 It can be very difficult to be a student in a good year, but in a bad year it can be even more troublesome. And it's really key that they all feel they're part of a community. I grew up when we were landing on the moon, and it's some of my very earliest memories are with moon landings and how exciting it was and everything, and so I grew up wanting to always be an astronaut. So I'm not an astronaut, I'm not in the program, but I'm doing planetary research and I'm all dating back to the first moon landings. I love the world around us, I love nature, I find it, I'm so curious about how it works and I'm amazed by it, I'm scared by it, all the big questions in my mind have to deal with who we are and are we alone and to me that's all about nature and if I can teach students who especially are not science majors that, hey, the world around you is interesting and you're connected to it and get their excitement and passion for it, then that's something that they can carry with them their whole life. Pandemic was very difficult because I had to figure out, well, how can I keep the connection that I really enjoyed with my students when we go online? It really became apparent to me very quickly that many of my students were struggling, especially, you know, ones who were maybe doing okay at school but maybe a little bit of high risk. They were really having trouble when we went to online, they were feeling isolated, so I needed to figure out ways to actually go beyond the communication I was doing before and making them feel more involved. So I started doing discussion lines about life check-in, how are you doing and it's inviting students to tell us what are the good things, what are the bad things, or it could be issues that they're having, that they're feeling isolated, that they're having trouble concentrating and what this channel does is allow students who are feeling very isolated and alone to reach out anonymously to a very big community and not only myself who I would always respond to them but the other students would respond and, hey, here's an idea, if you're feeling isolated you can try this, if you're having problems focusing, if you're feeling depressed, these are places you can go for help. I worked on helping to facilitate a community amongst the students and what I realized is they really rose to that, they really appreciated to be able to help each other, to be able to express their issues, to not feel so alone. And it's all about communication. I can be the greatest scientist in the world but if I only care about what I care about and I don't care about what they care about, they're not going to connect with me. Connection and empathy for what they need and what they want, that's where the learning really takes place. I look at the undergraduate program as some of the most formative years for our students. If they have a really valuable program at Purdue it's going to set them up for their whole life and here I am given that responsibility to make it meaningful to them. What this award actually says to me is that I've done a good job of contributing to Purdue into making a very worthwhile undergraduate program for these students. Being a boiler maker is someone who wants to not only understand the world around them, but to really work to make it a better place and that is not just a matter of technology, it's also a matter of education, it's a matter of acceptance of others of how they are. It's a matter of being a better person in a community, whether you're in this community or 10 years from now you're in a different community, you're going to carry that spirit of acceptance and learning and teaching throughout your whole life.