For most engineering and science students, the path after graduation seems clear: corporate labs, tech companies, research institutions. Public service rarely enters the equation. The connection between technical skills and serving communities feels distant, even invisible. Purdue University engineering students Tavon Hill, Janoah Darrow, and Lillian Boyer didn’t see this connection, either, until they became the first students to complete the Innovation for Public Service certificate.

For Tavon, the technical skills he’s developing aren’t abstract. They are directly tied to the inequities he witnessed firsthand. He said that “growing up in South Central Los Angeles, I lived in a historically redlined community, and I’ve done research on what redlining is, how that impacted housing and lower income communities, how it impacted the distribution of resources and wealth in lower income communities.”

Janoah Darrow came to the certificate with different but equally strong convictions. “I’ve always wanted to go into the defense industry, and I had an internship with the Navy the summer before I took this class, and I really enjoyed it,” she says. Her passion for public service was already established, but she needed help understanding the full landscape of opportunities for aspiring engineers.

What these students shared was a gap between passion and pathway. They knew they wanted to make a difference, but the “how” remained out of reach. This is where the certificate makes its most profound impact, because it breaks down the silos that keep technical education separate from public service.

Lillian Boyer describes the revelation many students experience: “I hadn’t known before how I could connect an engineering/STEM degree into a career that helps people, a career that’s more about how we can make change.” The realization transforms how students see their education and future careers. For Lillian, the impact was career-defining. “I don’t know what I would have done career-wise if I didn’t have the certificate. It really let my career bloom and showed me what I really want to come out of my career.”

Janoah echoes this sense of discovery: “The Innovation for Public Service certificate introduced us to so many more career paths and so many more jobs that you wouldn’t even think of applying to or you didn’t think existed.” It’s not just about adding options, but about fundamentally transforming students’ understanding of what’s possible with their engineering education.

The stakes extend beyond individual career satisfaction. As Janoah calls out, “College is preparing you to graduate and go into the workforce. But if you don’t even know what the opportunities are in the workforce, then it’s hard to apply anything that you’ve learned.” Without exposure to public service pathways, students miss opportunities to apply their skills where they’re desperately needed.

It isn’t just the students that miss an opportunity. Our country misses out as well. Tavon highlights that, “There is a lack of an engineering voice in some of these higher places, whether that be local, state, federal … they need more engineers and scientists who are able to speak on problems from their perspective.” Technical expertise shouldn’t be confined to corporate boardrooms. It belongs in public service spaces, too.

The Innovation for Public Service certificate doesn’t just create passion for public service. It builds bridges between the technical skills they’re developing and opportunities to use those skills on problems that matter, showing them that serving the public isn’t a detour from their STEM education, but a worthy chapter to explore.