When Scruggs arrived at Purdue in 1980, he gravitated toward industrial management because of his multifaceted interests. "It was technical and at the same time very management oriented," he says. "It was well-rounded, and it gave me options."

After breezing through high school, Scruggs experienced academic culture shock in college. Dr. Cornell Bell, director of Krannert’s Business Opportunity Program, helped encourage him through the resulting periods of self-doubt. Scruggs is pragmatic about those times now. "I think there are lessons in all of that," he says. "How do you handle failure? Do you go back and try it again?"

Scruggs persevered and landed an internship with Indiana Bell. After graduation, he rejoined Indiana Bell, which had been folded into one of the Regional Bell Operating Companies when AT&T divested in 1984. Managing the creation of outside plants for new buildings and neighborhoods, Scruggs was promoted into project management, then sales.

In 1998, Scruggs transferred his knowledge of local phone service development to KMC Telecom. "Big companies were now getting funded because of this telecommunications initiative, and they were looking for people who had wide, vast backgrounds in the Bell system," he says. Scruggs eventually was promoted to regional vice president.

Several years later, he hooked up with a network services company, CSS Group. Then in 2002, Scruggs was hired by the City of Fort Wayne as chief technology officer to develop a ubiquitous broadband infrastructure.

Scruggs recently returned to the parent company of his original employer, where he’s helping SBC regain some of the business lost since local phone service was deregulated. Scruggs, a member of the Krannert School Alumni Association board, is grateful to Purdue for the analytical abilities that have helped to amplify his career. "Your thought process is the key, because as technology changes, you’ve got to [have] the ability to process new things," he says.

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