Driving down West Michigan Street looks different today than it did a year ago.
There’s the giant gold Purdue sign at the corner of Michigan and West Street. At the same intersection, construction is underway on Purdue’s first new building in Indianapolis, set to open in May 2027.
To Michael Cline, these developments represent a successful year for Purdue University, which has been working to establish a footprint in Indy since it split from IU Indianapolis on July 1, 2024. That’s been a challenge, as IU kept nearly all of the former IUPUI’s buildings — and students — in the divorce.
Cline, who currently oversees Purdue’s facilities as senior vice president of administrative operations, will take over as Indianapolis chief operating officer in January. He’ll replace Dan Hasler, the former state Secretary of Commerce who came out of retirement in 2022 to shepherd Purdue through the split.
Purdue wants to take advantage of opportunities to work with local companies like Eli Lilly and Cummins in the city while ensuring that students in Indy have the same academic experience as their peers in West Lafayette.
“It’s all part of one bigger Purdue University,” Cline told Mirror Indy. “Those strategies of what to do and how to provide for students and grow our enrollment, we’ve got a pretty well-versed group of people already doing that. All we have to do is figure out how to do it here.”
Recently, Purdue released its long-term campus plan. The university is planning to build 16 buildings over 50 years of expansion and has a maximum enrollment goal of 15,000 students.
The university’s planning some more immediate changes, too. This fall, Purdue will open a student hub in a former office building on Indiana Avenue, which the university officially purchased earlier this year. That move, Cline said, is a response to students wanting a place to gather that isn’t a classroom building or a dorm.
“That’ll be something that they didn’t have,” he said. “It’s what they wanted. We think that’s a big change, even though it’s small.”
Cline spoke with Mirror Indy about the university’s 50-year plan and what new students and community members should expect. He also addressed Purdue and IU’s duplicate building signs, which caused a minor stir on social media last year.
Read more in this interview, which has been edited for length and clarity.
On Purdue’s plans for expansion
What were some of your priorities when thinking about this campus plan?
We landed this real estate in the deal that we made with IU that was authorized and approved by the state legislature, and so we have a piece of property that’s mostly parking lots and parking garages. Well, we want to cast a vision.
We had an enrollment of about 2,500 students that were in IUPUI that migrated to Purdue programs. As we think about our long term vision of a residential college where the students are living on campus — and we’ve got a finite resource of 28 acres — how many students can we serve here?
Once we started looking at that, then we really wanted to focus on flexible buildings that, over time, can transform the property into serving Purdue, but also be a place for vibrancy.
It’s hard to predict the future, and the campus master plan isn’t really a build plan. It doesn’t mean we’re going to build exactly, but it certainly presents a vision of what could be and where our emphasis will be as we think about growth and then becoming part of the local community.
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Purdue eventually plans to build 16 buildings and enroll 15,000 students in Indianapolis.
On attracting and supporting students
Obviously, the number of students you have right now is much smaller than where you want to be. How do you develop this campus in a way that’s going to ensure that you have enough room that those students want to come here?
The first building will be a big first step in that, and that’s gonna be open in two years. It doesn’t quite double our space, but it’s a big jump.
We’ve got a program with (race car manufacturer) Dallara, and that’s 20,000 square feet that will be a significant boost to our motorsports engineering program. It’s not here on campus, but it’s in Indianapolis.
As we do our enrollment and admissions, we’ll marry up what capacity we do have and then grow accordingly.
Purdue West Lafayette has a lot of out-of-state students, and IUPUI was always a school that largely Indiana residents attended. With Purdue in Indianapolis, how do you see the school’s role?
We’re still getting our arms around some of the things here. We’re just barely finishing up our first year. But I think that there needs to be a focus to have students from Indiana and Central Indiana look at Purdue University and say, “It’s more accessible being here in Indianapolis.” It’s up to us to come up with a plan and opportunities to make that go.
On community involvement
Can you tell me a little bit more about what you hope your relationship with this neighborhood will be, especially given IUPUI’s history of displacement and the way it was founded?
It’s very important to us that we work in a collaborative manner with the neighbors and the civic institutions here in the city of Indianapolis. We’ve done a good job of that in our first year.
The traditional nomenclature is sometimes called “town and gown.” Universities don’t get along with the town they’re in because this town might feel like they’re getting pushed around, but we’ve navigated that really well with West Lafayette.
Now, we’re this really small university in a big city, but we think we can apply the same approach. And not just with the city itself, but with our neighbors.
As we rolled out the plan, we gave them a little sneak preview of some of it so they’re not surprised. They gave us some input even before that. The good thing is that if there is something that comes up, we’re on the phone. They know us. We have neighborhood groups come into one of the office buildings we’re in and meet with them.
On one year of Purdue in Indy
What would you say over the last year has gone well, and what lessons are you taking into the next year of this fledgling campus?
We launched, and we had a really good year. A lot of students came to Purdue and had a positive experience. We’ve worked to grow these internship programs and get more opportunities for our students — not only the ones here, but even some in West Lafayette.
Our fall enrollment numbers are strong again. We don’t want to grow super fast. We want strong and steady. And, we’ve got a very promising second year coming up.
The relationship with IU has been good. There’s always things that might pop up like, “What’s going on with this?” or “Why did you do that?” or “Can you get the signs to read the right thing on the buildings?” They’ve got some buildings with a black and gold sign and a crimson and cream sign saying (the same thing).
I noticed that.
In a funny way, we couldn’t settle on it. We wanted to make sure our Purdue students knew that they could go into that building. That’s where their classes were. But at the same time, that’s probably sending the wrong message — that we’re not getting along — because we’ve really worked well with (IU).
Now we’ve got to migrate from opening the doors and saying “We did that,” to, “How do we nurture and grow long term?” That’s the focus.
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Claire Rafford covers higher education for Mirror Indy in partnership with Open Campus. Contact Claire by email claire.rafford@mirrorindy.org, on most social media @clairerafford or on Signal 317-759-0429.
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