Dear alumni, friends, students, staff and faculty,

Each semester in my senior seminar course and during the graduate student welcome meeting at the start of the academic year, I take a moment to remind our students of something essential. When I have the opportunity, I remind our faculty and staff, too. That essential fact is that every individual in our school contributes to the vibrant and intellectually rich community we share.

Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue is not an easy program to enter. If you made it here, that means you belong here. If you graduated with a degree from AAE, you deserve every bit of recognition that the Boilermaker reputation carries. We herald that reputation with pride because of our people.

If we are strong, it’s because you are strong. If Purdue is respected, it’s because you earned that respect yourselves, every day, in the classroom and in your professional life.

That goes for everyone from the students and faculty who study, teach, and learn every day; to the administrative assistants and lab managers who help run our department and manage the tools we use.

Our strong community of support is what allows us to do so much more. That’s why we’re the No. 3 undergraduate program in the U.S. — now three years running — and have been a top six graduate program for 25 years. We also continue to move into the top 10 worldwide.

All this happens as our program continues to grow in enrollment; we remain the largest aerospace engineering program in the country by degrees granted. We graduated 29 percent more undergraduate students in 2024-25 as the year before, and we keep breaking our enrollment records as well.

Bringing the brightest minds together is how we get that success. We have undergraduates who push the envelope in student organization projects that touch rocket propulsion, autonomous aircraft and lunar rovers. We have graduate students who investigate hypersonic flight, find solutions to challenges in astrodynamics and explore new ways to design, analyze and manufacture aerospace structures. Our alumni serve their communities, advance aeronautics, support national security and expand capabilities to place satellites into low earth orbit.

And soon, we will have the first student to accompany her research project into suborbital space.

It is your continued contributions in our field that give us this world-leading program. We wouldn’t be this beacon of success in aerospace without you.

Thank you.

William A. Crossley
Uhrig & Vournas Head of Aeronautics and Astronautics