Ohio State’s 17th President Ted Carter Jr. flew for the Navy in the 1980s. Credit: Ted Carter on X, @UofNE_President
You may know Ohio State’s newly appointed president as “Walter” or “Ted,” but his Top Gun comrades knew him as “Slapshot.”
According to Navy archives, Carter, who hails from Burrillville, Rhode Island, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1981 with a bachelor’s degree in physics and oceanography and quickly moved up the ranks to naval flight officer before graduating from the Navy Fighter Weapons School Top Gun in 1985 where he lettered in ice hockey, just one year before the iconic blockbuster of the same name was released.
According to a tweet by Carter, he hosted movie star Tom Cruise when he arrived at Naval Air Station Miramar to begin his flight training for the film in 1985.
“I graduated and returned to Miramar as an F14 Tomcat flight instructor as Topgun premiered in [1986],” the tweet said.
Carter’s accomplishments within the Naval Academy span 38 years, made complete with his serving as the 62nd superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy in 2014, where he served the longest term of anyone since the Civil War, according to previous Lantern reporting.
“Carter’s career as an aviator includes extensive time at sea, deploying around the globe in the F-4 Phantom II and the F-14 Tomcat,” archives said. “He has landed on 19 different aircraft carriers, to include all 10 of the Nimitz Class carriers.”
During his career, Carter flew 125 combat missions supporting joint operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan and accumulated a total of 6,150 flight hours, according to archives.
He currently holds the record for carrier-arrested landings among all active and retired U.S. Naval Aviation designators, coming in at a staggering 2,016.
According to archives, Carter has received several awards for his impressive performance in combat, including the Distinguished Service Medal and Defense Superior Service Medal, among others, as well as being inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 2015.
Before serving as president of the University of Nebraska, a role he began in January 2020, Carter established leadership experience as the 54th president of the U.S. Naval War College located in Newport, Rhode Island, from June 2013 to July 2014, according to previous Lantern reporting.
