Road Kill

Road kill in Iowa and Minnesota typically means a criter that was killed by a vehicle on the road.

You know road kill. Could be a deer, raccoon, rabbit or skunk (whew). If large and in the wrong place they can be quite hazzardous.

In Illinois on the way to Purdue we hardly ever saw critters.

But we did see lots of Road Kill, but it was mostly...

Convocation

We were at Purdue last week visiting the engineering college for Reed.

I noticed they had something call convocation. Convocaation simply defined is a group of people assembled together. They use this often in academic circles.

At Pudue convocation was largely focused on big name entertainment groups (most of which I was not to familiar with, I guess I don't get out much).

I'm used to another focus for convocation...

Nimble

Academia is known for leading edge thinking, but how about leading edge lab space, class room space and computer resources. My experience is “not so much”.

We saw some pretty creative and leading edge student support areas, class rooms and labs when we were at Purdue a few weeks ago. Granted this was their newest building, with cutting edge building design, glass walls, white boards everywhere (even the horizontal work spaces), fully decked computer and projection resources in the class rooms, even social media enabled lectures, where the students could tweet questions or requests for greater explanation.

We later walked through the Chemical Engineer building where we saw the typical 50's architecture and less than cutting edge equipment. I know our tour was carefully crafted to put the best possible Purdue in front of the prospective student (and their parents).

But there were some ideas there that I'd love to implement in my work space.

Tippecanoe and Edible Crayons

Just so you know I was listening on our recent Purdue campus tour with Reed. Here are some little known facts.

Best Laid Plans

Originally Reed and a friend were going to go to Purdue by themselves.

Then parents started worrying about things that could go wrong.

It might rain, the windshield wipers might not work, the hotel might not accept cash, we might have a lunar eclipse (though none was planned), or there might not be any bannanas in Indiana (Reed's favorite food. Minions seem to like them too).

So I volunteered to go along.

Sojourn

Reed and I went on an adventure Monday.

Reed is a high school senior this year and starting to look at colleges.

Reed is interested in engineering.

He has a teacher that he likes and respects that attended a school quite a bit east of where we live.

The school is in Indiana. Can you guess which one.