President Ted Carter Jr. during the State of the University Address on Thursday, April 11. Credit: Molly Goheen | Managing Editor for Digital Content
Fully adorned in scarlet and gray, university President Ted Carter Jr. said he doesn’t just want to maintain the level of excellence he’s seen in his first 100 days — he wants to go beyond it.
At his first State of the University address Thursday, he announced plans to do this through a written strategy produced with key stakeholders and the introduction of a campus survey for faculty and staff to better understand the university’s culture.
“We have to create and maintain a culture of excellence in everything we do,” Carter said. “We have many pockets of it all over our campus. Do we have it everywhere? No. Can we get it everywhere? If we imagine it, we can do it.”
He hopes that the questionnaire, which he envisions as a 14-question survey, will allow him to hear about Ohio State’s culture and achieve a baseline understanding to work from to achieve the next standard of excellence.
“We could just be happy to maintain what we have, but I don’t believe the founders who created us 154 years ago ever envisioned that we would ever rest on our laurels,” Carter said.
Speaking to these achievements, Carter shared a number of statistics relating to the university’s success. This included affordability rates, which he said have increased in recent years, and the graduate retention rate in Ohio, which sits around 70% each year.
In addition to achieving general excellence, Carter specifically said safety is one of his top priorities. He highlighted increased investments in campus safety, including the hiring of more campus police, an increase of foot patrols and a closer partnership with the Columbus Police Department.
“If we’re going to maintain and build the trust of the families who allow us to bring their sons and daughters here, we have the responsibility to take care of them,” Carter said.
He said he believes all of these goals and staying true to Ohio State’s values of “doing the right things for the right reasons” and sticking to Ohio State’s mission of “education for citizenship” will help change the perception of higher education as it continues to lose public trust.
Citing the third verse of Carmen Ohio, the university’s song, and his experience in the Navy, Carter said he believes it is fate that a sailor would be the one to take the university to the next level.
“If on seas of care we roll. ’Neath blackened sky o’er barren shoal. Thoughts of thee bid darkness go. Dear alma mater, Ohio. I could not be more proud to be your 17th president,” Carter said. “Together, we will navigate the seas of care and wherever we go, whatever we do, when you hear O-H, I-O. You know that you are with friends, how firm thy friendship.”
