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After spending nearly two years building the framework for Purdue University in Indianapolis, Dan Hasler’s work culminated this semester in the arrival of the first class of 800 students.
Hasler, a former Indiana secretary of commerce and longtime Eli Lilly and Co. executive, came out of retirement to lead the effort, which he describes as akin to launching a startup.
On July 1, IUPUI was split into Indiana University Indianapolis and Purdue University in Indianapolis. Purdue’s Indianapolis venture is an extension of the West Lafayette flagship campus, meaning students can study at both campuses throughout their time at Purdue.
Purdue in Indianapolis is “marbled” throughout Indianapolis, meaning the campus is stretched into the city’s workplaces along with traditional classrooms. The university is also building a $187 million mixed-use facility that Hasler said will create the physical presence the expansion is currently missing and will act as its beacon.
Hasler spoke with IBJ about his motivations to lead the expansion efforts, how the first semester is going and what’s next.
What’s behind the motivation for you to work on launching this program?
The joke in my life is, “So, Dan, when are you going to retire again?” I had no intention of leaving the farm. I have a farm in Illinois. I’m building a house. But when I saw this split being announced, which I never thought could happen, and realized that I have a perspective from being secretary of commerce, from being the president of the foundation of Purdue—I have lived in the nexus of these two things and thought I could bring some benefit to the leadership of it.
And I personally think this whole thing, this whole split, not just because of what Purdue’s doing but because what IU is going to do, is totally transformational for the city of Indianapolis. We’re the largest city in the United States that did not have an R1 institution, and now we have two right at the stroke of a pen. To be able to present that to the world as an economic engine for the city of Indianapolis, I think is just mind-blowing. It’s as big as the origination of IUPUI was at the hands of Mayor Lugar 50-plus years ago.
To get to be a small part of it, to get to be on an amazing Purdue team to try to do it—[I’ve] got some tread on my tires left; I might as well burn it off on this.
Work-based learning and internships are a major pillar of this new venture. What type of involvement are you seeing from students?
When we announced the Indianapolis campus, we made it clear that students on the Indianapolis campus would have a relationship with a company, profit or nonprofit, while they’re here in Indianapolis. That’s part of the deal. It’s not only required, but we’re guaranteeing that it happens.
And the reason for that is twofold. One, we’ve seen over and over again that when students can be in the work environment while they’re learning the trade, they learn better. They understand why they’re learning what they’re learning. … We believe that by having these students form a relationship with companies in central Indiana through employment while they’re here, when it comes time for them to graduate as seniors, they’re gonna realize what they’re leaving behind here if they do choose to leave. We think that’s going to help retention to the benefit of the companies in Indianapolis and keep some of the talent here. Now that’s yet to be proven.
For example, of the 800 students that are freshmen this year, 500 of them are already in some kind of project with a company in Indianapolis as freshmen, either through our VIP program, Vertical Integrated Projects, or our EPICS program, Engineering Projects in Community Service. They’re already getting engaged. We have 15 industry partners that are helping us with that engagement, where [the students are] going into the companies and solving real problems. … We have had lots of companies put their money where their mouth is and offer opportunities that weren’t offering opportunities before for internships and co-ops.
A big piece of making this new endeavor work is private-sector buy-in. What stage of partnership-building is Purdue in Indianapolis at?
Two things: I spend a lot of time with companies right now, and when I tell them, I said, “Guys, we’re doing this because you asked us to.” If you think about the very beginning of this, a lot of the driver from this were voices from corporate Indiana, corporate central Indiana, saying, “We need a stronger presence of Purdue in central Indiana.” We’re doing it for them.
So to make this work now, they’re going to come to the party and offer these opportunities for internships. They’re also going to need to think about talent acquisition differently. They can’t wait until October of a student’s freshman year, come and interview your students and expect them to come clamoring to their companies. Just as our football coach starts recruiting the stars their freshman and sophomore year in high school, these companies need to think about a long-term approach to talent acquisition. That means being in contact and being in relationships with these students as they’re freshmen, as they’re sophomores, as they’re juniors. So when senior year comes, you’ve got a student that’s just hoping they get an offer from these companies.
With launching anything new, there are tweaks and some reworking that’s required. Have you encountered any hiccups, and what’s it been like getting this off the ground?
This is a startup, right? We meet every Monday, and we talk about the things that I term as “first time-itis.” Almost everything we’re doing right now—either independently as Purdue or in collaboration with IU—is the first time. … And so, a lot of what we knew we would have to deal with is just the fact that people were doing things for the first time and would have questions. And so like any startup, the secret to the sauce is identifying where the rubs are very quickly, triaging what’s causing it, fixing it very quickly, and then institutionalizing the fix so it doesn’t happen again. … No mortal flaws or nothing that caused people big problems. Just things that we know that we can do better and more smoothly the second time.
What are some examples?
Student shows up with his meal card for the first time, and a card doesn’t work. You find out that there’s a glitch in the system that’s causing the IU system to not read the Purdue cards. You’ve got 300 hungry students trying to get lunch, and they can’t get food. As an example, yeah, what happened? Somebody’s over there in 10 minutes, opening up the turnstiles and saying, “Kids, first of all, go eat. We’ll take care of this later.” … The Purdue buses. We’re running a bus virtually hourly between West Lafayette and Indianapolis. We’ve had amazing, surprising ridership on it. The bus shows up on the campus of IU, and the space that they’re supposed to park in has Dumpsters in it. They know [the bins are] not supposed to be there. Somebody from IU parked them there. So, getting the Dumpsters gone by the time the next bus comes.
It’s not stuff that would cause the world to stop, but it is stuff that affects the first-year experiences of the students.
It’s early, but how does this new arm of the Purdue experience differ from what we already know about Purdue’sflagship campus? What is the personality of this campus?
We’re very young, so to say Indianapolis has its personality already would probably be premature, but it’s really not Indianapolis. It’s both Indianapolis and West Lafayette together. I kind of jokingly tell people Purdue has basically annexed Indianapolis into its campus because we talk to the students about [how] the campus is Indianapolis. We don’t want the students or our neighbors to feel like there’s a boundary or barrier between where they’re taking classes and where people are doing it for a living, or what’s happening downtown or on the near-north side. It really is an opportunity to have a campus that incorporates in it all the great things that are downtown Indy.
On the students’ side, something that really excites me a lot is, if you think about these first 800 freshmen that came to Indianapolis, there was a lot of uncertainty right when they were coming to visit the campus to decide if they wanted to come to school here. There wasn’t even a Purdue sign up. What you find is, these students are very entrepreneurial, and we refer to them as our co-founders. They took a little risk, too, right? They knew about Purdue. They knew what Purdue was capable of, but yet, there’s an uncertainty on this campus in the first year that they would not have had to deal with in West Lafayette. But that uncertainty excited them, and the idea of being able to be first and to be able to modify and mold what the experience would be for those that came after them distinguishes this group.•
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