 President Daniels, thank you so much for joining us. It's your first time on the This is Pretty podcast, and we appreciate your time. It's been a crazy year. So let's start with commencement, though. That was held outside at Ross State Stadium for the first time ever. And it went very well. Beautiful weather. You wrote in on the infamous couch cart. So tell me about that experience. Well, the couch that Ethan and Nathan put together was such a boiler maker thing to do, first of all. Inventive, innovative, a little fun. And as long as the school's been here, we've had great tinkerers and inventors. And so, as I think you know, it's a go-cart engine with a garden cart. They bought it at the Menards or somewhere. And a couch that was exactly what a, I'll say, male student's college couch probably should look like. I remember those kind, holes in them, and springs almost coming out of them. Actually, quite a comfortable ride. You know, I told people it doesn't corner very well, but it has a good straight line acceleration. Yeah, it was quite the entrance. What was it like writing your commencement speech this year? I always do it or try to have a first draft done over Christmas vacation. It's my big homework assignment of the year. You know, I personally, although it is always a worry item for me, I think it's a good tradition at Purdue that whoever has this job, give that speech. For one thing, it simplifies the problem of who you invite, will somebody not like the choice. It probably ensures that we keep the, at least while I'm doing it, that we keep the ceremony a little bit concise and tight. But I worry over it because every student sitting there has worked awfully hard. And I feel like I should also try to say something that is meaningful. I mean, unfortunately, we've all heard commencement speeches where somebody pulled out a Bartlett's quotations and strung together a bunch of cliches. And I try to do something that fits the times in the moment. Now, this year, as I wrote it, and it really didn't change much after New Year's, I was very conscious that this whole thing could be rendered obsolete because COVID is still evolving. And it certainly was back then. And so I thought, this might be something I have to start over on, but I didn't. And it seemed to be very well received. I've gotten lots and lots of nice comments and people elsewhere. I was interviewed on national television yesterday by somebody who saw it and thought it had some value to it. So as I say, it's always my number one assignment of the year. And I think it came off reasonably well. I agree. Did you feel differently writing it this year versus past years, though, because of all of the different challenges and adversity that Purdue has a whole face this year? I think so, because while I always try to think about those messages from a Purdue standpoint and a student standpoint, this year was, to me, you couldn't give a talk at the end of this year and not center it somehow on the experience that we just went through. But I just thought that especially what our students did, the way they conducted themselves, the character that they showed, which as I've said, over and over, was the indispensable element. Yes, we did 100 other things so that everyone's education could keep moving unimpeded, but would have all gone for naught had we not had the kind of students that we did. And so to that extent, I thought it wrote itself. And then I tried to put it in the larger context that, in my opinion, too many other places, too many other people and institutions did not live up to their responsibilities. And we expect our graduates, wherever they go, to do so. Sure, and you talked a lot about taking risks and the importance of making these big decisions. And looking back, do you ever second guess your decision to fully open Purdue? Well, it ended well, so you don't have to now. I wouldn't use the word second guess, but I would say, I mean, on a daily basis, we questioned what we were doing. First thing, every morning of last semester, in the second semester, we were able to feather it back to three and then two times a week, because I don't believe in meetings for meeting's sake. But last semester, every morning, first thing, we were looking at the data, looking at where the cases were, were any of them severe. And so of course, we were fretting about that on a constant basis, knowing that, however, under control things seem to be today, we could get up tomorrow and have a different situation. And we learned a lot. I mean, you say second guess. I mean, now we can look back and I've pointed out we did a number of things that we thought might help. Now we know much more and probably didn't need two miles of plexiglass. Didn't need to spend all the time we did rearranging dorm rooms and the beds. We probably cleaned and sanitized surfaces more obsessively than made any real difference. But we weren't going to leave anything to chance. And so to that extent, I'm glad we did what we did, even though some of it was probably not too important. Sure. And what was it like and how did you feel telling the world last April, Purdue is going to be fully opened and have in-person classes and activities? Apprehensive, it looked like. I felt very much it was the right thing to do if we could bring it off. I'll say it the other way around. I thought it would be a default of responsibility to just throw up our hands and say, this might not work so all 35,000 of you figure it out, take a year off or something. But of course, but that's the essence of difficult decisions. You don't know and you can't know. And if you try to wait till you think you know everything, it's usually way too late for whatever call that was to succeed. What do you think you were most worried about leading up to the 2020-2021 school year? The factors that would have caused us to call a halt or make a U-turn, there were three in Disha that I think I worried about or thought about the most. First and foremost was severity. I don't know why others didn't do this, but early on I asked our medical advisors, construct for us a simple measure of how ill people are. Because if any significant number of either students or staff were getting really dangerously ill, that would have been a trigger. And so there was a 1 to 6 little simple system they created, 1A symptomatic all the way up to 6, better go to the hospital. Only 2% of all the cases we had all year ever got past level three or something like that. So that was one thing that we watched very carefully and happily. We had just a tiny number, even of hospitalizations and those resolved. So then a second thing would have been if we'd run out of quarantine space. Because we knew it was essential when someone had it so transmissible to move them to a place till they weren't going to infect someone else. We never got close to that either. Again, we turned out we had many more beds for that than we thought we might. The third thing would have might need. And the third thing would have been if the local hospitals, emergency rooms, or I'm sorry, intensive care units, were overwhelmed and we had anything to do with it. It was our staff or our students. Happily that didn't happen either. Those were the three, maybe not the only three, but those were the three indicators that I probably watched the most closely. Sure. And the Boilermakers keep going video featuring you. I remember watching that during the IU Purdue game as it came on as a commercial. I turned to my husband who's an IU graduate and I was like, did you just see that? He was like, that was good. I'll admit it. I just remember feeling so proud to be a Boilermaker. Was there a certain moment that you can look back on and think of that you were the most proud of this Purdue community? Oh, I was proud throughout. I was proud of our folks for making that video. I had said to them before, an unrelated really to the pandemic, we get these slots on the Big Ten Network and occasionally somewhere else where you're able to put your institution on display for 60 seconds. I said, ours looked just like everybody else's. People standing around with beakers, huddled over a computer screen or something. I said, now there's some things that are unique about Purdue and we should emphasize those. Well, it came this last year and we really did have something that was different. So many of our peers didn't go to school at all or everybody was stuck in their room all the time or no in-person classes and so forth. And so I thought they did a really great job of showing others what, if you were here, you saw our students, our faculty, this institution coming together to achieve. Yeah, absolutely. Is there a single biggest lesson that you think you've learned throughout the past 15 months or maybe several? Well, we've all learned so much. I mean, we could fill another podcast with what we've learned about how to mix online instruction with in-person about work that does pretty darn well on a remote basis or partially remote. There are all sorts of lessons like that that I hope we learn and adapt. It'll make people's work family lives better. It'll be environmentally better if fewer people are driving and parking and so forth. To me, it was not a surprise that this university, and I'm going to go back to the students first and foremost, did come together and achieve what it did. Not a big surprise, but certainly gratifying to see one's impressions or positive suspicions borne out. Yeah, and I talked to Dr. Ramirez. And he just had so much praise for the students, and I know I've heard you speak as well on that. Is there anything that, looking back, maybe you would have done differently? Oh, sure. I mean, I've already mentioned several things we did that maybe the dollars we spent, the effort we spent, could have been directed at something else. I hope we won't have to go through it again. But there's quite a playbook, and we've tried to be very honest with ourselves and others about things that were valuable, others that weren't. But yeah, I think the one thing I would emphasize is we probably should have been more attentive, maybe aggressive than we were. Too many courses were started on in-person or were listed as in-person, and then somehow changed to online. And too many students were disappointed that that happened. And I'd heard from some students to whom it happened maybe three or four courses. And that wasn't a good thing. If we ever had to go through it again, I think we would be much more alert to that, try to prevent that happening wherever possible. Sure. And what did you miss the most about the school year last year? Was it? Oh, contact with the students. We all have our own way of doing things, but mine for all these years been be out a lot, and funning around, going to events. The gym, a huge change for me. I used to go three and four times a week to the co-rec. And that couldn't do that. Had to swap for something much more limited. Did you get a peloton? No, I borrowed a couple of aerobic machines, not a peloton, and some weights. But I'll say the range and variety of the workout has shrunk some, but I'm still sort of in routine maintenance at this point. So you recently released a video encouraging students to get their vaccines. What do you think needs to change in order for things to open up even more in the fall? It'll depend more than anything else on the rate of vaccination of particular students, but also our staff. And as you know, we've opted for a, I'll call it a free choice approach. And people have the option to just stay with testing, regular testing, which we all went through this last year. But we are strongly encouraging. We think all the evidence supports, hopefully, as close to universal vaccination as we can get to on this campus. And the higher that rate is, the closer to the world we knew we can approach and still know that we're not endangering anybody. Yeah, and now we kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel. How do you think higher education emerges after this huge pandemic? First of all, we hope we see the light. Yes, true. One of the imponderables is viruses are the ultimate survival machine. And they adapt and they mutate as we know. And so we're watching all that. But I agree that from everything we can see, including we've now seen some of these variants here and they're not worse so far. So let's hope that this path of improvement that we've been on continues. Everybody wants that. Higher ed will be different whenever we're past this. Because first of all, it has caused even more people to question its value. Now, we've talked here at Purdue now for about a decade about higher education at the highest proven value. Such an obvious thing to emphasize, I think, because we search for value everywhere else, buy a house, buy a car, buy your groceries, pick choice of restaurants. And now people are already asking, I think, the right questions. How much education will I, or my child, garner at institution A versus B per dollar spent? And now I think that's all become much more important. Clearly, we will be asked to and need to respond to the interest of students in a more flexible education. And so we're already headed this direction, but we better head there fast if we want to succeed in the new environment. So that means even more opportunities for work experience, internships, and study abroad. And we're already offering a lot of three-year degrees, which I think may become more popular with students who want to get on with it more affordably and get out and start earning their way in the world. So we're going to have to be open to these kind of ideas, and I hope, a step ahead of other schools in providing them. Right. And you've already touched on this a little bit about how you enjoy being out on the campus, interacting with students. What else are you looking forward to come fall 2021? How about a national basketball championship? I'd love to hear that. We're going to be good. I'm looking forward to seeing and I hope discovering that Purdue at record size is still maintaining its quality, its rigor, a good personal individual experience for students, even though we're going to have more by far than we've ever had. Most of your viewers, I hope, will know that for the fourth year out of the last five, it's record attendance. First 10,000-person class, it appears in Purdue history, and that's probably anything I've seen, the biggest in the Big 10. Now, that's wonderful that this university is attracting students from everywhere, great students. But it imposes a great responsibility on us to maintain and keep enhancing it. The quality of each person's experience gets harder as the scale gets bigger. But a lot of our faculty and others here talk about excellence at scale. We've got the biggest engineering school in the world's top five or 10. And I don't want to say it's easy. It's a lot easier to have excellence in a very small, if you're dealing with small numbers. So I'm looking forward to that, seeing us meet that very positive challenge as a community. And you mentioned, obviously, the planning for next year is in full swing. And you recently relaunched your presidential lecture series. Is there anyone that you'd love to see come to Purdue and speak in that? I don't think we're quite ready to announce the series yet, but I've already recruited two or three, and that's probably what we'll have in a given semester. I'll just say that in any job, a person should ask herself, himself, where can I add some values? There's something I can do that is, in any way, different or additive to what's already going on. Well, one of those things seemed to me was that because of past lives I had led, I might be able to sometimes say, increase the intellectual traffic flow through campus and recruit people to come here who might not otherwise. And so I hope we can do that again. I think it could be a real part of our students and faculty and our neighboring community positive experience. And so yeah, I look forward to getting that rolling again, and I hope in person, as we were accustomed to before. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it as well. And you mentioned your past life. You've said your time at Eli Lilly was some of the best experience ahead of becoming the governor of Indiana. And I've had the pleasure of speaking with people from Purdue Polytechnic High School, the data mine here at Purdue, and they've just been raving about the partnerships with Eli Lilly. What does that mean to you to see your past life and your current life kind of combine? Well, obviously, anything involving Lilly has special. I have special affection for, frankly, I've told a lot of students here who ask about career planning. I laugh and talk about what a lousy career planner I was, and just life planned me. I thought I would finish my working days at Eli Lilly and company. I believed in our mission with saving lives, improving lives, advancing science. The people there were invariably of great character and mutually supportive of each other. It was just a wonderful place to work. And that corporation was a great community. So of course, I'm very interested in that any time we interact with them, they are year in, year out. Let's face it. We're good for Lilly, because for decades now, and still the case, they're one of our top. They hire more graduates here than almost any company. It's no surprise. They've been great, as we say, corporate citizens for as long as that company's been there. And so the only surprise would be if they weren't directly involved in helping us with our high schools or the programs here on campus. And meanwhile, now the whole world has learned how fortunate we are to have great pharmaceutical companies, great science that goes on there. They've just saved who knows how many lives. Yeah, absolutely. And you said on the Business and Beyond podcast recently that there's a piece of you that's glad that you didn't run for president, because you would have never ended up here at Purdue. What have the past eight years meant to you? Well, not a piece of me, all of me. True, you're all here. I've told some of our folks, people, when they bring that up, I say things like, at this point in life, I'm not taking the demotion. I wouldn't have missed this for the world. I didn't see it coming. As I said, I thought I'd finish my working days at that great company we just discussed. Life changed not once, but three times since. And this change was my favorite in many respects. No, I mean, it's been a huge learning experience for me. And I hope we've contributed some things to advancing the university's interest. But I can't imagine anything else I might have done being more fulfilling than the time we've been able to spend at Purdue. I graduated in 2012, so I just missed you. But I remember hearing that and just thinking that was amazing. So let's get into some fun things. Well, this has been fun. You mean we would have more fun than that? So it wouldn't be Indiana if we didn't talk about the Indianapolis 500. Yeah. Do you plan on going to the race? Oh, yeah. Do you have seats, or? Well, I've been to a lot of. Well, full disclosure, I have been involved with previously the Holman Corporation, and now the Penske Entertainment, which is this marvelous development of this great, great person. Roger Penske, now I've gotten to know a little bit. He's everything that he was reported to be dynamo in his 80s and just done great things there and everywhere else he's been in business. So yes, I'll be there as I have been over and over. I've, on that shelf over there, you can see a picture of me. I was a big booster of auto racing, especially in my last job in particular, and even before that. As far as I know, I'm the only person from elected office who's ever been the official starter of the race. It was 2012. Nice. Graduation year, scary, by the way. Because you were in the car? Well, I've done that. No, I mean, I was, I waved the green flag. And those cars are roaring faster. And a lot of wind up there. And when I say scary, I say, you know, I don't know if anybody's going to see this flag, but I'll tell you what's not going to happen. It's not going to wind up in the first turn, because I'd never live it down. That was a fabulous opportunity. And you know, I don't know when anyone will see this conversation we're having, but this year's race, it's always one of the biggest sporting events in the year. It's always the biggest spectator event of any kind in the world. But this year, it's not just a sporting event. If it goes off well, let's hope and pray it does. I mean, it is a big, it's a worldwide event on the way back to normalcy. This will be the most people in one place for any reason, I think, since the pandemic started. And so it's, in a way, it's a medical event, as well as the greatest spectacle in racing. Right. Do you have any favorites for drivers? Are you betting on anyone? Well, those are two different questions. I won't have any bets then. Ed Carpenter, if you just make me pick somebody, he's a great person and he's homegrown, got a route for the home team. We've got a number of teams and drivers from Indiana, but Ed is one. So yeah, yeah, I'll be watching the 20 car with special interest. Awesome. And are you going to slow down at all this summer, or does your pace keep going? There's some natural. I've told friends from other times, I'd never had a seasonal job before. This isn't quite that, but clearly, when the campus population drops from 40,000 students to several thousand, it's different. And there's plenty to keep us busy. And planning for this fall, just as it was last summer, there are some additional features that my predecessors and I in earlier years didn't have to think about as you saw August coming. Sure, absolutely. Is there anything else you'd like to tell our listeners? I just hope that, I think, Boilermakers have always had a special affinity and pride for this place, and that's not, that would be a natural thing. I'm sure people at every school feel that way, but this has been measured. And there is a statistically significant difference, has been people's sense of loyalty and so forth. I've always assigned a lot of that to the fact that this is a place of upward mobility. That's why land grant schools were created, but I think it produced cases especially pronounced. I say all the time, I've now had a chance for a decade to meet so many tremendous Purdue alums. Almost none of them came from privilege. This is the place where the young woman or man from the farm or the small town or the inner city came from. And then over and over by the now hundreds of thousands were launched on great lives. And so we've always been proud, and I think that's part of it. I've talked to so many people, and it starts the same. For me, it started at Purdue. I owe it to Purdue, if not for Purdue. It's the thing I love the very most about this place, as you can see from my sniffles. And I hope the last year added a layer on top of that for all the reasons we just discussed. Absolutely. Yeah, and I think anyone like we talked about with that Boilermakers keep going. It's emotional, and it'll get you every time. Well, I do think it reflects. It's like the couch. Somebody said, well, that's a Purdue thing, tinkering around and inventing something that works. And I'd like to think that our navigating through this difficult circumstance expressed something that's always been there about this place. Absolutely. Well, we so appreciate your time and your energy, and we love talking to you. And it was all fun, all of it. I agree.