Questions and answers were edited for length and clarity. The full interview is available in the video above.
Q: How have your first 100 days in office gone? What have you learned, what have you accomplished and what do you hope to accomplish in the future?
So the first 100 days have been, in a word, amazing. It has exceeded every one of my expectations coming into the job. Every single day that I’ve been here, I wake up and I come to the realization that I’m where I’m supposed to be. I’ve never felt that way more in any job I’ve ever had in my life, however it happened. Some of these things we can kind of control in our life and some we don’t. So that gives me a lot of excitement to be here.
I’ve talked a lot about being in the listening-and-learning mode in my first 100 days, and I’ve done a lot of that. I think I was averaging close to 1,000 new faces a day for a while — that’s a lot. I’m just now starting to get to see people for the second time — still some people for the first time — and that energizes me. I was with the engineering department yesterday seeing all 15 of their buildings, students involved in everything from doing architectural designs to doing titration on separating battery acids. And it was just really exciting to be at the graduate level, the undergraduate level to see the buzz and excitement of students learning in the lab.
And I’ve engaged with everybody, from the General Assembly to the governor and lieutenant governor to our faculty, certainly the University Senate. I’ve already had three different University Senate meetings and cycles. I’m meeting with all the faculty and the steering committee, researchers; I’ve been out there and engaged with industry. I’ve already been on multiple trips coast to coast — visiting with Intel, with Amgen, with Honda executives, so understanding that part of our mission.
Certainly the athletic side, so I’m not only something of a fan, I’ve also had to go through one of the biggest hires right out of the gate in replacing the iconic Gene Smith and hiring Ross Bjork. And then, meanwhile, we’re doing some of the biggest hires that the university can do. So I’m in the middle of a provost search right now, four regional deans, beginning the start of the search for the Fisher College of Business and the Moritz College of Law, so those will be happening in the future. So this is obviously a transformative time, not just in my coming in.
I’m not going to get in front of the microphone and start introducing new policies — that’s part of this listen-and-learn mode. I will start speaking to a vision and the vision will turn into a strategy over the next few months done in a collaborative spirit that will eventually turn into a document that will be prepared to roll out probably sometime in the fall, that will look forward to the next five, even 10 years of where we think we should be going.
Q: Since you’re not looking to implement anything right out of the gate, do you have an idea of future initiatives you’d like to implement? Any concepts, ideas or issues that are of the utmost importance to you and you’d like to address during your presidency?
I’m going to do a pretty strong look backward. I want to make sure that people understand how much I respect the history of Ohio State, going all the way back to 1870 — how we were formed, why we were formed, what we have become now over 154-year history. I think it’s important for us to understand that because, if we don’t know where we’ve been and a little bit more about where we are, we don’t have a very good picture of where we need to go.
The state of the university is strong. In fact, I probably won’t use the word “very” strong because that’s just a superlative, but I would tell you that we are. And, as good as that is, just as our founding fathers and those who came before us created this university as one of the first land-grant universities in our country, we have a responsibility to never rest on our laurels. We can do better and the things that can make us better, bigger, stronger, are not the same things that worked even 10 years ago.
So we’ve seen a bit, understand the landscape of which we’re going into, and that’s across the spectrum of the pillars that I know are so important to us: academic excellence, student success — which includes affordability, accessibility and that success — meaningful research, and that goes beyond just the number of dollars that we tend to put a hanger on and say, “We took in a $1.5 billion in research.” Amazing numbers — we’re rising in the ranks. We passed Harvard. By the way, the No. 11 ranking was last year’s numbers. We’re probably going to be higher with that type of number this year. But it goes beyond that. It goes beyond even the number of patents that we create. It’s about what we can do to change and save lives with the type of research that we do.
The scholarly work that our faculty do is really meaningful and how that inspires the students that are here to want to be involved in that, whether it be research or that work to be continuous learners for life. The arts are really important. We are very good at the arts here. I was really proud to open the new building that was the arts, film and media — phenomenal building, beautiful theater and the black box is super cool. I was really proud to be part of that. Some of you may have reported on me, I grew up playing musical instruments. My mother was in the thespian arts and my sister is a professional in that so I have that connection to my family even though it doesn’t look like that’s in my background.
And then, of course, athletics. Athletics are important because it is what I call the front porch of the university, it’s what binds so many people together. They care about athletics. We are one of the few programs in the country that has over 1,000 student-athletes, 36 Division I programs, only Stanford and Navy even compete with us in those numbers. And that landscape is changing. So I’m very proud that we got Ross Bjork on board and he’s got some time with Gene Smith as we get ready for that. I’ve been to a number of sporting events.
And then, of course, our world-class medical center, what we’re doing there in clinical care. We’re only less than a year away from opening the new tower, which is really exciting. We’re talking about 850-plus new, state-of-the-art, operating and medical rooms, not just beds, and then how we’re connecting that to the James Cancer Research Center. That is, to me, the equivalent of building a new aircraft carrier and rebuilding an old one at the same time. And I’ve been through the space and it is quite an amazing construction. And that’s on budget and on time.
So those are just some of the pillars that I’m paying attention to — again, all of which are strong, but I know we can continue to be even better. Of course, we just had U.S. News & World Report rankings come out Tuesday for the graduate programs. I’m proud of a lot of good numbers there. And again, I don’t need to highlight anybody in particular, where we have lots of pockets of excellence. I’d like to see all of our programs rise to that same level, I’m thinking about nursing and pharmacy and medicine. There’s some really great programs that we have here.
Q: Former university President Kristina M. Johnson looked to implement the debt-free Scarlet & Gray Advantage program. Do you plan to continue what she started, or do you have plans of your own that you’d like to implement in the future?
I started the Nebraska Promise at the beginning of the pandemic. Eighteen-thousand students have taken advantage of that — middle- and lower-income — free tuition to Nebraskans. We don’t have that here. The Scarlet & Gray Advantage has some elements of that in what it’s described to be, and I really like what I see in that. How do we execute it and how do we make it real? That’s the challenge.
The great news is we are in a good trajectory. Forty-two percent of our students today are leaving this university with some amount of debt, which means 58% of our students are leaving here without any debt, whether they paid for it, got it through a scholarship, however, they got there, they’re still leaving here without a loan or some sort of money they owe for their education. Compare that 58% to the national average, it’s about 20% higher, in terms of most students leaving with some amount of debt. And those that are leaving with debt here are leaving with the amount of debt that’s about $25,000 average.
Those numbers are still numbers to be paying attention to, but if you look at the national average, that $25,000 is about $4,000 less than the national average. How do we get that to be even less and less and less? The trajectory on all those numbers is moving in the right direction. The intentionality of how we get to be more affordable and accessible is still work to be done. We are not in the place where we’re looking at our Ivy League schools, Vanderbilt or some of these other schools that are now approaching $90,000 for the cost of attendance. We knew eventually that some of the schools in our nation would cost $100,000 over the course of a four-year undergraduate degree to attend. We are not going to be in that space ever.
We are still the second-most reasonably priced undergraduate program in the state of Ohio for those that have selective admissions, and we’re seventh out of the newly expanded Big Ten in terms of affordability. So I’m proud of where we are. There’s still going to be more work to be done there. Again, I don’t have a new policy to introduce, except that I will be a champion of making sure that we’re as affordable as we can be.
Q: In the past, you’ve said student free speech is of the utmost importance to you, and something you really value on college campuses. Recently, three students said they were given official notices and had to attend a hearing office after protesting at one of your talks at a wellness event. In your mind, where is the line drawn between an acceptable form of protest and one that does need to be reprimanded?
First, let’s acknowledge that we’re living in very difficult times when it comes to world events. You still have a war going on in Ukraine, the events that happened on Oct. 7, 2023, between Israel and Hamas were despicable. This university has made a very strong public statement denouncing those actions. I have been a proponent of free speech, the Constitution, the First Amendment since the day I raised my hand to take my commission in 1981. So, I’ve lived a life of understanding what it means to support those to have a voice. And I bring that here. So I believe strongly that not only should everybody have a voice, they should know their voices are heard. Those are two different things.
Now that said, you don’t get to have your voice be heard to either promote violence against another group, particularly innocent groups, nor do you get to have that voice to harass other groups. So I’m particularly sensitive about events that are happening on many college campuses nationwide. And we’re not immune from it, where we may have one group of students that feel like they should be pitted against another group of students or faculty. That bothers me. We have to learn more about what really having frank and civil discourse means, and some of that’s education.
But beyond that, I still promote — I mean, the event that you’re talking about was at a wellness event, it was a private, invitation-only event. I have to admit that when I got up on stage, I wasn’t thinking that way, and then we had three students come in there who were voicing their opinions. And if you go back and look at my statements, I said I was proud of them having a voice and I was proud that we are on a campus that respects free speech.
What occurred afterward and was made aware to me was that was a private event and they’d kind of overstepped the bounds. So, again, there’s an accountability part to this. Is it going to remove them from campus? Certainly not. I wouldn’t hope so. But we should also understand that we’re still an institution that has rules. Everybody that’s here — I mean, we’ve got 65,000 students, we’ve got 35,000 faculty and staff — they all have the same right to do their jobs and to be educated. And although free speech is important, we shouldn’t impinge on other people’s rights to enjoy the same things that we give everybody.
Q: For students who are looking to protest to express themselves, what guidelines would you give them to abide by so they know what kind of protest will be protected and acknowledged on campus?
We are more than happy to sit down with any group through Student Affairs. We have obviously a very wide network of security people who keep our campus safe, and they let students know, “Here’s how, it’s easy to do.” And a lot of groups are doing it the right way, and I’m really very pleased by that.
We have invested so much, even before I came here, on campus safety and security, that I don’t know that that story has been told well enough. I mean, there’s 5,000 high-definition cameras that are on, looking at every aspect of the campus 24/7. We have an entire security center that does nothing but manage and monitor that so, internal to our campus all the way to our boundaries, I know that we are very safe and when something does happen, we can hold somebody accountable.
The perimeter of the campus is something that I still feel a responsibility for, and that’s where our relationship with the city of Columbus, our own campus police, we’ve increased the number of patrols that are out there. We’re doing everything we can, we’re still on the hiring for some of our own campus police. So, I can’t tell students and faculty how to feel. All I can do is keep working with them to make sure that we’re gonna do everything we can to keep people safe and, when events do happen — and let’s face it, we are larger than most cities in the United States, there will be, on occasion, things that happen — we will hold people accountable. If somebody breaks a law, we will do everything we can to hold somebody accountable.
Q: On April 8, there was another Title VI complaint filed with the Department of Education on top of the initial complaint filed Jan. 16. In light of these national origin discrimination complaints, what is the university’s response?
Those are always disappointing. I have met with a lot of these different groups personally within the first two weeks I was here to include the students of Jewish faiths. I’ve also met with a number of the Palestinian students. And again, I went into that to go into a listening mode. I wanted to hear what their concerns were. And the first thing I would want your readers and listeners to know is a lot of our students are personally affected by the events that have happened over there. They have family, they have loved ones that have either been taken hostage or have lost their life.
Again, I have tried to be a champion of trying to protect those who can’t protect themselves. So I have a lot of empathy for those who feel ill-affected by these events. And then I said to both these groups, we’re gonna do everything we can to protect them, protect their interests. Sometimes it looks like they’re almost opposing each other. And I would like to bring them together to have more civil discourse. That hasn’t gone as well as I would like.
I get that a lot of these organizations that are out there, they’re looking in only the best interests of whatever organization they’re trying to support. When I read some of these things — and, of course, we have responded to some of them — we can only know the things that we know. And when there’s allegations that something happened that’s either never been reported to us or something that we don’t know or doesn’t match a timeline, we probably have some more work to do to find out the straight truth, and we’ll get to that.
I am committed to making sure that we keep all of our students safe. And I’ve said that from the day I got here, we’ll continue to work on that. I am confident that we’ll be able to answer any questions about how we do that. And I’m actually quite proud that even though we’ve had our challenges here, we are not looking like a lot of other campuses across the country that have actually had outward violence of one group of students against another or administration. And if we handle these things at the lowest level, to make sure that we’re staying within some basic rules of dignity and respect, civil discourse and still allowing the voices to be heard, I think we’ll be OK. I mean, ultimately we’ll be OK.
And sometimes we just need people who take a little bit of an exhale to know that we’re all Buckeyes at the end of the day. It’s the one thing that binds us together. I’ve learned a lot in my first 100 days about what it truly means to be a Buckeye. And when we do have a lot of differences, I think we can all come back to that at the end to say, “This is why we’re here, why we care.”
If somebody was that upset or felt that unsafe about being on this campus, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t stay here. And that’s not happening either. So I don’t see any exodus of any types of groups of students from our campus at all.
Q: Do you have a message for Jewish students who feel they are being affected or targeted in any regard?
My message would be we care about you. As we stated publicly, as I’ve said to them privately, we’ll do everything to protect them, as I do for all students. And the other thing that I would make sure that people understand is I’m not doing anything more for one group of students, no matter who they are, versus another. I care about all students equally.
Q: What are the statuses of the vice president and provost positions? Where are you in the search and how is the process going?
We are weeks from getting to that selection. So we’ve done a tremendous amount of work, some of it even started before I got here. I’m excited to tell you that we have amazing talent that’s interested in this job. Every job that I’ve interviewed for, to include even the regional campus deans, [there’s been an] amazing amount of talent that wants to come to this job. Our reputation, our brand, is attracting people from all over the country, all over the world, who want to come and work at Ohio State.
You probably know I went and visited all four regional campuses. I did that over the course of a couple of days. Very uplifting. You know, those campuses were created in the late 1950s. You can tell that because some of the buildings still look like they were built in the 1960s. But I had three big takeaways from that. One is me making the statement that our regional campuses are here to stay, they’re relevant.
One was the quality of students that I met there. There’s really two kinds of students that go to our regional campuses. There’s those that want to come to the Columbus campus that for whatever reason didn’t get accepted in their freshman application, but they go there knowing that after one year of good academic standing, they can come here and transfer all their credits. There’s definitely a pocket of students who want to do that. And as I visited the Newark campus, about 50% of those 2,400 students there are actually doing that — that’s a big number.
And then there are other students that whether they intended to go to a regional campus for a year or two and transfer, they get there and they fall in love with the campus, small class sizes, professors who know their names, professors that are doing amazing research on their own and attract students who want to come in and do internships with them. And of course, the affordability part. It’s significantly less expensive to go to a regional campus. Not all of our campuses have the student life that we would like them to have, they don’t have on-campus living, we’ll have to take a look at that into the future.
The other piece that I took away was the quality of our faculty there. On all of those campuses, about half of the people who are involved in the teaching aspect are tenured faculty. Again, world-class, they’re doing world-class research and attracting those students to do research with them.
The only slight “other,” if you will, was the facilities. Some of our regional campuses look great. Many of them are larger campuses, so — my first visit was to Lima — a 600-acre campus is bigger than the entire campus of the Naval Academy. It’s a regional campus, but not a lot of buildings for that amount of real estate. So how do we tend to that? How do we make sure it’s relevant? How do we make sure the buildings are not only modernized for the type of teaching in the lab spaces? That’s something that we’re going to have to take on because these regional campuses take us all the way back to our 1870 land grant mission: we have to be something for all Ohioans.
Today, we’re a pretty selective university, with 70% of our 55,000 undergraduate students from the state of Ohio. For those who had an A-minus average in a very good public high school, and they find that they’re on the outside looking in to come and be part of the 8,350 freshmen we’re going to take in next year, they can go to one of those regional campuses and get a high-quality education and still find their way here.
Q: Does being weeks out from making a final decision mean the positions will be filled by then, or will there still be ongoing searches at that point?
I can only go so far in that because it is technically a confidential search, so we don’t do this in a public way. And there’s a good reason for that. And I’ve been on both sides of those types of searches myself personally. I’ve never shied away from the public-type search, but even my search in Nebraska and even coming here was confidential, and the reason we do that is for those that are in major sitting positions, for them to have the ability and the freedom to apply for one of these jobs without having to transmit back to their university campus or business that their doing this doesn’t taint their ability to put their best foot forward.
We’re still going through that, so I want to be careful not to show any more than that. But eventually, everybody who will be a finalist will have the opportunity to spend time on campus. There’ll be more than just me doing an interview, they’ll be collaborative, there’ll be others that’ll have a chance to be involved in that.
And let me just finish by saying this. Of all the hires that I’m making, the importance isn’t necessarily the order in which we’re doing them. I’m going to be very clear about this: the provost search is the most important hire I’m making, maybe the most important hire I make here over the next five years. To have our chief academic officer who will complement my skill set — and I’ve said this to you before — I know who I am and what I am and I know who and what I am not. I do not come from a classically trained academic hierarchy. I need somebody that is that.
I bring different skill sets to the job. And I see myself in conjunction with other really key cabinet positions. So the provost, the head of the medical center, the head of our research arm, when you look across some of these key leadership elements, we have to all have alignment, we have to have a vision that can turn to a strategy that turns to action so that we can elevate ourselves to become centers of excellence in every single thing that we do.
Q: We’d love some clarity on the university’s decision to remove the divestment issue from the Undergraduate Student Government ballot. Considering potential conflicts with state law, does the university have an official stance on divestment?
First of all, I’m not afraid to hear the opinions of our faculty or of our students. I’m a big supporter of not only [the] shared governance model — which we have been doing here for over a century — I’m also a huge fan of what Bobby McAlpine does at the Undergraduate Student Government level. And I’m still learning a little bit about their own bylaws and how they do things.
I do think they’re in need of an upgrade to their own bylaws. I think that’s a little bit what got this kind of clunky, to be quite frank. And then the only thing that got involved in this was a letter from the state’s attorney general reminding us something we already knew, that no matter what the opinion here is, we’re bound by state law and what we can do. So that’s just a restriction on that.
And then the last thing I would just say is, regardless of your opinion on this, I can say quite confidently that there’s nothing Ohio State University is doing to either help, deter, stop or change the course of these world events that are happening. We have incredibly wide portfolios that are spread out in all elements of the world, and we are always careful to make sure that we’re not ever putting too many eggs, so to speak, in one basket.
I understand the issue, I understand the emotion that goes behind this. To kind of make a final point on this, we’re going to be doing a survey that asks our faculty and staff — the medical center does this every year, we have not done this in some number of years — to give us their opinion on how we’re doing, and it will be a great set of data points for me to start to know where we have to move based on the input from those that are here on campus.
It’s gonna be a way that everybody will be able to be involved in it. It’s going to be a 14-question survey, done professionally, and I want to hear the voices of those who are here on campus.
Q: There’s been some controversy about the Undergraduate Student Government doing a lot of secret voting while also receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in student fees from the university. In the university’s view, is USG a government body or just another on-campus student organization?
Well, it’s not just a one or a zero. They operate as an independent institution. As you point out, there are some fees tied to it, and there’s also a board of trustees element to that, and that’s what tied this decision to say “take that off the ballot,” because there was nothing that could be done because asking students to vote on something that’s unlawful brings that board of trustee connection to the Undergraduate Student Government.
Q: In light of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on affirmative action, has the university’s admissions committee made any kind of changes in regard to their admissions process?
Well, obviously, we follow the law. I’m not unfamiliar with this at all, I dealt with this quite intimately when I was at the Naval Academy and even at the University of Nebraska as a system. So yes, we do have to make adjustments. We’re not actually asking for race-based data to come in, that’s not part of the admissions process. So, there are some slight adjustments to that.
But, just as we always have been in our history, we still welcome students from all 88 counties here in the state of Ohio, all 50 states, and we average over 100 foreign countries that have residency here at our university. So I still feel, even with the limitations of how we do this, we’re still going to bring in students based on performance and meritocracy. And yet we will still embrace having a very diverse student body as we always have.
