Trevion Williams keeps defying the odds with his signature style
Trevion Williams isn’t your average athlete. The six-foot-nine, 280-pound sophomore forward stands out for more than his size. While most college students are strolling campus in sweatpants and hoodies, Williams sports a style all his own. He loves to dress up, wearing tailored pants, pastel shirts, and bowties.
“That’s my style,” the Chicago native says. “I’m a big bowtie guy. Any chance I get, I try to wear one. I have at least 15 at home. I try to be different. It’s cool to be your own person. You don’t want do what everyone else is doing. My mom used to tell me all the time, ‘Don’t be like everybody else.’”
Another thing that makes Williams different? He’s now a gold medalist after contributing seven points and seven rebounds in the USA Basketball 19-and-under team’s championship game at the FIBA World Cup in July.
As a child growing up in the inner city, Williams was surrounded by gangs and gun violence. A close friend was shot and killed when Williams was 10. Four years later, his uncle was gunned down in front of his home for reasons unknown. Williams and his mother moved to Detroit to escape the violence.
“My mom played a big part in getting me to where I am,” Williams says. “It’s really tough getting a scholarship out of Chicago. It’s one of the toughest places to play.”
Now that he’s at Purdue, Williams is eyeing the next milestone — another Big Ten championship? The Final Four? A national championship? Williams is ready.
“We surprised everybody last year,” Williams says. “As a team, we’re going to have to work a little harder. But it’s a brotherhood. We’re connected. When times get tough, we’re in it together.”
This story appeared in the Fall 2019 issue of Purdue Alumnus magazine.
Photo by Charles Jischke.
Greg Baker leads AffirmedRx, a pharmacy benefit manager and public benefit corporation that’s shaking up the traditional pharmaceutical supply chain
Greg Baker is angry. He thinks you should be angry, too.
He’s on a crusade to reform traditional pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), the companies that manage prescription drug benefits on behalf of health insurers. In May 2023, Baker testified before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability that a handful of large PBMs control up to 80% of the market, to the detriment of the American public.
The first Black woman to earn a DVM degree at Purdue University, Dr. Doris Hughes-Moore, attributes her success to the sacrifices made by her ancestors
Dr. Doris Hughes-Moore (DVM ’73) recognizes the importance of preserving and honoring history. She’s president of the board for the Wilson Bruce Evans Home Historical Society, an organization with a mission to preserve the home and promote its historical significance as part of Black American history and culture in Oberlin, Ohio. She’s also the great-great granddaughter of Wilson Bruce Evans and his wife, Sarah Jane Evans.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Jeremy Busby’ 95 Developed Meticulous Mentality in K-States Nuclear Engineering Program.
On a bookshelf in Jeremy Busby’s office, tucked among scientific journals, policy manuals and bric-a-brac accumulated during his nearly 30 years as a nuclear engineer, sits his undergraduate notebook from Applied Reactors Theory I & II. Busby ’95 is now the associate lab director for the isotope science and engineering directorate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a federally funded research and development center in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He took those courses with Professor Ken Shultis and Professor Richard Faw in 1992 and 1993, but the principles instilled have stayed with him throughout his distinguished career.
A Q&A with Ashley Watson about spooky stories, ghastly tales and commonplace books
Gripped by a fascination with ghost stories from a young age, Ashley Watson, a communications specialist at Purdue University who earned her PhD in rhetoric, blogs about folklore, hauntings and commonplace books at notebookofghosts.com.
Appreciation of education inspires alumnus to fund endowed professorship in veterinary dentistry
A clerical error nearly cost Dr. Raj Singh his spot in veterinary school.
Nearly four decades later, after building a successful veterinary practice in California, he reflects on how the education he received at Purdue University prepared him to pursue the career of his dreams, take giant leaps as a business owner, and develop a special interest in dentistry. A passion for this field of veterinary medicine motivated Dr. Singh and his wife, Melissa, to commit $1.5 million to establish an endowed professorship in dentistry at the College of Veterinary Medicine last fall.
Geochemist Marissa Tremblay ’12 analyzes Antarctic rocks to unravel Earth’s climate chronology and predict the planet’s future environment
A geologic field excursion to Death Valley during spring break her first year at Barnard set Marissa Tremblay ’12 on course to becoming a scientist. She entered college intending to pursue a law degree, but stepping foot on that vast, desolate desert landscape marked with sand dunes ignited a curiosity to uncover the stories in stones.
Longtime diplomat and educator Patrick Mendis retains strong ties to Minnesota.
With humility and gratitude, Patrick Mendis (M.A. ’86, Ph.D. ’89) has embraced adventure, defied a prophecy, and charted his own course through life.
Mendis says a horoscope reading when he was an infant said he wouldn’t live past his first birthday. His mother, a Sinhalese Buddhist traditionalist, heeded the scholarly monk’s warning to raise her son outside the home, sending him to live with his Catholic paternal grandparents in rural Sri Lanka when he was 7 months old. His grandparents told him he was adopted, and that they found him under a banyan tree.
Silver Star recipient Antonio Gonzalez ’94 placed his trust in faith, football
Children growing up in the predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood of Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles in the 1980s and ’90s lived on the razor’s edge between childhood innocence and gang violence.
Plagued by high violent crime rates, struggling public schools and poverty, those who yearned to escape the concrete jungle of Boyle Heights saw two options — go to college or enlist in the military. In time, Army Sgt. Maj. Antonio Gonzalez ’94 would do both, earning a football scholarship to Kansas State University and receiving a Silver Star Medal recognizing his gallantry in action.
MATC launches bilingual welding program
Karen Feliciano says people are often surprised to learn she is a welder because “I don’t look like a typical welder to them. It’s very much a male-dominated field.”
Yet the MATC welding instructor sees herself in her students every day.
“My students inspire me,” Feliciano said. “I see the challenges I faced when I moved to Wisconsin from Puerto Rico. I see how much I struggled when I was first starting out in this career. But I see myself in their successes, too.”
Physics equations drive optimization of complex engineered systems
Computational models allow researchers to analyze and design complex systems, but development can be a slow process. Leifur Leifsson, associate professor and principal investigator of the Computational Design Lab, uses physics equations to optimize engineered systems for aircraft and space systems as well as microwave systems, nondestructive testing systems and food-water-energy systems.