Alumna’s Allegiance: Building the Future for Pharmacy and Purdue

Just wanna say it’s such a huge honor to be here with you both today. Jim and Jeannie Chaney, you’re huge supporters of Purdue University and the College of Pharmacy. Thank you so much for being here. So, to get us started, I’d really like to hear your story.

How did you two meet?

>> We met at a singles group in Cleveland that was sponsored by a number of churches for college grads and people in grad school. And with all the hospitals that we have, the universities, there’s always a number of these people with, like manner, like backgrounds and similar likes and dislikes.

And so we got along very well. There were about 250 people in the group, and they met regularly every weekend and did several things. Anything from going to the art museum to the orchestra or ice skating or swimming or hockey game or basketball game, anything. They did a lot of things.

So you would pick and choose. The group went along fantastically for quite a while, until it went out of business, because everybody found a mate.

>> So how did the two of you together find your passion for giving back, just in general, not necessarily to Purdue?

>> Well, I think we both grew up with families that gave back to the community, be it money or time.

And I know my family was very involved in that, and Jim’s was even more so.

>> Yes, her family supported the Cleveland Clinic and established a chair. And so we’ve continued with that funding for the chair and also for additional research. >> So, Jeanne, this is more of a question for you.

Purdue College of Pharmacy alumni, did you ever think that you would be coming back here and doing this now?

>> No, because when I was in school, they really didn’t have the buildings named with people’s names.

>> The H-shaped dorms were H1, H2, and H3. Things like that, or university hall or things.

They didn’t have names on them, so there was never any thought of ever doing anything like that. And at that point in time, I also didn’t have much money, so I wasn’t thinking about those things.

>> Yeah.

>> But, yeah, I started working when I was 13.

>> Okay.

>> My dad had a drugstore, and I started working. And one day he sat down at the dinner table, he said, can you be at the drugstore at 1’o clock on Saturday? I need somebody, okay?

>> Is that how you got into pharmacy?

>> Well, I’m number six in the family.

Number six pharmacists. I sort of was born into it, but I’m not sorry I did it. I figured it out in 9th grade, and that’s what I always did.

>> What led you to Purdue for pharmacy. The fact that half of the pharmacy schools in Ohio at the time that I was applying didn’t have any dormitories was one.

One of the schools, my dad went with me. We looked at the universities together, and he said, you’re not going there. And I said, afterwards, of course, but I said, why? He said, there’s problems. He was right. They lost their accreditation about five or six years later.

>> Wow.

They got it back eventually, but they had to work hard to do it. And I wasn’t that impressed with the school anyway, so it’s okay. And then there’s that other university in Ohio. It’s called Ohio State.

>> I might have heard of that one. It just I didn’t enjoy it, and so the next thing was University of Pittsburgh.

They didn’t have any dorms. And I asked all these schools, well, where are you supposed to stay? A tent in somebody’s backyard’s not gonna do it in the winter. So, yeah, it kind of erased a lot of schools. And my dad said, well, why don’t you try with Purdue?

Okay. I thought it was an Ivy League school. Well, Ivy League school in Indiana, that’d be different. But that’s how I got here was I sent out for the application, filled it out, sent it in, and ten days later I was in.

>> That’s fantastic.

>> Not like today.

>> Yeah, I know.

>> 72,000 applications. Yeah, that’s how I got here.

>> Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing. What did a normal day as a pharmacy student look like for you?

>> Classes all morning and labs all afternoon. That’s the way it worked because we did have labs all afternoon.

>> Wow.

>> So all our lectures were in the morning, and that’s how we did it.

>> Tell her about the lab building that you went to.

>> Well, yes. Our chemistry was not where they have the buildings now. It was actually in Quonset huts where the Neil Armstrong Hall is.

Okay.

>> Yeah, they were quaint. These are much better.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah, much better.

>> I had my very first chemistry lab on campus in the Chaney-Hale Hall of Science, fall of 2020. So that was a very nice building.

>> Yes, it is.

>> Could you tell us about that?

>> What do you want to know about it? Because when it came to actually designing it or anything, like, we had nothing to do with any of that. In fact, that’s a story in itself, because they were working in the basement building, and all of a sudden one of the architects looked up and said, well, maybe we better start designing the first floor.

And then they’re on the first floor. Maybe we ought to do something. That’s the way they build it, and they got it up, and it’s fine. We were approached about the naming of it, along with my college roommate, who was also a sorority sister of mine, and we agreed.

And in the middle of winter in Ohio, you were there, and you said in February. Well, this was in January, they came.

>> Yeah.

>> Why would anybody come to Cleveland in January? I don’t know.

>> Especially for ice cream.

>> Yes, and then we went out for ice cream.

>> Yeah, that’s when it happened. It was in January.

>> I know, especially for me, I’ve taught classes in the Chaney-Hale Hall of Science.

I’ve had my own classes. It’s one of my favorite buildings to study in, like, even now, I don’t have any classes there. I meet up with my friends, and we sit on the fourth floor.

It’s my favorite floor is the fourth floor, which apparently they built last. So I guess they saved all of their energy for that fourth floor, because that one’s my favorite. But we sit there, I watch the sunset sometimes from that building. I love it. It means a lot, both to me and the campus.

>> Did you go up there for the eclipse?

>> I did not. I was in Indianapolis. I went to the motor speed.

>> Okay.

>> Yeah. What did you do for the eclipse?

>> I went next door and talked to my neighbor. Watched it in her yard.

 

Yeah, our whole neighborhood was out.

>> It was kind of neat.

>> Yeah. 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Afternoon everybody was out in the front yard.

>> It’s probably easier than driving to Indianapolis. It was not an easy trip for me, but it was a lot of fun. Everyone was cheering at the speedway.

I’m not sure who we were cheering for, the sun, the moon, or the boilermakers. I’m not sure who the cheering was for, but it was a very cool event.

>> It was. It was a really neat thing. I was glad I didn’t have to go anywhere to see it.

I was happy to see it.

>> Yeah.

>> Our daughter lives in California and drove to Texas.

>> How long of a drive was that?

>> Quite a while.

>> Three days, four days.

>> Yeah, they stopped along the way, a few wineries, so it took them a while.

>> That’s crazy. I’m glad we were able to at least stay in the vicinity of where we live.

>> I’ll agree with you.

>> Yeah.

>> Well, what does your day look like? I told you what mine looked like. Lectures and labs.

>> So, I mostly have lectures.

Almost all of my schedule is lectures. I do have one lab once a week. Mine’s actually at 8:30 in the morning. So kind of the reverse of what your schedule had been. On a Tuesday or Thursday, I don’t have a lecture until 2:30 in the afternoon.

>> My. >> My.

>> But I get a lot of studying done. I kind of like the late lectures. Sometimes I don’t because I still have to go to campus. I still have to get up at my normal time, but then I can’t leave. I’m kind of stuck there wait until my classes end.

But I get a lot done, so that’s nice in a way. And then as soon as my classes are done, I’m either studying, like I said, in the Chaney-Hale Hall of Science, or I’m heading home to bother my roommates into watching TV with me.

But that’s kind of my average days.

The reverse of what yours had been.

>> Well, I remember one semester I had 8 AM, physics on Saturday morning after being out until 1 on Friday night. And the TA, English was probably his fifth language. He was not very understandable. So you had to shovel through what he said and figure out what you were learning.

It was painful.

>> I feel like physics in general, that was one of my worst subjects. No matter who was teaching it, at any point in my life I have to shovel through to figure out what they’re saying.

>> I’ll agree with you.

>> I enjoyed physics.

>> Tell us why.

>> Generalities, I like to do things, hands, build things, etc.

>> Okay.

>> So, that I did very well with.

>> I could only really understand physics when it was in terms of chemistry. I had a physics professor at one point who talked about physics, but he was like, think of it that you have two atoms, and the bond of the atoms is a spring.

And we’re gonna calculate the spring force on the atom. I was, I guess that makes more sense now that you say it that way. So I could only do physics when you talked about it in terms of chemistry. So why has it been so important for the both of you to support students?

>> Well, I think that at this point in time, we have such a need for pharmacists all over the United States. It’s a crying need. The drugstores are having to cut back on their hours they’re open because there aren’t enough people, that it has to do with a lot of reasons, part of which is COVID, it wore the people out.

And I think that we need to help all of those that are willing to go into pharmacy with a six year program that can be quite taxing, literally, money wise, on the family, besides your time. But I think we need to help any way we can to make sure we have the pharmacists we need.

>> Mine is, I think we’re all a Purdue family, and we support the family in whatever they’re gonna do. And what they’re doing now and what they can do in the future would probably be mind boggling. Purdue is a fantastic family, group of people, of faculty, staff, students, all of them in one big family.

>> Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. All right, so, Jim, I would like to ask this question to you. I know you didn’t attend Purdue, but I do think it’s safe to call you a boilermaker. Could you tell us more about your story?

>> I can explain why. We like to travel.

So the first travel experience we had with Purdue was with the alumni group. Met some fantastic alumni people, and we met a couple that said, there’s a trip coming up next summer. We’ll sign you up and pay your deposit, which we paid him back for. So we get on the trip, and all of a sudden people are looking funny at us.

It was a president’s council trip, and we weren’t president’s council members.

>> Jane Beering was designated person to come up and ask us how we got on the trip. And we told her, and so everybody was fine with that. The next year, we’re on another trip, president’s council this time, in Rome, and we’re after the cocktail party to begin the trip.

Jane comes up and says, come join the family for dinner. So we got invited to have dinner with the Beering family.

>> That’s great.

>> Began talking about their granddaughter that was going through a private school at the time. And ours had just graduated from a private school, so we had something to talk about.

And I say from that, that Steve Beering adopted me into the Purdue family. And we have made many Purdue friends from our travels. We’re now up to 30 some countries-

>> Wow.

>> Traveling with Purdue. We missed our last trip, which was South Africa, but we’re going to Kenya this May, and then Norway, June, I’m sorry.

May 31st, we leave, and then we’re going to Norway with the group in July.

>> That’s amazing.

>> There’s a lot of fantastic people that love to travel with Purdue.

>> Yeah, why do you keep choosing to travel with Purdue specifically?

>> Because it’s the family. It’s the people that are going along.

>> And Purdue trips are well planned. We have a number of single people that we know on the trip, whether they’ve ever been married and widowed or what have you, or divorced or whatever. Some never been married, but nobody has any trouble, because when you’re traveling with Purdue, you’re all family, and nobody cares if you have a partner.

That’s never an issue. And so many people wonder how it would be traveling alone. With Purdue the things are so well planned and taken care of. If there’s a problem, you know who to ask. They’ll work on getting it solved. And many of the tour companies that you go with aren’t like that.

If there’s a problem, you’d have to kinda ferret out your answer. And Purdue works very hard to make you very welcomed.

>> And the travel agent has a name of Chaney’s. No relationship, but they’re

Purdue graduate, in fact- Mister Chaney was a professor at Purdue, and so they’re

 

retired, and their kids are now running the travel agency.

>> The Purdue users move.

>> Yes ma’am.

>> Okay, well, now you have me wanting to sign up to go on a Purdue vacation.

>> It’s so well planned, it’s just unbelievable, just get ready, and go.

>> Pay your money, pack your shoot case and go.

>> We’ve never had any problems at all.

>> Yeah, last March, I had gone on a study abroad trip during spring break with Purdue, and not the exact same. But a very similar sort of experience where anytime there was any issue, it was taken care of at one point, our bus broke down. We were stranded at this restaurant, it was a beautiful restaurant, but we were stranded at this restaurant trying to figure out how to get back to our hotel.

It was fixed so fast, I can’t say that would have happened if it was just me trying to drive my way around in a little European car through Ireland. But I had a great experience when I traveled with Purdue, but that was just the one time I’ve only been to one country, much less 1020 therapy.

>> Well, keep your eyes and ears open after you’re out of school, and they’ll be, you can get an offer, you could take a trip every week.

>> Of course you can’t, they’d be overlapping, but there’s at least a trip a week.

>> Okay.

>> All year long

>> That’s very impressive.

>> Sometimes, some days we get three trip brochures at a time. Not now, they don’t come every day, but yeah, there’s always a lot of places you can go and see and make a lot of experiences.

>> All right, I’ll keep that in mind.

>> Yes, you will get out of school one day.

>> I know it’s kind of crazy to think about, but now I know where the vacation

>> Anywhere Purdue is going is where I’m going.

>> Well, and the other thing is where we go, we’ll always find Purdue people. We were in last time we were in Egypt, and a Purdue person who happened to be the ex prime minister, so he came over and talked to us.

>> He came to our party, and I happen to have been on campus at the time that he was made premier, whether they elect him or appoint him or whatever. And so I was aware that they had had a Purdue grad. He came to the party, he seemed so thrilled to be there with all these Purdue people.

He came and he stayed and he talked to everybody, and shook everybody’s hand, and pictures, and so on. He’d been the premier of Egypt, and he got his PHD at Purdue.

>> That’s amazing, that’s really great to hear.

>> Yeah.

>> Well, thank you for sharing that, I am very excited now to graduate, only so I can start traveling the world with the Purdue family.

>> All right, Jim, bringing it back to you, can you tell me what your life was like before Purdue?

>> I went to Denison University, graduated economics, when I graduated, it was right during the middle of the Vietnam war. When I graduated, I was in air force ROTC, but the air force decided they didn’t need anybody that couldn’t fly, and so eyesight was not up to par, so I was let go.

So I’m out on my own, trying to find someplace to serve the country, and I joined the Ohio National Guard and was trained as a tank commander. We were scheduled to go to Vietnam, and they found out that you can’t do much with tanks in the swamp lands or rice paddies of Vietnam, so we didn’t go.

But we also did three riots in Cleveland, Kent state happened to be one of them, and we also did a trucker strike. So we did more duty in eight years than if we’d done two years of active duty.

>> You also crushed a few.

>> Curbs and everything.

>> Curbs in shaker Heights, Ohio.

>> Because our tanks were stored into armory, which was in Cleveland.

>> Okay.

>> So to get to the Ravenna arsenal, we had to go through city streets, and we have a police escort. And the one thing I remember was, we’re going by this nice house, and one of our tank treads comes off, and the tank goes into the front yard.

>> No

>> And tears up the lawn. So he had to get the tank retrieval, vehicle out of Ravenna to come pull it out of the yard and replace the tread. And the state then had to pay for the fixing the lawn.

>> My gosh, do you remember how long it took to fix the tank?

>> It was not very long, cuz it’s not a big job to do it if you’ve got the right equipment.

>> That’s good, I’m just imagining this tank sitting out there for who knows how long.

>> No, they wouldn’t let it sit out there.

>> Yeah, and I can imagine some of the streets they went on in Shaker Heights, Ohio, were very nice streets, and it could have cost them quite a few dollars to fix that lawn.

>> Yeah, that’s crazy, so does that mean I have you the blame for the roads in Ohio?

>> No, that roads in Ohio are probably like roads everywhere, they don’t design them to last. It’s what’s called planned obsolescence, they use asphalt and the asphalt or concrete, maybe it’ll last ten years.

And then, the state gives another contract for another five to ten years, and it’s a vicious circle. In Europe, they don’t do that, they build them the last 20 years, or 50 years, or whatever the case may be, so we don’t do things right here.

>> Yeah. I mean, I’ve driven on roads across the country.

>> Sure.

>> I do agree with you there really doesn’t matter what state you’re in at some point you’re hitting a pothole.

>> You’re right.

>> Yeah, well, I know that probably any state government could use money given back to them for the roads, but why have you chosen Purdue to give your money back to the university?

>> It’s family, we started giving Purdue thanks to Gordon Shavers, who happens to be the lawyer at the time and happened to be one of the people that traveled with the president’s council. And his daughter happened to live in Cleveland, so he came to Cleveland periodically, and he invited me to lunch one time, and I paid, and I’ve been paying ever since.

>> That started when I was working then.

>> Then that started our giving to Purdue, and we’ve given significant quantities of money to all kinds of different things that people don’t even realize it. We started with the pharmacy building, which was a dual purpose endowment whereby the Principal went to stay with the university and the interest went to pay students scholarships.

And so that then was used, or will be used to build the new pharmacy nursing building. In addition to that, we’re funding the Daniel school of business building, and a lot of other things like protect Purdue, and Purdue was a it’s just a game.

>> It’s not just.

>> It’s not just a game, on a whole bunch of other things, we have a table. In the what used to be Pappy’s, that was transposed from Pappy’s to down there now after the renovations. And it’s got our plaque next to it that this was a gift from the Chaney’s.

>> That’s impressive. I didn’t know you participated in half of those programs.

>> And there’s probably more that you don’t know, too. We’ve given to different things at different times. We have a couple of, how to say, donor people that work for the university that have us on their speed dial.

>> Well, and you being a pharmacy student, you’re aware of Eldoret, and that’s something that I’m very interested in. And that’s where we’re going in June.

>> Okay.

>> We get to see it. I’ve wanted to see it for well over ten years.

>> Yeah.

>> It’s very interesting because it’s a program that Purdue put into place, sending pharmacy students to the university over there to work with their pharmacist.

And in addition, they’ve set up a school for kids that have no parents.

>> Okay.

>> And dormitories, there were men’s and ladies’ dormitory. And they have trained people. We’ve given them scholarships, and the scholarships have to be paid back by the people. One of the scholars, the first ones that we supported, is now a minister in the government.

>> Wow.

>> And he started as a street kid. And the problem over there is not only did they have COVID, but they’ve had all the other things, like AIDS and so on, things, Ebola and so on, that we’re not even aware of. So there’s many of these orphans.

And when COVID came along and the governor or the mayor or whoever over there told you to go home, like all the rest of us were told to go home,

>> There was no home to go.

>> They didn’t have any homes. So they were able to get a boys dorm built very fast so that they had a place to go.

And then they discovered there were a lot of young ladies that didn’t have a place to go. They were in the same boat, and so they got a girls dorm built, and it’s a place for these young people to go now that they have an address.

>> Yeah.

>> Another thing was people don’t have a car. They walk every place. And if they’re walking into the hospital to get checked up, it maybe a day’s walk,

>> Or two or three.

>> Or two days or three days walk. The group was able to contact a cell phone company in to get donating cell phones.

>> Battery powered, solar powered.

>> Solar powered, or hand wind up generator, and then people could take their blood work, check for diabetes, and find out how much insulin so they didn’t have to go back and forth every week or something.

>> Some of them couldn’t even do it because they wouldn’t get home before they’d have to go back.

And so they, yeah-

>> One of the major accomplishments that they’ve had.

>> And that’s the pharmacy students from Purdue and the medical students from IU working together. They work under Ampath, which is the umbrella that’s over all of this study at Moore University for the Americans. And they’ve done other things.

They’ve done some fantastic work with heart disease and making it a lot easier for people to be treated and effectively. And one of the things they found was their diets aren’t quite right for what they need, when they’re people like this. They wanted to help them, so they were helping the people.

But mothers being mothers, if they got some food and the family needed it, they would give it to their kids. That doesn’t help the mother who has the heart problem. >> Right.

>> So now they’re working on giving them adequate food for the family so that the mother does get what she needs.

And they’ve done it with a program that they’ve perfected over there. And actually, right now, they’re trying it on a very limited basis in Indianapolis to see that if it might become something they could use in the US.

>> Okay.

>> Which is very exciting.

>> Yeah, that is very exciting.

>> And the baby steps in Indianapolis, they’re trying it very limited, but they wanna see if it might work. And there’s a lot of big cities that they could work with.

>> Yeah, that would be really great for Indianapolis, for the entire country, really.

>> Yes, so that’s one of the things that’s coming out of Kenya.

So that’s one of the reasons I wanna see what’s going on.

>> Yeah, I don’t blame you. That’s very exciting, and I’m really glad to hear that we’re making so many improvements and we’re helping so many lives out there.

>> And it’s amazing what some of these students that ended up on the streets, living on the streets, what they’ve been able to teach them.

They also have sent over engineering students from here, and they are helping them build equipment and so on to work in their fields, to do better with planting and so on and anything else that they need, something that’s motorized for. And they’re teaching a trade to some of these young people so that they can have a livelihood.

>> Yeah, it’s fantastic. That’s, again, really great to hear. So I know we’ve talked about Purdue and how Purdue has this reach, really, across the world, which, again, is incredible. You’re both very involved, too, at the Cleveland Clinic Cole Eye Institute?

>> I’m involved.

>> You’re involved?

>> My parents started a chair at the clinic a number of years ago.

We’re currently also funding that chair. The chair is currently held by Dr Peter Kaiser, who just happens to have done some research here at Purdue with one of the researchers on molecular size particles for use in the eye. The Cleveland Clinic is worldwide, they have a big, huge hospital in Dubai.

They have a hospital now in London. They have something in Canada. They have a facility now in, or two or three facilities in Florida, and also one in Las Vegas for brain study.

>> Wow.

>> It’s been announced that Purdue and the Cleveland Clinic are cooperating in a study of ICU treatment to better run ICU doctors and patients using AI.

And it’s a three-year project, which is gonna start, I believe, at the end of this year.

>> I think it’s already started.

>> Wow.

>> It’s now. It was just announced about two weeks ago.

>> Okay.

>> So there’s a Purdue professor leading the Hill’s side of it, and there’s a

researchers from the clinic, they’re doing the ICU work.

>> It’s really exciting.

>> It is. AI is gonna be fantastic.

>> Yeah, especially when used for that, really just helping those patient outcomes. That’s very exciting. There’s no telling how many people we can positively impact with that.

>> We’re also funding some building. They’re doubling the size of the building.

It’s three quarters the way up now. We found that we’re at capacity. We can’t do any more surgeries in a day. And you say, well, how did that happen? Well, the improvements in surgical procedures have been so that they can speed the surgery up faster. And they don’t have enough pre op or post op beds, so they’re doubling those size and then they’ll be able to do twice as many surgeries.

It’s a beautiful facility when they get it done.

>> Yeah, that’s fantastic. I may have to see if Purdue is making any trips to Cleveland I’ll have to travel out there to see it.

>> Well, there’s some Purdue pharmacists and nurses that are working for the clinic.

>> We’re trying to get something going with that, stay tuned.

>> All right, you’ll have to keep me posted.

>> Stay tuned.

>> We liked it we told everybody that Purdue pharmacy nurses, the clinic would hire every single graduate. They’re that big. And what they’ve said is, that Purdue students are ready to land on their feet and make a job.

>> Job ready.

>> To make a job that was worthwhile for everybody.

>> Yeah, that’s fantastic. That would be really fantastic for patients, for healthcare professionals, just everyone involved, especially in the Cleveland area that’s going to be huge.

>> People come from all over to the clinic. It’s amazing.

They come from all over the world. For the eye institute they will come from all over the United States.

>> Wow.

>> Our chair is the chief retinal surgeon, and he’s the managing editor of all of the magazines for retinal surgery and retinal work. He shepherded two drugs through the FDA getting approved for retinal macular degeneration.

>> That’s incredible. That’s amazing.

>> It is.

>> It really is.

>> And you’d be sitting here and you’d never realize it.

>> Right.

>> Well, no. He hasn’t talk to you? He loves Purdue. His kids didn’t go here but he loves Purdue.

>> Well, his son was talking to come back to Purdue to get his master’s or PhD, I think.

>> But, yeah, it’s pretty amazing.

>> Yeah.

>> How did you choose pharmacy and why did you end up at Purdue?

>> Well, my grandmother had been a nurse, she worked in pediatric diabetes at the center in Boston. And when I was little, she used to babysit me.

And while we were babysitting she used to talk about her patients, which probably wasn’t fully her safe, but I really loved walking through these cases and learning about how she was making an impact on kids who at the time felt like they were just like me. Cause I’d be maybe like six years old and she’s telling me about this kid who’s eight, just got diagnosed with type one diabetes.

And I just knew from that point that healthcare was going to be the field I went into. And then in high school I absolutely loved chemistry and from there, I kind of decided that pharmacy had to be the way I went. And then, as for Purdue, during my senior year of high school, I had taken an anatomy class.

The very first day of my senior year, my teacher comes into the room and she says, all right, everybody, want you to write a ten page paper on your future career. I said, that’s gonna be easy because by then I knew I wanted to do pharmacy. She denied my proposal because pharmacy wasn’t specific enough.

I know that’s the face that I made.

>> My.

>> And I said to her, I said, what do you mean, that’s not specific enough? She said that, I need you to write it on a type of pharmacies. I said, that’s fine I know types of pharmacies. You have Walgreens and you have CV’s.

>> My. Okay.

>> I know 17 years old, I did not know the types of pharmacy. So I asked her, I said, well, what are the types of pharmacy then? And she told me, I go home and google it. So I went home, I googled it. Nuclear pharmacy came up on the list and I said, well, you know, at least this one will be interesting to write a ten page paper on.

And then a lot of my sources linked me back to Purdue. I said, is Purdue a real place? Purdue is a very real place I was able to tour it right before the pandemic February, end of February, 2020. So I got this close, and as soon as I went on a tour of campus, as soon as the tour was over, I said, I guess I have to move to Indiana now.

But it’s just clicked for me when I stepped onto campus. I knew by the time I flew back into Boston that I wasn’t going anywhere else for pharmacy school.

>> You were going west.

>> I was going west. Midwest started on the Coast. I didn’t even make it all the way to the other Coast and didn’t even leave the time zone.

>> Which didn’t?

>> I know which. It took my grandmother a minute to figure out that Indiana, at least west Lafayette, is in the same time zone as Rhode island, where the first couple weeks, when I called her, she’d say, what time is it there? Same time as your house grandma.

So it took us a minute to realize that we were still a thousand miles away, but in the same time zone. Yeah. So I talked about my journey to college. Looking back at your years in college, did you ever think that you were going to be sitting here with the Chaney Family Foundation?

Was that ever a consideration for either of you?

>> I don’t think there were foundations.

>> No, there were families. When we were growing up my dad set up the company which was a family company, which I moved into when I graduated from elementary school, so they tell me.

And the company did very well and we started funding the foundation about 18 years ago, and the foundation has done very well and that’s how we’re able to support both the clinic and Purdue. I’ll answer the following question because our son plays pickleball and he’s a semi professional.

In other words, he competes in the national championships in Naples, Florida. The head of corec called us one day and said, we need to talk to you about pickleball courts at Purdue. Pickleball courts need to be built at Purdue. There are 600 students signed up for Pickleball and they have two indoor courts that they have to share.

We’re working on the 20 courts hopefully they’ll be done a year or two years. Probably it’ll be adjacent to corec. They’ll be lit so the students can play all hours, the day and the evening.

>> Part of them will be covered too.

>> We’re working on covering whether that gets done the first year or not, because that’s expensive.

>> Right.

>> This last Naples PC visit, we went and visited the pickleball championship for the world is on a public park and there are 54 courts. They have two courts that are set up for televive Tv and add point Drew Brees has a professional team of pickleball people.

>> I had no idea.

>> It is the biggest sport. That people are going to now over anything else, it’s pickleball. All you need to do is go on Amazon and look and see pickleball equipment, paddles. You can buy nets, you can buy everything and get started with it.

Our doctor from the clinic got into pickleball, and he has a back concrete driveway, so he lined it up so he can play pickleball, and he’s lit.

>> Now maybe I should try pickleball now, I’ve never played. Now you’re selling it.

>> Yes.

>> He’s never played.

>> I’ve never played because of knees and hips and stuff like that.

But talk to Colrac.

>> Yeah.

>> One of their teams just got back from, and I should know that Mike Warren would be who you need to talk to. They just came back with winning first place.

>> Okay.

>> In one of the tournaments.

>> Yeah, I had met him at a meeting a couple weeks ago, actually, and he told us at this meeting.

He was like, I’ve got this huge donor, we’re building all of these pickleball courts, it’s gonna be so excited, I had no idea it was you guys.

>> Well, it’s not all us.

>> It’s not all us.

>> I think he’s working on a crew.

>> He’s working on matching funds, let’s put it that way.

>> Okay.

>> We like to spread the wealth around so we can support a lot of different things at Purdue, because it supports a lot of the Purdue people, the students, the family.

>> Yeah I think that’s so important, and that was one of the big things that drew me to Purdue, was just, I’m from New England.

Were a different kind of nice in New England compared to the Midwest, there’s even just a difference between Midwest niceness and then Purdue. It really is a family, and you really feel that as soon as you step onto campus, it’s one of those things that just keeps on growing.

And that was one of my favorite things about, it still is one of my favorite things about Purdue. So I have one final question for you both today. I like to end these podcast episodes on kind of a funny question. So, if you were to have a holiday, what would it be called, and how would you celebrate it?

>> I’ve got mine.

>> Yeah, you’ve got yours.

>> The Big Ten Pickleball Challenge at Purdue, with each big ten team sending three teams to compete in the challenge, and it would be a holiday for Purdue students.

>> Hey, I will never turn down a holiday for a Purdue student.

>> I’m not sure Meng would buy it, but we’ll see.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay, I would like mine. The name of it would be, do unto others as you want them to do to you. And it would be that day everybody should do one thing in the general medical field to help somebody else.

It could be as easy as going to the grocery store for somebody who is taking care of a patient in their home and they don’t have time to do that. It would be you could go sit with the patient while that person got a little break and got to go to the dentist or the hairdresser or the bank or whatever they needed to do.

It could be, if you knew more about it, if they actually needed somebody to help them with addressing or something. It could be anything, as long as it wove its way back to helping in a medical way.

>> I love that, that’s fantastic. I think we should implement that.

Gotta get started on that as soon as we leave today.

>> Well okay.

>> But thank you both so much for all of your answers and for sharing your stories. I had an incredible time, and I’m really glad that you could both be here today.

>> It was good meeting you.

>> Boiler up, right?

>> Yes.

>> Yeah.