Podcast Ep. 74: President Mung Chiang on Becoming Purdue’s 13th President, Boilermaker Persistence and Family

President Mung

In this special episode of “This Is Purdue,” we’re talking to the 13th president of Purdue University, Mung Chiang.

Listen in as President Chiang discusses the day he learned he would become president of what he calls “the most consequential public university in the U.S.” He also shares stories of Boilermaker persistence and humility and why the college experience should be both transformative and fun.

Plus, he shares more about his family life (the Chiangs will be the first Purdue family to live in Westwood Manor with young children), hobbies, and the best spot in West Lafayette to grab his favorite sweet treat – ice cream.

President Chiang, who officially became Purdue’s president on Jan. 1, 2023, is also the Roscoe H. George Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

You don’t want to miss this chance to get to know Purdue’s new president on a more personal level!

Full Podcast Episode Transcript

Mung Chiang:

Hello, everyone. This is Mung Chiang, President of Purdue University, and you are listening to This is Purdue podcast.

Kate Young:

Hi, I’m Kate Young, and you are listening to This is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking who are the next game-changers, difference-makers, ceiling-breakers, innovators? Who are these Boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty, and alumni taking small steps toward their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same.

Mung Chiang:

It truly is the most humbling and the highest honor that anyone, I think, in academia could imagine, because Purdue is not any other university. This is a special place.

Michael Berghoff:

We now have a very important announcement. It starts with telling you that the board is here to elect the dean of our College of Engineering, Dean Mung, the next president of Purdue University. I’d be pleased to entertain the motion that Mung Chiang be nominated for election as the 13th president of Purdue University to succeed Mitchell E. Daniels upon his resignation becoming effective January 1st, 2023. May I have a motion and second, please?

Group:

Second.

Michael Berghoff:

It’s been moved and seconded. All those in favor, say aye.

Group:

Aye.

Michael Berghoff:

It’s unanimous. The motion carries. Congratulations, Dr. Mung.

Kate Young:

That was the Purdue Board of Trustees Chairman Michael Bergoff announcing the board’s unanimous election of Dr. Mung Chiang as the university’s next president on June 10th, 2022. And on January 1st, 2023, President Chiang, who previously served as the John A. Edwards Dean of Engineering and Executive Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at Purdue, took over for former president Mitch Daniels. In December, we had the honor of sitting down with President Chiang on This is Purdue at Fowler Hall.

We hit a number of topics, including the day he found out he would become the next president of Purdue University, his family life and hobbies, and the best spot in West Lafayette to grab his favorite sweet treat, ice cream. And spoiler alert, as you’ll learn, President Chiang has a passion for ice cream. We also discussed the meaning behind that special Boilermaker persistence and humility, and why the college experience should be both transformative and fun.

This episode is a wonderful chance for all of our listeners to hear more about President Chiang’s goals for the university, what he is looking forward to most in his first semester leading Purdue, and most importantly, we get to know him on a more personal level. Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us on This is Purdue. I know all of our listeners are thrilled. We’re thrilled to have you on the show, too. But let’s start at the beginning. How did you first find out about Purdue?

Mung Chiang:

Well, thank you, Kate, for the opportunity. A delight to be here. Been a big fan of the podcast series you put together for us.

Kate Young:

Thank you.

Mung Chiang:

Great to be able to be on your podcast.

Kate Young:

Yes, a special guest.

Mung Chiang:

Well, all your guests are very special.

Kate Young:

That is true.

Mung Chiang:

Katie asked, how did I first learn about Purdue? Actually, I’ve heard about Purdue as an engineering student a long, long time. Been a long-time admirer of Purdue as an outstanding institution, so I can’t even remember when, but probably when I was a teenager. I’ve already been an admirer of Purdue, both its STEM engineering talent, but also as a wonderful place to live.

Kate Young:

Before coming to Purdue, President Chiang earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics and a Master of Science and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. President Chiang went on to teach at Princeton University as the Arthur La Grande Professor of Electrical Engineering and was recognized for a number of innovations in teaching. He was also the first chairman of Princeton’s Entrepreneurial Council. In July 2017, he was named Dean of the College of Engineering at Purdue. President Chiang tells us more about his journey to Purdue.

Mung Chiang:

I was the professor at Princeton University in New Jersey for 14 years, and then this remarkable opportunity came up in that the College of Engineering’s deanship was open and I applied. And well, I was the very lucky, blessed person to be chosen, so that’s how that got started back five and a half years ago.

Kate Young:

And you mentioned Stanford, Princeton. You’ve experienced all of these Ivy League schools. What makes Purdue so unique in your eyes after having experiences with those types of schools?

Mung Chiang:

Well, first of all, the Ivy League is just a particular term. I think what really matters is you look at each institution’s very special and unique DNA, if you will. I had all my degrees in engineering from Stanford and I worked, as mentioned, 14 years as faculty at Princeton. I would say that every institution has its own unique flavor. There’s no right or wrong, no comparison per se, but Purdue is very special in many ways.

I’ll just give you one example. Purdue provides a place where students come in, and when they depart, there’s a big delta. We have many students who do not come from positions of privilege and they come here, they study hard, and then their lives are transformed. So that is something very special, and we do it at such a scale of 50,000 students just on West Lafayette campus alone today, 38,000 undergrad, 12,000 master PhD students. So to have this scale and for each individual life be able to transform through the power of public education, that is something very special about this land-grant institution.

Kate Young:

Absolutely. We touched on it a little bit, but when you think about that Boilermaker community, you just talked about all these people, the faculty, the staff, the students, the alumni.

Mung Chiang:

Yes.

Kate Young:

What does all of that mean to you?

Mung Chiang:

These are very powerful combinations of talents. Each one of them that I have had the pleasure to meet, the students, faculty, staff, alumni, partners, and neighbors even, they are creative, they’re dedicated, and they’re humble. That humility, intrinsic here among the Boilermakers. We work hard, but also we don’t whine, we don’t brag about how hard we’ve worked and we get things done, and yet we remain ever true to that principle of humility. That is, again, something very unique here.

Kate Young:

That’s definitely something, a theme that we keep hearing on this show is the humble, the humility.

Mung Chiang:

Yes.

Kate Young:

In a University Business article by Chris Burt in June 2022, President Chiang said, quote, “There is no other university leader like ours. President Daniels and the outstanding team built Purdue into the most consequential public university in the United States.” I asked President Chiang what he meant by that term consequential.

Mung Chiang:

There are all kinds of rankings out there, and one can argue about which one is better and which is less noisy or partial, but this is different. I’m not talking about any particular ranking per se. Most consequential in my mind means that if this institution, this university were to suddenly disappear tomorrow morning, would anyone notice? Would anyone care, unless you are employee or students? Well, I would say that on that scale, if this institution were not to exist suddenly tomorrow, the whole world will notice and the whole world will care and it will be an irreplaceable loss to America and to humanity.

Look at what we have been able to do under President Daniels’ decade of leadership in terms of affordability, in terms of economic growth for our home state, Indiana, and the country in terms of national security, economic security, in terms of creating talents and jobs and knowledge all at the same time. And in terms of, of course, all the typical academic metrics and the physical transformation of our campus and our neighborhood. If you think about what this country needs in terms of talent and knowledge and creation of opportunities for everyone, Purdue has been standing out as most consequential university.

Kate Young:

That’s interesting. I like the way that you put that. It’s certainly true.

Mung Chiang:

Well, I’m perhaps biased, Kate. Maybe you are as well as a Boilermaker.

Kate Young:

I believe I am, too.

Mung Chiang:

Ah, but I do believe that Purdue is today the most consequential, irreplaceable public university in America.

Kate Young:

Absolutely. In that same University Business article, President Chiang praised former Purdue University president Mitch Daniels, saying, quote, “Mitch is the most innovative president in America; affordability through tuition freeze, 21st century land-grant through Purdue Global, and economic growth in Indiana through entrepreneurship and the Discovery Park District in West Lafayette.” I asked President Chiang about some of his mentors throughout his life, and it’s no surprise that former President Daniels was on his list.

Mung Chiang:

Well, frankly, it’s all about the teams and it’s all about the mentors, and I’ve had many outstanding mentors throughout my career, my life, including President Mitch Daniels, and I’ll just highlight my two PhD co-advisors when I was a PhD student at Stanford, Tom Cover and Stephen Boyd. Tom unfortunately passed away and Stephen’s still active as a professor there in electrical engineering.

They really taught me not only how to learn and how to create knowledge, how to do research and teaching, but also they made it fun. When I think about the time I spent as a student taking their classes and working on papers with them, all the many hours and sweat that we put in there, all the frustration, but also all the fun, it reminds me that dissemination and creation of knowledge is supposed to be fun.

Kate Young:

I think that’s true here too, right? You have Purdue has this reputation and there’s STEM and there’s all these strong things, but then at the end of the day, there’s also a lot of fun happening here.

Mung Chiang:

Oh, absolutely. Fun in classrooms and labs, in BIDC, the student design center, in the student clubs and activities, and fun also in athletics and student life. Yes, college life’s supposed to be a transformation of oneself.

Kate Young:

Sure.

Mung Chiang:

It’s not just about what we cover, but how much we uncover together, how much each person uncovers about oneself and about world around us. So that process of learning should always remain fun. Maybe not every single minute of it.

Kate Young:

Right.

Mung Chiang:

There’s always the final exam time.

Kate Young:

Right.

Mung Chiang:

But you asked me about the mentors. I’ll think of my co-advisors back when I was a student having a major influence to me intellectually, but most importantly, always reminding me through their own deeds and actions that research and learning is fun.

Kate Young:

During President Chiang’s time leading the College of Engineering at Purdue, the college landed its first back-to-back top four graduate ranking in the US. It also grew to be the largest top 10 undergraduate engineering college in the country. Undergraduate admissions selectivity, yield rate, and graduation rate, as well as women and minority enrollment percentages all achieved new record and online program size more than quadrupled, while the ranking advanced to top three in the US. New degrees were launched and professional master’s enrollment more than quadrupled as well. President Chiang explains how he was able to reach these milestones during his time as the John A. Edwardson Dean of Engineering.

Mung Chiang:

I started thinking that this is a tremendous honor, and when I got here, my appreciation for Purdue, at that time, the College of Engineering in particular, deepened even further. It’s just remarkable. Every morning, I will wake up and in my email inbox… Yes, I still do use emails. I know not everybody does that. Some ask me, “What is email? Well, what app should I download for that and how do I sign up?” Well, I look at my email inbox, Kate, and I’m bombarded by another award won by our colleague, another new course introduced online by our professors, another student club created by our students, and another lab and a research article highly cited, another invention commercialized.

It is just constant joy to be a cheerleader, if you will, and to be there to help accelerate and amplify other people’s success and to celebrate other people’s success. You just mentioned, how did Purdue engineering update? In many ways, towards many milestones in the pinnacle of excellence at scale, really is not a reflection of what I did. It’s a reflection of what many other people did, our professors, students, staff, and how our alumni helped us.

Kate Young:

See, there’s that Purdue humbleness coming in right now.

Mung Chiang:

Well, no, I’m just telling you the fact. I’m reporting back to you, Kate, exactly what happened. Oftentimes, I had no clue how that happened, but I said, “Oh, great. Let’s throw another party celebrating this big NSF award.” I was notified after the fact, but I’m just so privileged and humbled to be able to be there to help celebrate so many wonderful successes. And of course, it is not just within one college. It truly is across all the colleges, all the units, and all aspects of this remarkable university.

Kate Young:

My next question for President Chiang was one of the questions I was most excited to ask. Oftentimes, our Boilermakers on this podcast have a specific moment or special story that really resonates with our listeners, and this moment, the moment he was announced as the 13th president of Purdue University is no exception.

Okay, so I want to take you back to a day that was probably a big day, a big moment for you when you were announced president of Purdue University. What were you feeling?

Mung Chiang:

Well, excited, grateful, and very honored. It truly is the most humbling and the highest honor that anyone, I think, in academia could imagine, because Purdue is not any other university. This is a special place, and because after the Board of Trustees’ unanimous vote, it just dawned on me the kind of responsibility that not just myself but the whole team will continue to bear in order to advance this place. For 153 years now, coming 154 years in this place, generations of Boilermakers, starting here on the Wabash and going all the way out to the surface of the moon, so many Boilermakers have been ever grateful, ever true to this special place, yourself included in doing this podcast now with us.

Kate Young:

Right.

Mung Chiang:

Each generation must carry on, as we will say, one brick higher, because it’s already so high. The next brick higher is going to be even more challenging, but I’m so confident that together, we will be able to excel and scale, and together, we’ll be innovating continuously into the future even when there are substantial changes coming our way as always, one could argue, to American higher education landscape.

Kate Young:

Is there a particular moment from that day that you remember best?

Mung Chiang:

Well, I’ll tell you that I went home and told my children. My wife and I have three lovely children, and our eldest, the daughter, she insisted that it was a beautiful mistake.

Kate Young:

She didn’t have any faith in her dad?

Mung Chiang:

Well, you have to ask her that.

Kate Young:

Okay.

Mung Chiang:

But I’m just so glad that the Board of Trustees did not have to listen to her, unlike me.

Kate Young:

She was not part of the vote.

Mung Chiang:

No. But our middle one, he was relieved and excited that we’re going to stay in Indiana, and the younger one, she was only six at that time, just turned seven, and I think she on that day decided that Daddy’s cool again.

Kate Young:

That’s the goals, right?

Mung Chiang:

Well, yes, that is. That’s the pinnacle of excellence as a father.

Kate Young:

Right. How do you prepare for a role like this? I mean, you’ve kind of been preparing for this probably your whole life.

Mung Chiang:

Well, I’m not sure about whole life, but I’ve been eating ice cream my whole life, though. But I’ll say that the listening is always very helpful. I’m here to serve others, so it’s useful to start by listening to them, to the people that I am supposed to serve. And of course, I’m no stranger to Indiana or to Purdue University. I’ve been here for five and a half years already, including one and a half years as Executive Vice President for Strategic Initiatives. That covers campus-wide activities as well.

But still, there’s always something new that I can learn from my fellow Boilermakers. So past the five and six month as pledged, I have started a series of listening sessions, many, many sessions with faculty colleagues, with students and staff, open door office hours to brainstorm with them and get to know them better each individually, and many hours touring the state of Indiana. I intend to cover all 92 counties by the end of summer, end of the fiscal year.

Kate Young:

Wow.

Mung Chiang:

I’ve covered, I think, about 40 counties up to this point, including the two regional campuses, including Indie, including for the global as well. And then there are some institutional-level, unit-by-unit debriefing sessions. I know a lot of them very well already, but this is another chance to reinforce my learning and gathering with alumni both in the US, for example, in Silicon Valley, as well as outside, for example, in India, in South Korea, with Governor Holcomb as well, and visiting our industry partners, for example, in Sweden.

So it’s been very busy. I have to tell you that initially, I thought on the brink of unemployment for six months, but it turns out to be pretty interesting. I get to learn a lot and I didn’t have to make decisions. I guess I can get used to getting paid for not making decisions. That’s coming to an end, but it’s been very fruitful listening sessions, and the listening part is not going to end. That’s the best way to prepare for a job like this.

Kate Young:

I’m sure you’ve learned many things throughout these listening sessions. Did that help contribute to your goals for the next year?

Mung Chiang:

Yes, absolutely. Each conversation added some insight. Not all of the recommendations are in agreement with each other.

Kate Young:

Sure.

Mung Chiang:

Logically, it is not possible to agree to all of them, because many of them are in direct contradiction to each other. I’ve had listening session where in the same session, two professors held completely different viewpoints and they had a healthy debate, which is fantastic, as we have this range of heterogeneous opinions and we encourage them to express themselves. But I’ll say that first of all, there is the Board of Trustees passed under President Daniels the Purdue’s Next Moves with the five pillars, with Transformative Education 2.0, Equity Task Force, the National Security Technology pillar, the Plant Science and Digital Forestry pillar, and the Purdue Applied Research Institute, PARI pillar. Those five pillars under Purdue’s Next Moves will continue, and in the spirit of continuity, also our new School of Business and our new independent campus in Indianapolis, for all of these are truly exciting opportunities for all of us.

Kate Young:

In President Chiang’s statement, after he was announced president at the June 2022 Board of Trustees meeting, he said, quote, “The amazing success of the Daniels decade must continue.” And we already know former President Daniels served as a great leader and mentor for President Chiang, so how does it feel for him to take over this iconic university after this iconic president?

Mung Chiang:

Incredibly large shoes to fill, and if you think about President Daniels, as in my mind, a most innovative university president in America. Under his transformational leadership together with the team, with the support from the Board of Trustees, Purdue University transformed. It was always great, and now it is the most consequential public university in our country.

First of all, we’ve got to continue the momentum. We’ve got to continue the emphasis, excellence without elitism, if you will, or excellence at scale. Be true to our land-grant mission. Be true to student access and success and belonging. Be true to affordability. And furthermore, we always have to face how the world is changing and be ready to listen, be ready to adapt. People ask, “What kind of differences will there be?” Well, I assure you that I don’t know how to ride a motorcycle bike, so I guess one could say the difference will be from Harley Davidson to Häagen-Dazs.

Kate Young:

Because you’re a big ice cream guy?

Mung Chiang:

Well, I don’t ride a bike, but I do eat a lot of ice cream. It doesn’t have to be Häagen-Dazs, by the way.

Kate Young:

Okay. You’re not brand loyal.

Mung Chiang:

But the alliteration helps, Harley Davidson to Häagen-Dazs. I don’t know how I feel about the future of Purdue now.

Kate Young:

Did he give you any advice?

Mung Chiang:

Well, he’s always been very generous in his mentorship. But no, he has not given me any specific advice, if that’s what you were asking. He’s been very supportive to say, “Well, Mung, go ahead and Boiler Up. Do what you need to do.” And he did not ask me specifically to learn how to ride a Harley Davidson either.

Kate Young:

That’s good. Would you be willing to do that?

Mung Chiang:

I need to buy a lot of insurance before I ride on one.

Kate Young:

In October 2022, President Chiang and the Board of Trustees finalized his contract with the university, and it’s similar to Mitch Daniels. Purdue Board of Trustees Chairman Michael Bergoff says Purdue was one of the first to execute a president’s compensation contract this way 10 years ago. And although some watched and copied, only a small number of universities are using it at the level Purdue is. President Chiang explains.

How is your presidential compensation structured? That’s an interesting question that I’m sure listeners are curious about.

Mung Chiang:

Yes. Let’s talk about money, shall we?

Kate Young:

Okay.

Mung Chiang:

I talked with Chairman of the Board Mike Bergoff, and we both agreed that it should be structured identical to Mitch Daniels and the one that he’s had over the past 10 years, which means that there’s a base salary and then there’s a performance-based, a risk pay, if you will. When I was an engineering college dean, when I was EVP, I also had a risk pay component and that makes a lot of sense. And then there is some retention pay as well. I insisted also that the base pay ought to be lower than Mitch Daniels and the total package as well. And in fact, it turns out, I guess coincidentally, the base pay is identical to my current professorial salary and is frozen the same number as 10 years ago.

Kate Young:

Why did you feel like that was important?

Mung Chiang:

10 years of frozen tuition is something very special and meaningful to many. I think it’s only fitting and proper that the presidential base salary is also frozen the same as 10 years ago. But don’t worry, I’m not going to starve and I still have money to buy a lot of ice cream.

Kate Young:

We got to get some ice cream, because you keep mentioning it. So we need to know-

Mung Chiang:

Did I?

Kate Young:

Yes.

Mung Chiang:

Have I been mentioning that?

Kate Young:

A couple times.

Mung Chiang:

I didn’t notice.

Kate Young:

Where’s the spot to get ice cream in West Lafayette?

Mung Chiang:

Well, I don’t want to do any particular commercial at this podcast.

Kate Young:

Sure, no ads.

Mung Chiang:

But I don’t want to dodge your question either. Just preface my answer by saying that there are many different wonderful places and to each person, there’s a particular favorite spot and particular flavor. Right? There’s no right or wrong here.

Kate Young:

Right, right.

Mung Chiang:

Now, having said that, I do like the Grey Coffee House.

Kate Young:

Okay. Greyhouse?

Mung Chiang:

The Greyhouse.

Kate Young:

Okay.

Mung Chiang:

Now, but that’s a coffee house. They do have gelato.

Kate Young:

Oh!

Mung Chiang:

Ah, see? Now we’re talking. That’s something I’m revealing about our community. They have a gelato counter to the side and my favorite is what they call affogato. Somebody gave me a lesson some years ago that is apparently Italian, that says you are drowning gelato flavor of your choice with espresso.

Kate Young:

Oh!

Mung Chiang:

Now, the nice thing about that, if you’re talking about chemistry now, we’re talking about usually espresso, you want some sugar, you want some cream, and you want to cool it down a bit. Well, you’ve got all three in the ice cream already, so you don’t have to add anything and you’re drowning gelato with espresso. I usually will pick a gelato, because you’ve got to do the pairing right.

Kate Young:

Right. Yeah. So what’s the flavor?

Mung Chiang:

With other espresso, the flavor could be, say, I like dark chocolate.

Kate Young:

Okay, okay.

Mung Chiang:

But that doesn’t quite work for my taste buds. It might work for yours with affogato. So I usually go with very plain one, say vanilla.

Kate Young:

Okay.

Mung Chiang:

Fruity ones doesn’t work. Sorbetto doesn’t work. So, say a vanilla, vanilla bean gelato drowned by a double espresso. That’s going to get you going for the rest of the day.

Kate Young:

That’ll get you through all the studying, all the students listening. Go order that, right?

Mung Chiang:

All the budget meetings.

Kate Young:

Yeah. For you, it gets you through the meetings.

Mung Chiang:

Yeah. That, I will highlight, but let me just say I like a lot of them. I like Silver Dipper. I like Frozen Custard. When Pappy was here down in the basement, I liked Pappy’s with a float as well. I better stop, because I run the risk of forgetting some important establishment. I just say, I love them all.

Kate Young:

So the Westwood fridge will be stocked with ice cream, I have to assume?

Mung Chiang:

Oh, well, that’s too much temptation, so I don’t know, but that’s a great idea. See, this is a listening session, Kate.

Kate Young:

Yeah, yeah.

Mung Chiang:

All right, let me take your suggestion under advisement.

Kate Young:

Okay. Get back to me on it if you do that.

Mung Chiang:

Well, okay. I’ll let you know.

Kate Young:

And speaking of Westwood, President Chiang’s family will be the first to live in Westwood Manor, home of our Purdue University presidents, with young kids. I asked President Chiang about his family and how they feel about this new life chapter.

Tell us a little bit more about your children. We touched on them before, your wife. Are they excited to live in Westwood?

Mung Chiang:

Yes.

Kate Young:

Are they nervous? Are they excited?

Mung Chiang:

We will be living in Westwood. That is such an incredible blessing and privilege. It is a university property. We happen to be given the honor to reside in this university property and I was told, I need to check with the historians for accuracy, but I was told that this is the first time that Westwood in past 50 years as presidential residents of this university is going to have young children.

Kate Young:

I’ve read that, too.

Mung Chiang:

There’s going to be a seven-year-old and then a 10-year-old and a 15-year-old, so it’ll be interesting to see if they cause a lot of property damage. It’ll be, I think, a lot of fun to live in the community as a family, to serve the community. And my wife, Kay, she is an outstanding, real doctor. She is an internal medicine physician and absolutely the smarter one between the two of us, and a much better human being as well.

Kate Young:

Don’t worry, I’ll send this to her.

Mung Chiang:

Yes. Well, honey, if you are listening to this podcast, I just did state the fact that you are the much better human being between the two of us. Well, you’ve got to be nice to the boss. She is looking forward to this role as one gets called the First Lady of Purdue and being in Westwood, not only living there but opening up the Westwood as a place for community engagement. She looks forward to, as a physician, serving and helping the local community, but also as part of our Boilermaker family to engage with many different neighbors. She’s clearly excited about it. As to the three just mentioned, there are different reactions to the news, but one thing I made it clear to them now is that, “Now you’ve got to behave even inside the house.”

Kate Young:

Everyone’s watching.

Mung Chiang:

Ah, folks will be watching and they’re going to tell me. No, I hope that they will enjoy it and live their normal, regular life as kids growing up, but also recognizing what a special privilege it is to be there. They’re already all very much, well, have been for years now, big Boilermaker fans. My son, for example, once said something funny. I was bragging about, “Oh, Purdue’s ranking we’re most innovative. We are top 10 public university. Engineering is ranked top five and in fact, the largest ever to be in some ranking, be the top five in the country.” And then he pat my back and said, “Dad, it’s okay. Don’t be sad.” I say, “What do you mean, don’t be sad? We’re final four and there are like 300 of them out there.” He says, “Yes, might be number four, but in my heart, Purdue is number one.” That’s what he said. I say, “Well, there you go. That’s a Boilermaker!”

Kate Young:

Yes. Do you think they want to come to Purdue? Has that been talked about [inaudible 00:30:21]?

Mung Chiang:

Well, parents, there’s only that much you can do about the children’s destiny and some, I was told, prefer to be as far away as possible from home. Some may say, “I don’t want to be in a university where my dad is the president, my mom is the president,” so I don’t know. If you can help me brainwash them, we’ll set up a time.

Kate Young:

We’ll get them on the podcast.

Mung Chiang:

Ah, yes. Put them on the spot. Admit. That’s assuming, of course, given how difficult it is, increasingly so, given the number of applicants we have, the [inaudible 00:30:54] rate we continue to have. It’s never been easy. Now it’s so difficult to get in Purdue, so let’s assume that they will be doing well enough in their own K-12 learning that they can stand a chance.

Kate Young:

Another family story President Chiang shared during his interview was about his father, who went back to school to get his degree while he was in his ’50s. President Chiang connected the story to Purdue Global, Purdue’s online university for working adults, and I could tell it’s a great honor for him to be at the helm of not only Purdue University but also Purdue Global.

Now, part of serving as the president of Purdue also means leading Purdue Global. What does that mean to you?

Mung Chiang:

It means a lot. As Mitch said, Purdue Global is an online university serving such a diverse population, giving a second chance to so many now Boilermakers. That is especially meaningful to a place like ours. I don’t know if you’ve been to one of those commencements.

Kate Young:

Mm-hmm. I got to go in October.

Mung Chiang:

It’s something very, very, very moving. My own father, due to circumstances in life, he didn’t get a chance to go to college and complete a college degree until in his ’50s. Actually, I persuaded him to take an early retirement when I no longer needed to be supported. He went to community college. This is before online learning was as easy as today to be obtained. He went to community college and then he went to a four-year college to get a degree. Then he went on to get a terminal master degree in Master of Fine Art, and he did all that in his mid to late ’50s.

And I went to his graduation. That is the proudest moment. Not my own graduation, arguably not even my future, my children’s graduation, but to go to my parents’ graduation. You see that a lot in Purdue Global graduation. Now, we need to make sure that we will always be delivering high-quality educational material in our regional campuses, here in West Lafayette, in Indianapolis in the future, and Purdue Global. But you asked me, how do I think about that? I think it is fabulous.

Kate Young:

It sounds like you have a special memory attached to that as well.

Mung Chiang:

Well, yes. Getting to your father’s commencement and graduation, that is something very special. I’m so glad that we are giving that opportunity to many Americans.

Kate Young:

I’m so glad President Chiang shared that story about his dad with us. I asked President Chiang what he’s looking forward to most when it comes to his first semester as president of Purdue University.

Mung Chiang:

Wow. First day, first week, first month, always exciting, but it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.

Kate Young:

Right.

Mung Chiang:

And I look forward to continuing my listening tour. It doesn’t end on December 31st. I look forward to a lot more of those visits with residence halls and Greek life and the student athletes and dining courts. I still have one dining court I haven’t visited yet at lunch yet.

Kate Young:

Which one?

Mung Chiang:

I haven’t been to Ford. I look forward to continuing listening to our neighbors, friends, partners, alumni, a lot of alumni hub engagement. When I started here five and a half years ago, I traveled to over 20 different alumni hubs in the US, around the world during my first year and a half, and that was very, very educational to listen to them. Many of them have been just such outstanding supporters to their alma mater as well. Spring is also the time I look forward to the Day of Giving.

Kate Young:

Yes.

Mung Chiang:

As you know, one of the many innovations under President Daniels is the Purdue Day of Giving. Usually, it’s last Wednesday of April, and on that day, I will start previewing a new course I’m going to be teaching.

Kate Young:

Oh.

Mung Chiang:

I will then do a relay run together with students. I started doing this about four years ago, pre-COVID. Some student organization in past recommended this to me originally. “Why don’t we do marathon run together?” And I said, “I cannot finish a marathon, but we can do relay, perhaps. Together, we’ll run a marathon.” And the point is not only to be healthy, but also to fundraise for student organizations, so I look forward to that.

And then in Westwood, my wife and I will host a cookout party, if you will. She’ll help with the burgers. I’ll help with ice cream delivery for families with young children in our community. We have young children and we love to share the joy and the frustration of having young children with our colleagues and neighbors and students, if they have young children, too. So that is going to be the 2023 Purdue Day of Giving, and I look forward to that very much.

Kate Young:

That’ll be so fun. Though, as we can all imagine, President Chiang has a busy schedule. He is, after all, leading the most consequential public university in the country. But how does he like to spend his free time and does it involve ice cream?

We’ve heard that you run. We’ve heard that you like ice cream. What are some other favorite hobbies? What do you like to do outside of work? Anything you do to wind down after a long day?

Mung Chiang:

Yes. Well, I don’t know whether replying emails while eating ice cream counts.

Kate Young:

That’s not a fun one.

Mung Chiang:

No, that’s not a fun one. Frankly, most of the time, if there is some free time, it will be spent with my kids. My wife and I will spend more quality time with our children. I wish I could have done that more. Somebody once said, “What is truly painful is when you are working hard, you say, ‘Oh, I missed my family’.” And then when you’re with a family, you keep checking your phone and look if there’s more work emails coming. I mean, I confess, a lot of times I behave just like that. But frankly, if there is some half an hour here and there, I’ll probably want to devote that to my family.

Kate Young:

What does that look like to you?

Mung Chiang:

What is fun for them is fun for me.

Kate Young:

Right, yeah. Do you guys go for a walk? Do you go see a movie?

Mung Chiang:

I go to their dance recitals. I go to their basketball games.

Kate Young:

There you go. Okay.

Mung Chiang:

I’ve missed some Purdue basketball because I need to watch fourth-grader basketball.

Kate Young:

That’s much more exciting.

Mung Chiang:

Yeah, listen, quite exciting. Just watching whatever they are watching on Netflix at the moment, and sometimes I could even persuade them to put down their phone and iPad and social media and just talk to me.

Kate Young:

Right.

Mung Chiang:

We sometimes go to take a walk together, jog around together a bit. So, whatever is fun for them is fun for me. And frankly, I also take long naps, so there is a whole lot of free time left.

Kate Young:

That kind of surprises me about you. Yeah.

Mung Chiang:

Oh, I don’t know. I need a lot of hours of sleep. You think that with all those ice cream, I should be able to last a bit longer, to work a little harder. But the beautiful thing is in the family as well as in a research lab, as well as in a university, it takes the village.

Kate Young:

Yes.

Mung Chiang:

It’s about the whole team here. People say, “Hey, Mung, if you are not losing sleep, you better make sure somebody else on the team are losing sleep over this thing.” I say, “Well, I’d rather somebody else losing sleep over it.”

Kate Young:

When it comes to the word persistence, many of our This is Purdue guests have all different types of creative and profound answers to what that specific word means to them. Here’s what it means to President Chiang.

Mung Chiang:

I’m sure there are dictionary definitions and Wikipedia. I should ask Siri. Siri, what does persistence mean? I would give perhaps a somewhat unusual definition, a short one. Persistence to me means chasing after the infinite with what is merely finite.

Kate Young:

Expand on that a little.

Mung Chiang:

I know that confuses me, too. A lot of what we pursue as a university of knowledge, the creation of new knowledge and the broad dissemination, and I really mean broad for a place like Purdue, dissemination of knowledge, that is an infinite pursuit. It shall never end. There’s always something new we can do. And any time Boilermakers are tempted by complacency, we always have chosen to aim even higher, to touch the surface of the moon. Yet we will only have finite amount of time, finite, whether it’s big or small, finite amount of resources. So how do we pursue dreams that are infinitely far with what is merely finite? That, I think, is persistence.

Kate Young:

That’s the first answer we’ve had like that for that question.

Mung Chiang:

Oh. Well, okay. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad one, but-

Kate Young:

No, it’s a great one.

Mung Chiang:

This is the first one, I guess.

Kate Young:

It’s a different one than we normally hear.

Mung Chiang:

Oh, wow. There’s no right or wrong answer?

Kate Young:

It means something different to everyone.

Mung Chiang:

No, absolutely. I look at our students and I know that in their own individual small steps, they’re all making their personal giant leaps and their personal, manifested in ways more than one, different types of pursuit that are persistent.

Kate Young:

And what’s a good This is Purdue podcast episode without quizzing our new president with some rapid fire questions?

What’s your favorite spot on campus?

Mung Chiang:

Favorite spot on campus, and it’s not ice cream shop, Neil Armstrong statue and the replica of his giant leaps, the face of the moon. That’s a very popular selfie spot, I can tell you that.

Kate Young:

It is. It is.

Mung Chiang:

And we got Sirisha Bandla’s giant poster behind it now as well, and she is fantastic Boilermaker. A lot of people go there. By the way, they put a mask on Neil Armstrong during COVID.

Kate Young:

Yes.

Mung Chiang:

They put hat on Neil Armstrong. They put gold and black scarves on Neil Armstrong. Very creative. I’m not sure if they were supposed to climb up the statue, but anyway, I’ve seen that, and people take selfies all the time. And little kids will run, including my own, run across those footprints.

Kate Young:

Yes.

Mung Chiang:

You see that there’s one, two, three. Suddenly, there’s a giant one. There’s literally the giant leap there. I don’t know what Neil Armstrong’s thinking in that moment. Maybe he’s thinking, “Hey, let me try. Maybe I can go real far now since I’m on the surface of the moon instead of the Earth.” That’d be my favorite spot.

Kate Young:

Okay. That’s a popular one. What about a favorite Purdue tradition?

Mung Chiang:

There are many outstanding Purdue traditions. I’ll say the spring commencement, and summer and winter too, but spring is the biggest, because you see the pride, faces of our newly graduated Boilermakers; undergrad, master, PhD. You see the pride on the faces of those who supported them; the parents, their family, their friends. And we have still this tradition for the bachelor’s degree-holders. They will go on stage and shake hands.

Kate Young:

Right. Mm-hmm.

Mung Chiang:

As the Dean, I had the honor to shake hands, many hands, including about 2000 times in one single spring commencement. That really, A, is good training of this particular muscle and B, it really gives me this immense sense of what Purdue stands for. The combination of excellence and values that we hold dear to our heart, that combination executed at this scale with this much impact to individualize and to our state and our country, there’s nowhere quite like Purdue.

Kate Young:

Are you looking forward to the commencement speech? Have you already started thinking about that?

Mung Chiang:

Oh, oh, thanks for the reminder. I’m sure I saw my iPhone reminder somewhere. No, I have not. At this moment of recording the podcast, I have to say I have not yet. But with your reminder, I think I should start fairly soon, maybe during the Christmas and the holidays and New Year break. But that is something special, and I know that Mitch for 10 years has delivered one after another amazing, original speeches. And each one, the president has to deliver somewhere between six to eight times, depending how many graduation ceremonies we have, because we value each individual.

We don’t say, “Everybody stand up, everybody sit down,” except the one with the COVID year at the stadium. It takes quite a few rounds of advancement, so the president has to make the same speech that many times. I would just hope that I don’t fall asleep myself when I’m making the eighth round of it. I’m sure the audience already falling asleep. The question is whether I’m still awake by the time I’m saying the same thing eight times.

Kate Young:

It sounds like you’ll have a lot of good content.

Mung Chiang:

Well, yes. There’s no short of outstanding things to report to our students and to our parents about Purdue. That is for sure the case. But I tend to actually drag on my speech so long that the audience’s iPhone runs out of battery. Well, please do remind me again if I haven’t started yet in the new year.

Kate Young:

I will. I’ll let you know.

Mung Chiang:

Then that’s just cutting it too close.

Kate Young:

Okay. We know that you don’t ride a Harley, but what is something that Purdue students would be surprised to know about you?

Mung Chiang:

Well, let me do a commercial there.

Kate Young:

Okay.

Mung Chiang:

Every podcast must contain some commercial, I suppose, so it’s a commercial about a course, a new course that I will be co-teaching with Professor Chris Brinton in the ECE department. I remain a faculty member ECE department. I’ll continue to do a little bit of research, which is for me, wireless networks and edge computing, and I’ll continue to teach or co-teach a new course. It’s going to be about networks, social, economic, and technological networks, the principles of networks that rule our lives in some sense. It’s going to be, I think, a fun course, no prerequisite required. We’ll do it without a lot of technological prerequisites. You don’t have to have taken many engineering courses. In fact, I think we want to make it completely open to any students.

One of the many differences between one college versus the entire university is this university is so much bigger than any single college or single unit, and we want this course to be taken by actually primarily non-engineers. I don’t think a lot of people are aware of this. Frankly, we’re still designing it, so this might come as a surprise that the incoming president, just like Mitch, he has been doing that for many years to teach a World War I history course. I wouldn’t be equipped to teach that course, but I can try to pretend to be an engineer and co-teach this course to non-engineers. And you don’t need any prerequisite to get on the seminar sophomore-level course. Maybe that commercial will be something that not all our people aware of, so there we go. That’s the commercial.

Kate Young:

You heard it here first.

Mung Chiang:

You heard it here with Kate’s podcast first, and now you can go register for the course online. Well, I still need to make sure that we finish all the course proposal steps so that it can be registered for, well, hoping fall semester 2023.

Kate Young:

Our podcast team had a wonderful time getting to know President Chiang. He’s obviously very humble and intelligent, but he also has a great sense of humor that really puts you at ease. At the very end of our interview, something happened that has never happened to me before. President Chiang flipped the interview and asked me a question.

Well, we can’t thank you enough for joining us. Is there anything else you want to share with our listeners? Anything I missed?

Mung Chiang:

Well, let me ask you a question, Kate.

Kate Young:

Oh.

Mung Chiang:

So, you are Brian Lamb School of Communication graduate, I understand. What makes you the proudest, among all the Purdue traditions or artifacts or history, anecdotes, anything? What makes you the proudest as a gold and black, as a Boilermaker?

Kate Young:

I came back here about, what, 10 years after I graduated, and it’s been the greatest honor of my life to do this. I think it’s important too, when you said to take a chance. I really liked another job that I had and I was offered this job, and I was like, I could be complacent and keep working here and kind of take that route. I’m so glad I didn’t do that.

Mung Chiang:

Well, Boiler Up to that, Kate. Thank you very much.

Kate Young:

Boiler Up. Thank you so much for your time.

Mung Chiang:

Thank you.

Kate Young:

It was so fun.

Mung Chiang:

Pleasure. It was fun. Yes.

Kate Young:

We can’t thank President Chiang enough for spending time with us on our official university podcast, and sharing more about his family and what Purdue University and this Boilermaker community means to him. If you’d like to learn more about President Chiang and read his inaugural message to the Purdue community, head over to purdue.edu/president. And if you want to watch our full video interview with President Chiang on stage at Fowler, head over to our new podcast YouTube page, youtube.com/@thisispurdue. You can check out all of our podcast trailer videos, special clips from each episode, and more. Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcast. There, you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review. And as always, Boiler Up.