Purdue University’s Board of Trustees voted Monday to bring Mitch Daniels back as interim president, setting up a July 1 return for the former university leader as Mung Chiang prepares to leave for Northwestern University.
The board approved the appointment at a public session on May 25. Daniels, who led Purdue for 10 years from 2013 to 2022, will again take the top job on July 1 and serve until a permanent president is chosen and takes office. Chiang’s departure to Northwestern also takes effect that day.
Gary Lehman said the board looks forward to working with Daniels and the executive team. In a statement tied to the vote, he said trustees were extremely grateful for Daniels’ willingness to continue his long and successful service to Purdue in a role he knows well.
Daniels already has deep ties to the university. He is Purdue’s president emeritus and chair of the board of the Purdue Research Foundation, and he returns at a moment when trustees want continuity rather than a reset. The board said it will launch a national search for Purdue’s next president in the coming weeks.
Daniels framed the decision as one about keeping the university’s recent progress moving. He said Chiang has led Purdue forward in a host of important ways and that the momentum he generated should be maintained. If the board believed recalling him to active duty temporarily could help do that, Daniels said, no one as devoted to the institution as he is could say anything but yes.
That leaves Purdue with a familiar temporary leader and an open-ended search for its next permanent one. For now, the university is betting that the safest hand is the one that has already run the place before.
