Dr. Walls has influenced hundreds of HR students since starting Indiana Tech’s student chapter in 1993 and has taken a group of students to the SHRM Annual Conference each year since then. But for thousands of SHRM Annual Conference attendees who have seen him and his students throughout the years, he’s the guy with the shirts. Each year, Walls buys loud, colorful Hawaiian shirts for his students to wear on opening day of the conference. “They usually look at them and say, ‘I don’t want to wear that one,’ ” Walls said. But, “the power of the shirt is that it is a door-opener.” Conference attendees who see a large group of students walking toward them in crazy flowered shirts can’t help but stop and ask the students who they are and where they’re from. Vendors in the exhibit hall want to know, “Did you call each other before you got dressed today?” From those simple openings, conversations start and connections are made.  “It is a low-level, unbelievably effective way of networking. For an introvert, it pulls them out of their shells,” Walls said. “Then, on Tuesday or Wednesday of the conference [when the students are in their normal attire], someone will walk up and remember a student from wearing the shirt on Sunday. They stand out from 15,000 other people. Talk about the power of the shirt: For $10, I can guarantee you’ll meet people and that other people will come up to you first.” The SHRM Annual Conference is the “capstone experience” for students, Walls said. “They are transitioning from college life and starting their professional lives. Students get hooked on SHRM and the conference experience, and they perpetuate this membership that carries on afterward. A lifelong learning event is started at that moment.” (Excerpts of this are from the article published by Beth Mirza, senior editor for HR News.)