Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 5 June 1997 — Page 25

The Muncie Times, June 5,1997, Page 25

Lucky break gave Florida student a 2-year trip to Purdue

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. When Kyle Maurice thinks about how he first came to Purdue University, he just laughs. “I was in my senior year at Florida A&M when someone came to me out of the blue and said there was a plane ticket

the program have earned six doctorates and 80 master’s degrees. “I had heard of Purdue, but I had not considered coming here after I finished my bachelor’s,” Maurice

Kyle Maurice, Coca-Cola Fellowship recipient attending Purdue

waiting for me in my advisor’s office,” Maurice says. The ticket was to Purdue. Two years later, Maurice completed his first Purdue degree, a master’s in electrical and computer engineering, this past May. The ticket was sent by Dwight Lewis, coordinator of minority programs for the Graduate School, so Maurice could visit the campus as part of Purdue’s Historically Black Institutions Visitation Program. The visitation program is part of an 8-year effort to increase minority student enrollment in Purdue’s Graduate School. Each fall, Purdue flies in about 70 students who visit the campus for 3 days, Lewis said. Since the program’s inception, 175 graduates from 11 historically black colleges and universities have enrolled at Purdue. More than 85 percent of those students have earned advanced degrees or are still enrolled. Students involved in

says. “I was impressed by the facilities available and the quality of the faculty. But the real difference was Dr. (Kevin T.) Komegay. “I met him at one of the receptions during the visitation program. By the end of the evening, he told me that he wanted me among his group of graduate students conducting research in electrical engineering. And he followed up on that

statement.

“Later on, when he found out I was missing something from my application he called me to make sure I got the rest of the information turned in. No one at the other schools I was looking at paid that much

attention.”

It was not the first time that personalized attention influenced Maurice’s choice of

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schools. While a high school senior in Tallahassee, Fla., he planned to attend CamegieMellon University. “But one evening the president of Florida A&M came to the house and

stole me away,” Maurice says. Although Maurice was impressed with Purdue’s campus and his adviser-to-be, he still considered graduate school at Georgia Tech and the

University of Florida. The decisive factor was Maurice being named one of Purdue’s first Coca-Cola Fellows. see MAURICE on page 28