Purdue announces new Dean of the College of Science and other leadership updates

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – With the Fall 2023 semester set to start Monday (Aug. 21), Purdue University has announced several personnel updates to its leadership team.

I. National Searches

As announced earlier: College of Agriculture and Daniels School of Business Deans

Earlier this summer, new deans were announced for the College of Agriculture and the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business (DSB).

Bernie Engel was selected after a national search as the next Glenn W. Sample Dean of Agriculture, effective July 15. He served Purdue as senior associate dean of agricultural research and graduate education in the College of Agriculture for the past four years, driving graduate student enrollment, scholarly impact and intellectual innovation across the college. Engel earned his PhD in agricultural engineering from Purdue and joined the faculty in 1988.

James “Jim” Bullard was chosen after a national search to lead the continued transformation of the reimagined DSB and started as its inaugural dean on Tuesday (Aug. 15). The longest serving sitting president of Federal Reserve Banks – spending the last 15 years with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis – Bullard is one of the nation’s foremost economists and respected scholar-leaders. His scholarly impact has been based on research-based thinking and intellectual openness to new theories and explanations.

Frederick L. Hovde Dean of the College of Science

Following a national search, Lucy Flesch has been selected the next Frederick L. Hovde Dean of the College of Science. She succeeds Patrick Wolfe, who was appointed in January as provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and diversity. Jean Chmielewski, the Alice Watson Kramer Distinguished Professor of Chemistry in the College of Science, served as interim dean.

Wolfe thanked the search advisory committee, led by chair Richard Kuhn, the Trent and Judith Anderson Distinguished Professor in Science and the Krenicki Family Director of the Purdue Institute of Inflammation, Immunology and Infectious Disease, for its work in reviewing candidates, organizing forums for the finalists and gathering campus feedback on the candidates. The committee narrowed the field to six finalists, all highly qualified and outstanding individuals.

Flesch is currently the senior associate dean for faculty affairs in the College of Science and has served in that leadership position for the past five years. She received the American Geophysical Union’s 2022 Paul G. Silver Award for Outstanding Scientific Service, recognized by the global geology and geophysics community for her tremendous personal dedication and leadership for geodetic, seismic and tectonophysics research initiatives. Her research focuses on understanding how relative tectonic plate motions are accommodated throughout diffusely deforming continental regions where plate tectonic theory breaks down and quantifying the forces involved in driving this deformation.

Flesch joined the Purdue faculty in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences in 2005 and has been a full professor since 2016.

Director of the Purdue Institute for Cancer Research

After a national search, Andrew Mesecar, a Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and the Walther Professor in Cancer Structural Biology, has been named director of the Purdue Institute for Cancer Research (PICR) after serving as its interim director since August 2022, during which the former center transitioned to an institute. 

Mesecar had earlier served as deputy director for the cancer center beginning in 2010 and was department head of biochemistry. He is a leader in basic research on the structure and function of enzymes involved in disease, as well as targeting these enzymes with drugs using structure-based design approaches.

The PICR is among the nation’s leading institutions in cancer-related drug development. The institute’s scientists currently are developing 26 immunotherapies and 37 drugs, including 11 in human clinical trials.

II. Promotions

Senior Vice President and General Counsel,
Vice President and Deputy General Counsel

Steve Schultz has been promoted to senior vice president and general counsel. As Purdue’s chief legal officer, he advises the board of trustees, the president and senior administrators on issues of law, governance and risk management and oversees representation of the university in all legal matters. In addition to developing and leading its internal legal operation since joining Purdue in 2013, Schultz was one of the architects of the Boiler Gold Rush free speech orientation module, which he still moderates each year. Schultz received an undergraduate degree in history and political science from Butler University and law degrees from Yale University and the University of Cambridge (Trinity Hall).

Adrian Allen has been promoted to vice president and deputy general counsel. His primary areas of concentration are construction law, procurement issues, litigation and contract matters, in addition to providing legal and governance support for university financing. Allen, who joined Purdue in 2014, received his JD from Indiana University.

In addition, Monica Bloom has been promoted to associate vice president and senior counsel, human resources and academic affairs, and Jonas Burgett has been promoted to associate vice president and senior counsel, university partnerships and digital education.

Since its inception a decade ago, the Office of Legal Counsel has become an integral component of the Purdue ecosystem, providing essential support to the university’s strategic initiatives while also helping navigate the complex maze of legal and regulatory requirements that apply to its wide-ranging operations. For more than 10 years, Purdue’s in-house attorneys have served as trusted advisors not only to the Board of Trustees, administrators, faculty and staff, but also to the management teams of affiliated organizations such as Purdue Research Foundation, Purdue Global and Purdue Applied Research Institute. The additional title designations announced today reflect the leadership roles played by these attorneys within the university and are consistent with the practices of peer legal offices.

Senior Vice President for Policy Planning

David Reingold has been appointed senior vice president for policy planning, while continuing his current role as the Justin S. Morrill Dean of the College of Liberal Arts.

In his new role, Reingold will report to the president, and will coordinate various stakeholders for Purdue@DC, lead the systemwide civics literacy and freedom of inquiry initiatives, and oversee the longitudinal study on students’ critical thinking that was piloted five years ago.

As Dean of Liberal Arts, Reingold launched Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts, reimagining general education at Purdue. Cornerstone is now being replicated at 60-plus institutions nationally through a National Endowment for the Humanities program. Other key initiatives of his administration include Degree+, which allows students to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree along with their Bachelor of Science degree and complete both in four years; advancing Purdue’s commitment to affordability with the initial Degree in 3 program; Empowering Excellence, a broad program to support faculty research; and a graduate student initiative, which provides a better balance between research and teaching, redistributes resources to allow for more competitive stipends, and better prepares graduate students for professional success.

Vice President for Communications

Julie Rosa has been promoted to vice president for communications. Reporting to Ethan Braden, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Purdue University and Purdue Global, Rosa is a member of the leadership team for Purdue Marketing and Communications. She most recently served as associate vice president for communications and has worked at Purdue in a variety of communications roles since 1993. As vice president for communications, she will continue to lead the teams responsible for media relations, crisis and issues communications, internal and executive communications, working closely with marketing and communications colleagues across the Purdue system and external to the university to position, promote and protect Purdue.

Chief of Staff to Provost and Assistant Vice Provost for Academic Operations

John Gipson has been promoted to the provost’s chief of staff and assistant vice provost for academic operations. In this role, he will serve as a principal aide and advisor to Provost Patrick Wolfe while collaborating with his leadership team, university senior leadership, deans, faculty leaders, directors and others to pursue and support Purdue’s priorities and objectives.

Gipson most recently served as assistant vice provost for innovative educational pathways, following five-plus years as executive director and director of Summer Session, where summer undergraduate enrollment grew by 57.4% under his leadership. Summer Start has served more than 1,000 students, many from underserved backgrounds, and the program received the John N. Gardner Institutional Excellence for Students in Transition Award from the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition in 2020. Gipson also led implementation efforts for the new Winter Session.

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a public research institution with excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top 4 in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, with 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 12 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap, including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the new Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business, and Purdue Computes, at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.

Media contact: Tim Doty, doty2@purdue.edu