Class of 2025 inducted into Professional Practice Hall of Fame
The Office of Professional Practice (OPP) inducted eight Purdue University engineering alumni into the Professional Practice Hall of Fame at its 15th annual celebration on Oct. 17, 2025.
The inductees were recognized for significant influence on OPP’s programs, serving as ambassadors of the opportunities that experiential education grants.
“Having these alum on campus is evidence that co-op programs truly launch careers," said Jenny Strickland, OPP’s associate director of cooperative education and career readiness. “Seeing these alum come back to campus to be celebrated for their accomplishments is a catalyst of opening doors for future students through mentorship and career opportunities.”
Individuals were nominated and approved by the Professional Practice Advisory Council, a group of Purdue faculty that aid in the oversight and implementation of OPP programs.
A closer look at the Class of 2025 inductees:
Ronak Dave
Dave (BSAAE ’14) is a Purdue Trustee Scholar and Space Shuttle Memorial Scholar. Dave has been an Aviation Week 20 Twenties award winner, an honoree of the Purdue 38 by 38 and a member of the Young Professionals Alumni Council. He is a Micro-g Neutral Buoyancy Experiment Design Team (Micro-g NExT) mentor at NASA and has been awarded a Co-op Special Achievement Award.
His career began with a co-op at NASA, where Dave still works. He began at the NASA Johnson Space Center as a pathways intern (2011-13) then moved into ISS motion control systems as a certified attitude determination and control officer and a propulsion systems flight controller and a CST-100 (Boeing Starliner) propulsion officer supporting a Boeing orbital flight test (2014-22).
Dave is now a flight director with a focus on planning, training and execution of human spaceflight operations.
Jim Durkin
Durkin (BSIE ’82) is an Alpha Pi Mu industrial engineering Honor Society member, president of the Theta Chi, Alpha Delta Chapter Foundation Board and is the benefactor behind the Jim and Laura Durkin Industrial Engineering Endowed Scholarship. Durkin is also an active member of the Purdue Alumni Association, President’s Council and an Olympian level member of the John Purdue Club.
While at Purdue, Durkin was the chapter president of the Theta Chi, Alpha Delta chapter from 1980-81 and had a plant engineering apprentice co-op with Goodyear Aerospace. Highlights of his professional career include being a systems analyst at Arthur Andersen (1982-85) and leading The Martec Group as co-founder and president (1985-2020). As president, Durkin a global market-research and consulting firm with offices in the US, Europe and Asia; and guided Fortune 1000 and private-equity clients and helped create Martec’s Emotion Intelligence analytics.
Durkin served on the President's Purdue Parent & Family Leadership Council with wife Laura from 2022-24 and is an investor and advisor across banking, private equity, tech IP and food-beverage ventures.
Angela Jenkins
Jenkins (BSChE ’88, MSEEE ’89) is founder and president of Jenkins EH&S Consulting, LLS, a nationwide EHS&S strategy and risk-management consulting firm established in 2017. In the role, Jenkins has guided Fortune-10 and startup clients to achieve world-class compliance and sustainability goals.
Jenkins’ numerous leadership roles include companies such as SABIC, Ascend Performance Materials and DuPont. She has received more than 20 professional commendations, including commendation from the United States Department of Homeland Security and multiple Governor’s Environmental Excellence Awards.
Throughout her 40-plus-year career, Jenkins served as the global director of environmental and regulatory affairs at RPM International, where she directed environmental and health safety strategy across six continents and improved program rigor for over 400 manufacturing plants worldwide.
At Purdue, Jenkins spent co-op rotations with Central Soya Company (now DuPont Solae).
Since graduating, Jenkins has been a mentoring task team leader and ethics seminar presenter for Purdue EEE courses and a member of the Purdue University President’s Council. She has been part of the EEE External Advisory Council since 2015, serving as chair and chair emeritus.
Jeremy Koehler
Koehler (BSME ’09), currently the vice president of research and development at Acoustic Wave Cell Therapy, started his career with a co-op in product development at Biomet Orthopedics. Since his co-op days, Koehler has held multiple leadership positions in research and development and engineering teams at Claria Medical, Expanse Medical, NXT Biomedical and Prescient Surgical from 2016-2024.
Throughout his career, Koelher has been a Leslie Bottorff Fellows in Engineering Medicine (2023-24), a member of Engineers for a Sustainable World and serves as a professional mentor within the Purdue Silicon Valley Network, providing guidance to students and recent alums and sharing professional insights, especially students within the Engineering Honors Program.
Koelher also serves as an engineering coach, guiding faculty fellows in medical innovation and translation research at Stanford Byers Center for Bio-design.
Megan Mauck
Mauck (BSME ’06) has remained connected to Purdue as an alumni speaker for Women in Mechanical Engineering and OPP students considering co-op as a career launching point. She highlights the value of Purdue Engineering in large-scale media technology leadership, promoting leadership and professional development to engineering students before and after graduation as a mentor.
A quality engineering co-op with Toyota served as Mauck’s launch point in her own career. Highlights of her career include director of media operations at NBCUniversal, in which she consolidated studio and TV fulfillment for $25 million annual savings and launched internal product-development initiatives to streamline operations. Mauck also served as Vice president of global media operations, where she directed 250 staff members in preparing NBCU content for broadcasting major events (Olympics, Super Bowl) at 99.99% reliability and delivered $40 million in productivity gains through automated supply-chain solutions.
Mauck’s current role as senior vice president of technical operations includes directing a 1,000+ person global content operations and distribution team which delivers over $15 billion in annual revenue and oversaw system automation and the spinoff of seven cable networks to new public company Versant.
Erin Murphy
Murphy (BSME ’94) is currently the process excellence leader at Solventum where she leads development, implementation and continuous improvement of digital design and production workflow processes to drive efficiency and operational excellence.
Murphy’s first position after Purdue was at 3M, where she held progressive roles in supply chain, engineering and strategy. Murphy was the first female recipient of the 3M Outstanding Designer Award in 2003. She designed a 10-year supply chain plan, which supported a $350 million portfolio growth and sustainability goals, and recaptured nearly $10 million in sales through strategic investment planning. Murphy also created global technology engagements for over 10,000 visitors to strengthen external partnerships and inspire future talent.
Murphy was the Purdue University relations team leader for 3M from 2008-23 — where she recruited Purdue student talent.
While at Purdue, Murphy had a five-semester co-op at McDonnel Douglas Aircraft.
William (Bill) Troha
Troha (BSME ’69, MSME ’71, PhD AAE ’88) has worked at Honeywell Aerospace Advanced Technology, NASA Glenn Research Center, USAF Research Laboratory and SpaceX within his nearly 40-year career.
Troha’s co-op rotations were at International Harvester in Indianapolis within manufacturing, tool design, foundry heat treatment and pollution-control equipment procurement.
Troha served as a cooperative engineering student coordinator with former OPP professor Frederick Morse — who was posthumously inducted into the Co-op Hall of Fame in 2010 — from 1969-71.
From research, Troha moved into a position at USAF Research Laboratory from 1970-1995, where he guided major turbine technology programs and engine-failure investigations, advancing durability, cooling and vibration diagnostics. He has also been employed at NASA Glenn Research Center from 1995-97, where he directed high speed civil transport programs and organized national technology-transfer conferences, and Honeywell Aerospace Advanced Technology from 1997-2010, where he led three advanced turbojet engineer programs under $110 million in Department of Defense contracts, including a joint General Electric-Honeywell next generation helicopter engine initiative. In his career, Troha has earned four Honeywell Technical Achievement Awards.
Troha has been a rocket turbopump durability consultant at SpaceX since 2010.
Mary Werner
Werner (BSCHE ’05) spent her five co-op terms at Procter & Gamble, learning from rotations in R&D within the Skin Care, Baby Care, Hair Care and Personal Care businesses as a process and product development engineer. She spent 10 years as a Purdue campus recruiter for Procter & Gamble and has returned frequently to the Davidson School of Chemical Engineering as a panel speaker.
In her 20-plus year professional career at Procter & Gamble, where she was hired after graduation, Werner has been the global end-to-end Skin Care Product Development Director (2011-18), the upstream Beauty Technology Discovery and Development Director (2018-22) and is currently the Specialty Beauty R&D Director for newly acquired Skin Care brands Tula, Farmacy and First Aid Beauty. In these roles, Werner has led a path marked by innovation and leadership. She has led teams through the translation of consumer insights to proven, technical solutions resulting in over 50-plus product launches globally on Olay and SK-II. Additionally, Werner has spearheaded transformative technology platforms, created downstream agility with entrepreneurial-minded ecosystems, and continuously invests in developing future leaders of the organization.