Kristina Johnson walks onto campus on her first day of presidency at Ohio State. Credit: Sarah Szilagy | Campus Editor
University President Kristina M. Johnson expects life at Ohio State in 10 years to include no more student debt.
Johnson laid out her plans in her first State of the University Address Thursday, which includes students leaving with their bachelor’s degree debt-free, increasing diversity among faculty, building an anti-racist community and moving the role of a land-grant university to the 21st century.
The cost of college creates one of the biggest barriers for equality in higher education, Johnson said. At Ohio State, the average student who graduates with debt has incurred $27,000 in loans.
Johnson did not specify during her speech what steps will be taken to achieve this over the next decade.
“This is well within our reach,” Johnson said. “We will lead the nation as the first university to offer a zero-debt bachelor’s degree at scale.”
Johnson did not just address the cost of education for undergraduate students. On top of the university’s previous decision to increase the minimum graduate student stipend by $4,000 per year by August 2021, she said Ohio State is looking for more ways to help graduate and professional students in the future.
Johnson said Ohio State will be led to become the greatest land-grant university of the 21st century by committing to four kinds of excellence: academic, in research and creative expression, in entrepreneurship and partnership, and in service to the citizens of Ohio, the nation and the world.
Johnson said one of her goals to ensure academic excellence is investing in faculty. The university’s most urgent priority will be to hire a minimum of 350 new tenure-track faculty because the number of tenure-track faculty has declined by 219 since 2008, she said.
John Blackburn, president of the Ohio State chapter of the American Association of University Professors and associate professor at the Fisher College of Business, said he agrees with increasing the size of tenured faculty — those who have academic freedom and a long-term commitment with the university — because it builds trust between professors and the administration.
“There have been promises in the past to do this, and I hope that this will be a promise fulfilled and that in the future there will be some form of accountability that will show an increase in the tenured faculty members by at least that size,” Blackburn said.
The university will also hire 150 new faculty members within its new Race, Inclusion and Society Equity Initiative. At least 50 of them will be scientists, artists and scholars dedicated to addressing social equity and racial disparities in education and public safety, health care, leadership fields, and resources and the environment.
The RAISE initiative, Johnson said, will change the composition of Ohio State’s faculty and help build an anti-racist society.
According to Ohio State’s Human Resources website, as of Sept. 30, 2019, the university employed 3,726 Black faculty and staff — with 121 on the tenure track, 88 clinical faculty, one research faculty and 134 associated faculty.
That same semester, there were 3,953 Black students on Ohio State’s Columbus Campus, and 4,637 across all campuses, according to the fall 2019 15th day enrollment report.
To ensure service and accessibility to opportunities, Johnson said she hopes this program leads Ohio State to become an anti-racist community and a national leader in recruiting students from underrepresented groups.
“I want every single Ohio State student to be able to look across the lecture hall or seminar table and understand immediately that their dreams are valid and achievable,” Johnson said.
To achieve excellence in research, she said Ohio State will invest at least $750 million over the next decade in research and create the Presidential Research Excellence Fund to support innovative proposals of faculty and research aligned with national scientific, medical and engineering priorities.
Johnson said student research will also be a priority, with the launch of the Student Startup Accelerator, an annual competition to be selected as Buckeye entrepreneurs and awarded $50,000 to work toward their innovation for a year.
Johnson said her half year at Ohio State has inspired her — through academic, athletic and public health success — to take the university into the future.
Johnson said she is appreciative for the Buckeye spirit amid the pandemic and returning to campus and for the university’s health care workers, researchers, response teams and task forces that made contract tracing and safe practices more successful on campus.
Johnson said the efforts and dedication of the school enabled 75 percent of students to receive a form of in-person classes fall semester, with half of the classes being either in person or hybrid.
“We have the size, scale and scope to truly lead,” Johnson said. “We can take on the greatest challenges in our society, the great challenges in science, the great challenges in engineering, the arts, the humanities, the law and every other field we encompass — and make a real difference.”
Correction: A previous version of this article stated John Blackburn is president of the Ohio State University Association of University Professors. The organization’s name is the Ohio State chapter of the American Association of University Professors. The article has been edited to reflect this.
