Alyssa Brewer (BSCmpE '26)

For as long as she could remember, Alyssa Brewer wanted to go to Purdue University.

Growing up in foster care near Fort Wayne, she wasn’t sure that would ever be possible.

“I didn’t think I’d be able to go to college,” she said.

Still, Brewer, who had a lifelong interest in space, set her sights on Purdue because of the in-state tuition and the fact that Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, graduated from there in 1955.

Now, Brewer is a computer engineering major who expects to graduate in spring 2026.

“I wanted a way that I could do something with space in the future, so engineering seemed like a good idea because you get to directly affect progress,” she said.

Brewer said her education at Purdue wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Indiana’s 21st Century Scholars, which covers tuition at any state school if students meet certain criteria in high school. Another program that helped Brewer was Purdue Promise, which helps with financial aid and provides support to 21st Century Scholars.

Brewer was in foster care from about third grade until she was 13, when her foster parents adopted her. Her parents, who didn’t go to college, are proud of what she has accomplished at Purdue.

A TV news segment highlighted a software development team with which Brewer had worked that sent cat pictures to the International Space Station. Brewer worked at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, through the Undergraduate Co-op Program, where students get experience with companies in their field.

“My mom has always said she’s not a math person, so she was super excited that the project I was working on at my Co-op was in the news,” Brewer said. “She got to see that and thought it was really cool.”

At Purdue, Brewer said, free tutoring through the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering has helped her with her studies. Also crucial to her success were the Academic Success Center’s accountability groups that help underclassmen.

Brewer also credits her success at Purdue to her advisor, Cynthia Quillen, lead academic advisor and assessment assistant in ECE. “She’s the best advisor I’ve had at Purdue. Her average response time is five minutes.”

This spring, Brewer is working as a teaching assistant.

And after she graduates, her goal is to land at NASA, where she has been working on different software projects – an achievement, she says, that wouldn’t have been possible without Purdue.

“I’m very happy that I decided to go to Purdue,” she said. “It’s helped me learn how to study and how to learn. It’s made me more confident in my abilities.”