Joining the band on the field for the 57th year was the Ohio State University Alumni Band. Quadruple Script Ohios closed the halftime show, with current band members in the south end zone and alumni band members in the north, east and west.

TBDBITL’s formations remain a program highlight. This weekend’s show featured the Statue of Liberty, Revolutionary War soldiers and the Liberty Bell.

Saturday’s i-dotters were Robert Gawdyda, from Hubbard, Ohio, and alumni Jeremy M. Rogers (north), Mark B. Enochs (east) and Tom Goodman (west).

Ohio State is one of seven universities partnering with Stanford University for a first-of-its-kind advanced manufacturing training program known as Foundry School. Foundry School is a national program to train the entrepreneurs, engineers, technicians and industrial leaders needed to rebuild American manufacturing.

Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the program details at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace on Thursday. During the launch event, Ohio State President Ravi V. Bellamkonda joined U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno, Meta President Dina Powell McCormick and other manufacturing and technology leaders for a panel focused on revitalizing American manufacturing and creating jobs. The program also featured presidents and senior leaders from the universities working to deliver the Foundry School curriculum.

“Ohio State is a national leader in advanced manufacturing, and we're excited to partner with the U.S. Departments of State and Labor, along with university peers from coast to coast, to launch the Foundry School,” Bellamkonda said. “The university has a number of labs and centers, including the Center for Design and Manufacturing Excellence (CDME), already partnering with employers to educate the next generation of manufacturing leaders, and the Foundry School will further enhance our offerings and help us tailor Ohio State's student experience to grow Ohio’s economy and maximize job opportunities for our graduates. This work is core to our land grant mission, and Ohio State is proud to play a leading role.”

Bellamkonda offered several examples of how Ohio State was already working with industry to support advanced manufacturing. CDME is partnering with a company in Piqua to help manufacture a novel, high-pressure sand-casting technology for defense alloys. Students from CDME work directly with the company to help develop the technology. After completing their paid program with the firm, they can often join the firm as an employee.

American manufacturers will need an estimated 3.8 million skilled workers by 2033 in semiconductor, defense, energy and other technology fields, according to a report referenced by the State Department. The Foundry School is designed to help close that gap.

“I’m very proud that we have Ohio State front and center along with Stanford, Penn State, and a few other great universities,” Vance, an Ohio State alumnus, said. “I think it’s an amazing collection of people, of institutions, of businesses, of thought leaders, and of entrepreneurs that we’ve gotten together in order to make this possible.”

Stanford University has collaborated on the curriculum with Ohio State, Arizona State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State University, University of Kansas, Vanderbilt University and Washington University in St. Louis. At each campus, the program will run 17 sessions, each taught by founders and CEOs from advanced manufacturing firms. Industry leaders will come from the U.S. and the Republic of Korea, Japan, Taiwan and India.

The curriculum begins this year on supporting campuses and will cover topics like fundamentals of modern factory design, materials and supply chains and assembly-line engineering. A core program hosted by Stanford University starts in January 2027 and will focus on precision tooling, industrial automation, digital manufacturing, defense production and other sessions.

“The future is through manufacturing in states like Ohio and in the Midwest,” Bellamkonda said.

Trustees on Thursday honored each scholar as a Distinguished University Professor. The permanent honorific title is awarded annually to tenure-track professors who have been at Ohio State for at least five years and have demonstrated truly exceptional records in teaching, research, scholarly or creative work, and service. Distinguished University Professors become members of the President’s and Provost’s Advisory Committee and are awarded a $30,000 one-time grant to support their academic work. The university has awarded just 78 faculty since the creation of the honor in 1987.

The recipients are:

• Gail E. Besner, H. William Clatworthy Jr. Professor of Surgery, College of Medicine
• Shan-Lu Liu, professor, College of Veterinary Medicine
• Alan Luo, professor, Donald D. Glower Chair in Engineering, College of Engineering
• Giorgio Rizzoni, professor, Ford Motor Company Chair in ElectroMechanical Systems, College of Engineering
• Brent Sohngen, Distinguished Professor of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences
• Claudia Turro, Dr. Melvin L. Morris Endowed Professorship in Inorganic Chemistry, College of Arts and Sciences

“Academic excellence is only possible because of our people,” President Ravi V. Bellamkonda told trustees on Thursday. “World-class research, exceptional scholarship, dedicated service — we have lots of reasons to be incredibly grateful for and proud of our distinguished faculty.”

Trustees also reviewed the tenure of Bellamkonda, praising his progress on goals including academic excellence, integrating AI into undergraduates’ academic experience, and driving transformative research and innovation. Bellamkonda was named the 18th president of Ohio State in March.

“You do a great job articulating a really compelling vision for the kind of university that we can be and ought to be,” Board Chair Jeff M. S. Kaplan said. “The urgency, enthusiasm and action that you bring to this role, we believe, are exactly what we need.” 

The board agreed to a 3% adjustment to Bellamkonda’s base salary as part of the university’s Annual Merit Compensation Process, and an annual performance award for achieving agreed-upon goals of $420,000, or 30% of his base salary.

Trustees approved the president’s fiscal year 2027 goals, focused on inspiring, innovating and empowering people across Ohio and beyond, and building upon the themes of the Education for Citizenship 2035 strategic plan.

The goals are:

• Academic excellence, which includes enhancing Ohio State’s signature undergraduate experience, advancing life-changing research, cultivating dynamic people and leaders, and bolstering strong colleges and programs.
• Healthcare excellence, in which Ohio State will help to reshape and transform healthcare by providing world-class care for every person, pursuing relentless innovation to improve lives, and being the best place to work and learn.
• Athletic excellence, a space in which the university is positioned to define the future of college sports.

The following actions were taken during the full board meeting:

Establishment of academic programs approved
The board approved the establishment of the Bachelor of Science major in biotech science and the Bachelor of Arts major in civics, law and leadership. The major in biotech science addresses a growing workforce need within Ohio’s rapidly expanding biotechnology and life sciences sector, and the civics, law and leadership major offered by the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society advances Ohio State's land-grant mission by preparing students to participate thoughtfully and lead effectively in civic life through the study of history, constitutionalism, law and leadership.

Revision of program curricula approved
Trustees approved revisions to the classics major, comparative studies major, natural resource management major and the environmental policy and decision-making major.

Honorary degree approved
The board approved the awarding of the honorary degrees for the following:

• Douglas Laycock, Doctor of Laws, honoris causa
• Dianne McIntyre, Doctor of Arts, honoris causa

Resolutions in Memoriam

• Edward “Ned” J. Behrman, who died on March 7. He was professor emeritus in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences.

• R. Bruce Curry, professor emeritus in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.

• James R. “Jim” Helt, who died on June 15. He was an associate professor emeritus in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.

• Floyd L. Herum, who died on Jan. 12. He was professor emeritus in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.

• Michael Jon Kindred, professor emeritus in the Moritz College of Law and former associate dean.

• Cheryl Lee Krueger, former member of the Board of Trustees, who died on June 13.

• Robert Frederic Lawson, professor emeritus in the College of Education and Human Ecology, who died on Aug. 9, 2025.

• Sheila J. Marion, associate professor emerita in the Department of Dance in the College of Arts and Sciences, who died on June 22.

• Thomas Edgar Noyes, assistant professor emeritus within the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, who died on April 6.

• John D. Ong, former member of the Board of Trustees, who died on June 4.

• Russell “Russ” M. Pitzer, professor emeritus in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences, who died on May 25.

• Richard P. Swenson, professor emeritus in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences, who died on Feb. 20.

Personnel actions approved 
Trustees approved the following appointments and reappointments:

Appointments

• Karin Allenspach has been appointed professor (The Endowed Chair in Comparative and Translational Oncology and Biomedical Research) in the College of Veterinary Medicine for a term running from Sept. 1, 2026, through July 31, 2031.
• Natarajan Balasubramanian has been appointed professor (The Robert and Anne Hoyt Fund) at Fisher College of Business for a term running from Sept. 1, 2026, through Aug. 31, 2031.
• Susie Breitenstein has been appointed professor (Centennial Endowed Professor of Nursing) in the College of Nursing for a term running from Aug. 20, 2026, through Aug. 19, 2031.
• Kristi Cheramie has been appointed professor (The Hubert Schmidt Chair in Landscape Architecture) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Edward Dodson has been appointed professor-clinical (The William H. Saunders M.D. Professorship in Otolaryngology) in the College of Medicine for a term running from August 15, 2026, through June 30, 2030.
• Kiely Fletcher has been appointed vice provost for strategic enrollment management in the Office of Academic Affairs effective June 15, 2026.
• Frank Jacobus has been appointed professor and director (Walter H. Kidd Designated Professorship KSA) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Osama Khalil has been appointed associate professor (Dr. Charles Saltzer Professorship in Mathematics) in the College of Arts and Sciences for a term running from Aug. 16, 2027, through Aug. 16, 2032.
• Kami Maddocks has been appointed professor-clinical (Natalie M. Knutsen Professorship) in the College of Medicine for a term running from Sept. 1, 2026, through June 30, 2030.
• Antoinette Marsh has been appointed professor (Endowed Chair in Comparative and Translational Parasitic and Infectious Diseases) in the College of Veterinary Medicine for a term running from Sept. 1, 2026, through July 31, 2031.
• Dustin Mixon has been appointed associate professor (Russell C. Shaw and Lynn B. Shaw Endowed Professorship in Mathematics) in the College of Arts and Sciences for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Nathan Mowery has been appointed professor-clinical (Margaret Bowers Hardymon Professorship in Surgery) in the College of Medicine for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2030.
• Michael Neblo has been appointed professor (Ann and Darrell Dreher Chair in Political Communication and Policy Thinking) in the College of Arts and Sciences for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Kathy Northern has been appointed associate professor (Joanne Wharton Murphy/Class of 1965 and 1973 Professorship in Law) in the Moritz College of Law for a term running from Aug. 15, 2026, through Aug. 14, 2031.
• Efthimi Parasidis has been appointed professor (The Robert J. Lynn Chair in Law) in the Moritz College of Law for a term running from Aug. 15, 2026, through Aug. 14, 2031.
• Robin Queen has been appointed professor and chair (Bertha Lamme Professorship) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Jeffrey J. Walline has been appointed dean of the College of Optometry from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Balasubramaniam Shanker has been appointed interim dean of the College of Engineering from Aug. 1, 2026, through June 30, 2027.

Reappointments

• Elizabeth Cooke has been reappointed professor-clinical (Frank C. Woodside III Clinical Professorship of Trial Advocacy) in the Moritz College of Law for a term running from Aug. 15, 2026, through Aug. 14, 2031.
• Monica Cox has been reappointed professor (Distinguished Professor of Engineering) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Laura Dugan has been reappointed professor (Ralph Mershon Designated Professorship of Human Security) in the College of Arts and Sciences for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Cesar Cuauhtemoc Garcia Hernandez has been reappointed professor (Gregory H. Williams Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties) in the Moritz College of Law for a term running from Aug. 15, 2026, through Aug. 14, 2031.
• Andrew Glassman has been reappointed professor and chair (Frank J. Kloenne Chair in Orthopedic Surgery) in the College of Medicine for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2028.
• John Horack has been reappointed professor and vice president (Neil A. Armstrong Chair in Aerospace Policy) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Igor Jouline has been reappointed professor (Rod Sharp Professorship in Microbiology) in the College of Arts and Sciences for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Ahmet Kahraman has been reappointed professor (Howard D. Winbigler Designated Professorship) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Sanjay Krishna has been reappointed professor (George R. Smith Chair in Engineering) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Dhabaleswar Kumar has been reappointed professor (Distinguished Professor of Engineering) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Tasha Lewis has been reappointed associate professor-clinical (Nina Mae Mattus Professorship) in the College of Education and Human Ecology for a term running from Aug. 15, 2026, through Aug. 14, 2031.
• Jamie Lipp has been reappointed associate professor-clinical (Mary Fried Endowed Clinical Professorship) in the College of Education and Human Ecology for a term running from Aug. 15, 2026, through Aug. 14, 2031.
• Rama Mallampalli has been reappointed professor and chair (S. Robert Davis Chair of Medicine) in the College of Medicine for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2030.
• Matthew Mayhew has been reappointed professor (William Ray and Marie Adamson Flesher Endowed Professor in Educational Administration) in the College of Education and Human Ecology for a term running from Aug. 15, 2026, through Aug. 14, 2031.
• David McComb has been reappointed professor (Ohio Research Scholar in Materials) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Marta Nowak has been reappointed assistant professor (Christos Yessios Endowed Professorship) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• John Nusstein has been reappointed professor (Dr. William J. Meyers Endowed Chair in Endodontics) in the College of Dentistry for a term running from Aug. 15, 2026, through Aug. 14, 2030.
• Phillip Popovich has been reappointed professor and chair (Ray W. Poppleton Research Designated Chair) in the College of Medicine for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2030.
• Dongbin Xiu has been reappointed professor (Ohio Eminent Scholar in Scientific Computation) in the College of Arts and Sciences for a term running from Aug. 15, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Ahmed Yousef has been reappointed professor (Virginia Hutchison Bazler and Frank E. Bazler Chair in Food Science) in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Xiaodong Zhang has been reappointed professor (Robert M. Critchfield Professorship in Engineering) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.

Trustees also approved a market compensation adjustment for Jake Wozniak, treasurer, vice president of financial services and innovation and deputy chief financial officer.

Professional services and construction contracts approved
The board authorized the university to enter into or increase professional services and construction contracts for the following projects:

East Hospital endoscopy expansion and catheter lab
Professional services totaling $3.6 million, to be paid for with auxiliary funds.

Hughes Hall renovation
Professional services totaling $5.2 million, to be paid for with university funds, state funds and partner funds.

Wexner Medical Center community facilities
Professional services totaling $20 million, to be paid for with auxiliary funds.

Ramseyer Hall renovation
Professional services totaling $3.1 million, to be paid for with university funds and state funds.

Research Center deferred maintenance, phase 1
Professional services totaling $4 million, to be paid for with university funds.

Airport capital improvements
Professional services and construction contracts totaling $1.3 million, to be paid for with university funds and partner funds.

Baker Hall portable air conditioning and electrical upgrades
Professional services and construction contracts totaling $4.7 million, to be paid for with auxiliary funds.

Blankenship Hall upgrades
Professional services and construction contracts totaling $1.5 million, to be paid for with university funds and partner funds.

Fawcett Center renovations
Professional services and construction contracts totaling $6.5 million, to be paid for with auxiliary funds.

Howlett Hall deferred maintenance
Professional services and construction contracts totaling $11 million, to be paid for with university funds and grant funds.

Knowlton Hall roof replacement
Professional services and construction contracts totaling $5.6 million, to be paid for with university funds.

North Towers renovations
Professional services and construction contracts totaling $145 million, to be paid for with university debt.

Outpatient Care East clinic renovations and relocations
Professional services and construction contracts totaling $14.2 million, to be paid for with auxiliary funds.

Tunnel rehabilitation, phase 1
Construction contracts totaling $6.1 million, to be paid for with university debt, university funds, state funds and partner funds.

University Hospital pavilion air handling units review/repair
Construction contracts totaling $37.8 million, to be paid for with auxiliary funds.

Fiscal year 2027 capital investment plan approved
Trustees approved the university capital investment plan for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2027.

Joint use agreements approved
The board approved entering into joint use agreements between Ohio State and the following entities following funds appropriated in the state capital bill:

• Edison Welding Institute (EWI)
• Junior Achievement of Central Ohio
• Lifecare Alliance
• Rev1 Ventures

Settlement agreement and amendments to the concession agreement with Ohio State Energy Partners approved
Trustees approved a settlement agreement and amendments to the long-term lease and concession agreement for the Ohio State utility system.

Amendments to the bylaws of the Board of Trustees and Wexner Medical Center board approved
Trustees approved amendments to the bylaws of the Ohio State Board of Trustees and the bylaws of the Wexner Medical Center Board.

Board of Trustees committee appointments approved
Trustees approved the ratification of committee appointments for fiscal year 2027 as follows:

Academic Excellence

• Reginald A. Wilkinson, chair
• Bradley R. Kastan, vice chair
• Elizabeth P. Kessler
• M. Katherine Holcombe
• Elizabeth A. Harsh
• Juan Jose Perez
• Patrick J. Tiberi
• Annabelle B. Feibel
• Phillip Popovich (faculty member)
• Eric Bielefeld (faculty member)
• Jeff M.S. Kaplan (ex officio)

Engagement & External Relations

• Patrick J. Tiberi, chair
• Elizabeth A. Harsh, vice chair
• Elizabeth P. Kessler
• M. Katherine Holcombe
• Pierre Bigby
• Bradley R. Kastan
• Kara J. Trott
• Annabelle B. Feibel
• Jeff M.S. Kaplan (ex officio)

Finance, Audit & Investment

• Gary R. Heminger, chair
• Pierre Bigby, vice chair
• Tomislav B. Mitevski
• Juan Jose Perez
• George A. Skestos
• Kara J. Trott
• Patrick J. Tiberi
• Patrick C. Arp
• Amy Chronis
• Kent M. Stahl
• Jeff M.S. Kaplan (ex officio)

Governance & Institutional Accountability

• Jeff M.S. Kaplan, co-chair
• Elizabeth P. Kessler, co-chair
• Gary R. Heminger
• Reginald A. Wilkinson
• Tomislav B. Mitevsk
• Juan Jose Perez
• Kara J. Trott
• Patrick J. Tiberi

Master Planning & Facilities

• Tomislav B. Mitevski, chair
• Suzanne R. Kiggin, vice chair
• M. Katherine Holcombe
• Elizabeth A. Harsh
• Reginald A. Wilkinson
• Pierre Bigby
• Bradley R. Kastan
• Annabelle B. Feibel
• Robert H. Schottenstein
• Keith Myers
• Jeff M.S. Kaplan (ex officio)

Talent & Compensation

• Juan Jose Perez, chair
• George A. Skestos, vice chair
• Elizabeth P. Kessler
• Gary R. Heminger
• Reginald A. Wilkinson
• Suzanne R. Kiggin
• Patrick C. Arp
• Jeff M.S. Kaplan (ex officio)

Wexner Medical Center

• Robert H. Schottenstein, chair
• Kara J. Trott, vice chair
• Gary R. Heminger
• Suzanne R. Kiggin
• Tomislav B. Mitevski
• George A. Skestos
• Patrick C. Arp
• Leslie H. Wexner, chair emeritus
• Stephen D. Steinour
• Cindy Hilsheimer
• Amy Chronis
• Hiroyuki Fujita
• Jeff M.S. Kaplan (ex officio, voting)
• Ravi V. Bellamkonda (ex officio, voting)
• Trevor Brown (ex officio, voting)
• Michael Papadakis (ex officio, voting)
• John J. Warner (ex officio, voting)

Finance Committee, Wexner Medical Center

• Stephen D. Steinour, chair
• Tomislav B. Mitevski
• Juan Jose Perez
• Pierre Bigby
• George A. Skestos
• Amy Chronis
• John J. Warner
• Michael Papadakis

Quality & Professional Affairs Committee, Wexner Medical Center

• Kara J. Trott, chair
• George A. Skestos, vice chair
• Suzanne R. Kiggin
• Trevor Brown
• Michael Papadakis
• John J. Warner
• Eric Bourekas
• Stacy A. Brethauer
• David E. Cohn
• Scott A. Holliday
• Daniel Like
• Kami J. Maddocks
• Traci Mignery
• Elizabeth Seely
• Corrin Steinhauer
• W. Kimryn Rathmell
• Andrew M. Thomas
• Crystal Tubbs
• Nicole Williams

Foundation Board Representative

• Pierre Bigby

Alumni Board Representative

• Bradley R. Kastan

Fiscal year 2027 Clinical Quality Management, Patient Safety, and Patient Experience Plan approved
Trustees approved the annual review of the Clinical Quality Management, Patient Safety, and Patient Experience Plan for fiscal year 2027 for the university hospitals.

Fiscal year 2027 Quality, Safety and Experience Council Plan approved
Trustees approved the annual review of the Quality, Safety and Experience Council Plan for fiscal year 2027 for the Ohio State Comprehensive Cancer Center — James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute.

Plan for patient care services approved
The board approved the annual review of the plan for patient care services for university hospitals.

Scopes of care approved
Trustees approved the annual review of the scope of patient care services the Ohio State Ambulatory Surgery Center — Outpatient Care New Albany, Dublin Ambulatory Surgery Center, Powell Ambulatory Surgery Center, and Extended Recovery Unit for Outpatient Care Dublin and New Albany clinical departments.

Direct patient care services contracts and patient impact service contracts evaluation approved
The board approved the annual review of the direct patient care service contracts and patient impact service contracts for the university hospitals.

Contracted services evaluation approved
Trustees approved the annual review of the contracted services for the Ohio State Ambulatory Surgery Center — Outpatient Care New Albany and Dublin Ambulatory Surgery Center.

Emergency General Surgery Program verification approved
Trustees approved the submission for verification of the Emergency General Surgery Program for university hospitals.

Ohio State Energy Partners utility system capital improvements plan for fiscal year 2027 approved
The board approved the fiscal year 2027 capital improvements plan for Ohio State Energy Partners.

University Foundation Report approved
The board approved, as of July 31, 2026, the establishment of two endowed chairs as part of the Provost’s Endowed Chair Matching Program: the James Mitchell Endowed Chair, the Barbara and Al Siemer Chair in Functional Medicine; one endowed professorship: the Jim and Christina Grote Professorship in Integrative Health Education; one endowed professorship fund: the Dr. Martha S. Pitzer Professorship Fund in Nursing; one fellowship: the Morell Family Fellowship; one scholarship as part of the Scarlet and Gray Advantage Endowed Matching Gift Program; 23 additional named endowed funds; and the revision of 26 named endowed funds.

Naming of spaces
Trustees approved the following namings:

• The Oklo Nuclear Reactor Laboratory in the College of Engineering
• The Christine Coultrip Dwarf Conifer Collection in Chadwick Arboretum and Learning Gardens
• The CVS Health Innovation Hub in the Riffe Building
• The east-west portion of Carmack Road in the Waterman Agricultural and Natural Resources Laboratory to Hess Road.
• The following internal spaces in the Engineering Research and Education Laboratories:
  • Ayanna Howard Innovation Space (room 2241)
  • Google Foundations Lab (room 1250)
  • Air Transport Services Group Charitable Foundation Office (room 2203)

Touring Disney Animation Studios and Tokyo Disney Sea with alumni executives, attending Q&A sessions with Disney engineers and having dinner with Mickey Mouse are just some of the highlights 29 students from The Ohio State University experienced during the inaugural Around the World with Disney Imagineering global education program.

Open to all majors, the four-week summer course allows students from diverse backgrounds to explore how their interests can contribute to collaborative creations like Disney parks. Students from 15 disciplines took part, including 16 engineering majors and one architecture major.

“The course was designed around Disney Imagineering as a model for large-scale creative collaboration, bringing together engineers, designers, storytellers, technologists, artists and business professionals to create immersive experiences,” said Yuri Melendez, an instructional designer for the College of Engineering. “What made the concept especially appealing from an educational standpoint was the opportunity for students from different academic backgrounds to see how their own skills could contribute to complex, multidisciplinary projects.”

The brainchild of Engineering Instructional Technology Director Chris Strasbaugh, it is the first course offered by the Office of International Affairs at Ohio State to combine both domestic and international travel.

Visiting Disneyland Resort in California and Disney Tokyo, students enjoyed a unique behind-the-scenes peek into the creative force behind Disney’s immersive experiences.

“We had the opportunity to learn about the behind-the-scenes processes that go into designing Disney parks through backstage tours and panels with Imagineers in Disneyland in California and in Tokyo,” said Haven Tan, a civil engineering major. “We learned about attraction design, interdisciplinary collaboration within Imagineering, and theming within the Disney intellectual property. This was a dream come true experience and I am so thankful for all that I was able to learn.”

The coursework included a group project focused on designing a new park attraction, individual response papers on how students envision their academic careers fitting into the Imagineering ecosystem, and maintaining a travel journal to document their experiences.

“As a part of our coursework, we worked in teams to create and film an attraction pitch. Our group was inspired by Pixar’s film, ‘Hoppers,’ which we used to theme a unique boat ride attraction,” said Kaylin Kerrick, a computer science and engineering major. “Individually, I explored interactive queue design through the Disney mobile app for my problem portfolios relating to computer science. This course was an incredible opportunity to combine my interests in both computer science and animation and see how it relates directly to Disney Imagineering.”

Ohio State alumni were essential in making the trip an impactful learning experience for students, organizers said.

“Planning for the course included contributions from Ohio State alumni and Disney professionals, which I believe is one of its strengths,” Melendez explained. “Meeting with alumni in person helps students feel a sense of belonging and realize that they are in this wonderful Buckeye community.”

In California, students toured Disney Animation Studios and shared an insightful Q&A with Technical Supervisor Rebecca Thompson, a computer science and engineering alumna. In Tokyo, landscape architecture alumnus Mark Schirmer, the recently retired executive portfolio creative producer at Walt Disney Imagineering, spent a day with students exploring Tokyo DisneySea, including the newest addition, Fantasy Springs, and sharing some of the park's unique aspects.

“Our walkabout provided the students with an up-close look into the storytelling and level of detail that Imagineers strive to produce at our parks,” Schirmer said. “The students and faculty were truly engaged and curious with their questions. Throughout the day, we shared our experiences in creating and operating these parks and attractions. Their interest and enthusiasm was an inspiration for us and we hope the time together will inspire them to look to their future and believe, ‘If you can dream it - you can do it.’”

Fellow alumni Brad Okeson, Kelli Ross, Machi McGuire and Robert Anderson also provided invaluable insight that made the trip successful.

“It’s the alumni who made this trip special,” Strasbaugh said.

In summer 2027, the program will travel to Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando and Disneyland Paris. Student applications are due January 7, 2027.

For fans who want to experience the build-up to the home opener, The Ohio State University Marching Band’s pregame Skull Session will be livestreamed — accessible on phones, tablets and laptops for those who cannot watch it live in St. John Arena.

This is the sixth year that University Communications will livestream Skull Session before each home game of the season. The livestream is available on the Ohio State News YouTube channel through the website or the YouTube app.

“We’re excited to be back for our sixth season of livestreaming Skull Session. We are bringing back our popular guest interviews as well as the flag giveaways,” said Director of National Broadcast Media Joe Camoriano. “If you tune in 2 1/2 hours before kickoff of each home game, you’ll get to see one of the best fan experiences in the country.”

Camoriano and a team of videographers will stream Skull Session using seven different cameras and multiple microphones to capture the action from all angles.

Skull Session originally served as a final music rehearsal for the Ohio State Marching Band before its performance on the field. It has evolved into one of the most anticipated game day traditions for Buckeye fans. Doors to St. John Arena open three hours prior to kickoff and the arena can quickly fill up.

TBDBITL marches into the arena and plays “Fanfare for a New Era” as the football team arrives. Coach Ryan Day, assistant coaches and players speak each week to the fans before they head to the stadium. The band then performs a final musical run-through of its pregame and halftime shows before game time.

Does support from administrative leadership help keep teachers in their jobs by making them feel safer and less stressed? And when teachers experience violence from students in their classrooms, does it weaken the impact of that protective relationship?

To find out, researchers analyzed 2020–21 national survey data on school violence from 5,550 pre-K through 12th-grade teachers. Conducted in collaboration with the American Psychological Association (APA)’s Task Force on Violence Against Teachers and School Personnel, the study was published recently in Educational Researcher.

Andrew Perry, a senior lecturer in educational studies at The Ohio State University, led the project alongside a research team that included co-author Eric Anderman, a professor of educational psychology and vice provost for regional campuses. They focused specifically on teachers’ intentions to transfer or quit, noting that about one-third of educators who express a desire to leave actually follow through within the year.

The researchers’ definition of support centers on transparency and communication — such as teachers feeling safe and comfortable talking to principals about matters of discipline — and a general belief that school administrators will back up teachers when a disciplinary incident occurs.

They found that while supportive leadership is widely recognized as protective against teacher burnout, student-directed violence is a critical tipping point. In a sample where 44% of educators reported experiencing student victimization and up to 80% faced verbal or threatening aggression, high levels of violence systematically weakened the protective benefits of principal support.

These results did not surprise Perry. “Our hypotheses were largely supported by the study. What we expected to find, we found,” he said. “Support is beneficial and necessary, but not sufficient. You have to have it, but in the face of victimization, support alone is not enough.”

Prior research shows that teachers who are on the front lines in our schools are most susceptible to non-physical violence from students — including verbal threats, obscene remarks and slurs. It’s “a demoralizing, sobering day-to-day reality,” Perry said. “If a teacher feels they are in an environment where this stuff is ignored, and they have nobody to turn to, it becomes toxic to their well-being, and they want to get away.”

Notably, elementary school teachers reported being victimized more often than their peers. Perry suspects this is due to elementary students having a lower capacity for self-regulation, making them more likely to lash out through hitting, biting, throwing objects or screaming.

“Teachers sign up for the job, but dealing with young children presenting these behaviors is challenging. School principals being present and showing support is a necessary component, but systematic strategies are required alongside it,” he said.

In a 2024 School Psychology paper co-authored by Perry, researchers evaluated strategies schools use to prevent violence and found that zero-tolerance policies and school hardening practices, like upgrading physical security and surveillance systems, do not work. “The most effective strategies are restorative, prevention-based approaches that build a climate of mutual respect, safety and integrity,” he said.

Beyond institutional policies, Perry emphasized that addressing teacher retention requires a fundamental shift in how schools and communities handle classroom safety.

“Violence against teachers is real, pervasive and impactful. When teachers are victimized, they want to leave. Teacher attrition leads to cascading consequences: schools lose experienced veteran teachers and replacing them is expensive and leads to inexperienced instruction,” Perry said.

Administrators can influence teachers’ perceptions of school safety, anxiety and stress, and retention intentions, the researchers noted, but administrator support needs to be combined with positive and clear discipline policies, and effective violence prevention initiatives that include all stakeholders and systemic improvements in school culture and climate.

“Teachers are human beings who need support not only from principals, but from parents and the public as well,” Perry said.

This work was supported by the American Psychological Association. Additional co-authors include Linda A. Reddy of Rutgers University; Andrew Martinez of Hunter College; Susan D. McMahon of DePaul University; Ron A. Astor of the University of California, Los Angeles; Frank C. Worrell of the University of California, Berkeley; and Dorothy L. Espelage of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

When his family immigrated to the United States, one of his relatives fought for the Union Army in the Civil War. Once settled, his father’s family plotted out land that would be farmed for generations. Hinzman, a fifth-year student at The Ohio State University and member of the offensive line for the Buckeye football team, grew up on that same 300-acre farm.

“A dairy farm is an every day, twice a day, no breaks sort of thing,” he said. “It instilled in me a lot of values. I learned from my grandma and grandpa, who lived on a farm close by.”

As Hinzman puts it, farming isn’t a job; it’s a way of life – which made training for football the fun part of his day, no matter how challenging it was.

“Whenever we’re training, doing something really difficult, I’m like, ‘Man, this is fun,’” he said. “I don’t know if the guys understand that this is time when we’re allowed to go do something, hang out together.”

It is the values he learned from farming that have made Hinzman a success at Ohio State. He is currently working on his second bachelor’s degree and is a three-time university scholar-athlete, as well as a 2025 first-team All-American.

Now, he wants to help people with the same values give back to the communities that taught them. Hinzman founded the Grit & Grain Foundation with his father, Jon. The foundation will give kids from rural and blue-collar communities more opportunities to succeed, Hinzman said. 

“Through mentorship, athletics, education and service, we want to help young people build confidence, develop strong character and take pride in where they come from.

“I want people to hone in on their values, that work ethic that was instilled in you and let that take you to your next level,” he said. “It could be sports or something else, like engineering, that becomes your next great opportunity. You grow your own legacy and then come back to the community to pick up that teaching role.”

“Community is important to our players and to our team.,” said head football coach Ryan Day. “To see Carson take on this role of supporting the people and the industry that made him who he is today, I am very proud of him and his efforts.”

Ohio State football players are very visible to the public, and with that comes responsibility, Hinzman said,

“It’s only right for us to give back to the community. Those are the people that put us in this position and give us the opportunity to be Ohio State football players. They’re what makes Ohio State football great,” he said. “Without them, we’d just be a club team hitting pads.”

Having worked with his grandparents, Hinzman knows that older farmers often need help, either with immediate needs or longer-term goals.

“Those people that developed the community” deserve respect and support, he said.

“It’s important for the next generation to hear about farming because right now, people don’t think farming is the coolest thing to do,” he said. “It is hard work, it is demanding but it’s also one of the most rewarding things you can do, work the land.”

Hinzman is a fixture at the university’s annual Farm Science Review, where he emphasizes the significance of small farms. And he walks the walk, too. Hinzman has personally helped farmers clean up their land after storms. He brings his Buckeye teammates with him when he can.

“For the guys who grew up in the city, who grew up in the suburbs, this is a very different lifestyle,” he said. “For them to see that this is the backbone of America and how farmers support you, that’s important.”

And football players are made for lifting bales of hay, he added.

“We have a lot of big guys who can move a lot of weight, that’s for sure.”

For more than a decade, Ohio State faculty, students and postdoctoral scholars have played a role in designing Roman’s surveys. More than 20 Buckeyes, including nine undergraduates, traveled to Florida to watch the launch in person and also joined their peers on the Columbus campus for a virtual watch party.

David Weinberg, Distinguished University Professor of astronomy at Ohio State, was viewing the launch near NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building, where the Apollo rockets were assembled and rolled out onto the launch pad.

“We heard briefings recently from the NASA administrators and others, and everybody is very excited to see this go,” Weinberg said. “It’s been fun to be here and see people we’ve been working with for 15 years and have it all come together.”

Named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, the “mother of the Hubble Space Telescope,” Roman is designed to survey the universe a thousand times faster than Hubble.

The Roman telescope’s primary tool, the Wide Field Instrument, is a 300-megapixel infrared camera with 18 4K detectors – collecting photons of light that, according to NASA, will be “decoded into crisp cosmic panoramas.”  

Ohio State has deep ties to the Roman mission, showcasing the university’s academic excellence across multiple departments. Members of the university’s astronomy and physics departments have spent more than a decade developing the robust technologies and scientific programs in cosmology, exoplanets and stars to make the extraordinary mission a success.

Claire Lamman, a cosmologist and postdoctoral fellow at Ohio State, followed the launch from Columbus and looks forward to the discoveries the telescope will make.

“I care about what the universe looks like on big scales, how it changes and the forces that drive it, dark matter and dark energy,” she said. “Roman will be excellent for this… Not just figuring out where these galaxies are, but getting really good pictures of them will help us understand how galaxies are connected to their cosmic environment in ways that we haven’t seen before.”

Paarmita Pandey, an Ohio State graduate student, joined Lamman at the launch party. She said the telescope's surveys will help explore the lifecycle of stars, supernovae and black holes.

“I spend a lot of my time hunting for stars that should have exploded and didn’t. Some massive stars, instead of going out in a supernova, just collapse into black holes. No explosions. No fireworks,” she said. “So catching one of these failed supernovae in the act means staring at the same patch of sky over and over for years and waiting for a star to disappear. And that's exactly the kind of survey Roman is built for.”

Following the successful launch, the Roman telescope is on a million-mile journey toward the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, where it will stabilize and begin to transmit back 1.4 terabytes of data every day, the highest data rate of any NASA astrophysics mission so far. 

Ohio State researchers expect the telescope’s first science findings in mid-2027.

TUESDAY, SEPT. 1, 2026

2-5 p.m., Wexner Medical Center Board (Sanders Grand Lounge)

Leslie H. Wexner (chair), Gary R. Heminger, Tomislav B. Mitevski, Juan Jose Perez, George A. Skestos, Kara J. Trott, Patrick C. Arp, Robert H. Schottenstein, Stephen D. Steinour, Cindy Hilsheimer, Amy Chronis, Hiroyuki Fujita, Jeff M.S. Kaplan (ex officio, voting), Ravi V. Bellamkonda (ex officio, voting), Trevor Brown (ex officio, voting), Michael Papadakis (ex officio, voting), John J. Warner (ex officio, voting)

The public session of this meeting will be available via livestream provided by WOSU Public Media. The livestream URL is: https://vimeo.com/event/6139641/8bc17f7d61.

The agenda is as follows:

2-2:35 p.m., Public Session

• Approval of June 2026 Wexner Medical Center Board Meeting Minutes
• CEO Report – Dr. John Warner
• James Cancer Hospital Report – Dr. Kimryn Rathmell
• Wexner Medical Center Financial Report – Mr. Richard Silveria
• Recommend Approval to Enter Into/Increase Professional Services and Enter Into/Increase Construction Contracts – Ms. P’Elizabeth Koelker
  1. East Hospital – Endoscopy Expansion and Cath Lab
  2. Wexner Medical Center – Community Facilities
  3. Outpatient Care East – Clinic Renovations and Relocations
  4. University Hospital Pavilion AHU Review/Repair
• Quality and Professional Affairs Committee: Items for Approval – Dr. Andrew Thomas
  1. Ratification of Committee Appointments FY2027
  2. Recommend Approval of Amendments to the Bylaws of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center Board
  3. Approval of FY2027 Clinical Quality Management, Patient Safety, and Patient Experience Plan – OSU Wexner Medical Center
  4. Approval of FY2027 Quality, Safety and Experience Council Plan – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute
  5. Approval of the Plan for Patient Care Services
     1. OSU Wexner Medical Center
     2. James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute
  6. Approval of the Scope of Care
     1. New Albany Ambulatory Surgery Center
     2. Dublin Ambulatory Surgery Center
     3. Powell Ambulatory Surgery Center
     4. Extended Recovery Unit for Outpatient Care Dublin and New Albany Clinical Departments
  7. Approval of the Direct Patient Care Services Contracts and Patient Impact Service Contracts Evaluation
     1. OSU Wexner Medical Center
     2. James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute
  8. Approval of the Contracted Services Evaluation
     1. New Albany Ambulatory Surgery Center
     2. Dublin Ambulatory Surgery Center
  9. Recommend Approval of The Emergency General Surgery Program Verification

2:35-5 p.m., Executive Session

Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026

8:30-11:30 a.m., Full-Board Executive Session

Jeff M.S. Kaplan (chair), Elizabeth P. Kessler (vice chair), Gary R. Heminger, M. Katherine Holcombe, Elizabeth A. Harsh, Reginald A. Wilkinson, Suzanne R. Kiggin, Tomislav B. Mitevski, Pierre Bigby, Juan Jose Perez, Bradley R. Kastan, George A. Skestos, Kara J. Trott, Patrick J. Tiberi

12:30-2:30 p.m., Master Planning and Facilities Committee (Sanders Grand Lounge)

Juan Jose Perez (chair), George A. Skestos (vice chair), Elizabeth A. Harsh, Reginald A. Wilkinson, Pierre Bigby, Bradley R. Kastan, Patrick C. Arp, Robert H. Schottenstein, Keith Myers, Jeff M.S. Kaplan (ex officio)

The public session of this meeting will be available via livestream provided by WOSU Public Media. The livestream URL is: https://vimeo.com/event/6139657/8f84507b6d.

The agenda is as follows:

12:30-1 p.m., Public Session

• Approval of June 2026 Committee Meeting Minutes – Mr. John Perez
• Approval of Ohio State Energy Partners Utility System Capital Improvements Plan for Fiscal Year 2027 – Mr. Scott Potter
• Approval of Fiscal Year 2027 Capital Investment Plan – Ms. Amy Burgess
• Approval to Enter Into/Increase Professional Services and Enter Into/Increase Construction Contracts – Ms. Amy Burgess
• Approval of Joint Use Agreements – Ms. Amanda Hoffsis
  1. Edison Welding Institute Inc.
  2. Junior Achievement of Central Ohio
  3. LifeCare Alliance
  4. Rev1

1-2:30 p.m., Executive Session

3-5 p.m., Legal, Audit, Risk and Compliance Committee (Mount Leadership Room)

Elizabeth P. Kessler (chair), Bradley R. Kastan (vice chair), John Jose Perez, Annabelle B. Feibel, Amy Chronis, Jeff M.S. Kaplan (ex officio)

The public session of this meeting will be available via livestream provided by WOSU Public Media. The livestream URL is: https://vimeo.com/event/6139667/9881175f55.

The agenda is as follows:

3-3:30 p.m., Public Session

• External Audit Update – Mr. Dave Gagnon
• Annual Compliance Report – Mr. Gates Garrity-Rokous
• Annual Government Affairs Update – Ms. Stacy Rastauskas
• Approval of June 2026 Committee Meeting Minutes – Ms. Elizabeth Kessler

3:30-5 p.m., Executive Session

Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026

8-10 a.m., Finance and Investment Committee (Mount Leadership Room)

Tomislav B. Mitevski (chair), Pierre Bigby (vice chair), Gary R. Heminger, George A. Skestos, Patrick C. Arp, Amy Chronis, Kent M. Stahl, Jeff M.S. Kaplan (ex officio)

The public session of this meeting will be available via livestream provided by WOSU Public Media. The livestream URL is: https://vimeo.com/event/6140012/35edd438fd.

The agenda is as follows:

8-8:45 a.m., Public Session

• Annual University Financial Overview – Mr. Michael Papadakis
• FY27 Capital Investment Plan and FY27 Ohio State Energy Partners Capital Plan – Mr. Michael Papadakis
• Advancement Update – Mr. Michael Eicher
• Approval of June 2026 Committee Meeting Minutes – Mr. Tomislav Mitevski
• Consent Agenda
  1. Approval of Fiscal Year 2027 Capital Investment Plan
  2. Approval of Ohio State Energy Partners Utility System Capital Improvements Plan for Fiscal Year 2027
  3. Approval of the Settlement Agreement and Amendments to the Concession Agreement with Ohio State Energy Partners
  4. Approval of University Foundation Report
  5. Naming Approvals
  6. Approval to Enter Into/Increase Professional Services and Enter Into/Increase Construction Contracts

8:45-10 a.m., Executive Session

10:30 a.m.-12 p.m., Athletics Committee (Mount Leadership Room)

Gary R. Heminger (chair), Elizabeth P. Kessler, Pierre Bigby, Bradley R. Kastan, George A. Skestos, Annabelle B. Feibel, Jeff M.S. Kaplan (ex officio)

This meeting will be available via livestream provided by WOSU Public Media. The livestream URL is: https://vimeo.com/event/6140023/0fae7630c5.

10:30-10:40 a.m., Public Session

• Athletics Director’s Report – Mr. Ross Bjork
• Approval of June 2026 Committee Meeting Minutes – Mr. Gary Heminger

10:40 a.m.-12 p.m., Executive Session

1-2 p.m., Full-Board Public Session (Sanders Grand Lounge)

Jeff M.S. Kaplan (chair), Elizabeth P. Kessler (vice chair), Gary R. Heminger, M. Katherine Holcombe, Elizabeth A. Harsh, Reginald A. Wilkinson, Suzanne R. Kiggin, Tomislav B. Mitevski, Pierre Bigby, Juan Jose Perez, Bradley R. Kastan, George A. Skestos, Kara J. Trott, Patrick J. Tiberi

This meeting will be available via livestream provided by WOSU Public Media. The livestream URL is: https://vimeo.com/event/6140038/58cdea11cf

The agenda will be as follows:

• Approval of June 2026 Meeting Minutes – Mr. Jeff Kaplan
• Recognition of Distinguished University Professors – Dr. Trevor Brown
• President’s Report – President Ravi V. Bellamkonda
• Consent Agenda
  1. Resolutions in Memoriam
  2. Hand Carry: Presidential Review and Compensation
  3. Hand Carry: Approval of FY2027 Presidential Goals
  4. Hand Carry: Approval of Personnel Actions
  5. Amendments to the Bylaws of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center Board
  6. Amendments to the Bylaws of The Ohio State University Board of Trustees
  7. Ratification of Committee Appointments FY2027
  8. Approval to Establish Academic Programs
  9. Approval to Revise Program Curricula
  10. Approval of Courses and Course Revisions
  11. Faculty Personnel Actions
  12. Honorary Degrees
  13. Approval to Enter Into/Increase Professional Services and Enter Into/Increase Construction Contracts
  14. Approval of FY2027 Clinical Quality Management, Patient Safety, and Patient Experience Plan – OSU Wexner Medical Center
  15. Approval of FY2027 Quality, Safety and Experience Council Plan – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute
  16. Approval of the Plan for Patient Care Services – OSU Wexner Medical Center
  17. Approval of the Plan for Patient Care Services – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute
  18. Approval of the Scope of Care – New Albany Ambulatory Surgery Center
  19. Approval of the Scope of Care – Dublin Ambulatory Surgery Center
  20. Approval of the Scope of Care – Powell Ambulatory Surgery Center
  21. Approval of the Scope of Care – Extended Recovery Unit for Outpatient Care Dublin and New Albany Clinical Departments
  22. Approval of the Direct Patient Care Services Contracts and Patient Impact Service Contracts Evaluation – OSU Wexner Medical Center
  23. Approval of the Direct Patient Care Services Contracts and Patient Impact Service Contracts Evaluation – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute
  24. Approval of the Contracted Services Evaluation – New Albany Ambulatory Surgery Center
  25. Approval of the Contracted Services Evaluation – Dublin Ambulatory Surgery Center
  26. Approval of The Emergency General Surgery Program Verification
  27. Approval of Ohio State Energy Partners Utility System Capital Improvements Plan for Fiscal Year 2027
  28. Approval of Fiscal Year 2027 Capital Investment Plan
  29. Approval of Joint Use Agreement – Edison Welding Institute Inc.
  30. Approval of Joint Use Agreement – Junior Achievement of Central Ohio
  31. Approval of Joint Use Agreement – LifeCare Alliance
  32. Approval of Joint Use Agreement – Rev1
  33. Approval of the Settlement Agreement and Amendments to the Concession Agreement with Ohio State Energy Partners
  34. Approval of University Foundation Report
  35. Naming of the Oklo Nuclear Reactor Laboratory
  36. Naming of the Christine Coultrip Dwarf Conifer Collection
  37. Naming of CVS Health Innovation Hub
  38. Naming of Internal Spaces – Engineering Research and Education Laboratories
  39. Naming of Roadways – College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences

Public materials are available online through the respective meeting calendar entries in the Upcoming Meetings section of: https://trustees.osu.edu/.

While the card is easy to use, with just a tap, it requires users to always carry it, and it can be lost or stolen.

Now, Buckeyes on the Columbus campus can instead use a mobile BuckID that’s part of what they always have on them — a compatible smartphone or smartwatch.

“A BuckID provides access to all kinds of important things at Ohio State, and adding a mobile option makes it even easier for students, faculty and staff to use,” said Josh Bodnar, director of BuckID. “People who have already switched to mobile really enjoy how easy it is to use.” 

Mobile BuckID is free and available for the Apple Wallet, Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet. Users can simply tap their iPhone, Apple Watch, eligible Android phone or Samsung watch at readers, just like a physical card. If they have an iPhone or Samsung phone, it will still work for several hours after the battery dies.

Switching to the mobile BuckID is optional, and when a user begins using the mobile BuckID it will deactivate their existing BuckID card. If someone does not have a compatible device, or prefers to have a physical card instead, they will still be able to keep their current physical BuckID.

Students, faculty and staff who are eligible to switch to mobile BuckID received an email from the BuckID office on Aug. 25. Some people, including in the Wexner Medical Center and some health science colleges, are not currently eligible to switch. 

Mobile BuckID is initially open to the Columbus campus, with plans for a rollout in regional campuses in 2027. Students that are in online programs and remote-work employees can access a basic digital BuckID in the Ohio State App without needing to add the full mobile BuckID to their mobile wallet. All Columbus campus BuckID readers include mobile-credential capabilities in addition to the tap-enabled cards; if anyone on the Columbus campus still has a swipe-only BuckID, they will not be able to enter buildings or print until they switch to mobile or the tap-enabled cards.

Ohio State is one of the first colleges or universities in North America to integrate mobile functioning for student IDs into an existing app — here, the Ohio State app — instead of requiring an additional app for Apple users to download. To find out more about the mobile BuckID and how to easily switch to mobile, please see the BuckID website and answers to frequently asked questions.

Using computational modeling to simulate how electrons interact with manganese ions — an element produced during stellar explosions called supernovae — researchers predicted how different environmental conditions could produce types of observable light called emission lines.

They found that certain emission lines were extremely sensitive to changes in the temperature and density of the surrounding nebula, meaning they could be useful tools for analyzing rapidly expanding objects like supernova remnants and other large gas clouds, said Anil Pradhan, co-author of the study and a professor of astronomy at The Ohio State University.

“If we understand the chemical composition of galaxies, we can learn more about the chemistry of stars and their elements,” said Pradhan. “That will eventually lead to understanding the evolution of the universe and the composition of everything within it.”

The study was recently published in The Monthly Notices of The Royal Astronomical Society.

Stellar explosions play a crucial role in the formation of heavy elements like iron and other metals, which are essential to the evolution of stars, planets and other cosmic objects. Manganese is a key element because its abundance increases over time, meaning that researchers can use it as a cosmological clock to learn more about how galaxies evolve.

“Space and time are related, so measuring manganese abundances can grant us insight into the ever-expanding nature of the universe,” said Pradhan. “By combining this emission line data with other known facts on important elements like oxygen and sulfur, we may be able to view some of the earliest observable epochs in the history of the universe.”

Still, depending on their strength, faint emission lines can be extremely difficult and time-consuming to detect. To overcome these limitations, Pradhan and his colleagues employed powerful computing systems to model the behavior of more than 700 potential emission lines using atomic physics calculations that would otherwise have taken years to complete.

Though their work is still theoretical, the findings suggest that once paired with real-life astronomical observations, these conclusions could even be used to predict the conditions of other types of complex space environments, said Pradhan. Moreover, understanding manganese’s role in the cosmos could help scientists predict the universe’s chemical future.

“We’re getting better and better at capturing energy that reveals the shape of the universe,” said Pradhan. “This work joins astrophysics, atomic physics and plasma physics together, and we’re on the cusp of discovering many brand new processes.”

The team plans to verify their data using the James Webb Space Telescope and other ground-based observatories specialized in detecting chemical variations across time and space. The results from this work will also be made publicly available so that researchers can compare their datasets with novel atomic analyses, laying the foundation for similar chemical discoveries.

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and partially carried out at the Ohio Supercomputer Center. Co-authors include Sultana Nahar from Ohio State and first author Zher Samak from Al-Aqsa University in Gaza, Palestine.

The newly renovated Campbell Hall on The Ohio State University’s Columbus campus reopened last week, in time for the start of the new academic year. A host of facility upgrades are designed to enhance the student experience at Ohio State, university officials said.

The College of Education and Human Ecology (EHE) hosted Campbell Hall’s grand reopening ceremony on Aug. 21.

Renovation of the 110-year-old building began in summer 2023. The $61.2 million project includes university and state funding as well as private donations.

“A three-year renovation has transformed Campbell Hall into a modern facility equipped for a new century of education, innovation, scholarship and community impact,” said EHE Interim Dean Erik Porfeli. “For more than 100 faculty and staff, they will call Campbell Hall their home, continuing the legacy of so many others who have worked in this space.”

The renovation includes:

· Updated research laboratories

· An instructional kitchen

· Faculty, staff and student offices and workspaces

· Auditorium renovations

· Climate-controlled storage and a gallery for the university’s Historic Costume and Textiles Collection

· Modernized interior and exterior accessibility features

· Restoration of the Mirror Lake-facing building façade

· A new three-story community space in the center of the building that can host informal gatherings

“The most important thing is what happens inside the building,” said Interim Executive Vice President and Provost Trevor Brown. “The most important activity is the feeling and the energy it creates in the space to help our students, to help our faculty position our students for the world.”

Collaboration among the partners involved in the project was essential, said Todd Henterly, facilities project management specialist with Facilities, Design and Construction in the Office of Administration and Planning.

“We had the right team that was able to deliver the project within the confines of the resources,” he said. “It's a testament to how much the team really just dug in on this project and worked together.”

The renovation brings together several EHE programs and departments under one roof, including the Department of Human Sciences.

Evan Miller, a doctoral student in the Human Nutrition program, said moving to Campbell Hall has bolstered his enthusiasm for research.

“Having a professional, welcoming space allows us to provide participants with a positive research experience and creates an environment I’m proud to bring them into,” he said. “Being in this setting has strengthened my interest in clinical research and reinforced how rewarding I find a direct interaction between research and participants.”

Campbell Hall now also houses the Department of Educational Studies.

“We need spaces that foster community, connection and creativity. Campbell Hall gives us exactly that,” said Dawn Shrimplin, an educational studies graduate student. “Stepping into these classrooms isn’t just about sitting through a lecture. It’s about entering a space designed to inspire us.”

Campbell Hall also has new workspaces for students in the Fashion and Retail Studies program. Facilities include a 3D printer, a manufacturing-grade laser cutter and industrial glue guns.

The equipment will help students realize their most inventive ideas for clothing and accessories, said Alexandra Suer, a Human Sciences senior lecturer.

“They’re going to have a whole new range of capabilities that they’ve never had before,” she said. “The type of output from this space is going to be really exciting.”

Campbell Hall’s expanded, well-lit workspaces have the potential to promote collaboration among students, said Jonas Rogers, a Fashion and Retail Studies major.

“It’s a great place to be innovative. I feel like there are so many resources here that will bring students together,” he said. “It gives us a sense of community because we’re able to work together and talk to one another and bounce ideas off of each other. It’s a good hub for us.”

Carolyn Ready, a consumer sciences graduate student, said the new space is welcoming, even for students who are not majoring in fashion-related subjects but would like to explore their creativity.

“I think it’s an amazing opportunity for any student. We accept cross-majors,” said Ready, who volunteers as a sewing instructor for undergraduates. “If you need some type of relaxation or downtime, this is one of the things to consider – sewing. We have a lot more equipment and tools here for the students to use and become familiar with.”

The Campbell Hall renovation is a physical representation of Ohio State’s land-grant mission, Porfeli said.

“The academic enterprise of what we do has direct and engaged relevance with students on our campus, who we serve in powerful ways every day to help them navigate the challenges of their lives and overcome them to great success,” he said. “These are things that can happen, certainly, in Campbell Hall.”

Ohio State was officially welcomed as a new member during Entanglement 2026, the MQC’s annual meeting, and brings its membership to eight premier research institutions significantly broadening the region’s collective quantum capabilities.

“For Ohio State, joining the Midwest Quantum Collaboratory represents an important opportunity to amplify the impact of our extraordinary quantum research through strategic regional partnerships,” said John M. Horack, vice president for research at Ohio State. “By working alongside our peer institutions in the Midwest, we can accelerate discovery, expand opportunities for our students and strengthen the nation’s quantum innovation ecosystem.” 

Ohio State brings significant strengths around computing, sensing and networking communications to MQC. These strengths are anchored by university, federal and state investments, including the recent launch of the university-wide Center for Quantum Information Science and Engineering (CQISE). This hub unites researchers across physics, engineering, mathematics, chemistry and computer science.

“MQC creates a powerful framework for connecting the extraordinary quantum expertise that exists across the Midwest,” said Ezekiel Johnston-Halperin, co-director of CQISE and professor of physics. “Ohio State’s strengths in quantum computing, sensing and secure communications complement those of our partner institutions.”

Some other recent investments include:

• Ohio State is leading a multi-institutional consortium that secured a $4 million National Science Foundation Phase II award through the National Quantum Virtual Laboratory program to advance next-generation quantum sensing. Ohio State is partnering with the University of Michigan, also a collaboratory member, on a second award through this program.
• Researchers have demonstrated the first quantum key distribution link on Ohio State’s campus using in-ground optical fiber. The team is also working on Ohio’s first intercity quantum network that will establish a quantum-secure network between Columbus and Dayton. These projects are supported by the U.S. Department of Education and the Ohio Department of Higher Education through the Third Frontier Research Initiative.
• The university is launching the Quantum Graduate Interdisciplinary Program (QuGIP), one of the first stand-alone MS/PhD programs in Quantum Information Science and Engineering in the United States. This work is supported by funding from the National Science Foundation.

“As part of the MQC, it allows our research community to pursue larger-scale research opportunities and create pathways that accelerate scientific breakthroughs while developing the next generation of quantum leaders,” said Ronald M. Reano, co-director of CQISE and professor of electrical and computer engineering.

Ohio State joins other leading academic institutions, including Purdue University, Michigan State University, Indiana University, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Illinois Chicago and Northwestern University.

The study in cell cultures and rabbits found that a hormone that naturally becomes elevated during pregnancy produces specific fatty compounds, creating conditions favoring the virus’s ability to make copies of itself.    

The study helps explain why pregnancy, especially the third trimester, is associated with severe HEV outcomes, including liver failure, fetal complications and maternal death.

“This work demonstrates that the same biological processes that support fetal growth may also be co-opted by the virus,” said first author Kush Yadav, assistant professor of animal sciences at Ohio State.

Yadav also said the findings extend beyond hepatitis E, highlighting how metabolic changes during pregnancy may influence the severity of other viral infections.

The study, a collaboration between Ohio State and the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech, was published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Hepatitis E (HEV) is a leading cause of viral hepatitis worldwide and is known to disproportionately affect pregnant women, particularly in late stages of pregnancy. The risk of death in infected pregnant people can be dramatically higher than in the general population, but the biological reasons behind this heightened risk have remained unclear.

HEV is also the leading cause of acute viral liver infection in humans worldwide, mostly in developing regions where sanitation is poor.

In this new study, the research team discovered that placental lactogen, a hormone that increases significantly during pregnancy, plays a central role in fueling viral replication. The hormone increase triggers the production of higher levels of fatty acids and lipids – compounds that store energy, form cell membranes and perform other important functions in the body.

In cases of pregnant people infected with HEV, the presence of those fatty compounds provides the virus with an environment conducive to replicating more efficiently.

Experiments showed that elevated levels of oleic acid, a common fatty acid, directly enhance HEV replication, and increased production of phosphatidylethanolamine, or PE, a membrane-forming lipid, is essential for viral replication.

“This collaborative research reveals an important role of host lipid reprogramming in the pathogenesis of hepatitis E virus. Our findings that certain lipids, such as phosphatidylethanolamine and oleic acid, are elevated in hepatitis E virus-infected pregnant animals and enhance virus replication provide mechanistic insights into how hepatitis E virus causes disease, particularly pregnancy-associated adverse clinical outcomes,” said senior author X.J. Meng, University Distinguished Professor of molecular virology at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine.

Disrupting these lipid production pathways significantly reduced viral replication, results showed.

“Cutting-edge lipidomic analyses allowed us to precisely narrow down the key lipid drivers of HEV replication, identifying specific fatty acids and PE as strong candidates,” said second author Menuka Bhandari, a research senior associate in the Research and Analytical Service Core of Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.

While additional research is needed, particularly in human populations, the study provides a foundation for developing targeted treatments to reduce pregnancy-related complications from HEV, the researchers say.

“By identifying lipid metabolism as a critical driver of HEV replication, the research opens new avenues for interventions,” Yadav said.

Potential future strategies may include therapies that target lipid production pathways, approaches that regulate hormone-driven metabolic changes, and development of broad antiviral strategies that disrupt virus–lipid interactions.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and Ohio State startup funds and Alumni Grants for Graduate Research and Scholarship.

Additional co-authors include Hassan Mahsoub and Hannah Brown of Virginia Tech; Young Bin Park, Huong Van Lee and Jay Mun Choi of Calico Co. Ltd.; and Gireesh Rajashekara of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Four decades later, that mission continues.

Ohio State’s Graduate School is celebrating the 40th year of the Summer Research Opportunities Program, or SROP, a Big Ten Academic Alliance initiative that prepares undergraduate students for graduate education through intensive research experiences, faculty mentoring and professional development.

At Ohio State, SROP brings undergraduate students to campus for a summer of full-time research, cohort-based learning and preparation for the next step in their academic journeys. The 2026 program ran from May 26 to July 24, and includes weekly enrichment activities, workshops on graduate admissions and financial aid, networking opportunities, and a culminating symposium where students present their research.

SROP also connects students to a broader summer research community through Ohio State’s Consortium of Undergraduate Research Experiences, which brings together 16 summer undergraduate research programs from across the university. Founded in 2019 within the Graduate School, the consortium was created to help programs collaborate, share resources and build community for undergraduate research participants.

Brianna Davis Johnson, assistant dean for mentoring and strategic initiatives in the Graduate School, said SROP gives students a chance to see graduate education not as an abstract possibility, but as a tangible and supported path.

“It’s an opportunity for students, both who are maybe already at Ohio State or who are coming from places anywhere across the country, to really imagine themselves as graduate students and professional students here at Ohio State,” she said. “We are very proud that Ohio State has had a cohort since 1986, and we have been able to provide 1,000 students with an opportunity to participate in SROP.”

The program’s structure has remained largely consistent over the last four decades. Ohio State’s current SROP model continues to combine intensive research with professional development, community building and mentoring. Students spend approximately 40 hours each week on research and also participate in workshops on topics such as applying to graduate school, writing cover letters, developing personal statements and presenting research.

Mary Stromberger, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate School, supports the continued efforts of SROP.

“SROP provides promising undergraduate students the opportunity to immerse themselves in a summer research experience,” Stromberger said. “Students receive mentorship from faculty and graduate students, as well as professional development to better prepare them for applying to graduate school. In a nutshell, SROP opens doors to curious minds and provides a path to advanced education, research training and leadership.”

For students, the program can be transformative because it offers direct experience in research environments that may not be available at their home institutions.

Katy McCaffrey, a 2026 SROP participant and senior at Denison University, spent the summer conducting research in animal sciences. Her project examined the proteins and enzymes that are present during the second month of pregnancy and how they help maintain pregnancy.

Her faculty mentor, Rafael Domingues, assistant professor in ruminant physiology in the Department of Animal Sciences, studies animal reproductive physiology with the goal of identifying ways to support pregnancy success in animals and improve reproductive outcomes more broadly.

McCaffrey said SROP offered a different kind of research environment from what she had experienced as an undergraduate at a small liberal arts college.

“Being part of SROP and being able to work alongside graduate students as well as Dr. Domingues has been a really unique opportunity, and it’s provided a lot of key insight into both how life as a PhD student or master’s student would be, and what a long-term career in research looks like,” she said.

Domingues said undergraduate research experiences are important, regardless of whether students ultimately pursue research careers.

“I always have a lot of undergraduate students in my lab,” Domingues said. “I think it’s critical to have them involved in research, whether they want to pursue a career in research or not. That’s when they learn about the basics of why we conduct research, why do we do things the way that we do.”

The mentorship McCaffrey received from Domingues and a PhD student in his lab was central to her experience.

“They are very supportive. They want you to try out all the different things in lab, learn the techniques and kind of work through problem solving, which has been really rewarding,” she said.

For Johnson, that faculty-student connection remains the foundation of SROP’s success.

“We work very closely with faculty mentors who really are the heartbeat of the program,” Johnson said.

The program’s long-term impact is evident in alumni such as Maria Ford, a 2019 SROP participant and Ohio State graduate alumna who is beginning the next stage of her career as an associate clinical trial manager.

“Participating in SROP at Ohio State would be one of the best decisions that you can make in your undergraduate career because it will give you the groundwork for what you need to do to be able to succeed in whatever career trajectory that you choose to take,” Ford said.

Forty years on, SROP continues to connect students with faculty mentors, research communities and graduate school preparation, while advancing the Graduate School’s broader work to expand access, fairness and pathways to advanced education for all students.

Areas of focus include:

• Safety resources
• Getting around campus
• Well-being resources
• Freedom of expression and civic engagement
• AI Fluency

Safety resources

The safety of all Buckeyes is Ohio State’s top priority. The Ohio State University Police Division (OSUPD) has an authorized strength of 78 full-time officers supported by hundreds of non-sworn security personnel, a campus 9-1-1 call center and security technology. OSUPD works closely with the Columbus Division of Police (CPD) to offer increased patrols in the off-campus University District, including through the joint patrol program that pairs four OSUPD officers with officers from CPD to work in the nearby neighborhood where many students live.

While campus is a safe place, crimes do still occur. Police recommend the following safety tips:

• Lock doors and windows and do not allow unknown people into your home or residence hall.
• Utilize public transportation or walk in groups to avoid walking alone, especially at night.
• Report suspicious activity to OSUPD (614-292-2121) or local city police. Always dial 9-1-1 in emergencies.

The Office of Student Life provides students with complimentary safety devices for their off-campus homes, including window and door alarms. These can be picked up at the Willie J. Young Sr. Off-Campus and Commuter Student Engagement office at the Ohio Union from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

To learn about safety resources and more, visit the university’s public safety website.

Getting around campus

Lyft Ride Smart at Ohio State offers students discounted late-night rides in a designated area from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. CABS On-Demand is a free service offered to all Buckeyes, providing daytime and overnight service to select buildings. As autumn semester gets underway, campus will be busier than usual. Expect heavier traffic, plan for extra travel time, avoid distractions and watch out for your fellow Buckeyes. Review transportation updates, including CABS and CABS On-Demand changes, the COTA digital pass in the Ohio State app and the university traffic impact map.

Well-being resources

A variety of services are available to help support the well-being of our community. Students can utilize the university’s online Health and Wellness Resource Guide to quickly search for the most appropriate resource. Health and wellness related services are listed alphabetically and can be searched by feature using the specific criteria within the 10 Dimensions of Wellness.

• The Office of Student Life’s Counseling and Consultation Service (CCS) provides individual and group mental health services, workshops and outreach programming to currently enrolled undergraduate, graduate and professional students, and others covered by the Student Health Insurance Plan. CCS on-demand services offer ways for students to get help whenever it’s needed.
• Student Life Disability Services consults with students on a one-to-one basis to: review academic accommodations based on concerns including mental health; discuss concerns with classes or instructors; and refer students to additional campus and community resources.
• The Monda Student Resource Center helps students’ holistic, essential needs through resources and support from campus and community partners.
• Student Health Services offers on-campus health care options to the student population while Recreational Sports promotes living an active life of balance, physical activity and well-being.
• The Ohio State: Wellness app supports students’ mental health and well-being on campus with resources, connections to support, information about setting goals and building healthy habits.

Faculty and staff are encouraged to utilize resources through the Ohio State Employee Assistance Program (EAP). The EAP member portal connects employees with online tools, well-being resources and work-life services that are available to eligible Ohio State employees, their dependents, household members, parents and parents-in-law.

Freedom of expression and civic engagement

The First Amendment and Ohio law expressly protect the rights of students, faculty, staff and visitors at the university to lawfully engage in speech and expressive activities. The Freedom of Expression website is an online hub for support resources, policies and other information to help everyone participate in public discourse and exercise their rights. Ohio State's University Space Standards provide comprehensive information about using spaces on our campus, including the space reservation process and associated rules.

Ohio State expects members of our community to contribute to an environment where trust and respectful dialogue are the expectation — not the exception. To advance this, the university launched an initiative to help members of our community listen and discuss different perspectives productively, build trust with one another, learn how to clearly articulate their points of view and successfully navigate complex conversations. Listen. Learn. Discuss. helps students, faculty and staff draw connections and form skills to engage in productive and respectful dialogue. Visit the Listen. Learn. Discuss. website to find courses, workshops and events that support the practice of civil discourse.

The university remains committed to its motto of “Education for Citizenship” by supporting civic engagement.

• OSU Votes is a nonpartisan, student-led initiative in the Office of Student Life that works to register, educate and encourage other students to vote. OSU Votes can provide resources and facts on the voting process and voter registration.
• Ohio State is implementing a university-wide Asynchronous Learning and Civic Engagement Day on Tuesday, Nov. 3, following a resolution passed by University Senate in autumn 2025.

AI Fluency

In autumn 2025, Ohio State unveiled the groundbreaking AI Fluency initiative to integrate artificial intelligence into the Ohio State educational experience and support an educational environment that maximizes learning, creativity and impact. In the second year of this initiative, the university is expanding its offering of programs, courses and resources for students, staff and faculty.

• Colleges across the university have developed academic roadmapsshowing how undergraduates will build and use AI skills within their majors, from the College of Arts and Sciences helping to shape the future of AI to Fisher College of Business forging connections and collaborationwithin its research community.
• The Michael V. Drake Institute for Teaching and Learning continues to expand its AI Fluency support resources for instructors at all levels and launched a fellows program for this fall.

Visit the Office of Academic Affairs for a list of Frequently Asked Questions and subscribe to the AI Fluency at Ohio State newsletter to stay up to date on AI Fluency news and developments. For staff, the Office of Technology and Digital Innovation offers training, educational courses and more, and all available resources are offered on the “Learn to use AI” webpage. Virtual and in-person training can be found on the AI Resources and Events page.

President Ravi V. Bellamkonda welcomed the group with enthusiasm.

“We’re so glad that you’ve chosen Ohio State,” he said. “In my mind, you’re already succeeding because you’ve made one of the smartest possible decisions and that is becoming a Buckeye. By choosing The Ohio State University, you’ve given yourself an extraordinary gift.”

Bellamkonda introduced Trevor Brown, interim executive vice president and provost, who introduced students to the university’s alma mater, “Carmen Ohio.” The song, Brown said, “unites us all as an enduring tradition.”

Members of the men’s and women’s glee clubs and representatives from the university’s community – faculty, staff and students – guided the audience through the song, illuminating each line’s meaning.

Among the speakers were Ohio State University Marching Band drum major Ben Fox and Joy Dunne, current Buckeye and 2026 Olympic women’s ice hockey gold medalist.

“My best advice,” Dunne said, “is to ask for help. We all need it. There are so many resources, not just for student-athletes, but [all] students here. So, take advantage of it. Learn together. [College can be] a lot, but there are so many people that want to help you.”

Melissa Shivers, senior vice president for student life, closed Convocation by getting everyone on their feet to sing “Carmen Ohio.”

“There’s a tiny bit of choreography to know about it and it starts with finding some fellow Buckeyes to stand next to,” she said, encouraging students to stand together and sway to the song, as is tradition.

“On behalf of President Bellamkonda, Provost Brown and the entire senior leadership, faculty, staff and board of trustees of the university, I wish you the very best of luck on your Buckeye journey,” she said.

“We’ll be with you every extraordinary step of the way.”

Before Convocation, Bellamkonda also spoke about some of the initiatives and projects he is excited about as the new academic year begins. He noted students and faculty would be traveling to Florida this week for the launch of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. More than two dozen Ohio State faculty, students and postdoctoral scholars have played a role in designing Roman’s surveys.

“We’ll be announcing an exciting startup program for student startups called BuildX,” he said. “We want 100 investable student startups to come out of Ohio State from our students.”

BuildX is designed to tap into the entrepreneurial spirit of students at Ohio State. The university will tap a $1 million fund to support students and their ideas. Bellamkonda said the program would include academic courses for credit.

“This year, we’re hoping to have 20 startups that will pilot the program as we launch it. And every year, we’ll build more,” he said.

Bellamkonda said he is also looking forward to the second year of the AI Fluency initiative. About 50 new courses are available or in development and 60 faculty fellows will be embedded across campus to support the program.

Hundreds of students and staff assisted new and returning students in moving into the university’s residence halls last week. The well-choreographed process took place over four days on the Columbus campus.

Ohio State President Ravi V. Bellamkonda and his wife, Lalita Kaligotla, an associate professor at the College of Nursing, welcomed students and their families as they moved into Houston House on North Campus.

Bellamkonda said move-in is a particularly meaningful time for him.

“I love this time. I just love it because there’s a lot of enthusiasm and some trepidation,” he said. “It just is like renewal. It’s like spring. After winter, you like spring. After students and not as many students being on campus, students coming in, it is spring for the university, even if it’s fall on the calendar.”

Some returning students had an opportunity to talk to the president about the new year, including new initiatives that will start this academic year.

This semester, Ohio State will launch BuildX, a program to help launch 100 investable student startups annually by 2030. Bellamkonda said he wants the university to be known as a haven for entrepreneurship.

“I was excited to hear about [Bellamkonda’s] research and what he’s done prior to coming to Ohio State,” said resident advisor Braden Blackwelder, a second-year chemical engineering major.  “I think it’s awesome that he’s putting a lot of money into the startup, as well. I’m a big fan of research. I spent my whole summer here in a graduate fellow’s program.”

An inaugural BuildX cohort of 20 startups is expected to launch this year to join a summer accelerator program in 2027. It’s one of several signature undergraduate experiences for students this year.

Matt Wisniewski, a third-year pre-dental student and Japanese major, said it was good to meet the president as students were moving in.

“He seemed like a really down-to-earth guy. I mean, he’s only been here for not too long, and he’s already walking around meeting students,” he said. “I think that’s really great. He seemed very interested in research and that’s something that I really like about Ohio State.”

Bellamkonda said he was excited to see the joy from students arriving on campus.

“It’s just great to hear the enthusiasm that they have and the love they have for Ohio State. That’s the bottom line. There are engineers, nurses, environmental science, all sorts of people studying policy, business, but the common thread is they love this place, as do I,” he said. “So it’s wonderful to see that.”

The analysis also shows the risk of a nonfatal overdose is up to three-fold higher in illicit users compared to patients exposed to fentanyl in a medical setting or through a prescription.

Overall, the study found that illicit-source fentanyl exposure is linked to a significantly higher risk of opioid-related harmful outcomes than medical-source exposure.

Almost 300,000 people from a dataset of 300 million patients were divided into two groups based primarily on urine drug test results, with illicit-source users constituting 71.1% of the study cohort, compared to 28.9% medical-source users.

“Fentanyl is a big problem, but we don’t actually know how serious illicit drug use is compared to medical use,” said co-lead author Ping Zhang, professor of computer science and engineering and biomedical informatics at The Ohio State University. “Finding that illicit use has reached 70% among all fentanyl users is a surprise. And this is also a contribution of this paper. To make something that’s been a black hole visible to the healthcare system is significant.”

The analysis also showed that among all states, illicit fentanyl use is most common in Ohio.

The study was published Aug. 14, 2026, in eClinicalMedicine.

Data on patients screened for fentanyl exposure from 2015 to 2023 came from Epic Cosmos, a large U.S. electronic health record dataset. First author Seungyeon Lee, a PhD student in Zhang’s lab, conducted the analysis linking urine drug test results with medication records to group patients by medical or illicit use.

“Inferring or characterizing individual-level illicit fentanyl exposure poses significant challenges because illicit use often occurs outside the clinical setting and therefore is not directly observed in clinical data, so it’s difficult to measure the scale and impact,” Lee said. “This study focused on identifying illicit-source fentanyl use and its risk for opioid-related harmful outcomes.”

Among patients in the Epic dataset who met study criteria, people who tested positive for fentanyl and had received a prescription for the drug within 72 hours before the urine test were categorized as medical-source patients (85,535), and people who tested positive but had no recent fentanyl prescription composed the illicit-source use cohort (210,193).

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that’s up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. Its main clinical use is to treat severe pain, especially after surgery and for advanced cancers. Fentanyl is among the synthetic opioids that contribute to nearly 70% of overdose deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In addition to categorizing fentanyl users, Lee conducted analyses to examine patterns of adverse outcomes in both illicit and medical-source users that emerged over time from 2015 to 2023 and to estimate short-term risks within 30 days of fentanyl initiation.

The negative outcomes linked to fentanyl use included nonfatal overdose, abuse or misuse, and dependence that leads to withdrawal symptoms when use stops. Fatal overdoses were not included in this work because causes of death were not part of the Epic dataset.

The temporal analysis showed illicit fentanyl users had a higher prevalence of all three negative outcomes compared to medical users, and by 2023, the prevalence of nonfatal overdose was four-fold higher for illicit users than for medical-source fentanyl patients, at 18.6% of illicit users compared to 4.3% of medical users.

In the short-term risk analysis, after adjusting for a variety of health conditions and demographics, results showed that illicit-source fentanyl initiation was associated with a two- to three-fold higher risk of nonfatal overdose, abuse and dependence within 30 days compared to medical-source initiation.

“These patterns indicate that illicit-source fentanyl remains a significant and growing threat to public health nationwide,” the authors wrote.

The analysis also showed that, compared to medical exposure to fentanyl, illicit fentanyl users were younger and less likely to be married, had a higher concentration of fentanyl detected in their urine drug test, and were more likely to have a mental health or substance use disorder.

Medical-source users were more likely than illicit-source users to have a chronic condition, and patients with chronic conditions were more likely to have more frequent healthcare utilization and greater exposure to opioid medications.

Geographically, Ohio had the highest proportion of illicit-source fentanyl users – 12.2% – followed by Massachusetts (10.5%) and California (8.8%). Medical-source exposure was most common in North Carolina (10.6%), Ohio (10.5%) and California (10.3%).

Opioid regulations have been focused on medical-source opioid drugs, including fentanyl, but the researchers say the availability of new data on the widespread illicit use of fentanyl and related health dangers highlights a need for additional policy action.

For example, the examination of patient data revealed a transition from medical-source fentanyl use to illicit-source use among some patients. The Zhang lab’s next step will be analyzing patterns related to this transition, with hopes that the findings could assist with policymaking strategies.

This work was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Zhang is also a core faculty member in the Translational Data Analytics Institute at Ohio State. Additional co-authors were Richard Urman of Ohio State and Wenyu Song and David Bates of Harvard Medical School.

Once NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches this week, the mission is expected to explore the cosmos by surveying hundreds of millions of galaxies, capturing the sky in detail hundreds of times faster than even the Hubble Space Telescope.

“This enormous field of view will allow us to map astronomical objects in a way that we previously couldn’t,” said David Weinberg, a Distinguished University Professor of astronomy at The Ohio State University. “These better measurements may end up teaching us something extremely revolutionary about all kinds of matter in the cosmos.”

More than two dozen Ohio State faculty, students and postdoctoral scholars have played a role in designing Roman’s surveys, including the High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey, a portion of the mission aimed at probing the structure and expansion of the universe as it evolved through cosmic time. Anthony Harbo Torres, a senior graduate student in physics at Ohio State who helped calibrate Roman’s image detectors, said that mission success can be attributed to decades of human ingenuity and perseverance.

“With Roman, we'll be seeing some things for the first time, as well as revisiting places we've seen before but with an increased level of resolution,” said Harbo Torres. “It takes so many people to tackle a monumental undertaking like this and make it possible, so I hope that our images inspire a sense of wonder when people see the scale and detail of the things we find.”

The High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey aspect of the program plans to utilize the telescope to peer past the plane of the Milky Way to map about 12% of the sky in just under two years. In all, Roman's surveys will detect about a billion galaxies and 20 billion stars, more astronomical objects than have ever been detected by all of humanity’s telescopes put together, said Weinberg.

“For just one single point, displaying an image from this telescope would be like looking at a wall full of 4K televisions,” he said. “These will have an extraordinary image quality as it scans the sky for objects more than 100 million times too faint to see with the human eye.”

This preciseness is one that typically eludes scientists when trying to look through our planet’s blurring atmosphere, Weinberg said. Over the course of several months, Roman will settle into orbit at Lagrange point two (L2), a gravitationally stable point about a million miles away from Earth.

The Roman mission revolves around three core science themes — measuring dark energy, investigating exoplanets, and expanding the study of astrophysics and planetary science. Astronomers will use the data Roman sends back to study dark matter, an invisible substance that can only be perceived by its gravitational effect on other objects, as well as dark energy, a force that seems to have a hand in speeding up the universe’s expansion. Understanding these aspects can also offer insights into local galactic history and evolution.

“Mapping clusters of dark matter will help us figure out why gravity on the scale of the universe is so radically different from gravity on the scale of a solar system or galaxy,” said Weinberg. “Ohio State is part of the teams that are building the tools to actually do that advanced analysis.”

But just getting a better lay of the land isn’t Roman’s end goal. Creating a more detailed sketch of the cosmos will help scientists answer critical questions about the inner workings of the universe, such as whether stellar systems like ours are rare and how many black holes there may be in the Milky Way, and extend the search for potentially habitable exoplanets.

“Roman is going to allow us to find extremely rare things and things that don’t happen very often,” said Scott Gaudi, the principal investigator of the Roman Galactic Exoplanet Survey Project Infrastructure Team and a professor of astronomy at Ohio State. “It’s going to be those things that are likely going to surprise us and lead to new avenues of research.”

Compared to legacy instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope, Roman will map the sky about 1,000 times faster than its predecessor, a process made more efficient by its wide field-of-view, said Gaudi. Using a planet-hunting method called microlensing in tandem with the traditional transiting technique, researchers expect Roman will detect around 100,000 worlds, ideally expanding NASA’s exoplanet catalog to new heights.

Although Roman is currently slated as a five-year mission, researchers hope the data it uncovers, along with the lifespan of its sturdy science instruments, allows the mission to continue operating for decades to come. “Even though Ohio State has a large footprint on the mission, we don’t even begin to cover a fraction of the kind of science that can and will be done with Roman,” said Gaudi. “Our job so far has been to make sure it’s successful.”

The telescope’s first science findings are expected in mid-2027, but in the meantime, groups like the Roman Science Collaboration, of which Weinberg is a leading member, are looking forward to seeing how returns from this mission inform the next generation of astronomical priorities.

“The value of producing really big, vital datasets is that you then enable anyone in the world to go and make discoveries with it,” said Weinberg. “That’s a really powerful way of doing science, and I think bringing that to space-based astronomy is very inspiring.”

To celebrate their role in the achievement, as many as 20 members of the Ohio State cohort plan to be present on the beach when Roman lifts off aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

This includes Christopher Hirata, another key member of Ohio State’s Roman science team and a professor of physics at Ohio State, who notes that as large data sets and machine learning algorithms become indispensable for studying the universe’s most fundamental parts, this mission is primed to reshape how future researchers interact with exciting new science tools.

“Roman’s technology will have a huge influence on the future of space science,” said Hirata. “From launch onward, it’s going to be spectacular.”

The Quality and Professional Affairs Committee of the Wexner Medical Center Board will meet at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026, in Room 234 of Meiling Hall, 370 West 9th Avenue.

The agenda is as follows:

4-4:05 p.m., Public Session

• Approval of July 28, 2026, Meeting Minutes – Mr. John Perez
• Clinical Accomplishments – Dr. Andrew Thomas

4:05-4:50 p.m., Executive Session

4:50-5 p.m., Public Session

• Approval of the Emergency General Surgery Program Verification – Dr. Andrew Thomas
• Medical Staff Appointments, Initial FPPE Recommendations and Requests for Additional and/or Special Privileges and Change in Category, August 2026 – Dr. Andrew Thomas, Dr. Kami Maddocks
  1. OSU Wexner Medical Center
  2. James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute
  3. New Albany Ambulatory Surgery Center
  4. Dublin Ambulatory Surgery Center
  5. Powell Ambulatory Surgery Center
• Approval of New/Revised Privilege Application Form – Dr. Andrew Thomas
  1. Registered Pharmacist
• Approval of Revised Credentialing Supplemental Disclosure Questions – Dr. Andrew Thomas

Students at The Ohio State University gained firsthand experience in global business relations this summer by participating in the

Ohio State teamed with the Ohio Department of Development and other colleges around the state to recognize students who completed the internship during Global Trade in Action at the Statehouse last week. The event brought together students, educators, business professionals and legislators.

Ohio State and the Department of Development initially formed the partnership that created OEIP. Program objectives include workforce development, growing export sales and creating jobs at small to medium-sized Ohio companies.

Students who are selected for the program must complete a course that prepares them for the internship, said Dominic DiCamillo, director of Ohio State’s Office of Global Business and the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER).

“It’s a full spring semester, three-hour course,” he said. “Once they get through that, they’re then placed in a 12-week internship where they’re helping companies enter new markets or improve on some part of their export plan.”

During the Statehouse event, DiCamillo and Fisher College of Business Interim Dean Aravind Chandrasekaran presented the Ohio State OEIP participants with completion certificates.

OEIP’s main objective is to close the gap between Ohio companies in need of employees who know how to export and students from Ohio universities who have developed global business skills, said Lydia Mihalik, Ohio Department of Development director.

“None of what we’re building in Ohio happens without people. Companies don’t grow, communities don’t thrive and our economy doesn’t compete on the world stage without talented, driven Ohioans who are ready to do the work,” she told students during the Statehouse event.

“Ohio has something really special … incredible universities, businesses hungry to grow and students like you who show up with curiosity and with grit and the work ethic that the state is very well known for.”

Students participate in OEIP internships from mid-May through mid-August. The interns analyze a company’s export readiness and contribute to the development of the company’s export strategy.

Nicole Sciuva, an international business major, said her internship with Columbus-based arcade equipment supplier Shaffer Distributing Co. made her aware of a potential career path that she hadn’t before considered.

“This program gave me the confidence and autonomy to lead projects, strengthened my communication skills and introduced me to the possibilities of a global career in international trade,” she said. “I have also had the opportunity to meet inspirational professionals both inside and outside the classroom, whose guidance and experiences have provided valuable insight and clarity for my next steps.”

Alpha Bah, a logistics management major, said his internship with T.J. Clark International LLC, a Delaware-based water and fuel pump manufacturer, provided him with experience in international business negotiations.

“My greatest accomplishment was coordinating with an international supplier in Italy to obtain a critical component for our project, which demonstrated the importance of clear communication and proactive sourcing in global operations,” he said.

Students who participate in OEIP gain global experience without leaving Ohio, Melissa Torres, an Ohio State alumna, said during her keynote address at Global Trade in Action.

Torres is president and CEO of The Forum on Education Abroad. She previously served as director of CIBER and international programs at Ohio State and was a member of the team that founded OEIP.

“I think this program, in particular, is a shining example of how you can educate students: These students don’t have to leave the country, and they are increasing exports for Ohio companies,” she said. “They are developing their own understanding of what it takes to export. They’re learning marketing skills, manufacturing skills, language skills. … This program creates the next generation of small business leaders for the state.”

Since its initial founding at Ohio State, OEIP has expanded to other universities across the state that teach the preparation course for students from over 18 universities, said Nate Ward, director of the Global Business Center and SBDC Export Assistance Network at Cleveland State University, one of the participating universities.

“Each of these institutions has played a crucial role in preparing students to take on the real-world challenges of international trading,” he said.

“At the heart of this program are Ohio businesses, the small and medium-sized enterprises that welcome these students into their export initiatives. These companies are doing more than growing their businesses. They are strengthening Ohio’s position on the global stage and investing in the future workforce of our state.”

OEIP demonstrates the positive impact of partnerships between the state of Ohio, universities and private industry, DiCamillo said.

“I’m not aware of any other programs that bring together universities, government and businesses to work in such a way. And it’s something that other states have reached out to us to ask, ‘How do we do it?’” he said. “It’s something that really sets us apart from other states around the country.”

Ohio State students who also completed OEIP internships this year are: Sherry Dong, Global Recovery Group; Jackson Reider, Star USA Inc.; Kristine Shaner, Vesco Medical; and Shuto Urabe, Performance Results Plus Inc. Sharonda Exius, a Columbus State Community College and Franklin University student, was also recognized with Ohio State’s cohort at the Statehouse event for her internship with The Janz Corp.

The other participating OEIP universities are Bowling Green State University, Ohio University, the University of Dayton and Youngstown State University.

For generations, these familiar idioms have illustrated what Rin Reczek and Emma Bosley-Smith, co-authors of the 2022 book “Families We Keep: LGBTQ People and Their Enduring Bonds with Parents” (NYU Press), term compulsory kinship: the social expectation that biological and legal family ties must be preserved at all costs.

In their book, Reczek, a professor of sociology at The Ohio State University, and then-Ohio State doctoral student Emma Bosley-Smith (now an assistant professor at Alma College) examined the great effort adult children often make to maintain strained or painful ties with their families of origin. Now, in Reczek’s follow-up book, “Families We Lose: A New Explanation for Family Estrangement,” published this week by NYU Press, Reczek explores what happens when adult children decide that family obligation is no longer reason enough to stay.

Overall, her research has found that adult children who go “no contact” with one or both parents elect estrangement as a last resort, and to free themselves to create a chosen family environment that meets their needs.

Reczek has studied complex family dynamics for about 20 years, and she said that changing family structures often shoulder the blame for the social problems of our time. While researching “Families We Keep,” she was surprised by the lack of scholarly literature available on the topic of family estrangement. And when she looked at the current cultural conversations happening around adult children going “no contact” with family members — in the news, on podcasts, on social media, etc. — the dominant narrative was one of panic and stigmatization.

Family estrangement is the latest in a long history of what Reczek calls “family panics.” Take, for example, rising divorce rates. “When divorce rates were rising and we saw increases in states allowing no-fault divorce, we also saw a lot of panic around the fall, or decline, of the family,” she said.

According to prior research cited in the book, about 6% of U.S. adults are estranged from a mother, while roughly 23% are estranged from a father at some point in adulthood. Reczek notes there is no empirical evidence showing estrangement rates are surging.

As shifts in American family life stream across our 24/7 content feeds, historically private decisions become public conversations — and people can mistake them for the end of family life as we know it.

“To frame estrangement as just bad for society is inappropriate,” Reczek said. “When we see that kind of panic around it, it’s a signal that it’s touching on a change in how people think about family. Estrangement has been happening throughout history; maybe the publicness of it has become really scary to people.”

There’s an unspoken societal expectation that parents will take care of kids when they are little, and when those kids grow up, eventually the roles will reverse, with the kids caring for their aging parents. “Estrangement really cuts to the heart of that agreement, which never really was agreed upon by the child who was brought into the world,” Reczek said. “That is why it’s so painful for a lot of parents, understandably. They thought that their life would look a certain way, and now it doesn’t.”

In “Families We Lose” and a related article in the Journal of Marriage and Family, Reczek sought out the real-life stories behind the current estrangement panic. She conducted in-depth interviews with 68 estranged adults across the U.S. in 2023, tracing their family histories from childhood to the present day. Each participant was actively “no contact” with at least one family member, and their periods of estrangement ranged from short-term to decades-long, sometimes repeating in cyclical patterns.

The data shows that estrangement is rarely the direct result of a single childhood event, a social media trend or “therapy speak.” Instead, Reczek found it is driven by an unresolvable culture clash between those holding onto compulsory kinship and those embracing a different way of doing family: democratized kinship.

“If compulsory kinship creates the burns of inequality, then democratized kinship and its values of quality and equality are the balm,” she writes in “Families We Lose.” Familial relationships created under democratized kinship — with friends, co-workers, neighbors and others — are guided by shared values like accountability and growth, deep connection, mutual respect and safety. Estrangement, she argues, is caused by “the conflict that arises when one family member changes from compulsory to democratized kinship but the others fail to make the same transition.”

Reczek also debunks the myth that adult children who experience or initiate estrangement do so because they don’t care about family — that they’re selfish and individualistic. “That couldn’t be further from the truth,” she said. “They care so much about family. They want to have healthy families, and they have very high standards for what a healthy family is.”

Going no contact is rarely a spontaneous or easy decision. More often, it’s the final straw after years of mistreatment, miscommunication or boundary violations. Pundits have blamed mental health professionals for driving estrangement trends, but Reczek found nothing to validate that claim.

The people she spoke with described therapy as a space where they were able to work through some of the pain of their family relationships, and, through that process, learn more about the kinds of values that they had for their relationships. “It wasn't that the therapist was encouraging them to do anything,” Reczek said. “It was more that the therapist was teaching them about what healthy relationships could look like.”

Another powerful catalyst for adult children, Reczek found, is becoming a parent. Raising children brings memories of their upbringing into sharp relief, prompting them to set firm boundaries, or sever ties entirely, to protect the next generation from experiencing similar harm.

Ultimately, Reczek hopes the public conversation around estrangement moves toward a broader acceptance of modern family life — one that honors personal choice and agency in adult relationships.

“Maybe family doesn’t look like the way we thought it would, but it hardly ever does,” she said. “Being open to those possibilities is a really important thing for all of us.”

The Pierre Agostini Prize is the university’s most prestigious award for scholarly and artistic achievement and is presented annually to one faculty member in recognition of their groundbreaking and influential work.

“Professor Janet Box-Steffensmeier embodies Ohio State’s commitment to academic excellence through her extraordinary research, mentorship and service,” said Ohio State President Ravi V. Bellamkonda. “Her scholarship is consequential not only in her field, but across the entire Ohio State community and future generations of scholars who will benefit from her leadership and bold thinking. It’s a distinct honor to celebrate Professor Box-Steffensmeier as this year’s Pierre Agostini Prize recipient.”

Established in 2025, the prize is named for Ohio State Professor Emeritus Pierre Agostini, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2023 for his work to generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electrons.

“The Pierre Agostini Prize is a distinguished recognition of research excellence, and Professor Box-Steffensmeier is a truly deserving recipient,” said John M. Horack, vice president for research. “Her groundbreaking scholarship has advanced our understanding of political behavior and methodology in profound ways, and this honor is a testament to both her individual excellence and the transformative influence of her research.”

The prize recognizes Box-Steffensmeier’s work advancing political methodology and the tools researchers use to study politics. Her interdisciplinary approach brings together mathematics, statistics and political science to examine political institutions, public opinion, elections, courts and political behavior.

Over the course of her career, Box-Steffensmeier has helped advance the use of time series analysis, event history analysis and network analysis in political science. Her work has given researchers new ways to examine not only why political events occur, but when they happen, how long their effects persist, and how political actors and institutions influence one another over time.

She has applied those methods to questions spanning American politics, including campaign spending, partisanship, congressional behavior, interest groups and judicial decision-making. Her methodological work has also reached beyond political science, providing researchers across the social sciences with tools for studying change, timing and relationships within complex social systems.

“I am honored to receive the Pierre Agostini Prize,” said Box-Steffensmeier. “This recognition reflects the collective efforts of a vibrant scholarly community dedicated to advancing knowledge and addressing important questions in political science. I am grateful for this honor and remain inspired by the opportunities to continue learning, discovering and contributing to the field.”

Her academic accomplishments have earned recognition throughout the field. She was named an inaugural Fellow of the Society for Political Methodology, elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has also received the Political Methodology Career Achievement Award and the Warren E. Miller Award for Meritorious Service to the Social Sciences, and twice received the Gosnell Award for work in political methodology. In 2025, Box-Steffensmeier also received the Barry Prize for Distinguished Intellectual Achievement, recognizing her contributions to understanding democratic processes and advancing social science methodology.

Mentorship has been equally central to Box-Steffensmeier’s career. Undergraduate and graduate researchers continue to contribute to projects spanning political science, data analytics and artificial intelligence.

“What I enjoy most is helping students develop as scholars and researchers,” Box-Steffensmeier said. “Much of my work has been done alongside students, and I take great pride in seeing them forge their own paths, whether through creative, influential research that advances our understanding of politics and society or through successful, meaningful and impactful careers in a wide range of fields.”

Her impact as a mentor has been recognized nationally. The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research established the Box-Steffensmeier Graduate Student Award in recognition of her contributions to political methodology and her support of women in the field. She has also received Ohio State’s Distinguished Undergraduate Mentor Award and the Political Methodology Excellence in Mentoring Award.

“Ohio State has been a place where intellectual curiosity and collaboration thrive,” she said. “The support of colleagues across the university and the rich intellectual environment in political science and the social sciences have given me the opportunity to continually evolve as a scholar, pursue interdisciplinary research and explore questions that have shaped my career.”

Box-Steffensmeier was awarded the prize during the Ohio State Board of Trustees’ Academic, Research and Student Life Committee meeting on Aug. 20. She will receive a $50,000 prize, split evenly between a cash award and a research budget. She also received a medallion as a permanent reminder of the honor.

The Agostini Prize medallion features a scarlet ribbon and a polished gray medal and includes five university landmarks: Thompson Library, Orton Hall, University Hall, Mirror Lake and the Wexner Center for the Arts, representing the depth and breadth of the Ohio State experience.

The study, published in the Early Childhood Education Journal, drew on survey data from 110 preschool teachers in two Midwestern states to examine how classroom play is supported across urban, suburban and rural settings. Researchers looked at three key factors: teachers’ own knowledge and beliefs about learning and play, their perception of family support for play and their perception of curricular support for it.

While teachers’ beliefs about play and curricular support didn’t differ by region — 96.9% agreed or strongly agreed that play supports academic learning — urban teachers were significantly less likely than suburban teachers to say families in their classrooms viewed play as essential to learning.

According to Erin Fox, lead author of the study and a recent graduate with a doctorate in human development and family science from The Ohio State University, both research and anecdotal stories from teachers and parents point to growing pressure in preschool settings to prioritize direct academic instruction, which can limit children’s time for play.

Fox was curious about how this tension was taking shape across communities and set out to explore equity in access to high-quality, play-based preschool.

“One of the biggest misconceptions is that play doesn’t support learning,” Fox said. “In general, I think most people would agree that play supports social emotional development, but may be less likely to understand how play can also support early literacy or math skills.”

Far from being just a “break” or a way for kids to burn off energy, playful learning is an evidence-based teaching strategy: The researchers define it as an active learning approach that combines child-directed, engaging elements with intentional adult guidance.

“From the outside, it might just look like kids are playing, but when you actually talk to the teachers, it’s very intentional and there are clear learning goals behind it,” said Kelly Purtell, a co-author of the study and associate professor of human sciences at Ohio State. The paper is part of a larger study focused on understanding how teachers use and think about play experiences in preschool and early elementary school classrooms.

Purtell notes a broader cultural shift in the way conversations about school readiness have come to dominate how families view preschool.

“When talking to teachers, both formally and informally, they’ve expressed that when some families send their kids to preschool, they really expect them to be there to learn and to be ready for kindergarten,” Purtell said. An increased focus on formal academic preparation, she added, shapes broader expectations of what preschool should look like.

As to why teachers in urban areas reported feeling less support from families around playful learning, the researchers speculate that parents in urban areas might be more exposed to narratives around the importance of school readiness, Purtell said, and there is a growing need to better educate parents and families about the important role of play-based learning in ensuring school readiness.

Parental concerns about kindergarten preparation are well-placed and understandable, Purtell said, and she hopes to help broaden how people think about school readiness.

“Play-based learning is a developmentally appropriate learning strategy,” she said, “and it’s something parents should feel comfortable talking to their children’s teachers about — to better understand how and why teachers are using play in the classroom — and how that’s helping kids develop and get ready for the transition to school.”

Purtell is also a faculty affiliate of the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy, and Fox was a graduate research associate with the Crane Center. Additional co-authors were Maria Abdul-Masih of Ohio State, Rachel E. Schachter of the University of Illinois Chicago, Amy R. Napoli of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and Yuenjung Joo of the University of North Carolina Greensboro.