PNC Hosts Their First Homecoming

Who says you need a football team to have a Homecoming celebration? Not Purdue North Central. Here they are, thinking outside the box and having a great time doing so. Friday night was Purdue North Central’s first annual Homecoming Event, and what a party it was!

Things kicked off at 6pm on the Westville campus grounds. Current students, alumni, professors, friends and family gathered there, sporting their Purdue memorabilia and toting blankets and lawn chairs in preparation for the evenings festivities.

Melissa Westphal Benefiel, Director of Development for PNC was there enjoying herself along with her other staff members.

“This is the fist time we’ve ever had a homecoming. And the goal is to bring alumni back to campus and to have family-friendly activities so that the community could attend as well,” Westphal Benefiel said.

Well, it worked. This writer is a PNC alumna and I covered the event.

PNC hopes to make this an annual tradition that will continue for many years and bring back many alumni to campus and show the school’s spirit and positivity. It was an event that was the brainchild of the PNC Alumni Association.

“Our goal within the Alumni Association is to connect the students with the alumni,” Mark Zimmerman, President of the PNC Alumni Association and Human Resources Coordinator at Porter-Starke Services, Inc. “And we thought that this would be a great opportunity to bring the alumni back to campus and also have an event for the students…it took about five or six months to plan…and we wanted to give the alumni something to come home to.”

There were plenty of reasons to come out that evening. There was a live band; great food from vendors like Hungry Inc., The Country Griller, as well as others; games and other activities for all ages. And the celebration was brought to a close with an awesome fireworks display provided by BaddaBoom Fireworks (hence the reason for the blankets and lawn chairs) that was set to well-chosen songs by Queen and AC/DC.

The event was free and open to the public and everyone who attended left happy. I’d say that this event was an excellent start to the school year and a great memory for the students –current and past- to keep with them.

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Click here to find out more about Purdue North Central.

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Written by Caitlin Vanlaningham