Walk-on guard keeps rising to her ambitions, lifting others along the way
Abby Abel has always chased big dreams. After participating in a Purdue youth basketball camp at age 9, she decided she was going to play for the Boilermakers one day. She continued attending camps each summer; by her junior year of high school, she was a pretty good player, though not good enough to catch the eye of recruiters.
She’d gotten to know head coach Sharon Versyp (LA’89) over the years and expressed an interest in joining the team as a walk-on. Abel is the only walk-on player Versyp’s added to her roster in 12 seasons at Purdue. This year, Abel earned a full scholarship.
“It was a dream come true,” says Abel. “It meant so much to me for Coach V to give me that opportunity. She saw that I could add to the team. Maybe what I bring isn’t reflected on the stat sheet, but she sees it, and the team sees it, and that’s pretty awesome.”
Abel’s biggest impact off the court is the introduction of Play Unified at Purdue, a Special Olympics initiative that mobilizes young athletes to connect with other youth with intellectual disabilities. She had previous experience with Play Unified track in high school in Carmel, Indiana, and felt compelled to start a collegiate basketball event. Her freshman year, she received a grant from Special Olympics to hold a three-on-three basketball tournament that combined local Special Olympics athletes, Purdue student-athletes, and Greek life.
“Until you experience it, it’s hard to understand,” says Abel. “Play Unified allows us to come together in one sport, on one court. We’re more similar than we are different. They may not have as many opportunities to play the sport alongside us.”
She’s in the process of planning her third Play Unified basketball event scheduled for later this year. “I want to make it bigger and get more of the student population involved. I would love to see it evolve into an intramural or club program long term. I want to build upon the foundation I’ve set over the last two years.”
This story appeared in the Spring 2019 issue of Purdue Alumnus magazine.
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.