Investiture

Thank you, Chairman Zeiger. I'm a little choked up. I'm humbled by so many of you that have been here today.

I've had a chance to do a few things in my life, and professionally, this is as big as anything I've been involved in. And on behalf of Lynda, myself and my family, we just couldn't be more proud and excited, and again, humbled to be here. 

Former Chair Hiro Fujita, thank you for the work you've done as the head of our Board of Trustees. Thank you for finding us and bringing us here, to know what was here at Ohio State, and inspire us to want to be part of this great community. 

To the rest of the Board of Trustees, thank you for your trust, faith and confidence in me. It's such a privilege to work with you. As we talk about what the future of this university is together, I know we are going to do great things together, and I'm excited to be working with and for you. 

Governor DeWine, thank you for your mentorship, your sage counsel. It's wonderful to see you and Fran here in support of The Ohio State University. I value our time together, and I've learned so much from you already. 

To my family, my wife Lynda — we've been married 42 years. 38 years in the Navy. 25 moves or so. All four corners of this country, twice overseas, and two moves to the Midwest. And I speak on behalf of both of us — we couldn't be happier to be here, and thank you for being such a great partner in this amazing job that we're taking on. And Chairman Zeiger, thank you for acknowledging Lynda.

To the rest of my family, Lynda's mom, Dr. Beverly Kohlhepp is here, our son Christopher, our daughter Brittany and her husband Nick, and Nick and Brittany's daughter, our granddaughter, Riley Rose, the star of the show is here today — one year old today.

I am just now in my 11th month in this job. I spent the first six months of this job doing what I call a listening and learning tour. I really wanted to understand the history of this great institution, what it means to be a Buckeye. And in my State of the University address, I talked a lot about our history, quite a bit about where we are, and not as much about the future, because I knew this day was coming. And as much as this is a time-honored tradition, the investiture of a president of a university, I really don't want this day to be about me. This is a day about the future of The Ohio State University. And I have spent the last couple of months working on what that future would look like. And today is an opportunity to articulate just some of that, in as abbreviated form as I can. 

You know, I go back and I think about the humble beginnings of this university dating back to the Morrill Act of 1862, the Cannon Act, the Ohio State act, that formed this university in 1870, and then the formation of our first class on September 17th, 1873. 24 students, all in agriculture, two women — very progressive for the time — and how they moved forward. And then our first military science and tactics course in 1874 — 150 years ago. These are the beginnings of our humble land-grant roots. 

And as I take a look at where we are today — six campuses, 45,000 employees, 67,000 students 8,500 faculty — the largest faculty in the United States of any academic institution — our reach and our impact is incredibly strong. But what made us successful in the past is not necessarily what's going to make us successful in the future. And as I entered here, I had the privilege and the challenge of building my own team. I hired four new regional deans. Multiple other deans. A new athletic director. A new head of advancement and planning. And yes, a new provost. So, Dr. Ravi Bellamkonda, would you please stand so everybody could acknowledge you? You will be our next provost coming to us in January. 

Ravi and his wife Lalita are here with us today. Thank you so much for being here. You’re not officially on the clock yet. And Dr. Karla Zadnik has been doing amazing work as our interim provost. But this is an important part of who we are as a university. Coming to us as the sitting provost at Emory University in Atlanta. An engineer — a biomedical engineer by training, a PhD at Brown University, work at MIT, Georgia Tech, the head of engineering at Duke, and of course working at the world-class academic institution at Emory, and even some time here at Case Western. So, Ohio roots, and we couldn't be more excited to bring you here, because a lot of what we're going to talk about today is going to be about how you and I, as well as the rest of our cabinet as a team, along with the work of our Board of Trustees and the Buckeye community, are going to move forward. 

And Ravi and I wanted to come to Ohio State for the exact same reasons. It's one of the reasons we hit it off so well. We both acknowledge and recognize that higher ed has hit an interesting cross-section in its amazing history. Just this past June, Gallup surveyed the American public and found that only 36 percent of Americans said that they had high faith in higher education. That's 20 percent lower than that same survey said in 2015. Americans have told us that higher education costs too much. They're worried about the return on investment. And on top of that, because of lower birth rates in 2007 to 2009, we're entering into what's known as an enrollment cliff. And the result of that is, since prior to the pandemic, just a mere eight years ago, we're 1.5 million fewer students in our roughly 4,500 academic post-secondary institutions across the nation today. These are real challenges. And both myself and Ravi, we want to come to The Ohio State University because this is the institution that can change that. In fact, the Association of American Universities also surveyed Ohioans just this past summer, and what they told us — and these were not Ohio State graduates — that 72% of them did have faith in Ohio State, and making a positive impact in our state.

And we're not having trouble getting enrollment. We're up in almost every category. You've read about the largest incoming freshman class, 9,530 of them. But we also grew in graduate studies. We grew in students that are in our Medical College, which nationally is down five percent — we're up six percent. And we're producing students at a faster rate than we ever have: an 88 percent six-year graduation rate, 73 percent in four years. So, is Ohio State out of the woods and we don't need to worry about this? Well, we could just keep doing what we're doing, but what made us successful in the past, given these incredible headwinds, are not what will make us successful in the future. 

So today, I want to share with you what our vision is. And I say “our” because, over the last 10 months, I have been working collaboratively with the entire Buckeye community — faculty, staff, students, alumni, philanthropic donors, our foundations, the business community, the general assembly — pretty much anybody that would get in front of me and listen to me for a few hours. I wanted to hear their input on what they thought the future of this great institution should be. And after careful deliberation and thinking, I want to share with you that vision, and I want to articulate a little bit about what our future strategy should be. 

The Vision. The future of higher education is, and will be, here at The Ohio State University. We, The Ohio State University, will be a model for the nation. Excellence is not a destination or goal. At The Ohio State University, excellence is an expectation. And with the team that we've built, that expectation will be a reality. 

So, to make this vision a reality, we will do five things. 

The first: relentless pursuit of academic excellence, because that is how we will retain faith in the members here, in the state of Ohio, and the American public. We will promote, invest, in sustained academic excellence. 

Two: we will educate the future, great generation for citizenship. 

Three: we will embrace and advance research, creativity and innovation. 

Four: we will create the best working and learning environment. And that goes back to a statement I made on my very first day on the job on 1 January of this year: We must create an environment here on this campus that is not only safe in reality, but makes every one of our students, faculty and staff feel safe. We will continue to attract and retain world-class faculty and staff. We will continue with the free exchange of ideas. Promote and preserve free speech. And we will also work on improving student health. 

Finally, number five — and by the way these are not necessarily in the order, other than academic excellence — we will continue to respect our past, because we were founded as a land-grant university, and we will continue to be so. But we have to re-imagine what the future of a land-grant university is, because times have changed from when we were founded.

Some things are still the same. We are the state's only flagship, which means we have a responsibility for service to our state. We are a school for all Ohioans. 67,000 students and over 70 percent — 71 percent to be exact, are from the great state of Ohio, and we will not change that. We are in all 88 counties of the state of Ohio. We're involved in helping ranchers and farmers, people that work in 4-H. When we go through a season like this in drought, our drought mitigation team helps mitigate the economic challenges that go with that. And finally, because we are a public institution, we have a responsibility to be good stewards of the taxpayer’s money.

So, knowing all that, today I am proud, along with my entire team, to introduce to you what I call a 10-year runway. And it's a plan, and that plan is called Education for Citizenship 2035. Now, you've all heard that term before, “Education for Citizenship.” It's actually our motto, and we adopted it in 1938. And as you look behind me, and you see the university seal, the Latin inscription on there is actually: Education for Citizenship. And to do that, we are focusing on six strategic themes. And by the way, when we're done here, you're going to get a bag of some goodies, and you're going to get a document that explains the entire plan here. So, there won't be a test after this, but you'll be able to take that home and read more, and we'll talk a little bit more about process here. 

These strategic themes are built on, first of all, the three main parts of our mission: academics; research, creativity and innovation; and clinical care. Those are the things that we do, but we also have to acknowledge that there are other big pieces of this university. Workplace culture, our operations — which are tremendous, we're one of the largest, most-complicated campuses in the country. We're an $11 billion a year operation today, and getting bigger. And we do not work for profit. And yes, I'm listing athletics as one of our strategic themes. And although that one might look a little bit different, I think it's important. It is the one thing that brings all Ohioans together. Regardless of what school you went to, you're a Buckeye if you're in the state of Ohio. And maybe more importantly, the landscape of collegiate athletics is changing so quickly, something has probably happened while I'm talking that we'll have to deal with. The future of shared revenue, name image and likeness, the transfer portal... for an institution that is the largest athletic department of any major university in the country, with 36 division one programs, we need to be a leader, we need to be a voice in protecting the student-athlete model for collegiate athletics. 

So those are the six themes. And as I want to talk and transition about how those themes work, they're not silos. In fact, everything we do works through them. They're not all weighted exactly the same. In fact, the only thing I'll talk about when I talk about operations, and how we manage and how we try to be dynamic and get away from the idea of being something of a bureaucracy — having been in the Pentagon, I'm a little familiar with that — but to use a flying analogy, we have to be able to fly this massive airplane, repair it, and upgrade it all at the same time every single day. That's how dynamic — something that higher ed is not known for — that we will have to be. 

So, as I look across these six major themes, we will be developing strategic priorities. Today, I will be introducing some of these strategic priorities that will have a myriad of initiatives. And over the course of the next six or seven months, we will develop these further. The plan that you will get today is a strategic framework; it's the beginning. That's not to say that we're not actively going after many of these initiatives and these ideas right now, because we are, but we need to do some business case analysis on some of the bolder, bigger ideas. 

In every workshop that I did, I would ask the audience, if you have an idea that we haven't talked about, hasn't come up, send me a note; I want to hear about it. And we've gotten some, we've gotten some really good ideas. In fact, I will actually talk about a couple of those today. 

And for you here in the audience and for everybody watching live online or watching this recording, I want to hear from you. If you have an idea for how we can make this university greater than it already is, send it to me: president@osu.edu. I look forward to hearing from you. I get a lot of love letters on that that email, I want you to know that. I want to hear some of those good ideas. 

So let me just introduce a handful of them to give you a snapshot — and I'm doing these in an abbreviated fashion — but I want you to know these are the things that I will be working with the Board, with the community, and all of you to achieve excellence in everything that we do. 

First and foremost: academic excellence. It is our North Star. If we are great at academics, then everything else will soon follow. This means investing in faculty. We want to bring the best faculty here, and retain them, compensate them correctly. It means resourcing. Resourcing our academic colleges and our academic disciplines to match not just the demand signal — which students tell us what it is that they want to study — but so that we can make a bigger impact in the future of our nation, and the future here in the state of Ohio. And we know what many of those are. And I don't want anybody to get the idea that there are winners or losers in, you know, the thousand courses that we teach, the over 200 academic disciplines that we offer — there are not. But we know we need more engineers. We know we need people more acclimated to STEM fields, because the business community is demanding it. We know we need more doctors, we need more nurses, we need more veterinarians. As the Governor was talking about this past year, we made 168 veterinarians. We probably ought to be making closer to 200 a year just for the demand signal here in the state of Ohio. 

And agriculture. I've had a chance to get around the state; I've been through about half of our 88 counties. We are an ag state; one in seven Ohioans work in the agricultural community. I'm proud that we have outstanding Extension offices in all 88 counties. But agriculture is changing. It's changing with the environment, and it's changing with technology. So, as we talk about all the academic disciplines we have, we also have a community college—the Agricultural Technical Institute out at our campus in Wooster. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do to promote that academic discipline, because there's a great need there. 

And of course, the humanities. The humanities are still important. As a son of an English teacher, everything I do, whether it's technical, whether it touches artificial intelligence, which we'll talk about here in a little bit, it all involves understanding history, the written word, the spoken word; understanding philosophy, sociology — all of those things continue to be very important. 

And of course, the arts. The arts are all part of our important landscape here at Ohio State. 

And of course, as we talk about educating the next great citizens for the state, we have to also help them understand what civil discourse really means. This year, we instituted a new academic program called Listen, Learn, Discuss. It's an offering; it's not mandatory. And it's been written up in the Association of American Universities as well as the local newspaper did a great story about it. And I think it's more relevant than it's ever been before, and I'm really proud that our faculty and staff put it together.

We're standing up a new center, called the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture and Society. There'll be an opportunity to hear different points of view, because I think that's a big part of what we are here is to show our students different points of view, and not tell them what to think, but how to think. 

Student success. We spend a lot of time thinking about student success. I'm proud of the work that we do. I mentioned some of the graduation rates that we have here. I'm not so sure that we're measuring — and higher ed is responsible for this — the right things, the right outcomes. Student success isn't just about getting somebody to a diploma, or retaining them from their freshman to sophomore year — something that we are well above the national average at 94 percent. It's really about what do they get to go do when they leave here. And how do we track that? 

Student success is also about things like campus accessibility. The number of students that come to campuses across the country today with disabilities, both physical and others — some not seen — are growing. It's more than doubled just over the last eight years. It's something we have to pay attention to, and something that I want us to lead. 

And finally, as I was talking to the many different groups — I didn't get to talk to all 619,000 living alumni, I did get to talk to quite a few — but one of the pearls that came to me was “don't forget about us.” And they're right, this is one of the largest, most powerful networks of alumni of any place in the country, maybe the world. And they're in every industry. And in most cases, they're leading. So, one of our ideas is create a mentorship program with our alumni, and connect them to our students. Because our students should know before they graduate that there's an amazing network that's going to help them be successful. 

Which leads me to my next point: internships. We are very good at getting our best students working with a Fortune 500, the big companies, some elements of federal, state and local government. We do send students overseas to study abroad. But we don't get to all of our students. Imagine a scenario where every undergraduate student had a meaningful internship opportunity. And imagine the impact that could have on retaining our best Ohioans. Where today, seven in 10 of our undergraduate students do stay in the state of Ohio for their first jobs. I think we can do better. And I want our students to know what's available.

And we know we need to do that, because workforce development is part of our mission. And the jobs that are going to be here in the state of Ohio and our nation by the year 2030 don't exist today. So, we have to be dynamic and make sure our students know what's out there. 

Affordability. You know today, we are one of the most affordable because we are a state institution. Many of you have heard me talk about this — 58 percent of our undergraduates today leave with no debt. That's 20 percent better than the national average. Those who do leave with debt, it's average of about $24,000 — also 20 percent better than the national average. But again, we can't rest on those laurels. We’ve got to look at how we can improve that. 

We're exceptionally good at taking care of lower income students. Today we provide about $400 million in scholarships, from federal, state, private philanthropy, and even from the university. There are pockets of students that we are missing, though, in that formula. And again, students are telling us how important it is. Today, the average student gets about $10,000 in some form of aid. 62 percent of our undergraduate students get some sort of financial aid. We'll be looking for how we can improve on that. 

Accessibility. This gets back to our land-grant mission. When we were first founded, and up through most of the first number of years, pretty much, we accepted everybody that would want to come to Ohio State. Today, dating back to the 1990s, and really, was put into practice in 2000, we became very selective. It's hard to get into Ohio State today; we should acknowledge that. This past year, we had 80,000 applications for that incoming freshman class of 9,530. 

65 percent of that class are from the state of Ohio. With various transfers from our other community college partners, and other institutions, that's how we get to over 70 percent Ohioans in our overall student body. But I'm here to say that, if you are from the state of Ohio, and your dream is to come to The Ohio State University, we will find a way for you to be here.

And we will continue to invest in our regional campuses. I visited them; I made the statement that they're here to stay. Because that is the immediate pathway. We have 23 community colleges here in the state of Ohio. We have a wonderful partnership with Columbus State. We have partnerships with Tri-State up in Cleveland, and many of the others. I'm looking to improve on those pathways — those two plus two programs, for those students who want to learn a trade, but want to finish an undergraduate degree. That will be important for us. And that will be part of how we fulfill our land-grant mission. 

Clinical care. Over half of our revenue that we work with here is through our Wexner Medical Center. It is world class. Today, we take care of 23 percent of all of the population here in central Ohio. 88 counties in the state of Ohio — one in seven Ohioans — are treated at one of our facilities. We have patients from all 50 states who are treated there, and yet we can continue to do more. By January of 2026, we will be expanding a new tower with 1,700 new employees. And we need to do that, because this region, as the Governor well knows, is planning to expand. We expect that the central Ohio region will grow from 750,000 to a million more people in population by the year 2050. So, this 10-year plan better have some idea of how we're going to be ready for that. 

We also need to make sure that we're, as part of a land-grant institution, how are we taking care of all Ohioans? Clinical care, dental care, hygiene care. The 32 Appalachian counties in the state are in dire need of doctors, nurses, dentists, hygienists. How will we find our way to make sure that we're taking care of all Ohioans. 

And then the research that we do — and I'll talk more about research in a larger scale — but on the medical and healthcare side, this is such an important part. The James Comprehensive Cancer Center is an amazing institution. Within the next 10 years, we should be on a clear path to being a cancer-free Ohio and America because of the work that we will do here at Ohio State. 

The research and innovation and creativity that we have here — again, it would be easy to rest on our laurels. This past year, the research dollars were over $1.45 billion. That ranked us number 11 in the country. That was ahead of Harvard, and ahead of UNC Chapel Hill. It'd be easy to say we're just doing fine, but alongside our medical research, along with what's happening in our 15 colleges... I know we can do more. 

We have a special place here on campus, on the west side, it's called Carmenton. There are two buildings there already. Pelotonia just moved their headquarters there. Every space in those two research buildings is currently full. Over the next 10 years, we'll continue to develop that space, bring in other tenants. Yes, we have Intel. Yes, we already have relationships with Honda and Amgen and others. We could be that Raleigh-Durham triangle and elevate ourselves to a new level. And this type of research, through creative expression, through discovery, and embracing innovation and entrepreneurship can make the difference between how we not only change lives, but how we save lives. 

Athletics. I talked a little bit about why they're important. The most important thing we can do in the future, as we go through what is likely to be a shared revenue model, is do as much of what has made us successful the same. When I hired Ross Bjork, he and I decided right away that we would retain all 36 division one sports programs. It's important; we have over a thousand student-athletes. It's important for our Olympic sports that we do this. Not many other schools are going to be able to do this. And, we will remain financially self-sufficient. That's no small order, because we're going to be sharing a fair bit of our revenue with our student-athletes. And finally, we're going to retain scholarships for all 36 division one sports. We will determine how best to do that; there's a lot of big decisions to be made. But these decisions will help shape the conversation about how we can make sure that our student-athletes remain students first. They're all going to be professionals, but very few of them will be professionals in athletics. And that's why I believe our athletics is so important. It is the front porch of the university. 

And there's something about athletics we just don't talk enough about, and I want you to know it because I think it's quite extraordinary. We're one of the top academic performing athletic departments in the country. Yes, we are.

Our own football team, based on the history of their athletic performance, had 100 percent score in their academic performance index. There was only one other school in the nation that had that. 

That was that small little Ivy League school up in Boston called Harvard. 

Our women's ice hockey team last year had a GPA of 3.835. 3.835.

Now, I'm going to brag on Coach Muzerall here because she's proud of that, and she's been the leading sports program academically for four years in a row. Oh yeah, and they've won two national championships in the last three years.

And by the way, the GPA of all of our student-athletes across the board is over 3.3. This is exceptional. A 94 percent graduation rate. We are top 10, not only what we do on the field, on the court, in the pool, but in the classroom. And I think that it is so important that we hold on to the student-athlete model, because if we lose it, and student-athletes get titled employees, then we won't have student-athletes anymore, and we will be farm systems for other sports programs.

Another group that I want to talk about today, and this is only a few days before Veterans Day, is military veterans. We have a proud history here of supporting military veterans. You heard me mention about the first military and tactics course taught 150 years ago. We're one of the oldest military institutions, in terms of our storied ROTC program — very successful. We have over 2,300 military-affiliated students on our campus. We do exceptional work. We're one of the top rated military-friendly schools in the country. But what most academics don't know, and what most Americans forget, even though less than one half of one percent of our American population serves in uniform today, 10 percent of the American population are veterans. And 200,000 of them transition out of uniform every year. Now 10 years ago, most of those veterans, using their post-9/11 G.I. Bill, would hit the easy button and sign up with a for-profit, or what was commonly known as a diploma mill organization, to go get a degree. Because believe it or not, only 17 percent of the military has a post-secondary degree. Most of the Officer Corp does, but when you look at the military writ large, most of them don't. And when they get out of uniform, three in four look to go get a degree. I want The Ohio State University to be the first choice for veterans, whether they are here in the state of Ohio, or elsewhere. We offer in-state tuition for veterans wherever they are, to include our active-duty military. And we will look for ways to give them credit for their military training and education. This will be a national movement, and I want us to lead it. And I believe in the next 10 years, we won't be one of the best universities for military veterans, we'll be the best.

The last item on my list — and there are many others, and I really am just giving thumbnails: I want to talk a little bit about artificial intelligence. Today, American businesses, only 5 percent of American businesses are saying they're using artificial intelligence, total. 90 percent of American businesses say they're about to. Artificial intelligence is here. Most of us are not very articulate about what it is, and certainly not about what it's going to be. Most universities are trying to create curriculum, research, even some brick and mortar, to try and address the future. By the year 2028, artificial intelligence will be a $1 trillion business. We here at Ohio State have already invested. 300 faculty have been working as experts in artificial intelligence since 2018, and yet, we're behind. We have pockets that are ready to accelerate us. The Center for Software Innovation is one example from which we can leverage the great work that's being done there. 

And this has to be done across every single thing that we do. So not just in the engineering curriculum, not just in the STEM-based fields. This will have application in clinical care, in the arts, in the humanities. And the workforce of the future will demand that our students are not just articulate, but fluent, in how artificial intelligence works. So, we will be investing, as well, in this. We will explore what it means, how to use this in a cross-disciplinary fashion, and I want us to be the center, the tech hub model for the nation for artificial intelligence. And much of it will be tied to the type of research and development that we're going to be able to do out in Carmenton. 

There's another problem with artificial intelligence, and that is the energy consumption. To use a single search on ChatGPT today requires 25 times more energy than a Google search. To kind of put that more in context, ChatGPT usage for a single day in the United States, that power alone would power 180,000 American homes. This is not sustainable. We know that we're going to have to be the people that solve that energy solution, and I want that to happen here at Ohio State.

I mentioned Education for Citizenship. You have to go back to 1938 when we brought that in as our motto. But it wasn't just that moment in time or somebody's just good idea. It was somebody pretty special. In fact, as you came in here today you may have seen some history on this out there in the lobby. It was the sixth president of The Ohio State University, George Washington Rightmire — two-time graduate of Ohio State; got his Juris Doctorate here; taught here. He was here through the depression. You can imagine what it must have been like to be running a higher ed institution during the Great Depression, not knowing that Pearl Harbor was around the corner. Not knowing that World War II, which would change the world forever, not knowing what the postwar G.I. Bill would do for Ohio State and this country. But he picked those three words because it was mission-oriented. And it was at that critical intersection for higher ed where it needed to change. And that's why I wanted to choose that, and that's why our team decided that Education for Citizenship is the right mission for us right now. 

So, all of these things that we talked about, we will formulate them together, we will put them in a much more discrete plan. And everything that we say we're going to do will be transparent. We will measure them, and the plan will be dynamic. And on 1 July of 2025, the plan will go into action, and it will last for 10 years. 

And I'm excited for our future, because excellence is not a destination, it's the expectation.

I want to finish, with, really, the words to what I consider to be the most amazing alma mater song sung in our country, Carmen Ohio. I know everyone in here that’s an Ohio State grad knows it well. We will finish the ceremony by singing it in total. But the words at the end speak to this moment in time in higher education, not just for us here at Ohio State, but what it means to have to go through a transformation. They were written in 1902 by Fred Cornell, a freshman here at Ohio State.

Summer’s heat, or winter’s cold
The seasons pass, the years will roll
Time and change will surely show
How firm thy friendship, O-hi-o.

How firm thy friendship, indeed. That is the element that makes our campus so special.

God bless everyone who works, studies, supports The Ohio State University.

God bless our alumni, those that are so strong and supporting us financially.

God bless our men and women who wear the cloth of our nation, who stand the watch tonight so that we may enjoy the very freedoms that we have here today.

And as always and forever, Go Bucks!.

Now let’s get to work.