Empire students with intention and passion

Purdue professors receive the extraordinary early career teaching award for the inspiring commitment to the success of student students

This year's recipient of the extraordinary Early Career Teaching Awards from Purdue will form boiler makers through innovative teaching methods and real projects in the executives of tomorrow that have effect locally and worldwide.

Every spring, the university presents this award to outstanding faculty members with the rank of an assistant or a clinical assistant professor. You will receive a surprising presentation in your classrooms from Purdue Pete, while you are surrounded by students, colleagues and mentors.

Meet the 2025 award winners:

Rebecca Johnson

“Care is a cardiac fan,” says the saying. And it's a Rebecca Johnson knows well.

Every year the clinical assistant professor at Purdue's School of Nursing tries to create a room hundreds of students to learn the history, clinical techniques, commitment to service and compassion in order to be successful in the notorious area.

Johnson wants to trigger a passion for nursing by building innovative, practical teaching experiences, and she has seen the promising results in the feedback of her students.

“I love to see comments that tell me that I took my passion for nursing back and showed them why they did what they did, or it has inspired them to go a different direction that they would not go into before,” says Johnson.

“Because of her, I have a new perspective on nursing,” says student Grayson Hill. “Having them as a clinical instructor was phenomenal.”

Since 2017, Johnson has been working as a faculty consultant and coordinator for water supply in developing countries, an interdisciplinary class for students and doctoral students, where they work with faculty and community partners to deliver safe drinking water and to improve the taps and quality for peribanic residents of the La Vega region in the Dominican Republic.

In recent years, she and your colleagues have also put together the opportunities for the learning opportunities for students to work with the Bauer family resources based in Lafayette for the Bauer family in Bauer to develop health promotion and education for children and their families.

In addition to teaching critical basic nursing courses, one of Johnson's most unique offers are the war influences in health care, in which students interview veterans about their health experiences and have the opportunity to present their results to the veteran project of the congress library.

These examples of their local and global effects and their warmth, selflessness and commitment as an educator and nurse led to their extraordinary Purdue 2025.

For Johnson, the award was a welcome memory of how far she got on her journey.

“I think the most important thing is to understand that without the help of other anywhere else, you will come about whether it is students, mentors or colleagues,” she says.

Johnson's role as a care professional also taught her the value of being aware of the various experiences of everyone, and it is a lesson that asks her to internalize the students when treating patients in a developing area.

“We have to be humble when we go in your room and realize that there is a force difference,” she says. “It is important to ask: 'How do you want to be looked after today?”

Johnson emphasizes the importance of this question, especially since her students work in many different health care, including hospitals, global non -governmental organizations and non -profit organizations.

She encourages her students to explore different career paths. “I always try to tell my students that there are as many different options as they can be,” she says.

Wherever Johnson's students may be, it is always a way to see them in action – especially at clinical locations.

“I tell you that this is the most exciting when we know that we will work together a little,” she says.

Yiwei Huang

Yiwei Huang's energetic passion for teaching the leader of tomorrow is appreciated by students and purdue alike. She gives her students a safe space to dream, make mistakes and grow.

“You can see every time you go to this classroom, that she really takes care of us and want us to do it well,” says student Cameron Tarpey.

In combination with this ethos, the assistance professor for landscape architecture revolves around three pillars: designing (or experimenting), learning and inclusion of the community. And she challenges her students in Purdues College of Agriculture to experience these pillars through real projects.

“Gen Z was born with technology, but they are also the group that wants to change the world,” says Huang.

In order to give her students the opportunity to apply their skills outside the classroom and revive the communities, she has built partnerships with stakeholders in Indianapolis and Chicago, including local schools, parks and purdue's campus planning and architecture unit.

Last year, her class worked with Carmel Clay Parks & Recreation to develop a plan for a new Chinese garden. Your concept was approved and moved to the next phase. Two years ago, Huang's students also designed design ideas to reconstruct the outdoor meeting room for the Westminster Village Senior Living Community in West Lafayette.

In addition, their students had the opportunity to imagine the future of Purdues Campus in 2022 by setting up rainwater management and green infrastructure solutions. Your design of the agricultural machine was recognized by the Campus Rainworks Challenge of the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Huang created these immersive experiences to help students interact with customers, to communicate clearly and to sell their ideas.

“The students always say that the entire commitment process is really an eye opening and inspiring and teaches them new things outside of regular lectures,” she says.

This ingenuity and deep enthusiasm for the trips of their students and their success are among the reasons why Huang won an extraordinary early career lessons 2025.

“Teaching has always been my dream,” she says. The award means a lot for them because it was selected by students and confirms their commitment to the use of designs to redesign city spaces – especially to create high -quality green spaces for communities they need.

“I think we are really a country artist, and we try to bring people closer to nature and create beautiful surroundings outdoors to improve their physical and mental health,” says Huang.

In particular, she appreciates the inclusion with children in K-12 public schools, seniors, women and colored people. Huang believes that its input improves the design approaches. This is also an element that you think about the students and know that they will meet customers with different backgrounds and with different approaches and opinions.

Their main goal is to equip students with the skills and mentoring they need to thrive at Purdue and beyond.

“I always tell my students that if there is a thing that I can teach them that design has made and we can use it to tackle the challenges on site,” says Huang.

“Your homework has a value that can really affect the communities.”