Former Purdue Polytechnic Columbus director Joe Fuehne spent the week of June 27 the same way he’s spent many of his summer days over the years — working with local kids to teach them about robotics and STEM.
However, there was something different as he entered the Advanced Manufacturing Center of Excellence to help with a robotics camp for black and biracial students.
“It feels kind of odd to walk down to the end of the building, where my office was and to look in and to see somebody else’s name on it,” he said.
Fuehne was with Purdue Polytechnic Columbus for 20 years and has served as director for the last decade. He officially retired on May 31 and has not yet heard who will replace him as director of the Columbus/Greensburg area. Tim Doty, Director of Media and Public Relations for Purdue University, said that the college hopes to “have something to share in the next couple of weeks.”
While there’s a strangeness to revisiting the AMCE, Fuehne joked that the upshot is that, “It’s time for somebody else to make decisions, not me.”
Prior working for the school, Fuehne was an engineering analyst. He worked for a company in Houston for about seven years before moving to Arvin Industries.
“I enjoyed my job, but I didn’t feel like it had a whole lot of impact on anything,” said Fuehne. “I was kind of just coming in and doing my work, doing what I needed to do, never got any sense of fulfillment or anything from those jobs. And so, that was what was behind my pretty-much constant search, at that point in time, for an academic job.”
Fuehne was working for Arvin in 2002 when he got the opportunity to teach a night course at Purdue Polytechnic. He’d had an interest in academics ever since earning his Ph.D. in 1990 but hadn’t found the “right opportunity” until then.
He started out as part-time. A semester or two later, he accepted a full-time position.
“I told folks that I got up every day loving my job, because I got to learn something new every day,” he said. “That was my thing. And then I got, of course, the opportunity to have an impact on people.”
When asked what prompted his retirement, Fuehne said that he and his wife, Gail, had both targeted 2022 as a retirement date for a while. They had to wait until they were 59-and-a-half years old to access retirement funds. Additionally, their only son is now 27 and married, with a job at General Electric.
“So he didn’t really need much of us anymore,” said Fuehne. “And, again, my wife has spent about the last seven or eight years with Cummins. And so we were ready to have a break from a full-time job. I think we will both stay involved in some way or other, with the community or maybe with our companies in a part-time role. But I think the whole 40-hour-week thing was — we were done with that.”
Fuehne’s initial plans for retirement include travel. He also hopes to stay involved with the community and science, technology, engineering and math education.
While he may be stepping down as director, Fuehne has fond memories of his time with Purdue Polytechnic.
“This is going to sound cheesy, but it’s really been my honor to work for Purdue for the last 20 years,” he said. “I truly have loved my job, because I could come in every day and learn something new. Obviously, every job has its ups and downs, but generally speaking, it was the best job that I’ve ever had.”
