A Message From President Daniels
November 2020
Dear Boilermaker Alumni and Friends,
It’s November 2020, and the good news is that nearly 50,000 of us are still here in West Lafayette teaching, learning, conducting research and striving to build a better world together. Nothing has been easy about this year — for any of you or for us.
At Purdue, we began early — in April — learning from our medical experts who demonstrated to us the extremely low risk to young people from COVID-19 and provided us the scientific basis for a decision to reopen our campus this fall. Thankfully, that has proven true thus far, and our faculty, staff and students have worked vigilantly and persistently to enable us to continue our important missions during this year.
As we approach the end of our first semester, I thought it time to provide you an update on some things you may have missed over the past months:
First, we welcomed our largest incoming class ever in August — 8,925 first-year students joining their peers for a record enrollment of 46,114 at our West Lafayette campus. This came in a year when college enrollments nationally dropped 4%. Along with our outstanding faculty and staff, these students have embraced our Protect Purdue Pledge, protecting themselves, each other and our community.
More than 200 Protect Purdue ambassadors have helped build the culture of COVID-19 safety among students.
Through a curriculum comprising in-person, hybrid, “hyflex” or fully online learning, we gave our students and faculty a range of instructional options. More than 800 classrooms and instructional labs were de-densified and reconfigured to enable social distancing. We distributed 55,000 wellness kits to students and employees, complete with Purdue-branded face masks, hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes and a digital thermometer, to help keep them safe. In August, we welcomed more than 40,000 students to campus. And for those who could not be on campus for classes, our faculty offered an online option, allowing 4,900 students — 4,600 undergraduates and 300 graduate students — to continue their college experience from wherever they are.
We have delivered a high percentage of in-person instruction this fall, the highest among our peer institutions, but still not at all what we hoped it would be or what our students deserve. So, we are examining how we can expand our in-person offerings for spring, while preserving the online option for those who truly need it.
Protecting Purdue
Ensuring that our students are able to continue their studies, our researchers able to continue their vital work and those who are most vulnerable would be protected was the basis our of our Protect Purdue Plan.
Our dining courts, which offered carryout meals only during the first part of the semester, now offer some socially distanced indoor seating.
We believe Purdue helped show the way for higher education to resume in-person classes successfully and safely when we implemented and executed a comprehensive COVID-19 testing plan for all students ahead of the start of classes. Through an innovative partnership with Vault Health, a company formed by researchers at Rutgers University, we tested 37,959 undergraduate, graduate and professional program students for COVID-19 through an at-home test before they arrived on campus. Provided at no cost to our students, the at-home tests offered an accurate, convenient and fast way to screen for COVID-19. The testing strategy, coordinated largely by our newly formed Protect Purdue Health Center, was effective and encouraging — 272 students tested positive and were therefore intercepted before they could come to campus and infect others.
Each week, we are randomly testing 10% of students and employees on campus for COVID-19, and testing certain employees critical to campus operations weekly, in addition to the open testing offered by the Protect Purdue Health Center at no cost to any student or employee who wants or needs to be tested.
Our robust contact tracing protocols continue to yield useful insights that guide our decision making. We have intervened to address the spikes traced to our congregate housing (fraternities, sororities and co-ops), which consistently has accounted for nearly 60% of our positive cases — not because they’ve violated the pledge, but due to the social interactions inherent in the close-quarters communal nature of the housing itself. We have not had a single transmission of the virus connected to classroom instruction or lab activity, and to date, the 130 employees who have tested positive have contracted the virus through community interaction, not their campus function.
Our seven-day average for the positivity rate reported through the Protect Purdue COVID-19 dashboard ran between 1.5% and 3% the first several weeks then rose along with state and national trends to between 3.5% and 6.3% in recent days, still lower than what Tippecanoe County and the state of Indiana are currently experiencing. We have closed more than 1,700 cases and, thankfully, more than 98% of them have been mild, very mild or asymptomatic.
Our extraordinary students are largely to thank for this public health achievement. One case in point: An informal survey by a young Boilermaker student revealed that 94% of the students he tallied one day this semester were wearing their masks outdoors — an inspiring level of commitment even beyond what is required by the Protect Purdue Pledge.
Thankfully, an overwhelming majority of our students, faculty and staff who have contracted COVID-19 have been asymptomatic or have had very mild symptoms. For those students and staff who have needed to isolate or quarantine, we tapped Purdue Village, whose apartments had been on the demolition list before the pandemic hit. The good news is that so far no more than 10% of the 900 beds available for quarantine or isolation have been needed at any one time.
We begin now to wrap up this first semester — our students will leave just before Thanksgiving with any remaining courses and final exams held virtually. We have encouraged each of them to be tested for COVID-19 either just before they return home or as soon as they arrive, to quarantine as advised by public health officials, and to continue to follow the Protect Purdue Pledge during their winter break. We will test all students once again for COVID-19 before or as soon as they return to campus in January.
Our spring schedule will begin Tuesday, Jan. 19, a week later than usual. To compensate for this later start and to minimize mass travel to and from campus during the semester, we’ve eliminated the typical spring break period. In its place, and at the suggestion of the University Senate’s Educational Policy Committee, we will have three reading days throughout the semester to give faculty and students a brief respite from instruction.
Better Boilermaker days ahead
Our Boilermaker football team has started the season with a 2-0 record for the first time since 2007 and is 2-0 in Big Ten action for the first time since 2010. Their excellent play, even if the majority of us can’t watch it live from our seats at Ross-Ade Stadium, has been a bright spot in this difficult fall.
There are some things to be wistful about, though. Among the casualties of the pandemic are many Boilermaker traditions and social gatherings that remind us why we love Purdue, especially during a season as beautiful as autumn. Many of our traditional fall events have been necessarily reimagined: We now have a Virtual Homecoming, Virtual Old Masters and Virtual Christmas Show.
We hope many of you will be able to join us this week for Giant Leaps @ Home, Purdue’s 2020 Homecoming celebration. There are events throughout the week, including virtual campus tours, an online scavenger hunt and the announcement of the Homecoming Pillars of Excellency winners, concluding with a Saturday night football game against Northwestern at Ross-Ade.
Bell tower turns 25
Hundreds of students, faculty and staff joined the 25th birthday celebration of the Purdue Bell Tower on Oct. 14. As part of the festivities, we dedicated a time capsule to recognize both the bell tower milestone and this historic moment in campus and world history. Students contributed to the capsule by sharing their experiences and submitting messages for future Boilermakers, and we included some other signs of the times such as a COVID-19 test kit, a copy of the Protect Purdue Plan, a virtual commencement box and a letter I drafted for this occasion.
We begin now to wrap up this first semester — our students will leave just before Thanksgiving with any remaining courses and final exams held virtually. We have encouraged each of them to be tested for COVID-19 either just before they return home or as soon as they arrive, to quarantine as advised by public health officials, and to continue to follow the Protect Purdue Pledge during their winter break. We will test all students once again for COVID-19 before or as soon as they return to campus in January.
Our spring schedule will begin Tuesday, Jan. 19, a week later than usual. To compensate for this later start and to minimize mass travel to and from campus during the semester, we’ve eliminated the typical spring break period. In its place, and at the suggestion of the University Senate’s Educational Policy Committee, we will have three reading days throughout the semester to give faculty and students a brief respite from instruction.
Better Boilermaker days ahead
Our Boilermaker football team has started the season with a 2-0 record for the first time since 2007 and is 2-0 in Big Ten action for the first time since 2010. Their excellent play, even if the majority of us can’t watch it live from our seats at Ross-Ade Stadium, has been a bright spot in this difficult fall.
There are some things to be wistful about, though. Among the casualties of the pandemic are many Boilermaker traditions and social gatherings that remind us why we love Purdue, especially during a season as beautiful as autumn. Many of our traditional fall events have been necessarily reimagined: We now have a Virtual Homecoming, Virtual Old Masters and Virtual Christmas Show.
We hope many of you will be able to join us this week for Giant Leaps @ Home, Purdue’s 2020 Homecoming celebration. There are events throughout the week, including virtual campus tours, an online scavenger hunt and the announcement of the Homecoming Pillars of Excellency winners, concluding with a Saturday night football game against Northwestern at Ross-Ade.
Bell tower turns 25
Hundreds of students, faculty and staff joined the 25th birthday celebration of the Purdue Bell Tower on Oct. 14. As part of the festivities, we dedicated a time capsule to recognize both the bell tower milestone and this historic moment in campus and world history. Students contributed to the capsule by sharing their experiences and submitting messages for future Boilermakers, and we included some other signs of the times such as a COVID-19 test kit, a copy of the Protect Purdue Plan, a virtual commencement box and a letter I drafted for this occasion.
It was a fun and fitting way to celebrate a milestone birthday for this gift from the Class of 1948, a monument standing tall at the center of campus symbolizing our persistent pursuit to reach “one brick higher.”
Awards and honors
Purdue was named in September the 5th most innovative school in the country by U.S. News & World Report — a testament to the faculty, staff and students who bring their best every day in our world-changing research, transformative education and engagement with our communities, country and world. In other recent rankings, Purdue was No. 4 on CNBC’s 2020 list of the top public U.S. colleges that pay off the most, and was ranked third in startup creation in an IP Watchdog Institute report.
Congratulations are in order for Regan Bailey, professor of nutrition science, who was elected in October as one of 100 new members of the National Academy of Medicine in recognition of her life-changing research on nutrition and human health.
Regan Bailey, professor of nutrition science and new member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Several of our students have been honored recently with prestigious scholarships:
- Grace Johnson, a junior in the College of Agriculture, is a Udall Scholar, one of only 55 students in the country to receive the award.
- Josiah Gottfried, a junior in the College of Science, has been named a Boren Scholar.
- And three of our students, Maia Clare in the College of Science; Zachary Marshall in the College of Engineering, the Purdue Polytechnic Institute and Honors College; and Lindsey Wilson in the College of Science have received the Astronaut Scholarship from The Astronaut Foundation.
The College of Veterinary Medicine received the 2020 Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, the oldest and largest diversity-focused publication in higher education.
These examples are merely illustrative. Outstanding work goes on at Purdue University each and every day, and I hope you take the time to check out all of our news, stories and research findings when you get the chance.
I hope you all are as proud as I am to be part of this great university in these uncertain and unprecedented times.
Hail Purdue,
Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. President