Ag School on Ross Award roll
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Eric Steiner took center
stage at the Elliott Hall of Music when we has selected to speak
for his 2002 classmates at commencement. Photo by Tom
Campbell
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By Tom Campbell
The wooden pews of West Lafayette's St. Thomas Aquinas Church are
as comfortable as a cactus. But one Sunday morning in May of 1971, they
felt as good as any La-Z-Boy recliner to Francis Lueken.
Surrounded by his family and future wife, Lou Ann Vaal, Lueken sat
back in the church and reflected on becoming the first College of Agriculture
graduate to earn his BS (general agriculture) and MS (Extension education)
simultaneously.
Within hours, Lueken would join fellow graduating seniors, stride across
the Elliott Hall of Music stage and receive his diploma from Purdue
President Frederick L. Hovde. For the first time in days, he breathed
deep and relaxed. After a four-year academic sprint, the finish line
was within sight.
Lueken had not slept for 48 hours, having pulled a double all-nighter
to put the finishing touches on his research project in Extension education.
Sitting down anywhere not bent over a book or staring into a computer
was relaxing, even in the achy-making pews of St. Tom's Church.
"Mark Kopka, a classmate, came up and said 'Congratulations,'"
Lueken recalls. "He seemed really excited. I just thought he was
talking about graduation."
But Kopka was referring to a greater accomplishment than graduation.
He had participated in an earlier commencement session and saw Lueken's
name listed in the program as the winner of the G.A. Ross Award as the
outstanding graduating male student at Purdue.
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