to quandaries like these, Purdue University Calumet leaders say, is “experiential learning,” an innovative method of learning that integrates classroom and textbook learning with the applied learning that occurs within a work-related, real world setting. 

In 2006, Purdue Calumet received a $1.7 million Title III grant from the U.S. Department of Education to help accomplish this. Beginning next fall, as a requirement for education, all new students must complete two courses or equivalents that are experiential. The nature of these experiential learning opportunities can take the form of any of seven types: internship, cooperative education, practicum, cultural immersion, undergraduate research, service learning or a design project.

Linking experience with course objectives

Experiential learning as on-the-job training is nothing new. Traditionally, education majors have learned experientially through student teaching, and nursing students have benefited from hospital clinical experiences. Internships also have provided hands-on learning opportunities for students. But unlike traditional internships, beginning next fall, course learning opportunities accepted as “experiential” must be structured such that the experience links directly with course objectives.

Academic experiential learning, as it will be introduced at Purdue Calumet next academic year, must meet specific standards of quality set forth by the National Society for Experiential Education (NSEE). The organization is guiding faculty-many of whom have received mini-grants from the Title III allocations-to develop or adapt experiential curricula.

“It’s kind of putting a quality twist to those experiences,” says Janice Golub-Reynolds, manager of experiential learning at Purdue Calumet. “It helps strengthen, not only the academic experience of students, but also their outside engagement. It gives them that ‘a-ha’ moment.”

Ultimately, administrators and faculty want experiential learning to distinguish a Purdue degree earned at Purdue Calumet. Instead of trying to gain and identify experiences worthy of an employer’s attention, Purdue Calumet graduates would have actual, documented work experience that appears on their transcript.

“There’s a big difference between having an experience just to have it, and having a faculty member work with you to review the experience in terms of what you have learned,” said Beth Pellicciotti, assistant vice chancellor for Academic Quality Programs at Purdue Calumet and  principal investigator of the grant. “This ‘sense making’ can impact, not only your future learning, but also your future career.”

Learning why they learned what they learned

Robert Kramer, director of the Purdue Calumet Energy Efficiency and Reliability Center, knows first hand how well this concept really works. He first led his students into his field of energy as a way of accelerating the amount of material they had to cover. In one course, students evaluate the energy efficiency within campus buildings. In another, they are paid to conduct energy appraisals for commercial businesses.

“We needed to find something that was more efficient in allowing students to transfer more information and develop more skills that would be available on the conventional type spectrum,” he said.

 ”This is not where you go out and experience something in the community and come back and talk about it. It is integrated into the fabric of the course itself. This has to be an interactive process in which that external interaction integrates with classroom experience seamlessly.”

For one of their assignments, students had to design a plan to optimize energy usage in The Calumet Conference Center on campus. While they worked in the kitchen, Kramer watched as they grasped the idea of equipment utilization and timing.

“All of a sudden, the classroom theory work started to meld into the real world,” Kramer said. “All of a sudden, they knew why they had learned the partial differential equation.”

Many other visionary and innovative faculty members at Purdue Calumet have offered courses experiential in nature for years that help bridge the gap between lectures, equations and theory and how to apply what students have learned in an ambiguous real world. They serve as examples of how coursework and authentic workforce experiences are interwoven effectively.

After eight weeks of instruction in his project management course, for example, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Information Systems Kuan-Chou Chen introduces his students to an actual business client, for which they will manage a project, solve a problem or design a process. More than a course assignment, the employer client is depending on the students to come through with something that is good enough to be implemented.

In his course, “Problems in Public Relations,” Associate Professor of Communication Thomas Roach takes a back seat while his students form their own consulting company for the purpose of conducting a communication audit for an actual corporate or other organizational client. As a “company,” the students delegate responsibilities among themselves, secure a client and then work together to analyze the effectiveness of their communication processes in conducting the audit. Finally, they present the client with a proposal that ultimately has the power to change the company.

Better trained, more well-rounded graduates

Charged with the initial task of assembling a task force to build the experiential learning program, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Ronald Kovach notes the benefit of engaging the community in educating the very students who will someday work for it.

“The community gets better trained students,” he said. “It gets students who have a better understanding of the field as well as an understanding of the world of work. When they leave us they are experienced.”

Case in point: senior computer graphics technology major Jamie Turkevich. While interning last fall in Purdue Calumet’s Center for Student Achievement, the Highland student applied her classroom, textbook and laboratory lessons in graphic art and branding to design an experiential learning logo.

“I firmly believe that this experience will benefit me when searching for a job (this) spring,” she said. “I have learned what to do and what not to do in order to get tasks completed; how to handle constructive criticism; how to manage my time better; and how to exercise better communication skills between myself and the client.”

In her role as manager of experiential learning, Golub-Reynolds makes sure faculty have the tools they need to carry out experiential learning course objectives. With the help of two coordinators to be hired, the Center for Student Achievement will act as a liaison between faculty and the community, helping to secure third party clients and making sure standards are met among other tasks.

“We create a triangle as far as the educational enterprise is concerned,” Kovach said. “It’s the community or site; it’s the student; and it’s the faculty member.”

Golub-Reynolds recalls working early in her career in Purdue Calumet’s Office of Career Services and noting the energy and maturity an internship opportunity generated for students. Adding a quality check to such opportunities, and bringing those experiences back into the classroom for further instruction has the potential to transform the value of a Purdue degree as offered at Purdue Calumet.

“Think of all the ways this can change students’ lives,” she said. “Not just academically, not just for their career, but civically, socially. It’s going to develop a different, more well rounded individual. Experiential learning is about engaging students in real, authentic experiences.”

Energy solutions

Energy Efficiency and Reliability Center advances region by seeking to solve energy problems

By MARY FOX
Mary Fox is a freelance writer, journalist and frequent contributor to Purdue Calumet INSIGHT

A 38 percent savings on an electric bill is enviable. A 48 percent savings is something that most people would not even venture to dream. However, through the efforts of the Purdue University Calumet Energy Efficiency and Reliability Center (EERC), those savings have become a reality.

Through wireless control and communication equipment and an in-house-developed advanced control system installed in the Purdue Calumet parking garage, 38 percent of the cost of lighting the garage has been saved during the winter, and 48 percent has been saved during the summer months. The savings were achieved through the Wireless Energy Monitoring Control and Optimization project that the Purdue Calumet EERC is conducting with United States Department of Energy funding.

EERC Director Robert Kramer is confident that the research will help others reap significant savings. “It’s conceivable,” he said, “that for commercial operations, a 30 to 50 percent reduction in energy costs is do-able.”

Finding energy problem solutions

Kramer considers working for solutions to the energy problems the world faces essential. “If we don’t deal with energy issues for the future,” he said, “the consequences are going to be dire.”

Kramer, a former chief scientist for NiSource Energy Technologies, knows how energy costs affect business, industry, and economic development. He explained that Purdue Calumet’s Energy Efficiency and Reliability Center is targeted at helping employers, organizations and private citizens “get the biggest value for their investment in energy.”

With energy costs at a point in which the price of heating a data center, for instance, may be more than the cost of computers in that center, conservation methods are of utmost importance.

As Kramer emphasizes the importance of dealing with energy matters, he considers the needs of northwest Indiana, as well as nations such as China and India, whose energy dependence is rapidly increasing. “It’s really a crucial issue,” he said. “If we don’t have energy, things shut down.”

He added that “by enhancing energy efficiency and reliability, we help increase the security of energy sources. Some of the work we’re doing in reliability is targeted directly at enhancing energy security. If you figure the growth in China and India, where are they going to get this energy?”

The research and other efforts of the 4-year-old Purdue Calumet energy center are focused on the smooth transmission and efficient use of energy. “What we’re trying to do is help be part of the solution for the future energy supply and at the same time enhance economic development and the attractiveness of northwest Indiana,” Kramer said.

Partnering with industry

The EERC is partnering with such entities as ArcelorMittal, whose Indiana Harbor plant is the largest steelmaking complex in North America, and whose Burns Harbor plant, Mittal Steel USA, is capable of producing 4.7 million tons of raw steel annually.

“The processes involved are energy-intensive and integrated; as such, efficiency and reliability are essential to achieving and maintaining a reduced environmental impact, reduced carbon footprint and cost control,” said Eugene Arnold, an ArcelorMittal engineering project manager who has a focus on environment and energy. “It is a very natural fit to be involved with the efforts of the Purdue (Calumet) Energy Efficiency and Reliability Center.”

Such engagement is a strategic objective of Purdue Calumet, which is intent on investing its intellectual capital to address challenges facing northwest Indiana. Purdue Calumet’s 10 centers and institutes each contribute to the community. That the steel industry and Purdue Calumet would join together through the Energy Efficiency and Reliability Center makes sense. “Energy is obvious a major economic factor of Northwest Indiana,” Chancellor Howard Cohen said.

Faculty researchers, students involved

In partnering with local industries, Purdue Calumet contributes faculty-applied research and expertise along with an eager, yet relatively inexpensive work force of engineering and other students to contribute to the economic development of the region.        Through the EERC, students participate in research projects and energy audits of businesses. Courses in energy efficiency and methods teach students how to enhance energy efficiency. The Program for Energy Education trains students Kramer hopes will be the next energy engineers.

“We’re training engineers who have a background in energy efficiency,” Kramer said.

Developing a respected reputation

Having hosted five conferences in three years, the EERC is fast becoming a respected source of energy knowledge for the general public and professionals. Members of the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers are among those who have attended programs the center has hosted.

Not only have people come from around the country to learn about the center’s projects, but Kramer also has spoken to groups from China, Japan, Russia and Europe.

In the relationship with ArcelorMittal, the steel corporation is funding research through a grant for what is called the Highly Varying Load Coordination study. Through the study, the EERC is determining the value of coordinating the operation of large industrial loads, such as arc furnaces and rolling mills, so as to reduce transients on the electric transmission system and improve electric system reliability.

Education partnering with industry

ArcelorMittal also has engaged Purdue Calumet Mechanical Engineering Professor Chenn Zhou to do computational fluid dynamics modeling for a number of the company’s processes. Ethan Rogers of the Purdue Technical Assistance Program is aiding ArcelorMittal in developing Energy On-Boarding Training for new employees. Explaining the importance of higher education partnering with industry, Purdue Calumet’s Cohen said, “It’s the academic work that allows you to put the ideas into practical use.”

ArcelorMittal is just one of a growing number of entities awarding grants to the Energy Efficiency and Reliability Center. The Department of Energy has provided more than $1.8 million in funding. The Center for Coal Technology Research and the Illinois Coal Research Center have provided $250,000 and $40,000, respectively, in grants.

“Receiving grants or funding from the Department of Energy contributes to the reputation of our campus,” Cohen said.

From coal and garbage to energy

Those looking to the EERC for answers to energy problems will find a variety of solutions under consideration. One would-be solution for reducing the cost of energy in steel manufacturing is that of developing ways to use Indiana coal in the coke production process. Although eight million tons of coal is used to make coke for the northwest Indiana steel industry, none of that coal comes from Indiana.

“We’re developing ways to meet the quality requirement of coke for use in the blast furnace by using a blend of coal from Indiana with conventional metallurgical coals, as well as providing five new product value streams from the process, including liquid transportation fuels, hydrogen and fertilizer,” Kramer said.

Another process Purdue Calumet’s energy center is researching in conjunction with Purdue West Lafayette colleagues is the generation of hydrogen from water through the use of an alloy of aluminum and gallium. Since the hydrogen would be produced as needed from water, storing the hydrogen at high pressures would not be required. The hydrogen, then, could be used for power. “Basically, you could fuel your car with water and aluminum,” Kramer explained.

Another of the 14 projects the EERC is researching is the transformation of common garbage into energy. The Purdue Calumet center is researching the development of a process to produce electricity from a fuel cell or reciprocating engine fueled with hydrogen produced from food or other waste. The carbon dioxide formed during the process would be converted into a saleable chemical product.

Conserving energy not only preserves a resource but has another environmental impact. “By increasing energy efficiency,” Kramer said, “we reduce emissions that contribute to global warming and the need for foreign energy sources.”

Given, arguably, that determining more efficient and reliable uses of energy has never been more important; saying that Purdue Calumet’s Energy Efficiency and Reliability Center is on a mission might be an understatement.

By KRIS FALZONE
Kris Falzone is a former journalist and corporate communications executive who now heads her own communications firm.

John Johnson sailed through college at Purdue University Calumet.

Not in the figurative sense. By his own recollection, he wasn’t a remarkable student. He even dropped out of school for a semester when money was tight and he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life.

He sailed - literally - as a licensed tankerman on the Great Lakes. He pumped diesel fuel and loaded and unloaded barges up and down Lake Michigan. It was dirty, hard work that paid well and was certainly interesting.

And it motivated him to finish college. He decided he didn’t want to work physically that hard for the rest of his life, as his sailor father had to support a family of eight children.

‘. . . it was what you made for yourself

“I learned life’s lessons,” said Johnson, 54, a 1976 interdisciplinary engineering graduate of Purdue Calumet and now vice president of finance and enterprise services and chief information officer of Intel Corp. in Santa Clara, Calif.

“I learned that nothing was given to you. You had to work for everything. At the end of the day, it was what you made for yourself.”

Those are core values he attributes to his teen and college years in Hammond, where he graduated from Gavit High School. Like many families in the area whose financial resources were limited, he took advantage of earning a Purdue degree right in his backyard, with plenty of job opportunities nearby to help pay the tuition.

‘ . . . You had to be self-sufficient.’

“You went to class and you passed your class, or you didn’t. You had to be self-sufficient. Many of us worked part-time and went to school full-time,” he recalled of his college years.

That’s a dynamic that holds true of the campus today. A recent university study showed that about 77 percent of Purdue Calumet students work more than 20 hours per week. Approximately 35 percent work full-time.

Johnson recalled that in his large family, it was “absolutely a given” that he would go to college, but he had to figure out how to pay his tuition while his parents continued to feed and house him. He worked long hours in addition to going to school.

“You could never let yourself think, ‘Well, this is too much.’ You could not give up,” he said. “I’ve used that (lesson) my whole career. If you put that effort in, good things happen.”

World wide responsibilities

Today, Johnson leads more than 6,700 Information Technology professionals spanning more than 50 countries. He is responsible for a $1.2 billion budget to support, develop and deliver all IT services and solutions to Intel’s 90,000 employees around the world. He has driven major initiatives at Intel that include data center consolidation and virtualization, an 85 percent mobile enabled workforce and initiatives that have returned 20 percent productivity improvements to the workforce.

And as CIO of the company that pioneered the microprocessor, he is frequently invited to speak globally at technology conferences and to media.

 ”It’s exhilarating to meet people all over the world and to see different places,” Johnson said. “I enjoy meeting with the companies we work with, small and large, and talking with government folks in different places.”

Johnson and his wife, Kristine - a 1978 Purdue Calumet interdisciplinary engineering alumnus - have traveled the world, but still get back to Northwest Indiana often to visit family. The couple has two daughters, Valerie, 24, and Katherine, 19.

Started as a management trainee

Johnson began his career with U.S. Steel at Gary Works as a management trainee, where he served on a small team that was using microprocessors for the first time in the steel mills. In the late 1970s, when the steel industry was struggling through competitive pressures, he moved to Minneapolis to take a job performing automation and product quality testing with Honeywell’s residential group.

Honeywell, like U.S. Steel, was an early customer of Intel, and Johnson was “fairly aggressive” in using Intel’s microprocessor technology to perform process control functions on the factory floor.

Johnson was recruited to Intel’s sales office in Minneapolis in 1981. “It was the best decision I ever made,” he said.

His PUC education: a key to his success

At Intel, Johnson held technical positions in sales, marketing and business development. In 1992, he became the director of Worldwide Technical Marketing. He joined the IT organization in 1999 and in 2003 became a vice president responsible for the IT Customer Services organization. He was appointed to the co-CIO position in February 2005 and became sole CIO in July 2006.

Johnson believes his Purdue engineering education has been a key to his success.

“That engineering training teaches you that problems can be solved,” he said. “It’s basic training in methodically solving technical challenges.

“To be successful in a large company like Intel, you also have to develop really solid people skills,” he added. “You have to be able to work in a team and to manage people. . .  But the engineering background helps you look at just about anything that’s going on, and to think about what you are trying to accomplish and the systematic approach to solving the problem.”

Challenges of his job

Johnson recalled a Purdue Calumet professor, Daniel Goodman, who inspired him to stick with engineering.

“He had a knack for explaining things in a very crisp, concise way, and it got me hooked on the idea of process control,” Johnson said. “Some of the work I did with him benefited me at U.S. Steel and Honeywell.”

The challenge for Johnson as an engineer, he said, has been to round out his business skills as he has progressed in his career. As CIO of Intel, he says he is continually striving to find the right balance of using the latest technology and tailoring it to the needs of the company, without spending too much money.

“We don’t just try technology for the sake of technology,” he said. “I’m managing other people’s money . . . and I have to make sure it’s spent to the best interest of our shareholders. I take that responsibility very seriously. You have to make good decisions, long-term decisions, and support the business’s goals in the right way.”

Steel industry exec Anthony Bridge credits engineering education with career advancement

By KRIS FALZONE
Kris Falzone is a former journalist and corporate communications executive who now heads her own communications firm.

The technical acumen and strong work ethic Anthony Bridge developed as an engineering student at Purdue University Calumet have helped trigger his career success, the U.S. Steel executive believes.

Bridge, 53, a Gary native, is vice president of engineering and technology at United States Steel Corp.’s Pittsburgh headquarters. He leads an organization of approximately 450 people across the United States, Canada and Europe with responsibility for research and development, engineering for domestic and international steelmaking operations, and blast furnace engineering and technology. Additionally, he and his staff administer the Fortune 200 corporation’s $1 billion capital budget.

 It’s a challenging role dealing with every facet of the steelmaking process.

“The operating groups rely on my organization to have the right people with the broad-based training and experience to support their requirements,” he notes. “We are in a constant search for people with business acumen, technical competence…and leadership capability to tie all that together.”

Returning to school

Bridge had earned one undergraduate degree - in industrial management - from Purdue in West Lafayette in 1976 and was working full-time at Inland Steel in East Chicago when he decided, in his late 20s, to go back to school for a second bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He graduated in 1990, leading to advancement opportunities in the steel industry.

“It was a struggle for me, but I was passionate and committed to it and worked very hard,” Bridge recalls of his years of working and going to school. He later also earned an MBA from Indiana Wesleyan University.

Benefit of his engineering degree

“It put me on par with a lot of my colleagues. … I had a grassroots base with the management background. The difference with a technical degree is that it is applications based. Now I was pretty much competing (for jobs) side by side with the engineers (in the steel mills). People understand that if you have an engineering degree, you understand the technical aspects as well as the business basics.

Continuing, he said, “The (Purdue Calumet) engineering staff and curriculum prepared me for the technical challenges I would face in the workplace. Although several things have contributed to the success I have had in my career, I am very comfortable in correlating a significant part of it to my experience at Purdue University Calumet.”

Bridge advises current Purdue Calumet students to focus on developing their own leadership skills.

“Successful people…are regarded as intelligent, dependable, innovative, loyal, organized, hardworking, good communicators and confident,” he said. “People who demonstrate, at a high level, these attributes, more often than not, meet or exceed the goals or objectives given to them and have the ability to influence, motivate and enable others to be more effective.

“The ultimate compliment in business is that your subordinates, peers and/or superiors regard you as a leader in your field of work.”          

Strong family ties

Bridge, 53, and his wife, Brenda, often visit family in northwest Indiana as well as Vicksburg, Miss., where Bridge’s parents grew up and he spent much of his boyhood summers. The Bridges’ daughter, Shayla, 24, a Purdue North Central computer science graduate, works for U.S. Steel in Pittsburgh, while their son, Jarret, 20, is studying engineering at the University of Pittsburgh.                                                        

Bridge credits his parents’ strong work ethic and the Southern culture they brought with them to Gary with influencing his personal and professional success along with his education. His father worked at U.S. Steel’s Gary Works for 35 years, plus ran a landscaping business, did carpentry and concrete jobs and repaired cars. His mother also worked. Bridge saw early on the importance of hard work; it was a way of life in his family, and he and his two siblings all could afford to go to college.

Bridge spent the first 19 years of his steel industry career at Inland in ironmaking operations. In 1995 he moved to Rouge Steel in Dearborn, Mich., as superintendent of ironmaking, where he built upon what he had learned at Inland by upgrading the smaller company’s ironmaking facilities.

A fast track at U.S. Steel

Bridge joined U.S. Steel in 1998 to manage the No. 13 blast furnace - the company’s largest - at Gary Works. He was promoted to division manager of iron producing in 1999, to plant manager of primary operations in 2001, and transferred to Pittsburgh in 2003 when he was named managing director-blast furnace engineering and technology. He was promoted to his current position in 2005.

“You really have to have a healthy amount of patience and perseverance” to be successful in the steel business, or any industry, Bridge says. “And as cliché as it sounds, you have to like what you do. Hard work and long hours come easy if you like what you do.”

Bridge has seen opportunities improve for African Americans, women and other minorities in the steel industry during his more than 30 years in the business. At industry conferences, he sees more of an international flavor. He sees the graduating population of universities changing, the demographics of the workforce changing and greater mobility for minorities going forward.

“If you have the credentials, if you’ve done everything that anyone else would need to do, then the tendency for anyone to restrict you because of color or gender is diminished, because the culture is being more open to providing access than it ever has in the past,” Bridge says.

Life beyond the steel industry

He is a proactive advocate of diversity programs. He also promotes early childhood development of math and the sciences, and speaks with high-school students through the Pittsburgh Technology Council, where he is a board member.

“There is a large body of engineering work in this country, and a great engineering curriculum,” Bridge says. “The sciences are an important area of academia that we need to promote more.”

Bridge also serves on the board of the National Aviary in Pittsburgh.

In his free time, Bridge enjoys golfing, hunting, and raising and obedience-training dogs. He also takes his father fishing at least twice a year.

Of his years at Purdue Calumet, Bridge most remembers being motivated by his academic advisor, Professor Barrie Burridge. Burridge, who still teaches in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, not only was an excellent teacher, Bridge recalls, but was “very friendly and never seemed preoccupied when you came to see him. He always focused on the student… He was an inspiring kind of guy.”