Purdue Student Engineering Foundation celebrates 30 years of service
The Purdue Student Engineering Foundation (PSEF) celebrated 30 years with a reunion Sept. 5-7, 2025, where alums and current students could recall their experiences and share the impact of PSEF on their Purdue journeys.
In 1995, there were plenty of College of Engineering events available to students attending Purdue University. But few were focused on prospective students.
Marcia (Klichenman) O’Malley and a group of senior classmates wanted to change that.
So they did, establishing the Purdue Engineering Student Foundation (PSEF), a student organization with a very specific focus of connecting with people in the “before” and “after” Purdue phases of life: high schoolers and Purdue Engineering alums.
“One vision that we had was to get high school students excited about engineering,” O’Malley (BSME ’96) said.
That hasn’t changed much in 30 years.
The campus tours that were an initial thrust of PSEF’s mission in 1995 — in which guides walk backward and share their own unscripted experiences and thoughts about the Purdue Engineering experience — are even more frequent and relevant in 2025.
More students than ever are interested in engineering at Purdue. Nearly 35,000 students, a record number, applied in fall 2025. More interest means more tours. In one year, 64 students gave 637 tours to over 15,000 interested students — leading to a yield rate of approximately 54% of admitted students, about 20% higher than the admitted student yield rate in the College of Engineering overall, according to the 2023-24 PSEF annual report.
The numbers show PSEF’s impact: A passionate engineering student tour guide is just what many students need to choose Purdue.
“We tell everyone who applies for PSEF that they got into Purdue Engineering and represent Purdue Engineering,” said Kayla Manley, the current PSEF president. “We’re a group of social engineers who care very deeply about helping other people find their college path, even if it's not at Purdue. To be in PSEF means being confident in your experience and expressing that to other people.”
In the beginning
The most exciting milestone of the early days was getting an office in fall 1995. With mailboxes, a couch, a desk, a whiteboard and 10 official members, PSEF was officially in business. It even had a logo: a pyramid on a cream-colored polo shirt, showcasing connection to Purdue before and after being a student on campus, as part of one continuous experience.
It was a small community, but the first PSEFers were outgoing, charming and very knowledgeable of Purdue as a whole. They were quick to attract new members for mentorship, community building and, eventually, a new generation of student leadership.
“When we recruited the next round of leadership because we were graduating (in 1996), it really made us look back at what we had made,” O’Malley said.
While chatting with a student during a reunion in 2019, O’Malley felt pride when the student shared that she was a member of PSEF.
“I'm glad that that we were able to identify a space that gave more students opportunities for leadership and networking,” O’Malley said. “Seeing the legacy we left on campus blew me away.”
PSEF in the 2000s
From his encounter with PSEF, Andrew Weidner (BSIE ’08) was struck by how welcoming they were.
Mar “reinvigorated the chapter, developing a professional development program that included outside speakers (often alumni) and visits to local businesses that employ engineers,” ABE head Nathan Mosier wrote in a Fellows nomination letter. Like in MIND, Mar’s efforts to include a range of engineering disciplines and companies “led to (ASABE) students gaining a wider appreciation for the breadth of interests and skills embodied by our department.”
Weidner held a PSEF leadership position each year he was at Purdue, being elected president in 2006 as a sophomore in industrial engineering.
“PSEF is always on and delivering a real version of the student experience,” Weidner, from San Francisco, said. “Not everyone had perfect GPAs, but everyone was passionate about Purdue Engineering. I had several students spot me on campus to say ‘Hey, your campus tour convinced me to come to Purdue.’”
He was at the helm of an organization that was less than 10 years old at the time. With the novelty worn off, Weidner’s goal for PSEF was to establish a robust and clear identity. And to establish one for himself, who was just starting out in engineering.
To create an identity meant organizing. Which was easier said than done.
“We had real commitments to the university and prospective students, and we had to rally and organize the group to deliver on those,” Weidner said. “We also had to have fun and keep it entertaining.”
With the help of advisor David Bowker from the Office of Future Engineers (OFE) — and the very clear mission of PSEF and all its offerings, like the new program Advancing Prospective Engineering Xperiences (APEX, previously called Engineering Expo), made to engage high school students — Weidner got to work making a student org that would outlast his years at Purdue. He restructured PSEF members into committees with very niche foci and connected the organization to other large Purdue student orgs, like the Purdue Engineering Student Council, the National Society of Black Engineers and the Society of Women Engineers, through social events and member meet-and-greets.
The PSEF pyramid was a unifying aspect, but the signal to Weidner that PSEF was unified came in the form of a bear-shaped homecoming float prop. In fall 2006, the bear was added to display the light, friendly and fun vibe that PSEF sought to carry in its identity. Then the bear became a short-term highlight on PSEF merchandise.
Weidner enjoyed reminiscing about the surprising icon with PSEFers at the 30-year anniversary reunion Sept. 5-6.
“We recruited a lot of great students and had a lot of fun in the process,” Weidner said. “That combination of purpose and fun made the group very close, and its alumni very supportive.”
Friends through PSEF
Jon Coughlin was a social butterfly.
PSEF drew him in from his first on-campus tour in 2005.
In 2006, as a sophomore, Coughlin acted as a friendly face for first-year student Phillip Cherry. Cherry joined PSEF the following year.
Fifteen years later, they are still friends.
“I joined PSEF not because of Jon, but through Jon,” said Cherry, who is from suburban Dallas, Texas. Coughlin’s positive experiences encouraged Cherry to check out PSEF, and the enthusiastic and friendly faces Cherry was introduced to made him want to become one for future out-of-state students who would tour Purdue in the future.
Coughlin, from Granger, Indiana, shared a similar story of his on-campus PSEF tour when he was in high school.
“I got to go and just hang out with a student, without my parents, and that was the first time I was fully on board and excited about coming to Purdue.”
When Coughlin became president in 2008, his goals were simple: build credibility and connections. Connections would be easy for him, a social student among social engineering students.
But building credibility would require scheduling — and holding students to a schedule — when it came to tours and the growing list of PSEF commitments. Coughlin realized that creating a new system of scheduling and accountability was out of his depth. But what he certainly could do was keep PSEFers’ morale high to aid their creativity.
When Coughlin started his term, he recalled emails coming in from advisors 10 minutes before tours, asking for help. Those requests mostly went unanswered.
“By the time I graduated, students in PSEF understood that there was a calendar and the expectation was that you would give tours,” he said. “They happened at the same time each day, and you joined the organization to give tours.”
Cherry’s skill for organization came in clutch as he and the rest of the Outreach team created and implemented the robust scheduling system. Where PSEF once scrambled to get guides, under the new system, suddenly the organization had more than they needed.
The student org was shaping up to become the “well-oiled machine” that PSEF is often called in 2025.
“The more reliable your organization is, naturally, the more people are going to lean on you as an asset,” Coughlin (BSAAE ’09) said.
The skills learned while giving tours became essential to both Cherry and Coughlin, now parents and mid-career professionals. After graduating in 2010, Cherry earned a master’s degree in civil engineering, working as a consulting traffic engineer and transportation planner for 10 years before moving into a role with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, designing and building bus infrastructure projects.
Coughlin, a video game designer, saw the benefits of his PSEF days throughout his career.
“When selling video games, you’re always making pitches to talk about your products. When you’re giving a tour, you are functionally pitching Purdue to the people on the tour. To do that well, you must pick up on the cues of the audience, see what makes their ears perk up,” he said. “When you talk to enough people, you start to get an idea of the questions they’re going to ask and the things they need to hear. Those are skills I learned in PSEF.”
PSEF now
Manley joined PSEF on a whim as a first-year student. The positive community and the potential for long-term impact on the Purdue experience drew her in.
It was that community and passion for Purdue that kept Manley active and passionate while leading tours, rain or shine, and why she ran for PSEF president — and won — in fall 2024.
“We are all the experts of our own experiences. Understanding how to present myself confidently and authentically was a big learning challenge,” Manley said. “Seeing seniors and juniors be so involved, especially in mentoring when I was a first year, helped me feel like I belonged in Purdue Engineering.”
PSEFers, who represent 12 engineering majors and the First-Year Engineering Program, spend an average of five hours weekly giving tours and meeting prospective students and families, sharing their own Purdue experiences and answering questions. Biweekly meetings keep the 50-60 members each year engaged, even when schedules may be packed with tours and classes. New PSEFers connect on a semesterly retreat, hosted outside of Purdue and including design challenges, skits, conversation and other games and activities to get to know the PSEF community at large.
Manley admitted that when she was interested in PSEF as a first year in 2023, she was intimidated by how put-together the members seemed. But after a semester immersed in PSEF, Manley realized that it was a skill she would learn to cultivate through tours, working with APEX and within the PSEF community.
Manley’s goal for the future of PSEF is extending the organization’s reach with helpful, tailored and up-to-date information available to students worldwide. A continuous project, the team is working to publish virtual tours of Purdue’s engineering buildings with voiceovers or captions in global languages.
Much of the outreach for PSEF’s expanding offerings would rely on the nearly 400 alums and their worldwide connections to get the word out. To keep connected to alums, PSEF releases a quarterly newsletter with calls for speakers and resume reviewers. Alums are also encouraged to engage with PSEF Alumni Coordinated Engineering Recruitment (PACER), established in 2024, to share their Purdue and post-graduation career experiences with high school students interested in Purdue Engineering.
PACER ties the two audiences of PSEF to one another. It makes a full pyramid of connection, from prospective students and current students to alumni in all parts of the career journey.
It's never difficult for PSEF to find alum to volunteer time and expertise.
“If you think about why people join PSEF, it's because they want to get involved and help other people,” Manley said. “Even when they graduate, that doesn't go away. We do all of this because we love to do it, and we love Purdue Engineering. To meet all of the people coming through and to see so many of them come to campus in the fall as students, is our favorite way to give back to Purdue.”
