February 3, 2006

Purdue University President Martin C. Jischke made these remarks Friday (February 3) during a meeting of the Purdue University Board of Trustees.

It is going to be an exciting year as we continue to move forward on our strategic plans and Campaign for Purdue.

We are getting off to a big start next week hosting a Discovery Lecture Series, "Transforming Society Through Emerging Technologies: National Nanotechnology Initiative at Five Years." Many of the top people in the nation in nanotechnology will be here for this important program at our Birck Nanotechnology Center.

I believe the potentials in nanotechnology are enormous. And with the best nanotechnology facility of its kind in the nation, I believe Purdue will be a leader in this exciting new field.

The first big alumni event of the year is our annual President's Council program in Naples, Florida, next weekend. We also have the Mollenkopf golf event in Naples. We are looking forward to meeting with a large group of Purdue people there, and we will have some very important announcements at that time.

I have an important announcement this morning.

Our Campaign for Purdue has passed the $1.3 billion mark with 17 months to go. We hit the $1.3 billion mark at the end of January. As you remember, our original goal for this campaign was $1.3 billion.

When we started this campaign, we didn't know how much we would be able to raise. But we put our faith in the Purdue family. We have learned that we put our faith in the right place.

Thanks to this tremendous response, we have now been able to raise our campaign goal to $1.5 million. I am sure we will succeed in reaching our ultimate goal.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this campaign. And congratulations to Murray Blackwelder and everyone who has worked so hard to make this campaign a great success.

Our strategic plan goals include excellence in faculty. Purdue faculty are international leaders.

Leah Jamieson, our interim dean of engineering and Ransburg Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been elected president-elect of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. This is typically called the "I Triple E."

It is the world's largest technical professional society, representing professionals in computers, telecommunications, nanotechnology, biomedicine, electric power and consumer electronics. The organization has more than 365,000 members in 150 countries.

Her term as president will begin Jan. 1, 2007, and she will become the second woman to head this prestigious organization.

Dr. Jamieson is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. At Purdue, she helped found and is director of Engineering Projects in Community Service, or EPICS.

She continues to bring great distinction to this university, and we are very fortunate to have her here working with our faculty, staff and students. We have great confidence in her leadership as we launch a national search to replace Dean of Engineering Linda Katehi.

Dr. Katehi, as you know, has accepted the position of provost beginning this spring at one of our peer institutions, the University of Illinois. This new opportunity recognizes the outstanding work Dr. Katehi has accomplished at Purdue, and we wish her all the best.

In December I reported to you about declining numbers of American students enrolling in engineering and science nationwide.

Our middle school and high school students are unprepared in math and science and correspondingly uninterested in these careers. Of the nearly 1.1 million U.S. high school seniors who took the college entrance exam in 2002, less than 6 percent had plans to study engineering. That is a 33 percent decrease from 10 years earlier.

Meanwhile, more than 50 percent of the current U.S. science and engineering work force is approaching retirement.

We have also been concerned about declining international enrollment in universities across the United States. This is of special concern because so many of these international students have typically enrolled in science and engineering and have helped us deal with shortages of these professionals in our own nation.

I have been in Washington, D.C., several times during the past 15 months to discuss this subject.

In the fall of 2004 I had an opportunity to address the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Last fall I spoke about all this with a select group of U.S. senators. It was also discussed in early December when I took part in the National Summit on Competitiveness at the U.S. Department of Commerce. And in January, I participated in the University Presidents Summit on International Education at the Department of State.

Among the people we met with at this summit were Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes and President Bush.

I can tell you the meetings were very positive. I was encouraged with the support from the administration. They pledged to work with us. The president made this quite clear in his State of the Union message.

I have some additional information concerning Purdue international enrollment.

We are all aware that after years of steady growth, international enrollment in the United States has been in decline since 2002. But the decline is slowing, and we are optimistic this situation will continue to improve.

Nationwide, international enrollment dropped 2.4 percent two years ago and slowed to a decline of 1.3 percent last year. We have seen similar declines at Purdue.

Our international graduate and undergraduate enrollment hit a high of 5,094 in 2003 and dropped to 4,921 in the fall of 2004 — about 3 percent.

This year our total international enrollment dropped again to 4,831.

But we do seem to have turned the corner in terms of undergraduate international enrollment. This year we have a record number of international freshmen on our campus — 401. The total of new undergraduate international students was close to being a record.

Even though we had a slight decline in the total number of international undergraduates, we see evidence that we are on track to maintain or slightly increase our numbers by next fall. International undergraduate international applications and admittance are running ahead of this time last year.

At the graduate level, we continue to see a decline in the number of applications and admissions.

This academic year in total international enrollment, the University of Illinois and Purdue are first and second among public universities in the nation. Only the University of Southern California has a larger international enrollment than Illinois and Purdue.

International enrollment at Purdue this year is 12.5 percent of our student body. International students comprise 37.5 percent of our graduate and professional enrollment.

The largest numbers of international students are in engineering, 47.9 percent of enrollment; science, 15.9 percent; management, 12.3 percent; liberal arts, 8.3 percent; and agriculture, 6.8 percent.

The largest number of our international students are from India, 1,020. China is second at 782 and South Korea third at 680.

It is also interesting to note that 30 percent of Purdue faculty members are foreign-born, including 47.9 percent of our engineering and science faculty.

We have been recruiting international undergraduate students for a decade at Purdue. And we now have new initiatives under way to help us recruit international graduate students.

Among these are departmental trips to recruit international students. Four of these are planned for this semester, including visits to several Asian nations, Russia and the Balkans.

In addition, we continue to move forward with our Asian Initiative.

Our Asian Initiative is a campuswide effort designed to help Purdue focus its programs and faculty on alumni and a select group of institutions in India and China. As I have mentioned, these are the two countries from which we draw our largest number of international students. They are also areas of the world that are clearly emerging to be important trade and intellectual partners of the United States.

Together, they represent a third of the world's population.

This year I am serving as chairman of the Association of American Universities. This is an organization of 62 leading public and private research universities in the nation.

Last week this association proposed a national education and innovation initiative "aimed at meeting the economic and security challenges we will face over the next half-century." These proposals have major focuses on science, engineering education and international enrollment.

AAU's initiative contains a broad set of recommendations for policy changes and investments, primarily by universities and the federal government. These are designed to strengthen the nation's capacity to perform basic, university-based research; to cultivate American talent in the sciences, engineering, mathematics, and foreign languages; and to continue attracting and retaining the best talent from overseas.

Some of the association recommendations for universities are: Reexamine doctoral education, particularly in science-related and language disciplines, to develop ways to shorten the time it takes to obtain a Ph.D.; improve completion rates; and broaden the scope of Ph.D. education to better prepare students for a wide range of careers.

I can tell you that at Purdue we are working on all of this and much more.

The AAU recommendations for the federal government included increasing investments in basic research supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the departments of Energy, Defense, Homeland Security and Commerce by 10 percent annually for the next seven years. The AAU proposed that the government continue to grow the investment thereafter.

The AAU also recommended that the nation increase by 5,000 the number of graduate fellowships and traineeships supported by current programs at federal science and education agencies. It proposed creation of a new graduate fellowship and traineeship program at the Department of Energy Office of Science. And it recommended expansion of the National Defense Education Program to generate talent to ensure future economic, energy, and national security.

I was very encouraged to see President Bush is also supporting initiatives in these areas.

This week in his State of the Union message, President Bush called for dramatic increases in funds for science research. He proposed doubling the funding for research in the physical sciences over the next 10 years.

The president said: "This funding will support the work of America's most creative minds as they explore promising areas such as nanotechnology, supercomputing and alternative energy sources."

I am certain all of us here today would agree.

And I am proud to say that these are all central focuses in Purdue's Discovery Park.

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