Martin C. Jischke made these comments at the Executive Roundtable Lunch in Indianapolis.

September 27, 2006

Community input vital for determining Purdue's next steps

We had a big day Saturday at Ross-Ade Stadium. Our football team is 4-0 and headed for South Bend on Saturday. This will be a tough one. But Purdue has an exciting young team that is getting better every week.

As Gerry said, this is going to be a unique and very important program today. We are entering the final months of our 6-year strategic plan.

We have accomplished a great deal. Our goal was to transform our university. And I believe that we have.

Now we must begin the process of deciding where we want to go next. You are an essential part of this. Purdue is your university.

Our plans must reflect the needs of this community and our state. These are plans that will ultimately emanate from our Board of Trustees as they determine the next goals for our university.

Before we begin to talk about the future, I’m going to spend a little time this morning bringing you up to date on progress we are making.

Enrollment at our West Lafayette campus this fall is a record 39,228. Included in this number are 7,938 graduate and pharmacy and veterinary medicine students. The undergraduate student population includes 7,815 first-semester freshmen. This is the largest freshman class in our history. And for a very good reason.

More of our students are graduating, and more of them are graduating in four to six years. This opens more places in the freshman class as we maintain the overall size of our campus.

This class is an outstanding freshman class. It includes 205 students who were valedictorians of their graduating high school class. It includes 85 National Merit scholars, more than at any other university in Indiana this fall. Only two Big Ten universities were expected to enroll more.

We are off to a very good start.

When we were drafting our strategic plan, we took what I believe is an essential step in the planning process. We determined what it would cost to accomplish our goals. We carefully reviewed all our revenue streams, including state funding and student fees. We also launched a major capital campaign.

As you know, the goal of the campaign is $1.5 billion. To date we have raised $1.433 billion, and we are quite confident we will reach our goal by next June 30. I want to thank everyone who has helped make this possible.

We have very exciting new partnership to announce today. You will remember that in March of 2004 we announced, right here in Indianapolis, an alliance with the Regenstrief Foundation. This created the Purdue-Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering in the e-Enterprise Center of our Discovery Park.

The Purdue-Regenstrief Center for Health Care Engineering launched in February of 2005. Through this Center, we are bringing the university's core strengths to bear on the public policy issue of health care that ultimately affects every citizen in the nation. Every college at Purdue is involved in Regenstrief activities.

In less than two years, Purdue's Regenstrief Center has established a national reputation for applying engineering principles to give us workable ideas for improving the nation's comprehensive health-care system. It has generated more than $20 million worth of sponsored research. These research projects have focused on improving the safety and efficiency of patient care, providing more efficient deployment of physicians, nurses and other health-care personnel, and better coordinating inpatient and outpatient treatment.

Regenstrief and Indianapolis-based St. Vincent Health, which operates 16 Indiana hospitals, began a strategic partnership in April 2005.

Regenstrief also is collaborating with the Indiana University Medical Group-Primary Care, a practice of 138 IU physicians in 17 clinics that produced more than 500,000 patient visits in 2003.

Today, we are very pleased to announce support for the Regenstrief Center at Purdue is going to the next level.

The Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation is forming a partnership with the Purdue Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering through an investment of $1 million!

This will be used to study how engineering principles can improve the delivery of health care.

This partnership with the Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation will give our researchers at Regenstrief and Discovery Park a window to a global player in the health-benefits industry.

We are confident we will be able to provide answers to the grand challenge of minimizing costs, improving service and re-engineering health-care delivery in America with the help of this partnership.

Speaking for everyone at Purdue and all us in Indiana, we deeply appreciate this investment in the future of healthcare delivery.

The impact of this will be far reaching, indeed. With us today is the president of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Dennis Casey. Thank you very, very much.

We are progressing on our Strategic Plan goals focused on our missions for learning, discovery and engagement.

At the inception of our plans, we actually anticipated about $800 million in new and remodeled facilities. To date we have completed $464 million, with another $181 million in progress and $141 million in the planning stage. This fall, we have opened a new $25 million Biomedical Engineering Building and a $20 million Lawson Computer Science Building.

Our $53 million Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering is under construction and will open next year.

We knew at the beginning of our strategic plans and Campaign for Purdue that we needed to add more full-time faculty. We set our goal at 300. That was very aggressive.

I know of no other university in the nation that is adding 300 faculty positions at this time when states are struggling everywhere to support higher education. I am very pleased to tell you that as of this fall, we have authorized 249 of these positions.

And even more impressive, we have hired people for those 249 positions. They are on campus.

We will complete this important part of our campaign by the fall of 2007. Among our efforts at recruiting and keeping top faculty is the creation of named and distinguished professorships. Eighty-eight new professorships have been funded system-wide as a result of the Campaign for Purdue.

We are progressing toward our goals in other aspects of our strategic plans. Diversity is essential to our learning environment. Since we started our strategic plans, more than half our new faculty hires have been women and minorities.

This year’s freshmen have record diversity due to our African-American, Asian American, Native American and Hispanic American populations.

We are stepping up our engagement efforts with the state of Indiana, which provides our base support. Our technology centers are among the nation’s largest. Our Research Park has established a presence in Indianapolis and northern Indiana to help economic development efforts there. We are working on economic development plans with communities around the state.

The publication University Business has cited Purdue as the top business incubator model in the nation.

We are increasing scholarships and financial aid, to keep Purdue accessible to every qualified student. When all funds are taken into account, including student employment and loan programs, total Purdue student financial aid system-wide last year exceeded $480 million.

Discovery Park continues to be among the most exciting research and learning complexes not only in Indiana but throughout the Midwest.

Six years ago, Discovery Park was an idea. Today, it is a $300 million research and learning complex that is impacting our state and beyond.

Right now in Discovery Park, we have completed or are in the process of building: a $58 million Birck Nanotechnology Center, a $15 million Bindley Bioscience Center, a $12 million e-Enterprise Center, the $25 million Biomedical Engineering Building and a $7 million Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship to help advance our discoveries to the marketplace.

Last week, we broke ground on a $10 million Discovery Learning Center.

Also in Discovery Park we have launched a Center for Advanced Manufacturing and a Purdue Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering.

With a $25 million grant from Lilly Endowment, we have launched four additional centers in Discovery Park: an oncological sciences center, a center for the environment, a cyberinfrastructure center and an energy center.

We are moving rapidly forward in our research mission.

We have more work to do before this Strategic Planning period concludes at the end of this fiscal year, June 30.

So where do we go from here? How do we build on what we have accomplished?

That is why we have gathered here this morning. I invited Gerry Dick to join me to lead this discussion. We need your input.

We are keeping a record of what is being discussed today. All of you will receive a list of these thoughts and recommendations. As we think about our next steps, we should consider several points:

First, how has central Indiana benefited from Purdue?

Second, how can the university partner with central Indiana for gain?

Third, what do the businesses/citizens/young people in central Indiana need from a major research university like Purdue?

Fourth, what can Purdue bring to central Indiana – either physically or virtually?

Fifth, what can Purdue offer on campus that would benefit central Indiana?

Creating plans is an exciting process. We are building the future. I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you.

Related Links:

Jischke requests Indianapolis residents' input on Purdue's future

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation forms $1 million alliance with Regenstrief Center

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