Biography | Bob Chapek — The Microbiology Degree He Earned on This Campus

People treat Disney chiefs as film-school or business-school products.

Chapek's first credential was a science degree.

Robert Alan Chapek finished a Bachelor of Science in microbiology at Indiana University Bloomington in 1981.

He had come down I-65 from Hammond after graduating from George Rogers Clark High School in 1977.

The Region high school had offered entry-level chemistry, physics, and biology.

On this campus he found classmates trained harder than he had been, and he later told alumni audiences that catching up was his first lesson in grit.

He assumed the degree would lead to a technical bench at a drug firm.

The first job that opened was environmental science at an oil company in Chicago.

The limestone block that housed the microbiology labs was then still called Jordan Hall, at 1001 East Third Street.

The trustees stripped David Starr Jordan's name in 2020 because of Jordan's eugenics work.

The same building is now signed as the Biology Building.

The Sample Gates at Kirkwood Avenue, the postcard entrance, were not here yet.

They were dedicated in 1987, six years after he left.

In 2016 the College of Arts and Sciences gave him its Distinguished Alumni Award on a return visit.

In May 2022 he came back as undergraduate commencement speaker and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.

IU's own archives note that they hold no student-era photographs of him.

The first campus pin is the science building, not the later gates.

Photo: jdfr, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (Sample Gates, built 1987)