On last month’s conversation with Purdue President Mitch Daniels, we chatted about the way the school is now tracking incidents involving electric scooters and motorized skateboards. Now, the school has convened a task force to determine whether new rules need to be made regarding their use – to keep both riders and drivers safer. We cover that on this edition of WBAA’s Monthly Conversation with Mitch Daniels, as well as how the school’s interest in bulking up its contracts with global defense companies aligns with a newly-announced directive by Governor Eric Holcomb to triple the number of federal dollars coming to Indiana for defense.

Monthly Conversation with Mitch Daniels

Monthly Conversation With Mitch Daniels: Skateboard Rules And Defense Spending

When, in late October, a Puerto Rican Purdue student was denied the purchase of cold medicine at a CVS store across the street from campus, international students and students of color hoped for more of a public response than they got from school administrators – and, undoubtedly, a different response than they got following a recent Purdue Student Government meeting . On this month’s conversation with Purdue President Mitch Daniels – which was taped before that meeting -- he comments on why he’s been relatively quiet on the subject. And he questions what the boundaries of campus are, with respect to where and when a comment must be made about a student being harmed.

Monthly Conversation With Mitch Daniels: Comments On CVS Controversy

In any organization, the line item that requires the most money is personnel – so at a place like Purdue, which has many thousands of employees, pay and benefits are a big topic of discussion. So it goes on this edition of WBAA’s Monthly Conversation with Mitch Daniels. We talk with him about the fact he’s getting about eight percent more money this year than he did last year, while the average employee got between two and three percent, and what kind of message that sends -- especially in a time where so much has been written about CEO pay in America and disparities between it and the pay of rank-and-file employees .

Monthly Conversation With Mitch Daniels: Pay And Benefits Edition

Two topics come up time and again on this edition of WBAA’s Monthly Conversation with Mitch Daniels: food and money. Faculty have opposed the opening of a Chick-Fil-A location on campus, in part because the company’s founders oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds. So is making the proprietor sign boilerplate language about inclusivity and non-discrimination enough to quiet those concerns? And what’s the difference between this and giving money back to the founder of Papa John’s Pizza after he made insensitive remarks?

Monthly Conversation With Mitch Daniels: IDs, Chick-Fil-A And Betting On Purdue

Purdue President Mitch Daniels disagrees with the notion that he’s sometimes snarky in the regular column he writes for the Washington Post. He’d prefer to call it sarcasm or humor. But in a recent column about politics – a subject he regularly comments on, even if there’s little connection to his current role in higher education – his language jabs at both parties, but is notably more dismissive to Democratic ideals.

Monthly Conversation With Mitch Daniels: Hunting The Snark Edition

Sometimes news changes fast. When we taped our conversation with Purdue University President Mitch Daniels this month, the school had just announced it’ll change its IDs to make it easier for students to vote in Tippecanoe County. As you’ll hear, Daniels says Purdue isn’t in the elections business, and advises that the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles – which he oversaw as governor – will give free IDs to those who ask. That’s true, and it’s a fact the county election board seized upon a couple days after the interview was taped. But there’s a problem – getting that ID can mean students would have to give up their driver’s license from their home state.

Monthly Conversation With Mitch Daniels: Purdue IDs As Voter IDs

When U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced a few months ago he planned to move the department’s headquarters out of Washington, D.C., Purdue University President Mitch Daniels endorsed the idea every chance he got, and even started his school making some preparations in case Indiana was chosen as the new home. That honor went instead to Kansas City, Missouri – but was there more Indiana could have done to back up its bid?

Monthly Conversation With Mitch Daniels: USDA Moving, Tiny Houses, Civics Exam

Admitting as much when he used it in this year’s commencement address, Purdue President Mitch Daniels chose what he called a “distasteful, but descriptive word” – snowflake – to describe graduates at some of Purdue’s competitor institutions. President Daniels insists he’s received more positive comments about the remark than about almost any other speech he’s given, but the backlash was swift on social media, saying he shouldn’t have even invoked a term that’s often been co-opted by some conservatives to describe people with whom they don’t agree.

Monthly Conversation With Mitch Daniels: 'A Distasteful, But Descriptive Word'

Despite a slowdown wrought by the Purdue Senate, school president Mitch Daniels says he still thinks next year’s graduating class could be the first one to need to pass a civics exam to receive a diploma. On this edition of WBAA’s Monthly Conversation with Mitch Daniels, we ask him about that timeline, and the one deciding the future of the Purdue Armory, which many community members seem to want to save.

Monthly Conversation With Mitch Daniels: A Civics Slowdown And An Armory Skirmish

A hallmark of Mitch Daniels’ time as Indiana governor was the expansion of testing of Hoosier students. The tests given to K-12 students have never been more high-stakes than they are now, and that’s rankled plenty of teachers and administrators. Somewhat less rancor has been generated by the Purdue President’s latest testing proposal – a civics exam students would have to pass before they’re awarded a diploma. On this edition of WBAA’s Monthly Conversation With Mitch Daniels, we address how that test might be administered and whether another exam will solve the problem of American governmental illiteracy. Also on this month’s show, a remembrance of Purdue alum and Indiana Senator Birch Bayh. Mitch Daniels says he once worked on a Senate campaign trying to defeat Bayh, but later came to know him as so many did – a giant of public life whose days seem more bygone all the time.

Monthly Conversation With Mitch Daniels: A Civics Test And A Testament To Civil Service

It came as little surprise when, earlier this month, Purdue President Mitch Daniels announced the school would extend its tuition freeze another year. The bigger financial news was the offering of a $500 bonus to employees making less than $75,000 a year. Our listeners want to know where the money is coming from, and why it’s not being added to the pool of merit raises, so people get more of a structural increase in their salary and benefits. And the longer the tuition freeze goes on and the school foregoes some income it could be getting, the more the cost of living rises – so is compensation actually going up or just keeping pace with inflation? Also on this month’s program, President Daniels responds to criticism from a former math professor that the school has issues with diversity. And a listener asks for more open access when prospective political candidates canvass in West Lafayette.

Monthly Conversation With Mitch Daniels: A Bonus, Not A Raise

At the beginning of each year, Purdue President Mitch Daniels pens an open letter to campus. Mostly, it talks about the high points of the past 12 months, but this year’s mentions an increasingly common topic: grit. It’s a qualitative measure of how ready a student is for school, life, and the challenges both pose.

Monthly Conversation With Mitch Daniels: Grit Vs. Students' Emotional Health

A number of elite schools, including members of the Ivy League, have gotten rid of the need for an ACT or SAT test score to get in. But Purdue President Mitch Daniels says in a recent Washington Post editorial that the West Lafayette campus will not be following suit. On WBAA’s Monthly Conversation with him, we ask President Daniels why not and have him respond to an editorial in the Purdue student newspaper that points out what its writers think may be hypocrisy on the president’s part regarding how he talks about grade point averages and their worth. Also on this month’s show, could increasing the Department of Child Services budget help get more low-income and first-generation students to Purdue, or does such a move merely decrease the overall state funding pool and shrink the amount available for higher education?

Monthly Conversation With Mitch Daniels: Test Scores Vs. GPAs In Admissions

While he was governor, Mitch Daniels talked a lot about reversing Indiana’s worrying “brain drain” trend. A dismal number of Hoosiers complete college, and many who do venture outside the state to make their way in the world. But now Purdue’s President has a plan for “brain gain .” We ask him about it on this month’s edition of WBAA’s Monthly Conversation with Mitch Daniels. Also on this month’s show, a blogger takes a look at how President Daniels views a current urban design buzzword: placemaking. We’ll ask whether the thought process that helped envision a State Street overhaul has evolved from one which got the former governor criticized for allowing construction of an Interstate-69 extension that some derisively called the “zebra highway.”

Monthly Conversation With Mitch Daniels: Brain Gain And Placemaking

Purdue University is a $2 billion a year industry , so from time to time in our monthly conversations with President Mitch Daniels, we have to talk about money. This month, we ask whether the huge marketing budget for online enterprise Purdue Global – some estimate it’s close to $100 million – is potentially stepping on the marketing budgets of other Purdue programs. The University already had some online offerings and some that attracted non-traditional students, so is their biggest competition now another Purdue-branded product? Also, President Daniels understandably gets a little cross when we point out that very little of his so-called “at-risk” pay is actually at-risk, but for the first time this year, the school’s Trustees gave him a 100% rating on his assessment. So on this month’s program we suggest a name change that might better reflect the facts on the ground, and might be more palatable to Purdue employees who might actually be at risk if they lost any of their pay.

Monthly Conversation With Mitch Daniels: Global Ads And Coming Insurance Changes

WBAA's monthly talk with Purdue University President Mitch Daniels.

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Monthly Conversation with Mitch Daniels

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