Andrew outside of Cary Quadrangle with the Cary Racing kart.

Ten years have passed since the Purdue University community was shaken by the tragic death of Andrew Boldt, a promising ECE student. The Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering is marking Andrew’s death by remembering how he lived.

Andrew was a bright and ambitious young man with a passion for technology and innovation. He was an enthusiastic and engaged Teaching Assistant in ECE. Andrew’s friends and professors remember him as a dedicated student who excelled academically and contributed positively to the Purdue community. In a letter to Andrew’s family and friends shortly after his death, former ECE Prof. David Meyer remembered Andrew as one of his “brightest and best students” and “one of his most dependable and trustworthy undergraduate teaching assistants.”

To help memorialize Andrew, Meyer created The Andrew Boldt “3-Z” Teaching Award, which is exclusively for outstanding undergraduate teaching assistants. The award is given to the candidate who best exemplifies Andrew’s “zest” for life, his “zany make learning fun” personality, and his “zealous” promotion of professionalism. The award includes a plaque, along with a replica of the ginormous No. 2 pencil Andrew used to fill out quiz bubble sheets in his senior design class.

“I had the pleasure of teaching Andrew in two courses in ECE, where he distinguished himself as one of the hardest working students I’ve ever known. I was also impressed by his very effective communication skills and how he used them to help other students,” said Prof. James Krogmeier.

A few years after Andrew’s death, Krogmeier had the honor of leading the design of a memorial garden near the Max W & Maileen Brown Family Hall (BHEE). It includes a place to sit and reflect near a plaque which summarizes Andrew’s philosophy of life with the Latin phrase “Per aspera ad astra,” which means "through difficulties to the stars."

In remembrance of Andrew, Purdue ECE is placing three bouquets of white roses on campus – one at Cary Quad, where he lived, one in the ECE Advising Office, and one in the memorial garden outside BHEE.