Purdue President Mung Chiang is headed to Northwestern
Purdue announced Monday morning that its president Mung Chiang is off to Northwestern.
What is could mean for Purdue athletics is anybody’s guess. It is no secret that Purdue Athletics Director Mike Bobinski, who will be 68 in October, won’t be on campus forever, so a new president, along with theh Board of Trustees will have much to say on his successor.
Alignment is key, and rest assured, Board of Trustees Chair Gary Lehman, a huge fan of Purdue athletics who can be seen seated right behind the TV announcer’s location in Mackey, will have his hands full with his board colleagues coming up with a replacement.
Gone is longtime BOT chair Mike Berghoff (about 18 months ago), and it will be interesting to see where this all goes. There have been rumors about a couple of “local” candidates with deep Purdue ties, as rumors of Chiang’s imminent departure have been circulating for at least a year, but the validity of those rumors was never substantiated. What direction Purdue takes in selecting its next president will affect the rest of Bobinski’s tenure and all movement in and around Mackey, but it is safe to assume that Boilermaker athletics, while a factor, will not be the sole agenda for those involved with the Purdue search.
The days of perfect alignment, at least viewed by some if not many (Daniels, Berghoff, Bobinski), that folks like Matt Painter have mentioned in the past are in a new chapter. It’s a very new place in a brave new world of college athletics.
From the Purdue release:
Purdue University’s Board of Trustees on Monday (May 18) announced that President Mung Chiang has informed them that he has accepted an offer to become president of Northwestern University, a role he will assume on July 1.
Purdue First Lady Dr. YingKei Hui also will have the position of internal medicine physician at the Northwestern Memorial Hospital, an academic medical center that is part of Northwestern Medicine.
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Trustees Chair Gary Lehman said Chiang’s three-plus years as Purdue’s president have been a time of growth and academic excellence during a challenging time in higher education.
“We are ever grateful for Mung’s leadership as Purdue continues to impact lives with outstanding teaching, research and engagement,” Lehman said. “We will miss Mung and Kei and their positive influence on our campus and community. We wish them all the best as they move forward to the next steps in their careers.”
“It has been an incredible honor and joy for me to work with the amazing board, colleagues, students and alumni here,” Chiang said. “There truly is something special at Purdue: not just the projects and programs, but also the people, who time after time set the standard for excellence at scale.”
Lehman said the board will name an interim president in the coming weeks and initiate a search for a permanent president shortly thereafter.
