ECE Professor and former Head Mark J.T. Smith, who is currently the Dean of Purdue's graduate school, is now officially a HistoryMaker. The HistoryMakers organization, which is assembling the country’s largest African-American oral history collection, has included Smith among the thousands of interviews it has done with accomplished African-Americans, among them Barack Obama and the late poet and educator Maya Angelou.

The project, which began in 2000, aims to interview 5,000 people. So far the group has conducted more than 2,600 interviews all across the United States, talking with both heralded and overlooked contributors in areas of science, history, politics, art and athletics, among others. The archives for HistoryMakers has been donated to the Library of Congress.