A Message From President Daniels
September 2019
Dear Alumni and Friends,
There’s no time quite like the first days of fall semester as students return to campus, classrooms come alive, and Boilermaker sports teams take to the fields and courts.
This fall is, if anything, even more exciting as we wrap up our year-long observation of Purdue’s 150 Years of Giant Leaps, welcome the most students in our history, and introduce another round of innovations and initiatives.
We recently received the news of our continued high rankings from the Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education and from U.S. News & World Report. We hope you’ll share with all of your friends our pride in being named the 7th Best Value institution and among the top 10 publics in the country by WSJ/THE, and the 6th Most Innovative institution by U.S. News & World Report. These rankings, which place us No. 1 in the Big Ten and No. 1 in Indiana on nearly every measure (and just behind Michigan for top public), represent exactly what we intend Purdue to be — always innovative and of the highest value. In addition, individual departments and schools received their own recognition: Agricultural and Biological Engineering is No. 1 for the ninth consecutive year, Industrial Engineering is No. 3, Aeronautics and Astronautics is No. 4, and Civil Engineering is No. 5. The Krannert School of Management’s program in production and operations management ranks No. 4.
This fall, 44,551 undergraduate and graduate students, the most ever, arrived on the West Lafayette campus, and once again our incoming class — 8,056 students — is the most academically well-prepared in our history. More than 17,000 of our undergraduate students are from the state of Indiana, and more than 7,000 are domestic minorities. We’re thrilled to see them all and wish them a great year inside the classroom and out.
Engineering and Polytechnic Gateway launch
Just last week, we announced another transformative grant from our friends at Lilly Endowment Inc., helping us move forward with what we are calling the Engineering and Polytechnic Gateway Complex. With $40 million from the Endowment, $60 million from the state of Indiana, and another $40 million in private gifts, Purdue is ready to seize this moment in educating more of the engineers and technicians our economy needs and continuing to be the largest economic driver of industry, startups and jobs in Indiana. Take a look at this video, which tells the story so well.
Giant Leaps celebration wraps up
Our Giant Leaps 150th celebration, which kicked off at Homecoming last year, will draw to a close during this year’s Homecoming on Oct. 12. We are grateful to all of you who have joined us, either in person or virtually, as we spent a year celebrating the many ways Boilermakers have taken giant leaps to shape the world and will continue to take them over the next century and a half. If you haven’t watched our series of Footprints videos of Boilermakers around the world who are innovative and inspiring, I urge you to do so. If you have seen them, watch again and look for new stories as they are added each week. You won’t be sorry.
This fall’s events are as compelling as any we’ve had. We kicked off the semester with this video; convened a three-day summit on the future of nuclear energy; and welcomed historian and author Walter Isaacson, whose presentation you can view here. Among events still to come:
the Amelia Earhart Aerospace Summit; the Purdue 2050 Conference of the Future; Gina Kolata, discussing “What IF the Next Pandemic is Inevitable”; Dr. Sally Satel, addressing “What IF We Went Beyond a Disease Model of Addiction?”; Condoleezza Rice, the 66th U.S. secretary of state; and our Purdue astronaut reunion – check out the growing calendar at takegiantleaps.com/calendar and join us when you can!
As we finish out this year of outstanding and illuminating programming, we promise to continue to bring renowned speakers to campus to discuss with our own expert faculty and researchers the topics that affect all of us and the world around us.
Other campus news
I hope you have read about the fun we had recently in implementing a new robot food delivery service at Purdue. Media outlets around the country, including CNN, picked up the story as we partnered with Starship Technologies, the world’s leading autonomous delivery service, to offer faculty, staff and students the option of ordering their food from what is essentially a robot cooler that traverses campus. I had the honor of getting the first lunch delivery, and from all early indications, students are loving their new campus neighbors.
Another story that I know has touched all of you over the past year is that of our late inspirational superfan and graduate Tyler Trent. Tyler continues to bring our Purdue family together and we honored his legacy at our first home football game by dedicating the Tyler Trent T2 Gate at Ross-Ade Stadium. Thanks to the generosity of our board chair Mike Berghoff and his company, the gate will serve as a lasting tribute to Tyler and what he brought to all of us. You can watch the video here of the morning ceremony before Purdue students entered the stadium, led by Tyler’s parents, Kelly and Tony.
There’s a lot more going on, and you can head to the Purdue homepage or to our newsroom website to keep up with all that is happening. And for those of you so inclined, please continue to watch and share our great stories on social media so all your friends know about us, too.
We look forward to seeing you on campus this fall.
Boiler Up!
Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr.
President