Chairman Zeiger, members of the Board, good morning.
I appreciate the opportunity to tell you a little bit about what our teams have been working on since the last time we met.
You may remember that we predicted 2025 was going to be a year when The Ohio State University made history.
Seven weeks in… we are delivering.
I am so proud of the achievements of our students, faculty and staff so far this year. And we are just getting started.
As you know, Lynda and I recently celebrated our first full year as Buckeyes. We are even more excited about the work and mission of Ohio State today than when we first arrived in Columbus.
And that is a credit to the leadership of this Board, the tireless commitment of our faculty and staff, the enthusiasm of our students, and the support from our partners. So thank you.
Of course, we kicked off the New Year at the Rose Bowl, part of the greatest run in college football playoff history.
I assume I don’t need to recap what took place over that four-week period. I’ll simply take this opportunity to congratulate once again Coach Day, his staff and our student-athletes on bringing home our ninth national title.
And I’m so pleased that we have Coach Day as the leader of our program and our young men.
Our success on the field gave us a tremendous platform to talk about our success OFF the field. We took full advantage of that megaphone.
Our team’s perfect Academic Progress Rate – which, by the way, puts us in the exclusive company of Harvard University – earned national media attention. Our website had its highest traffic in over two years.
I know many people associate Ohio State with athletic excellence, and we’re very proud of that. But we strive for excellence in all aspects – athletics, student learning, research and patient care.
With the nation’s eyes on Ohio State, I’m very pleased that we were able to deliver that message of excellence far and wide.
Speaking of excellence – I want to officially welcome the newest member of our leadership team. Dr. Ravi Bellamkonda joined us as executive vice president and provost in January.
This was a search we knew we had to get right. And we did.
What stood out to me about Ravi is that he shares our vision for academic excellence as our true North Star. I’m happy to have him and Lalita on board, and I have every confidence that with Ravi and the team we’ve assembled, Ohio State is going to do big things.
We have already been able to celebrate some victories early in the semester.
I’m proud to share with you that we retained over 98 percent of our new first-year students on the Columbus campus from fall to spring. That’s a great proof point when you consider that we had our largest first-year class in history this past year. To me, it says that students and families recognize the quality and value that we provide, and they want to be a part of it.
We’ve also made exciting announcements when it comes to faculty excellence. A few weeks ago, Professor Adam Leroy from our Department of Astronomy was named the recipient of the 2025 Henry Draper Medal, awarded by the National Academy of Sciences for extraordinary discovery in astronomical physics.
This honor puts Professor Leroy in elite company: Nine previous Draper Medal recipients have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics. We are proud of Professor Leroy and the national acclaim an award like this brings to the world-class faculty of Ohio State.
And, we have announced the new Agostini Prize, named in honor of professor emeritus and Nobel Laureate Pierre Agostini. This award will be our most prestigious honor for scholarly and artistic achievement and will give us an opportunity to lift up the “best of the best” work taking place here at Ohio State.
Now, I could talk at length about the successes of our students, faculty and staff.
But I share these highlights because I want us to always remember that the work we do at Ohio State is creating impact each and every day.
There’s a lot happening in the world today, and I’ll get to that in a moment. What has struck me about this university – and frankly every institution of higher learning I’ve had the privilege of serving – is that even during times of uncertainty or challenge, the work of higher education never stops.
We still have the unique and sacred privilege of educating the next generation of leaders, of preparing them for success in life and work, of exposing them to new ideas and teaching them not what to think but how to think.
We still have the responsibility of conducting research that grows the economy, discovering new medical treatments that give hope where there was none before, and providing patient care that changes lives.
As public land-grant universities, we still have the noble mission of serving as the primary engines of growth and opportunity for the communities we serve.
We still hold true to our founding values of access and opportunity for all – the values that have made America the envy of the world when it comes to higher learning.
None of that has changed. In fact, I would argue our mission is more important now than ever. And I would further argue that the future of higher education is going to emerge from public land-grant institutions like ours. There is a race for leadership right now in that space. Ohio State can be, and will be, at the forefront.
No doubt, higher education has found itself at the center of many developments at the state and federal levels as of late.
We anticipated that new leadership both locally and nationally would bring new ideas and priorities. Certainly, a number of the policy proposals put forward in recent weeks will impact Ohio State, some significantly so. We are monitoring each new development and communicating with the campus as necessary.
Just last week, we shared with students, faculty and staff that we are continuing our evaluation of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across campus and have stood up two working groups to review jobs and programming related to DEI.
And as of a few days ago, we along with our colleagues in public education have learned of additional guidance from the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights regarding DEI. This new guidance will inform and likely accelerate our work.
But as we said at the outset of our review, our goal in being proactive was to be prepared to make changes if necessary. I expect that will be the case. And I have heard and understand the concerns and questions we’ve heard from students, faculty and staff.
I will not pretend to have all the answers. And I will not pretend these conversations are easy. My job, as president, is to make sure that first, we follow the law; second, that we take care of our students, faculty and staff; and third, that we stay true to our values as a land-grant university serving the people of Ohio.
I will always advocate for a competitive, affordable Ohio State that provides life-saving research and patient care, and I take every opportunity to share our story with elected leaders who historically have recognized the tremendous return that their investment in higher education yields.
I recently had an opportunity to meet with both of our new U.S. Senators, Senator Husted and Senator Moreno, in Washington, and I was pleased with our conversations. Here in Ohio, we appreciate Governor DeWine’s budget recommendation that makes important investments in access, research and clinical care, including support for veterinary medicine and behavioral health, both priorities for us.
The message I’ve shared with our elected officials, and with every Ohioan, is that a strong and competitive Ohio State means a strong and competitive Ohio. This is what higher education does: We create opportunity, we are engines for growth, we change lives. And few do it on the scale of The Ohio State University.
That is why our 10-year Education for Citizenship strategic framework is so important for the future of our state. Since we introduced the framework in November, we have been hard at work developing the priorities that will form the final plan.
I have told our teams, this is the time to be bold. We will be making exciting investments in academic excellence that will enhance Ohio State’s leadership role in the areas that will grow the future workforce. And we have big ideas around affordability that will help keep an Ohio State education accessible for every student who wants to earn it.
I am excited about the work we’ve put into this plan so far and look forward to keeping you updated as we get closer to our release date of July 1.
I thank you again for your leadership and support as we prepare for Ohio State’s next chapter.
Mr. Chairman, with that, I’ll turn it back to you.