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• The Wall Street Journal's SmartMoney ranks a Purdue degree among nation's best buys.
• Purdue is listed in Princeton Review's top 100 "best value" colleges.
• Purdue Research Park at AmeriPlex-Indianapolis is dedicated. The 55,000-square-foot incubator will help high-tech entrepreneurs create new businesses, develop new technology and expand life sciences research in Indiana.

• Trustees approve a master plan for the West Lafayette campus that emphasizes compact growth, green space, a more pedestrian-friendly State Street and a perimeter parkway. The plan, along with one for University Residences, also calls for collaborative, mixed-use development in key areas that encourages more synergies throughout campus. A major new residential zone may be formed on the southeast part of campus near the Village and may include a new dining facility. New mixed-use facilities, including opportunities for residential structures, are proposed for key corridors such as Third Street.
• The U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration extends a $15 million award for WIRED -- Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development -- to transform local economies.

• President Córdova unveils an Amelia Earhart sculpture outside Earhart Hall. The bigger-than-life artwork is a gift from former Purdue trustee Susan Bulkeley Butler.
• The Innovation Center is dedicated at the Purdue Research Park in West Lafayette. More than half of the 80,000-square-foot facility is home to a national software solution center for EDS, an HP company.
• The University Senate establishes a steering committee to discuss the feasibility, meaning and potential implementation process of a core curriculum.

• The U.S. Department of Energy announces it will fund a $20 million Energy Frontier Research Center at Purdue to advance work in biofuels.
• Purdue Research Park officials dedicate the $14.5 million, 105,000-square-foot Kurz Technology Center II, built thanks to a deferred gift from the wife of a Purdue alumnus.

• Purdue announces that new students will be required to have taken at least four years of high school math. The requirement, which will begin in fall 2011, is part of an effort to help students succeed at Purdue.

• The Department of Visual and Performing Arts becomes a school named for benefactors Patti and Rusty Rueff. Rusty is a leader in the video gaming industry.
• Purdue's second cluster supercomputer, Coates, is built in a few hours. It was later ranked No. 146 on the international TOP500 list.

• Purdue launches Signals, a first-of-its-kind computerized system that tracks student academic progress and warns students in real time if they need work in certain areas.
• A new freshman engineering program -- Ideas to Innovation -- begins and quickly becomes a model for new ways to teach incoming students. It emphasizes hands-on and team learning.
• Purdue opens its first new residence hall since 1993. First Street Towers offers 360 upscale, single-occupancy living units.
• At IPFW, Ron Venderly Family Bridge over the St. Joseph River opens, linking the main and west campus.
• At IPFW, the $12 million Medical Education Center is dedicated, providing classrooms, offices, conference and patient exam rooms.

• The National Science Foundation awards $105 million to a Purdue-led team to spearhead a center that will serve as headquarters for the George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, or NEES. The grant is the largest in Purdue history.
• Purdue dedicates the $7.5 million expansion of the Niswonger Aviation Technology Building, which adds 18,200 square feet of learning space. The building, funded by gifts, also will be soundproofed to eliminate airplane engine noise from the nearby airport.
• A former speech pathologist gives a $10 million gift to the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. The gift, from Marybeth Lyles Higuera of Visalia, Calif., will be used to fund the Lyles-Porter Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences facility.

• Gebisa Ejeta, Distinguished Professor of Agronomy, earns the World Food Prize -- called the Nobel Prize of agriculture -- for developing a drought- and disease-resistant sorghum, a food staple upon which millions of people depend for survival.
• President Córdova spends a week in Asia forging ties with education and business leaders in Taiwan, South Korea and China.
• Purdue dedicates Wayne T. and Mary T. Hockmeyer Hall of Structural Biology, a new $39 million, 65,690-square-foot home for Purdue's Markey Center for Structural Biology research group.

• Purdue kicks off a $15 million national center for developing new methods to prepare for, detect, respond to and recover from terrorist attacks as well as other crises. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security chooses Purdue to lead 15 universities in a six-year effort to create the center, known as Visual Analytics for Command, Control and Interoperability Environments, or VACCINE.
• The University launches "Sustaining New Synergies," a campus-wide effort to determine how the University will fund its strategic plan in the face of reduced state revenue.
• Purdue empowers students with Hotseat, a software application that captures student comments during a class and allows everyone in the class to view those messages, including the professor and teaching assistants.

• The Purdue Research Foundation's Office of Technology Commercialization doubles the number of issued patents for Purdue discoveries for calendar year 2009. Purdue receives 48 issued patents for 2009, compared with 24 for 2008. Purdue Research Park, which is managed by the foundation, adds two more technology centers across Indiana, bringing the number of parks in the system to four. More than 200 companies employ about 4,000 people, up about 26 percent since 2006. The average annual wage of employees in the park network is $54,000. Sixty-four of the park-based companies were a direct result of discoveries from Purdue and 25 more companies work with Purdue faculty to advance new technologies.