The vet school is looking for a new dean. Faculty say a donor may be trying to sway the search

Nearly two years ago, on a small stage in the breezeway of Purdue’s equine hospital, the man whose name would soon be plastered on four Purdue buildings helped cut a dog bone-shaped ribbon.

David Brunner, a private veterinarian in Indiana and Purdue alum, had donated $10 million to help build the David and Bonnie Brunner Purdue Veterinary Medical Hospital Complex, a sprawling 162,500-square-foot compound that would house Purdue’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

As the vet school moved readily into the new building, news broke in March 2024 that then-dean of the vet school, Willie Reed, would soon be stepping down. A search would launch almost immediately, Purdue announced.

Now, months later as the search nears completion, some in the vet school said they worry Brunner might now be attempting to influence the search process. Through a “letter writing campaign,” they say, the major donor may be attempting to sway the search in favor of one of the candidates: Indiana State Veterinarian Bret Marsh.

In emails obtained by the Exponent, Brunner wrote to an unknown number of Purdue alumni and veterinarians in Indiana, urging them to email Purdue administrators — particularly the provost’s office — and endorse Marsh as dean.

“I assure you, together, YOU CAN INFLUENCE WHO IS SELECTED FOR THE NEXT DEAN,” Brunner wrote to alumni in all capital letters Aug. 29. “WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!!”

In an email to vet school faculty on Sept. 9, search committee member and vet school department head Catharine Scott-Moncrieff accused Brunner and his “campaign” of “undermining the integrity of the search process.”

But Brunner, in an interview with the Exponent on Tuesday, objected to his involvement being characterized as a “letter writing campaign.” Instead, he said, he has only helped veterinarians advocate for Marsh by giving them email templates to send to Purdue administration.

“My belief in (Marsh) is based totally on qualifications, not an agenda,” he said.

A Purdue spokesperson did not respond to two requests for comment on the ongoing search.

‘Letter writing campaign’?

When Reed stepped down as the vet school’s dean in March, Purdue announced it would be forming a 10-person committee of faculty, administrators, staff and a student to begin searching for and interviewing candidates.

Brunner said he was first involved with the search process when a vet in Indiana called him to ask whether Marsh was a candidate. Before that, he said, he had no idea Marsh was in the running.

“Everybody knew,” he said. “I was not somebody who knew."

Brunner declined to name the vet who supposedly told him about Marsh’s candidacy, saying he didn’t know who the caller was and that he had gotten Brunner’s number from somewhere else.

“I’ve never spoken to the guy again in my life,” he said.

After finding out about the dean search, Brunner said he emailed his graduating class from Purdue and told them to email administrators and urge the provost’s office to appoint Marsh as dean. He attached a template email for senders to sign their name on and send themselves.

“It’s the same thing you do for your senator or for anybody else,” he said. “Cut, paste and send. That’s what it was.”

In the email titled “Call to action regarding dean selection,” Brunner calls Marsh the “most qualified candidate for the position of dean.”

“TIME IS QUICKLY RUNNING OUT,” he wrote. “I ENCOURAGE YOU TO TAKE ACTION NOW!”

Word of Brunner’s involvement in the search process first spread in the vet school when Scott-Moncrieff emailed faculty Sept. 9 to raise the alarm, almost two weeks after Brunner began sending emails.

It’s unclear how many letters have been written to Purdue administrators from alumni and veterinarians in favor of Marsh, but Scott-Moncrieff said she believes there have been enough to potentially influence the search.

“There is an intense letter writing campaign underway,” she wrote, “with letters sent to veterinarians and other stakeholders in Indiana, as well as the Purdue board of trustees and Purdue administration in support of Dr. Marsh.”

Brunner said his involvement stopped at telling other alumni to email administrators, and he himself never emailed Purdue administrators.

“It wasn’t a campaign,” Brunner said. “I sent two letters out.”

Word of the emails spread by itself, he said, and soon the call to action and email template had reached beyond alumni to Indiana veterinarians without his involvement.

But in the email sent to alumni, Brunner explicitly calls on recipients to spread the word to others in the state.

“I encourage you to email Provost Dr. Patrick Wolfe, informing him that you strongly endorse Dr. Marsh,” he wrote. “Additionally, I ask you to contact colleagues and ask them to do the same.”

Influential name

Brunner’s name is stretched across four facilities on campus in bold, silver letters: the Brunner Medical Hospital Complex, the Brunner Small Animal Hospital, the Brunner Equine Hospital and the Brunner Farm Animal Hospital.

The donor, along with his wife, Bonnie, earned the recognition in 2021 when they donated $10 million to Purdue for the school’s new vet complex. This donation, Brunner said, is why he got involved with the dean search in the first place.

“I heard from two different places (Marsh was up for deanship),” he said. “Because of my donation, people thought I might know what’s going on.”

Some faculty, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Exponent they are concerned Brunner’s donation could potentially give him sway over the search process.

“It’d be just a sham,” said one faculty member who didn’t want their name used. “Marsh will probably be the person the administration wants.”

Brunner dismissed the concerns.

“Maybe it’s better I didn’t give the money,” because he would have supported Marsh either way, Brunner said. “There’s no money tied to this at all.”

Brunner said he believes the source of anxiety among faculty in the vet school stems from a fear of a “person who’s from the outside.”

“I think they’re a bunch of nervous academicians,” he said. “If they’re nervous, I can’t help them. I don’t see it, I don’t understand the connection. There’s a lot of things they could make up.”

State vet of Indiana

Before Marsh was Indiana’s state vet for three decades, he was a student at Purdue.

Originally from rural Indiana, Marsh earned his doctorate in veterinary medicine from Purdue in 1984 and immediately got a job on the state’s Board of Animal Health, a government agency that oversees veterinary policy in Indiana.

By 1994, he was appointed as the state veterinarian and would oversee BOAH for the next 30 years.

“I had an opportunity to go into the public sector, and I’ve been there ever since,” he told a reporter from Farm Progress in 2016.

Of the six vet dean candidates, Marsh is only one of two who doesn’t have experience in academia. According to a candidate list obtained by the Exponent, he is the only one from Indiana.

For that reason, Brunner said, he believes Marsh is the best option to be dean.

“How do we top somebody with (Marsh’s) background?” he said. “His entire career has been spent taking care of the veterinarians and animal health in the state of Indiana.”

Though Brunner told the Exponent he didn’t know about Marsh’s candidacy or the details of the dean search until an unnamed vet called him, he outlined the credentials of five other candidates in his Aug. 29 email urging alumni to ask Purdue to appoint Marsh.

“The selection committee has narrowed the list to six final candidates. Four candidates have research backgrounds, one is from academia and several are out-of-state applicants,” he wrote.

A faculty member told the Exponent the search committee’s candidate list was kept private by committee members and Purdue administration until faculty were asked for input on Sept. 6 — over a week after Brunner, who is not a member of the search committee, already knew the credentials of the other candidates.

Keeping veterinarians in-state

Supporting Marsh as dean is part of a long pattern of Brunner fighting against what he calls a “veterinarian shortage” in Indiana. By pushing for Marsh, an established Indiana vet, to be appointed to lead Purdue’s vet school, Brunner said he hopes to recruit and keep veterinarians in the state.

“There’s a massive veterinary shortage, which still continues,” he said. “In previous years, out of, I believe, 82 students graduating (from Purdue’s vet school), only 24 applied for licensure in the state of Indiana.”

Brunner said he’s known Marsh for 30 years, crossing paths with him multiple times. Recently, he said, he’s worked with Marsh to increase in-state enrollment at Purdue’s vet school.

“I met with President Daniels, I met with Provost Wolfe … Long story short, because of my efforts, (in-state enrollment) increased. And now the class has admitted 10 more in-state students than out-of-state students,” he said. “(Marsh) and I worked together on this.”

Even at the dedication of the vet complex under his name, Brunner emphasized his goal to keep Hoosier veterinarians in the state.

“We’ve got a shortage of (veterinarians) in Indiana,” Brunner, flanked by then-vet school dean Reed, said in his speech, “and we want to make sure that we’re keeping them here if at all possible.”

The majority of veterinarians in the state, Brunner said, also want Marsh as dean because of his established history in Indiana. The letters being written to Purdue administrators from veterinarians across the state, he said, are evidence of that.

“There wasn’t a pressure campaign,” Brunner said. “It was just people letting their voices be heard. And I think voices being heard is what’s making people nervous.”

When the Exponent asked Marsh on Friday whether he had heard concerns that Brunner was influencing the search process, the state veterinarian declined to comment, saying it was “at the university level” and he “wasn’t involved.”

The Exponent asked Marsh to clarify whether he knew about a letter writing campaign or not.

“I’m not involved with any of that,” he said.