For Tom Cunningham, a class can sometimes feel like home. 

After decades in the printing industry, he came to Purdue for his Ph.D. — and then stayed as a visiting assistant professor and now as a lecturer. He leaned into his newfound love of teaching, made manifest in the Spaceflight Operations class (AAE 590). “It’s like teaching the story of my PhD, in lecture form,” he says.   

Cunningham came to Purdue to study under former professor David Spencer, in the Astrodynamics and Space Applications research group. Working in orbital mechanics for his thesis, he pursued a broader scope in his day-to-day work. “Professor Spencer was a generalist. His Ph.D.s did studies into all kinds of stuff. He was living between systems engineering, spaceflight operations and how things actually work.” 

In the mid ’90s, Cunningham earned an aerospace engineering master’s degree from Stanford. But having taken a research assistant position back then, he laments that he never really got to teach. “Coming here [to Purdue] for my doctorate many years later, I emphasized the teaching experience. I jumped on a teaching fellowship they revived at the time, and took a year off to focus on that,” he says. 

Once he became a lecturer in AAE, those experiences put him in charge of Spaceflight Operations — formerly Spencer’s course. Cunningham says it’s a continuation of that research group. “It’s a lot of fun. It also includes space history, so it’s one of the few classes that show the connections that you may not see when you focus on one topic at a time.” 

Andy Freed, Ronak Dave, and Allison Bolinger are just some of the notable industry figures that lecturer Tom Cunningham has invited to speak for his Spaceflight Operations class.

Cunningham invites guest speakers from all over the aerospace industry to speak with the class. These include NASA flight directors Allison Bolinger (BSAAE ’04) and Ronak Dave (BSAAE ’14); and Purdue EAPS professor Andy Freed, who worked at Thiokol during the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, to share case studies on spacecraft failures.

Space Ops is far from the only course on Cunningham’s teaching schedule. He also leads an Aeromechanics course (AAE 203), multiple sections of Introduction to Aerospace Design (AAE 251) — which culminates in the SPACE Award from Northrop Grumman — and Dynamics and Vibrations (AAE 340).

Meeting a growth need

AAE department head and professor Bill Crossley says excellent instructors are critical to maintaining Purdue’s exceptional reputation while also being the largest aerospace engineering program in the country. 

“As our graduate count doubled over the last decade, our faculty have worked hard to maintain our world-class educational rank while pursuing cutting-edge research. We also hired 14 professors, professors of engineering practice and lecturers since 2020,” Crossley wrote in Aerogram magazine in late 2023.

More than just hiring excellent instructors, the school encourages high quality teaching through multiple awards, including the Outstanding Instructor Award. Cunningham was selected as the second-ever recipient of that award in 2023, and was a runner-up in its inaugural year. 

One of the factors earning Cunningham accolades is the mentorship he provides to students. Decades spent in the world of OEM printers gives him perspective. “Understanding the business world helps me advise students about what lies ahead of them when they leave. They could choose academia, NASA, private industry. I can help students understand what to expect,” he says. 

Returning to the Midwest

A Wisconsin native, Cunningham wasn’t afraid to explore the world. He spent a year during high school studying in Japan. Returning to Wisconsin for a mechanical engineering degree from UW-Madison, he took another trek to Japan in his senior year — spending 7 months in a research group at Kyoto University.  

Tom Cunningham advises the first student club at Purdue to take on the Punkin’ Chunkin’ competition. The team is made up of students from his Aeromechanics class.

With his master’s from Stanford, he stayed on the west coast for 20 years exploring a career in the printing industry before returning to the Midwest for an advanced degree. 

He's glad to be back. 

“The people here are more real. There is a certain shallowness in California. There’s something more accessible to me about the people here,” he says.  

His students have also roped him into agricultural activities: He’s the faculty advisor for a Punkin’ Chunkin’ team comprised of AAE students from his Aeromechanics class. The competition challenges collegiate teams to catapult a pumpkin as far as possible. It’s a thrill. 

“This is my best job yet. It’s nice to work in a positive environment, and to work with students,” he says. “Pinch me, wake me up, I’m having so much fun here!”