University President Michael V. Drake reflected on the university’s past five years during his final State of the University address Thursday.
Drake highlighted successes of the 2017 strategic plan and his belief that the university’s current position allows for a smooth transition in the president’s office. Drake — who served as president since June 2014 and will do so until at least the end of spring semester before filling a faculty position — announced his retirement from his current position in November, according to previous Lantern reporting.
Drake said the five “key pillars” of focus for the strategic plan were access, affordability and excellence; teaching and learning; research and creative expression; academic health care; and operational excellence and resource stewardship.
“We expected our strategic plan to bear fruit in about five to seven years,” Drake said. “And nicely, together, we have exceeded our expectations in less than half that time.”
Affordability initiatives were one of the key factors considered in the previous university president search process, Taylor Stepp, Undergraduate Student Government president from 2012 to 2014 and search advisory subcommittee member at the time Drake was appointed, said in a previous interview with The Lantern.
By summer 2020, the university will have provided an additional $200 million in need-based aid to students — twice the $100-million goal set in 2015, Drake said.
“Our affordability grants are currently benefiting 15,000 low- and moderate-income students on all campuses,” he said.
President Michael V. Drake gives the State of the University Address at the University Senate meeting Jan. 30. Credit: Amal Saeed | Photo Editor
This has led to a 20-percent increase in first-year Pell Grant students — students who receive federal need-based aid based on their low-income status — and first-generation students since 2015, Drake said.
“We have more work to do and will continue our focus and our efforts on increasing access for students from all backgrounds, but we have tremendous, tremendous progress,” Drake said.
Kate Greer, current USG president and fourth-year in European history and German, said she has noticed “incredible progress” in access and affordability in the last few years.
“Covering full cost of tuition for Pell-eligible students in the state of Ohio has been really incredible,” Greer said.
Drake said the percent of graduates leaving Ohio State with debt has decreased from 55 percent to 50 percent in the past five years.
The university has seen an 8.5-percent increase in the four-year graduation rate since 2015, with 2019 at 67 percent, Drake said.
“More students [are] graduating than ever before, graduating in less time and with less debt than just a few years ago,” Drake said. “That’s really our founding mission made manifest.”
The university made strides to distinguish itself from similarly sized institutions with the University Institute for Teaching and Learning, which implemented a research-based survey to improve undergraduate instruction, Drake said.
Drake said that 93 percent of the faculty who have completed the training of the teaching program resulting from the survey planned to apply the training to their courses.
“We don’t want to be stuck in the teaching methods of the 18th or 19th or 20th centuries,” Drake said when taking questions after the address. “We want to continue to develop the best education methodology moving forward, and our University Institute for Teaching and Learning is meant to do just that.”
One of the better-known outcomes is the university’s Digital Flagship initiative.
“More than 23,000 first-year students have received iPad technology toolkits as a part of the largest learning-technology deployment in our history,” Drake said.
Another result of Digital Flagship was the development of Ohio State’s mental wellness app that launched Wednesday.
The university had a record-breaking year in 2019 with $929 million in research expenditures, $158 million of which was industry-sponsored, Drake said.
Additional advancements included those of this year’s President’s Prize recipients, Simone Bacon, a fifth-year in public health, and 2019 Ohio State alumna Jen Schlegel. Their current projects are focused on early learning in disadvantaged populations and software development to aid those with limited dexterity, according to previous Lantern reporting.
Drake said Ohio State is joining other public Ohio universities in the Ohio Intellectual Property Promise to ensure the university leads in the transfer of university discoveries to the commercial sector.
“As our new graduates enter the workforce, we are all pleased to see a recent survey that identified Columbus as No. 1 in the Midwest and No. 2 nationally for the best place to find a job in 2020,” Drake said.
Although Drake approaches the end of his tenure as university president, he credited much of the achievement to the hard work and commitment of the University Senate and the Ohio State community.
“Having been in higher education for 40 years, I know of no other institution better positioned to fulfill its land-grant mission than the Ohio State University,” Drake said.
