As a Purdue Parking Operations student employee, rising Purdue University junior Aidan Wetli said he’s personally directed Purdue President Mung Chiang’s car in a school parking lot.
Wetli described Chiang — who the Board of Trustees announced as Northwestern’s next president Monday — as a “pretty solid dude.”
While some Purdue community members described Chiang as a fun, energetic presence that brought the community closer, others described him as a leader who didn’t vouch for the student body and lacked transparent communication.
Rising Purdue sophomore Grant Costa said Chiang attended many sporting events to hype people up.
“He was everywhere,” Costa said. “He wasn’t only the president, but he was making Purdue a family.”
Jialong Huang, a Purdue third-year Ph.D candidate in material engineering, experienced both former Purdue President Mitch Daniels’ and Chiang’s presidencies.
Huang said the biggest change under Chiang was the school’s increase in industry collaborations, such as making a deal with SK Hynix for a proposed semiconductor chip manufacturing company.
NU students should be ready for a “rich” future, he said.
“President Mung really has a good ability to contact those company guys and to ask for funding, to ask for collaboration, to improve our industrial power,” Huang said.
Costa said he also appreciated Chiang maintaining the university’s tuition freeze for three years.
But Purdue Prof. Stephanie Masta said maintaining tuition levels came at a caveat.
“While tuition remained frozen, student fees did not remain frozen — everything else increased,” Masta said. “Housing increased, dining increased, so holding tuition frozen is really only one part of the deal.”
Chiang was unanimously elected as president by Purdue’s Board of Trustees in 2023. Following the selection, some Purdue faculty criticized the lack of a traditional open search process and accused the Board of undermining shared governance, according to Inside Higher Ed.
Masta, who was also a Purdue University senator for two years, said communicating with Chiang felt challenging. She said he sometimes avoided answering questions directly.
“Silence is complicity,” Masta said. “I think President Chiang is very risk averse. I think that he’s very hesitant to do anything that might be negatively viewed by the Board of Trustees.”
Isaiah Brown, a rising Purdue junior and the media head of Purdue’s Young Democratic Socialists of America Chapter, said they, too, appreciated Chiang’s down-to-earth and fun personality at first.
But Brown said he felt “blindsided” after learning more about Chiang, including reports that Purdue allegedly rescinded over 100 application offers of Chinese international graduate students under the leadership of Chiang, who was born in China.
“He was a Chinese international student, and now Purdue has completely cut off people from China and other Asian countries coming in or foreign exchange students,” Brown said.
Raisa Deotale, a recent Purdue graduate and YDSA’s former co-chair, also said the group wanted Chiang to allocate more funds to issues that affect student life, such as facility maintenance and access to public transport.
“Most students are apathetic because everyone knows it’s a freshman ritual to go through brown water and mold in your dorms,” Deotale said. “We all know that there’s bats in Wiley. We all know that there’s cockroaches in our dorms. We all know that there’s no AC units.”
Deotale said she wishes YDSA had more opportunities to speak with Chiang.
Recent Purdue graduate Sanshray Kukulta encouraged NU community members to “stay on their toes” and collectively advocate for their needs.
“Anytime you have a new leader or anyone in power, you have to be holding them accountable and making sure that they are listening to you,” Kukulta said. “They answer to you. There is no Northwestern University without the students and faculty.”
Email: [email protected]
Related Stories:
— Q&A: President-elect Mung Chiang talks AI, engineering background, University goals
— Northwestern faculty express hopes, worries after Mung Chiang announced as president-elect
— Purdue President Mung Chiang named 18th president of Northwestern
