Purple Community Football Game Raises $11K for Van Andel Institute

The annual Hope College Athletics Purple Community game program raised $11,211.75 for the Van Andel Institute earlier this month.

The event during the Oct. 5 football game at Ray and Sue Smith Stadium will allow the college to fund two student interns to work this summer at VAI in Grand Rapids.

Purple Community, VAI's grassroots fundraising and awareness program, connects individuals, schools, teams and businesses to the resources needed to support the organization's groundbreaking cancer and Parkinson's disease research.

Since 2009, Hope College Athletics has hosted Purple Community programs at football, basketball and soccer games and raised more than $100,000 for VAI.

During halftime on Oct. 5, Hope students Emma Rudisel and Brianna Couturier were recognized as the college's most recent VAI interns, along with Michelle Love, the VAI program administrator for the organization's undergraduate research internship program.

Both student internships were funded by money raised at Hope College Purple Community games in the past.

The goal of VAI's Undergraduate Internship Program is to expose aspiring researchers to exciting advances in biomedical sciences that will help define their career paths.

Summer interns at VAI gain a wealth of hands-on research experience during their time in the Institute's labs. They play key roles in the day-to-day operations of the lab and have the opportunity to work closely with and learn from the various people working in a lab.

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