Dominque Oden, Civil Engineering Sophomore

Making the jump from high school to college basketball, Dominque Oden says she just wanted to contribute to a winning team. She’s done far more — scoring more points in her first two seasons than all but three other Boilermakers in the program’s history.

As a civil engineering student focused on architectural engineering, Oden is equally proficient in her sophomore classrooms. In fact, the pull to Purdue, after Oden turned down offers from a couple of Ivies (Harvard and Princeton) and other schools, happened “because I wanted a great academic school and a great sports school,” she says.

Survivor Strategies

The pressure of wanting the final shot in a basketball game or acing a statistics exam could not compare to what Oden survived as a child in New Orleans. Her father, Marquis Oden, a high school teacher, was shot and killed by a student in front of Dominique, then 4 years old, and two of her three sisters.

Three years later, the Odens were displaced by Hurricane Katrina, having to first move to Tallahassee, Florida, to live with an uncle, before settling in Atlanta. As her mother, Trudy Oden, worked two and three jobs to support the family, Dominique and her older sister, Diamond, were pressed into responsibilities at a very young age. “Both my mom and my sister are great role models,” Oden says. “I learned you don’t have to complain when things get tough. You just have to stick it out and eventually you’re going to get to the place you want to be.”

A good education seems to be part of that journey. Diamond recently graduated from Cornell University with a degree in environmental sciences. Dominque’s younger sister, Diarra, was accepted to Johns Hopkins University this year.

Architectural Designs

As well as she plays the game, Oden may see basketball as a means to an end. “If the opportunity presents itself, I might play some basketball after graduation,” she says. “But if I really have a good job offer for the profession I want to be in the rest of my life, I’m not going to turn it down for a sport I cannot play for that long.”

The architecture bug started when Oden first shadowed a different uncle (an architect in Georgia) at construction sites. To build upon that knowledge, Purdue’s architectural engineering program allows her to bring her love of math into the study mix. This summer, she’s hoping to land a campus internship to further her knowledge of structural engineering.

Like many college athletes, Oden is intensely focused on timing beyond shot clocks. With only so many hours in a day, she’s judicious in picking her spots to eat, do homework and even relax. “Time management is key,” she says. “We have mandatory study hall hours and the tight scheduling helps show how much you can accomplish in one day.”

With all that responsibility and hard work behind her — and ahead of her — Oden stands poised to break more Boilermaker records as a ballplayer and build great things down the road.