Introduction The Purpose-Driven Student details my credentials and life events leading me to become a Purpose-Driven Student and later a Purpose-Driven Professor at Arizona State University. When I was a teen, it was common practice for young boys to drop out of school to become coal miners. Our schools taught coal mining as the best place for young men to work. I thought school was a waste of time because coal-miners needed little education. During elementary school, my father became ill with a fatal black lung and could no longer work in a coal mine. He opened a small grocery store, about...