Winners of 2016 "Beautify Grissom"
IE students, faculty staff, and the IE Advisory Council voted, and the winners were announced at a luncheon on April 22. This year, first place went to Audrey Whitmire (center), 2nd place to Rebecca (Beck) Seligman (left), and 3rd place to Pam Yuan (right). Winning paintings are hung in Grissom Hall. Congratulations, IE artists!
Audrey Whitmire: Industrial engineering for me has always been about seeking knowledge and solutions for purposes of benefitting mankind–about using individual talents, discoveries, and efforts to improve life for someone else. When I first started painting, I thought about what kinds of things represent engineering objectively, which can be seen in the gears, cityscape, and detailed pattern. But really the metaphor behind the painting is the idea that even an ordinary person can rise to great heights and go places he/she never thought possible through the pursuit of knowledge and goodness (represented by the colorful gear-balloons). For me, that's what engineering is all about.
Rebecca Seligman: My painting is representative of some of the many aspects that Industrial Engineers are involved with every day. On the painting you will see: tools, representative of an industrial engineer's constant battle to produce zero waste, while still having the materials needed to finish a job; a world, Industrial Engineering is an extremely global field with work spanning every country, and it is essential to ensure industrial engineers develop the skills necessary to adapt and be successful no matter where their work is located; a clock, representative of the productivity and time management for which Industrial Engineering strives; and lastly, hands working on gears, not only is this picture representative of the teamwork needed both while working with industrial engineers and with those in other disciplines in order to get an end result, but it is also representative of the problem solving skills that are constantly being utilized to get to find a solution. I chose to paint the canvas in multiple different and bright colors in order to symbolize the countless different solutions that can be utilized to solve a problem and the creativity that is often used to reach the best solution. When I think of Industrial Engineering, I think of the many different aspects in which our field is actively involved. For me, becoming an industrial engineer means gaining skills to become proficient in many different areas, spanning many different topics and ideas. Industrial Engineering supplies endless opportunities to learn new things, providing the chance to find something you truly love doing, and that is what my painting works to represent.
Pam Yuan: Given the theme for the Beautify Grissom contest, "What is IE to you?" I think back to all the opportunities IE has given me to travel, having been the only Industrial Engineer on my Global Engineering Programs team, I've been able to use my supply chain management skills and economical way of thinking to travel to five countries with the team; hence the world map in the painting on the foreground. More specifically, the continent Africa is centered on the map because I spent my first summer internship as an IE student in Cameroon, my freshmen year. I associate many of positive memories of doing Industrial Engineering work there, and those experiences confirmed to me that I was in the right engineering discipline, having just come out of First Year Engineering.
Within my first semester being in IE, the School of Industrial Engineering has been increasing in ranking worldwide standing at a proud #3 right now alongside Stanford University. That is why I painted the arrows on the engineering fountain as well as the arrows on the metrics that all point upward. The gears next to the metrics not only serve as the ultimate symbol of the mechanics that go into engineering, but it shows that engineering requires a lot of collaborative effort, since each gear must be working for the system to run. The left corner has a silhouette of the Chicago skyline representing the proximity of Purdue to major cities and industrial centers where we, as students, can aspire to work to make a difference in the corporate and real world. Finally, Purdue is ultimately home to me in my growth as an Industrial Engineer and Purdue's Engineering program, in general, is something I'm incredibly proud of; therefore, I included the bell tower and arch as symbols of our school spirit. This is what IE is to me and I am ever grateful to be part of this amazing program.
Writer: DeEtte Starr, starrd@purdue.edu