Welcome to 2024 at Purdue
January 9, 2024
Dear Boilermakers,
After a smooth, successful and strategic 2023, the new year starts with an exciting announcement today: Lilly Endowment Inc. has committed a $100 million philanthropic gift to Purdue, the largest such gift in the history of our university. We are truly grateful for the tremendous support from Lilly Endowment, which has already provided many significant gifts to Purdue prior to this transformational commitment.
The $100 million gift will accelerate and amplify two intersecting initiatives announced last year: the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business and Purdue Computes. Together with Purdue University in Indianapolis — our first comprehensive urban campus, set to open this July — these strategic initiatives will further elevate Purdue’s excellence at scale for our students, faculty, staff and partners.
As announced at the Board of Trustees meeting at the end of last year, we are bringing back, as part of our “ABCD” strategy to serve our state and our country, commercial passenger airline service to the Purdue University Airport, with a new terminal to be named after Amelia Earhart. We are also gathering input from you about pedestrian safety on a campus that will see groundbreakings for many new academic and residential facilities this year; about the use of AI in teaching and learning and agility in offering new courses and credentials; about further investment in master’s and doctoral students, including another increase of the stipend minimum and expansion of the new Presidential Awards in Doctoral Excellence; and about student access and success, including the Business Opportunity Program, Minority Engineering Program and other programs that support success for students from all backgrounds.
Later this year, as we celebrate the Purdue Memorial Union’s centennial, we will unveil the collection of Degas sculptures gifted to us by Avrum Gray (ME’56). And as we continue to bring together this community of scholars and curious minds, we will welcome various speakers in the Presidential Lecture Series, including 2023 Nobel Laureate Moungi Bawendi who studied at West Lafayette Jr/Sr High School.
In 2023, Purdue University was the only university as a leading partner in three out of three national hub competitions (Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen, Silicon Crossroads Microelectronics Commons, Heartland BioWorks). And, as 2024 begins, Purdue remains the home to the No. 1 men’s basketball team in America.
A Happy Boilermaker New Year!
Mung Chiang
President
Roscoe H. George Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Purdue University