Business School History: 2020-Now

2020

Purdue students are sent home in March to finish the spring semester online as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In-person instruction resumes in the fall, with many classes taking a hybrid format. Masks are worn and social distancing is practiced as part of the Protect Purdue campaign.

Allyn Knoche, a 1956 Purdue graduate, gives the Krannert School mineral rights to a nickel mine in Canada potentially worth millions of dollars. Knoche was inspired to give the gift because of a finance class he took at Purdue that led him into a career as a stockbroker and investment advisor.

Krannert launches an online master’s degree in business analytics in the fall and announces plans for online master’s degree offerings in human resource management and global supply chain management in early 2021.

Noel S Paul, a Purdue graduate with more than 30 years of corporate experience, is named Executive Director of the Krannert Professional Development Center. Michael Campion is named Herman C. Krannert Distinguished Professor of Management and Richard Makadok is appointed Brock Family Chair in Strategic Management. Clinical Professor Matthew Lynall is named Avrum and Joyce Gray Director of the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship.

Greg Hayes (BSM’82) is named chief executive officer of Raytheon Technologies, a defense contractor with $74 billion in annual sales. He previously served as chairman and chief executive officer of United Technologies Corporation.

2021

The Krannert School introduces a bachelor’s degree in Integrated Business and Engineering (IBE), a reboot of the BSIM degree that dated back to the early 1960s. The new program, a collaboration with the College of Engineering, allows students to take primarily engineering courses in their first year, followed by a solid foundation of business courses in the sophomore year.

Four students in the IBE program benefit from the inaugural Julie Wainwright Scholarship for Women Who Make a Difference. Wainwright (BSIM ’79), founder and CEO of The RealReal, established the scholarship to help increase the number of female entrepreneurs.

As a result of the pandemic, Purdue holds its 2021 spring commencement in Ross-Ade Stadium instead of Elliott Hall of Music. Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes (BSM ’82) is awarded an honorary doctorate at the ceremony.

Krannert teams with Purdue Athletics to offer a course on optimizing personal brand, providing students valuable information on social and digital media strategies, financial literacy and philanthropy.

Joshua Chan is appointed the Olson Professor in Management, Yanjun Li is named the Lewis B. Cullman Professor of Management, and Ellen Ernst Kossek is named a Distinguished Professor of Management. Kossek also receives the Lu Ann Aday Award, the most prestigious award given by the university for exceptional work in the humanities and social sciences. Cara Putman is appointed the new director of the Brock-Wilson Center for Women in Management.

2022

Purdue announces a major initiative to reimagine the School of Management into a new School of Business that will redefine the preparation of business leaders, grounded in the hallmarks of a Purdue education, including STEM disciplines and business analytics. Graduates from the School of Business will be uniquely positioned to bring discoveries to the marketplace, scale up innovations and effect societal change.

Largely funded by a $20.8 million gift from the Dean and Barbara White Family Foundation, the largest monetary contribution ever made to the School of Business, the Dean V. White Real Estate Finance Program is launched. The program provides an academic experience for students to plan, develop and manage successful commercial real estate projects.

Charlene Sullivan, an award-winning professor in finance, retires from Purdue after 44 years at the university. Economics Professor Jack Barron retires after 47 years with the school.

The school forms the Krannert Military Association to create an environment friendly to veterans and to recruit new undergraduate, graduate and domestic students into residential and online degree programs. The effort is led by Don Roush, who served in the U.S. Army Reserves for more than two decades.

Pengyi Shi, associate professor of management, is part of a team to receive the Shah Family Global Innovation Lab’s Seed Grant Award. The group proposed to co-develop a digital solution and decision support system addressing the youth substance abuse crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

2023

Jim Bullard, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, is chosen to be the Dr. Samuel R. Allen Dean of the Daniels School. Daniels earned praise for his leadership and innovative thinking as part of the Federal Open Market Committee, and he was ranked the seventh-most-influential economist in the world in 2014.

INFORMS, the largest association for the decision and data sciences, awards the Business Analytics and Information Management programs the 2023 UPS George D. Smith Prize. The award recognizes excellence in preparing students to become practitioners of operations research and analytics.

The Dean and Barbara White Family Foundation commits $50 million to Purdue to name the undergraduate business school the Bruce White Undergraduate Institute. It combines with the Krannert Graduate Institute to comprise the Mitch Daniels School of Business.

Allison Gabriel joins the faculty as the Thomas J. Howatt Chair in Management and director of the university's new Center for Working Well. The center provides cutting-edge research on the challenges facing modern workforces.

2024

The Lilly Endowment approves grants totaling $100 million to the Purdue Research Foundation. The funding includes $50 million for the Mitch Daniels School of Business in support of the new building slated to open in 2027.

The Board of Trustees approves restructuring plans for the Daniels School, shifting from two departments—economics and management—to nine: accounting, economics, finance, management information systems, marketing, organizational behavior and human resource management, quantitative methods, strategic management, and supply chain and operations management. The new structure, which takes effect in 2025, allows the school to respond more quickly to evolving student, faculty and industry needs.

Mohit Tawarmalani, Allison & Nancy Schleicher Chair of Management, receives the Computing in Chemica Engineering Award from the Computing & Systems Technology Division of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He teamed with Rakesh Agrawal, Winthrop E. Stone Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering, on work related to developing computational models and numerical algorithms for chemical processes.

Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith returns to Purdue to participate in the grand reopening of the school's Vernon Smith Experimental Economics Laboratory. Smith, who received the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics, began his work in the field at Purdue from 1955 to 1967.

Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks, a 1990 Daniels School graduate, is named to the Purdue Board of Trustees. He fills the vacancy created by the retirement of board chair and Daniels alum Michael Berghoff. Gary Lehman (BSIM '74) is elected to replace Berghoff as board chair.

2025

Formal groundbreaking ceremonies take place for the new 164,000-square-foot business school building, located on the site of the demolished Krannert Center.

A Cornerstone for Business conference titled "Markets and Moral Sentiments" brings business leaders and academicians together to discuss the role of business in society. Topics include the ethical implications of emerging technologies, the wisdom of historical and philosophical business foundations, and how to build a more just and sustainable business future.