Dear President Daniels and Dean Lundstrom,
We, the leadership of AAUP Purdue (Purdue chapter of the American Association of University Professors) welcome the opportunity presented by the two open leadership positions at the helm of the University and our College of Engineering. While we understand the desire for an efficient leadership transition, we urge you as President and Dean, together with the Board of Trustees and other stakeholders you’ve brought into the process, to invest adequate time and consideration in listening and evaluating all relevant viewpoints to ensure the best possible outcomes.
Dear President Daniels and Dean Lundstrom,
We, the leadership of AAUP Purdue (Purdue chapter of the American Association of University Professors) welcome the opportunity presented by the two open leadership positions at the helm of the University and our College of Engineering. While we understand the desire for an efficient leadership transition, we urge you as President and Dean, together with the Board of Trustees and other stakeholders you’ve brought into the process, to invest adequate time and consideration to listening to and evaluating all relevant viewpoints to ensure the best possible outcomes.
Over the past few years, leadership decisions have been hastily made behind closed doors, but these selections have ultimately disrupted student learning and negatively impacted the ability of faculty and staff to do their jobs. Purdue made national news as setting “a new precedent for opacity.” The processes ignored the Purdue community’s recommendations, and the leaders appointed through this process were more focused on elevating Purdue’s brand rather than supporting the college or university’s actual success. We saw that this kind of process doesn’t serve Purdue long-term, despite hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in retention packages. Moreover, the rapid turnover and overly long interim appointments, after newly appointed leaders move on to positions outside the university, distracts the campus community from our land-grant mission.
We strongly recommend there be faculty representation on the presidential and engineering dean search committees and in decisionmaking as Purdue selects its next leaders. This representation should be publicly communicated and broad in terms of college or school, rank, and both contingent and non-contingent faculty. This representation should be broader than the limited “distinguished faculty members, student bodies … all the deans …” who the Board of Trustees has already selectively talked to. We recommend a return to the productive, collaborative relationship between Purdue leadership and AAUP (e.g., a reality throughout the 1980s).
Our next Purdue President and Dean of Engineering should be selected by search committees that include representatives with obligations to Purdue’s students. We as Purdue need to think differently if we want a different outcome.
Our AAUP principles of shared governance and academic freedom, simply put, mean we want search committees consisting of a wide range of Purdue community members – not just including us faculty – who are responsible and accountable to the public. Dissenting voices must be heard when such an important decision is made so that any major concerns can be vetted before new leaders are selected, and critical dialogue is necessary for the strength of the university. AAUP represents anyone in a teaching role, including graduate student teaching assistants, lecturers, and others who interact with Purdue students most often.
The Board of Trustees shared a survey that allowed anyone in the community to weigh in on this transition. While we welcome this move towards greater inclusion in leadership selection, concerns we raised back in May remain. The implementation of this survey has been neither transparent nor systematic, nor is it clear how the survey responses will factor into decision-making. Both the survey itself and its distribution were rushed; it was sent during the summer when the majority of campus is away, occupied with other priorities, and not being paid.
What limited data that are available (from external reporting) showing initial results to the survey indicate desires for leadership to meet basic criteria, ones which we would consider at most minimal standards for such high-level positions, such as financial fluency, AI literacy, and athletics acumen. We note that just 2,000 responses have been registered from our combined campus populations of over 100,000 students and 10,000 faculty, not to mention the countless alumni and community members, on a survey that is anonymous, subject to misuse, and devoid of relevant indicators to ensure adequate representation from all key groups at Purdue.
As experienced faculty, researchers, educators, and members of the Purdue community and citizens of the state of Indiana, we know that Purdue deserves better.
There is no reference to affordable campus housing, course enrollments, frequently changing teaching requirements, state legislation, and other issues we know our students and teachers are concerned about. Survey data have been hastily outsourced to AI to analyze. We’ve been promised presidential search updates throughout the process on the main search site, although no updates have been posted since the initial announcement the week after the 4th of July holiday.
As the people fulfilling the land-grant mission of the university by teaching Purdue’s students, we are fundamentally concerned with the QUALITY of our students’ education. It’s our job to know the nuances of what students need and how to ensure faculty can foster their success. It is not clear whether search committees are even working with you and your Board/Cabinets right now, which is concerning since you may not have the data you need. See for example Professors Hummels and Akridge’s article in the Chronicle of Education, where they point out that folks not in the trenches of teaching don’t know the vital behind-the-scenes issues that make or break student learning.
President Daniels and Dean Lundstrom, you’ve both been at Purdue a while. You hired many of us, charging us to be the ones directly teaching Purdue students every day and trusting us to be most suited to know what Purdue students need. We’d like to honor that commitment and help find your successors.
As AAUP, we’ve been willing to point out publicly what the vast majority of our colleagues say privately, including where our own leadership is falling short, even if it’s uncomfortable. At the same time, we stand up for Purdue against external forces (e.g., working hand in hand with the faculty senate and other Purdue bodies, as well as Big10 colleagues the previous year), working to make sure Purdue stays true to its land-grant mission, productive, and competitive.
Looking at the recent COACHE results, the biggest flashing red light is instructors’ perception of Senior Leadership, which has plummeted in the last three years and now sits in the bottom bucket compared to other universities who took this same survey. Addressing those results is one of AAUP Purdue’s top priorities for this year.
As we see strong grassroots pushback in other areas of our community, whether overwhelming opposition to data centers or Flock camera surveillance, so also our university leadership in crisis needs to hear what the whole community is actually thinking. President Daniels and Dean Lundstrom, you have an opportunity for an immediate win on this front, showing your faculty that you are eager to roll up your sleeves and tackle this challenge.
We look forward to working together to select the right next leaders deserving of the progress you have made. We can build back one brick higher!
AAUP Executive Committee
We strongly recommend there be faculty representation on the presidential and engineering dean search committees and in decisionmaking as Purdue selects its next leaders. This representation should be publicly communicated and broad in terms of college or school, rank, and both contingent and non-contingent faculty. This representation should be broader than the limited “distinguished faculty members, student bodies … all the deans …” who the Board of Trustees has already selectively talked to. We recommend a return to the productive, collaborative relationship between Purdue leadership and AAUP (e.g., a reality throughout the 1980s).
Our next Purdue President and Dean of Engineering should be selected by search committees that include representatives with obligations to Purdue’s students. We as Purdue need to think differently if we want a different outcome.
Our AAUP principles of shared governance and academic freedom, simply put, mean we want search committees consisting of a wide range of Purdue community members – not just including us faculty – who are responsible and accountable to the public. Dissenting voices must be heard when such an important decision is made so that any major concerns can be vetted before new leaders are selected, and critical dialogue is necessary for the strength of the university. AAUP represents anyone in a teaching role, including graduate student teaching assistants, lecturers, and others who interact with Purdue students most often.
The Board of Trustees shared a survey that allowed anyone in the community to weigh in on this transition. While we welcome this move towards greater inclusion in leadership selection, concerns we raised back in May remain. The implementation of this survey has been neither transparent nor systematic, nor is it clear how the survey responses will factor into decision-making. Both the survey itself and its distribution were rushed; it was sent during the summer when the majority of campus is away, occupied with other priorities, and not being paid.
What limited data that are available (from external reporting) showing initial results to the survey indicate desires for leadership to meet basic criteria, ones which we would consider at most minimal standards for such high-level positions, such as financial fluency, AI literacy, and athletics acumen. We note that just 2,000 responses have been registered from our combined campus populations of over 100,000 students and 10,000 faculty, not to mention the countless alumni and community members, on a survey that is anonymous, subject to misuse, and devoid of relevant indicators to ensure adequate representation from all key groups at Purdue.
As experienced faculty, researchers, educators, and members of the Purdue community and citizens of the state of Indiana, we know that Purdue deserves better.
There is no reference to affordable campus housing, course enrollments, frequently changing teaching requirements, state legislation, and other issues we know our students and teachers are concerned about. Survey data have been hastily outsourced to AI to analyze. We’ve been promised presidential search updates throughout the process on the main search site, although no updates have been posted since the initial announcement the week after the 4th of July holiday.
As the people fulfilling the land-grant mission of the university by teaching Purdue’s students, we are fundamentally concerned with the QUALITY of our students’ education. It’s our job to know the nuances of what students need and how to ensure faculty can foster their success. It is not clear whether search committees are even working with you and your Board/Cabinets right now, which is concerning since you may not have the data you need. See for example Professors Hummels and Akridge’s article in the Chronicle of Education, where they point out that folks not in the trenches of teaching don’t know the vital behind-the-scenes issues that make or break student learning.
President Daniels and Dean Lundstrom, you’ve both been at Purdue a while. You hired many of us, charging us to be the ones directly teaching Purdue students every day and trusting us to be most suited to know what Purdue students need. We’d like to honor that commitment and help find your successors.
As AAUP, we’ve been willing to point out publicly what the vast majority of our colleagues say privately, including where our own leadership is falling short, even if it’s uncomfortable. At the same time, we stand up for Purdue against external forces (e.g., working hand in hand with the faculty senate and other Purdue bodies, as well as Big10 colleagues the previous year), working to make sure Purdue stays true to its land-grant mission, productive, and competitive.
Looking at the recent COACHE results, the biggest flashing red light is instructors’ perception of Senior Leadership, which has plummeted in the last three years and now sits in the bottom bucket compared to other universities who took this same survey. Addressing those results is one of AAUP Purdue’s top priorities for this year.
As we see strong grassroots pushback in other areas of our community, whether overwhelming opposition to data centers or Flock camera surveillance, so also our university leadership in crisis needs to hear what the whole community is actually thinking. President Daniels and Dean Lundstrom, you have an opportunity for an immediate win on this front, showing your faculty that you are eager to roll up your sleeves and tackle this challenge.
We look forward to working together to select the right next leaders deserving of the progress you have made. We can build back one brick higher!
AAUP Executive Committee
President: Stephanie Masta
Vice president: Position Open
Secretary: Temi Adeoye Olenloa
Treasurer: Jennifer DeBoer
Member-at-large: Reed Kurtz
Immediate past president: Erin Moodie