Purdue University President Martin C. Jischke made these remarks Saturday (12/18/04) during a meeting of the Purdue University Board of Trustees.

President Jischke's comments to the Board of Trustees

Good morning.

The campus is quiet this morning as we begin our semester break. But there has been a tremendous amount of activity on campus the past several weeks.

And tomorrow will be a very exciting day for many Boilermaker families. In West Lafayette we will be celebrating commencement during two ceremonies on Sunday. Also, on Tuesday, December 21, we will celebrate commencement on our Purdue Calumet campus.

In West Lafayette this weekend there are 3,055 candidates for degrees. Of those candidates, 2,258 are undergraduates. At Purdue Calumet, there are 550 candidates for degrees ranging from associate's to master's degrees.

Congratulations to all of these students.

Commencement is a celebration of success and accomplishing goals. It is truly a happy time not only for our students and their families but for our faculty and staff.

As President of Purdue, I take particular joy in seeing these students fulfill their dreams, knowing they have received among the best educations available anywhere in the world. We now welcome our graduates to their continuing participation in the lifelong Boilermaker family.

We had a very exciting announcement at our Purdue Research Park earlier this month.

Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation announced it has selected New Jersey-based Butler International Incorporated to open a new engineering design center at Purdue Research Park in West Lafayette. This will bring as many as 200 high-tech jobs in the helicopter industry to Indiana by next year, and potentially 500 jobs in three years.

This is the outgrowth of teamwork by state, local and university leaders, using Purdue resources to attract top industry and jobs for Indiana.

Sikorsky, based in Stratford, Conn., is a world leader in the design, manufacture and service of advanced helicopters for commercial, industrial and military uses. Among its better known products are the H-60 "Blackhawk" helicopters. The company also has built and maintained every presidential helicopter since the days of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Butler will perform targeted engineering design in support of Sikorsky's projected growth in domestic and international development. Butler operates three design centers within Indiana, and this new center is anticipated to be the largest.

The location of this high-technology enterprise at Purdue Research Park is an important step for Indiana. It demonstrates that our state is very competitive in the knowledge-based economy. It demonstrates Purdue has what high-technology industry needs today.

Purdue's strengths in engineering, as well as aeronautics and astronautics, will be a major asset to Sikorsky and Butler. They will also benefit enormously from our Research Park, which has been recently designed the number one facility in the nation.

Meanwhile at our Calumet campus the Northwest Indiana Technology Center has opened.

This is the impact of our partnerships with the state, this community and private enterprise. This is the impact of our strategic plans, which are focused on building Purdue into a better university so that we can help Indiana grow into a better, more prosperous state.

In my governance report to the board last month, I talked about the large number of Purdue programs and schools receiving high national and international rankings. I concluded that we would see more national recognition for our progress as we move forward on our plans.

We did not have to wait long.

Three programs in the university's Department of Communication have now been ranked among the top 10 in the United States by the nation's largest communication association.

The department's graduate program was ranked fourth in interpersonal communication. It ranked seventh and eighth respectively in organizational and health communication.

These rankings are from the National Communication Association. They reflect the quality of research in the Department of Communication, as well as how we prepare doctoral students to enter the academic arena or the professional sector.

Purdue's high ranking in health communication program is a first for a university that does not have a medical school.

The program was just formed in 2002. It looks at how interactions among patients, health care providers and the medical industry influence the quality of health care.

The faculty in our health communication program is pursuing interdisciplinary research with other areas such as Purdue's pharmacy, nursing and veterinary programs.

Also, just this week, our landscape architecture program was ranked seventh in the nation in a report released by DesignIntelligence, a monthly publication targeted for design professionals.

This was the first time that the publication had ranked landscape architecture programs in its annual report, called "America's Best Architecture & Design Schools, 2005."

The rankings were based on a survey of professionals in landscape architecture, who were asked to rank programs based on how well graduates of those schools were "prepared for real-world practice" when hired.

Congratulations to everyone in the Department of Communication and landscape architecture for their outstanding work.

I am also very pleased and proud to tell you that Purdue Nuclear Engineering Professor Arden Bement Jr. has been appointed by President Bush as director of the National Science Foundation. This is the very important federal agency that supports fundamental research and education in science and engineering.

Dr. Bement is the 12th director in the history of the National Science Foundation. He had been acting NSF director since February 22 when Purdue alumna Rita Colwell, a 1956 graduate, stepped down as NSF director.

Dr. Bement is on unpaid leave from Purdue's School of Nuclear Engineering.

I believe in addition to his own incredible abilities Dr. Bement’s appointment as NSF director is a testament to the quality of Purdue faculty and the university's strong science and engineering programs.

He is one of the chaired professors we have talked so much about. And his chair carries a pretty good name in the history of Purdue. Dr. Bement is the David A. Ross Distinguished Professor of Nuclear Engineering, named for the great chairman of the board who did so much for this university.

Finally, as you know, our strategic plans focus on our land-grant missions for learning, discovery and engagement. We are working hard to put our research to work helping people, driving economies.

I have some very interesting research news to talk about this morning.

A successful method for healing spinal injuries in dogs has been developed by Purdue researchers, offering hope for preventing human paralysis. And that is an incredible statement.

Lab tests have shown that an injection of a liquid polymer known as polyethylene glycol (PEG), if administered within 72 hours of serious spinal injury, can prevent most dogs from suffering permanent spinal damage. Even when the spine is initially damaged to the point of paralysis, the PEG solution prevents the nerve cells from rupturing irrevocably, enabling them to heal themselves.

Nearly 75 percent of the dogs treated with PEG by Purdue researchers were able to resume a normal life.

This work is being done by a team led by Dr. Richard Borgens, the Mari Hulman George Professor of Applied Neuroscience and director of the Center for Paralysis Research in Purdue's School of Veterinary Medicine. Their research appears in the December issue of the Journal of Neurotrauma.

With the discoveries of Dr. Borgens' research team a new and safe therapy may now be even closer to human trials. Funding for this research has been provided by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the state of Indiana and the Mari Hulman-George Endowment.

We live in exciting age filled with great possibilities.

And this is an exciting time, indeed, to be a Boilermaker.

To the News Service home page