The AAAS Fellowship, recognizing scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications, is one of the most prestigious honors a U.S. scientist can receive. Fellows are elected by their academic peers. The 2025 class consists of 449 scientists, engineers and innovators across 24 AAAS disciplinary sections.

“The American Association for the Advancement of Science has a long history of honoring researchers whose exceptional work is expanding the impact of their respective disciplines,” said John M. Horack, vice president for research. “The contributions and achievements of Ohio State’s newly elected Fellows exemplify this standard of excellence and service.”

Ohio State’s newest Fellows represent the colleges of Arts and Sciences and Engineering. This year’s class, joining over 550 Ohio State scholars who have been granted this lifetime recognition since 1874, are:    

Tanya Berger-Wolf, director of the Translational Data Analytics Institute and professor of computer science and engineering; evolution, ecology and organismal biology; and electrical and computer engineering. For distinguished contributions to the field of computer science, particularly for interdisciplinary, cutting-edge research in the area of computational ecology and Artificial Intelligence for science.

Stuart Ludsin, professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology. For distinguished contributions to interdisciplinary science at the nexus of limnology, fisheries ecology, global change biology and ecosystem management.

Steven MacEachern, professor of statistics. For distinguished contributions in Bayesian methodology and computation, and for outstanding leadership and service in advancing statistical education, research and professional engagement. 

Michael Poirier, professor of physics. For distinguished contributions to the fields of gene regulation and chromatin biology, particularly for biophysical studies of pioneer transcription factors and chromatin dynamics. 

AAAS is one of the world’s largest general scientific societies and publisher of the Science family of journals. Fellows are recognized for their achievements across disciplines, from research, teaching and technology to administration in academia, industry and government, to excellence in communicating and interpreting science to the public. 

The 2025 class of Fellows will be honored at a forum on May 29 in Washington, D.C.

Brown joined Ohio State’s faculty in 2001 and became dean of the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at its inception in 2015. Prior to that, he served as director of the then-Glenn School.

In June 2025, he was named senior vice provost for academic affairs in the Office of Academic Affairs. In this role, Brown has served as deputy to the provost and as a partner and resource for deans, vice provosts and other academic leaders ­– and helped lead strategy for ensuring student academic success and strong student outcomes.

As interim provost, Brown will lead programs and initiatives in the Office of Academic Affairs, overseeing deans of all Ohio State’s colleges, regional campuses and University Libraries, as well as the Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge.

“We are pleased to be able to further elevate Dr. Brown’s portfolio and responsibilities at Ohio State,” Bellamkonda said. “He brings stores of knowledge about our academic mission and its many programs, as well as a deep understanding of and appreciation for the shared governance process with which we operate.

“Most of all, Dr. Brown is a dedicated public servant. Like his mentor and friend, the late Senator John Glenn, he has committed himself to the betterment of society through the act and, importantly, teaching of public service.”

Brown said he is ready for the next challenge.

“As President Bellamkonda has said, Ohio State is an academic powerhouse, and our focus on teaching, research, creative expression and community engagement is critical to improving the lives of Ohioans and families around the world,” Brown said. “I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to advance that important mission and continue the university’s momentum related to academic excellence.”

Brown has performed extensive service for Ohio State. Over the last five years he has served as co-chair of the academic transition task force during the COVID-19 pandemic, executive dean of the professional colleges, senior advisor to the provost, and interim dean of Fisher College of Business, alongside his role as Glenn College dean. As a scholar, Brown worked with local, state, federal and foreign governments, as well as public organizations, to improve organizational and managerial performance. He has conducted applied research projects for the city of Columbus, IBM Center for the Business of Government, Pew Center on the States, U.S. Department of the Navy, and others. His research on government contracting has been utilized by the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. From 1994 to 2013, he helped lead the Parliamentary Development Project, a U.S. Agency for International Development-funded organization that provided technical assistance to Ukraine’s national parliament.

He is also a renowned researcher in public management and organizational theory, contracting and contract management, and strategic management and performance measurement. The National Institute of Governmental Purchasing recognized him as the Scholar of the Year in 2013. The American Society of Public Administration’s Section on Public Administration Research awarded his co-authored book, “Complex Contracting: Government Contracting in the Wake of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Deepwater Program” (Cambridge University Press), as the Book of the Year. He is also a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. 

Brown received a PhD in public policy and political science from Indiana University and a BA in public policy from Stanford University. From 2021 to 2024, he also served in the leadership of the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration, which promotes the ideal of public service through higher education. 

While Brown’s appointment as interim executive vice president and provost will begin immediately, pending Board of Trustees approval, he will continue to hold the title of dean of the Glenn College through April 30. Beginning May 1, Stephanie Moulton, professor and associate dean for faculty and research at Glenn College, will be acting dean.

Moulton, who holds a PhD from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, is a visiting scholar at the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank and a faculty affiliate of Ohio State’s Institute for Population Research in the College of Arts and Sciences as well as the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research on Poverty.

She also serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Wealth and Mobility Study at the University of Michigan’s Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics. Moulton is a member of the Academic Research Council for the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center and an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. 

“Dr. Moulton is a dynamic, collaborative and proven leader,” Brown said. “We look forward to working with her on the Council of Deans and the many program areas in which our Glenn College excels.”

In the United States, advancements in specialized farming methods for crops and livestock have boosted efficiency and productivity. However, these improvements have drawbacks such as declines in soil health and organic matter, water quality challenges, loss of biodiversity and increased vulnerability to extreme weather events.

New climate-smart agricultural practices (CSAPs) have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enhance carbon storage, improve resilience to climate change and ensure the viability of farms. However, traditional, top-down approaches to boost adoption have been slow. This project focuses on working with farmers from the ground up to overcome barriers and find innovative approaches that can accelerate their use on Midwest farms.

“This is an unprecedented investment by the USDA in a farmer-led response to address water quality and carbon sequestration challenges in agriculture,” said Douglas Jackson-Smith, project lead, professor and holder of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Endowed Chair in Agricultural Ecosystems Management in The Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES). “We’ll be engaging farmers in Ohio and Missouri, major farm states with different natural environments where the impacts of climate variability on CSAP performance can be compared across time and space.” 

The project is funded through USDA’s flagship Sustainable Agricultural Systems program.

“At our core, we value the discovery, translation and sharing of knowledge toward impactful outcomes,” said Cathann A. Kress, Ohio State vice president of agricultural administration and CFAES dean. “This transformative investment by USDA allows us to cultivate enduring partnerships and advance new collaborations with farmers in Ohio and the Midwest, driving innovation to support the resilience and viability of agriculture within its ecosystems.”

In addition to empowering farmers to lead the design and innovation of practical approaches to climate-smart farming, the project will provide opportunities to train the next generation of students in the use of on-farm research and community stakeholder collaborations as strategies to address future farming system challenges.

“With this investment, we will spur innovation clusters where farmers themselves identify and overcome logistical, agronomic and economic barriers that make it difficult for them to use conservation practices,” Jackson-Smith said. “We believe farmer leadership through collaborative, on-farm research and peer-to-peer learning networks are key to finding realistic solutions that really work on the farm.”

Although led by Ohio State, the project will also involve close partnerships with researchers, extension staff and students at Central State University, the University of Missouri, Lincoln University Missouri and Solutions from the Land.

The College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) will build the state-of-the-art facility at Waterman Agricultural and Natural Resources Laboratory on the Columbus campus. 

Ohio State President Walter “Ted” Carter Jr., who spoke at the groundbreaking on his 30th day on the job, said, “Agriculture is critically important, not only for states like Ohio, but for our nation and our world. 

“This Multispecies Animal Learning Center is going to benefit our students by providing hands-on training that leads to careers in animal agriculture,” Carter said. “It’s going to benefit the industry by being a hub for research and workforce development. It’s going to benefit our state broadly, as agriculture is Ohio’s No. 1 industry. This university exists to serve, and this new facility is going to help us better serve the state of Ohio.” 

The MALC will facilitate education in essential STEM fields and will foster workforce development for diverse careers such as animal sciences, engineering, food science, human nutrition and health. Inside the facility, students will have opportunities to gain hands-on experience with swine, equine, poultry, cattle, sheep and goats. The public will have a chance to learn about modern livestock production with tours; a viewing area into the animal barns; and interactive, educational displays. 

“This is a game-changer for us. It is integral to our vision for Waterman and will be a world-class facility that brings people and animals together for hands-on learning, engagement and programming,” said Cathann A. Kress, Ohio State vice president for agricultural administration and dean of CFAES. “It’s going to bring schoolchildren, in grades K through 12, here to learn about career pathways. It’s going to engage people from all across our industry. And it’s going to be a place where all of us can learn more about the work of the university and our industry.” 

As an expansion of the original MALC project, a new, modern dairy will also be constructed at Waterman to replace the aging dairy facility. It will feature robotic milking technology and the latest in precision dairy technologies, feed systems and waste management. The new dairy will meet educational and research needs, with a projected completion date of winter 2025. 

CFAES is actively fundraising while moving forward with MALC construction, with opening expected in fall 2025. At present, $16.4 million in philanthropic funding has been secured, which includes $11.5 million from Nationwide Foundation. In addition, a $10 million investment from Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and the General Assembly was allocated in the state budget toward the project. 

“We’re just so proud of what’s happening right now with this new project,” said Devin Fuhrman, Nationwide’s chief agriculture and sponsor relations officer. “Nationwide is a company founded by farmers. Being able to invest in the future of agriculture is so important to us. We hope we can provide pathways to create opportunities for students of all ages to find their way to a career in agriculture.” 

The new multispecies center will bolster Ohio State’s ability to offer interdisciplinary teaching and research opportunities. Additionally, it will provide space for Ohio State University Extension – CFAES’ statewide outreach arm – and youth development programs, such as 4-H and FFA, and their events. 

“The construction of this facility presents an opportunity for even greater engagement with the broader university – our students, our faculty and our staff. It will be an opportunity to showcase all the tremendous work that takes place here at Waterman and how food really reaches from farm to plate and everything that goes into that,” said Elizabeth Harsh, executive director of the Ohio Cattlemen’s Association and Ohio Beef Council and an Ohio State trustee.

Designed to groom postdocs of color to become top-performing faculty, the two-year fellowship created a pathway to the professoriate in the college – a “grow your own” model for hiring and retaining faculty of color.

“This initiative required us to think differently about how we diversify faculty in our college at a time when many institutions continue to use traditional approaches that have failed to address the cultural environment of the unit,” said Dean Don Pope-Davis. “We chose to be disruptive by consistently asking ourselves, ‘Is what we are doing transformative, consistent with our core values and sustainable?’”

Senior Associate Dean Noelle Arnold, who directs the postdoctoral program, said scholars of color typically don’t get the same start as other faculty.

“Research has shown that new faculty of color often lack doctoral mentorship beyond the dissertation,” said Arnold, director of the college’s Office of Equity, Diversity and Global Engagement. “We provided significant mentoring for research, teaching, service and grant writing – designed to foster belonging, efficacy and successful metrics for the professoriate. This fellowship was our way of not only diversifying our faculty but also being a part of the solution to some negative statistics.”

Less than 15% of all postdoctoral scholars become tenure-track faculty, according to a national survey. A small percentage of those are diverse. Also, in 2018, Black and Hispanic faculty accounted for 18% of tenure-track positions, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, but just 7% held tenured positions.

So it’s significant that five of Ohio State’s cohort were hired by the college to date. The program’s success hinged upon building a supportive and inclusive culture through intensive mentoring, professional development and research assistance. The multi-tiered approach included opportunities for community and college engagement on special projects to foster an immediate sense of belonging and engagement with the community.

The end-game, for both the fellows and the college, was for them to find their place at the college table and to emerge as highly accomplished scholars. A comprehensive process for monitoring progress kept the scholars on track each semester, Arnold said.

Cohort support brings success

The effort panned out. Since starting the fellowship in 2019, the eight postdoctoral scholars received more than $4 million in grant funding and authored more than 30 publications. 

Among those hired is Rhodesia McMillian, now an assistant professor of educational policy. In April, after months of working with faculty mentors and the college’s Office of Research, Innovation and Collaboration, she received a Spencer Foundation grant to analyze federal court appeals involving K-12 schools.

“My (graduate) professors didn’t have those types of resources,” she said. “They had to fend for themselves.”

The postdocs were offered competitive salaries, moving expenses, a technology package and professional development. Faculty mentors were paid to serve as coaches, signaling the importance of the effort. The fellows were encouraged to pursue independent research paths and not “kowtow to a larger project at the college,” McMillian said.

“I have yet to experience a point of divergence,” she said. “Even if it’s not said explicitly, it’s felt explicitly: When I succeed, the college, and consequently the university, succeeds.”

Dinorah Sánchez Loza, among the cohort and now assistant professor of multicultural and equity studies in education, credits leadership and hands-on mentoring.

“What has been most striking is the holistic approach to providing an atmosphere of support and genuine investment in our success,” she said. “All along the way I benefited from knowing my scholarship and I were valued here – something I did not think I could expect from such a large university.”

Bigger, in this case, is better

The large cohort was cohesive, critical for retention. Together they received bimonthly sessions from teaching award recipients, grant writing assistance and professional development on time management. Some collaborated on grant proposals and – when the pandemic curtailed their social gatherings – had informal FaceTime meetups. They bonded.

“The cohort model is a key feature that contributed to developing a diverse scholarly network, and, importantly, a sense of community,” said Kristen J. Mills, who was hired as an assistant professor of higher education and student affairs.

The program’s design goes beyond numbers, Arnold said, but the cohort size was key because representation and belongingness matter. The college more than doubled its number of postdoctoral scholars of color when hiring the eight fellows in 2019.

How colleges recruit also matters. As part of the dean’s initiative, candidates for the fellowship were brought together in 2019 for three days of events, including a banquet, poster sessions, meetings with faculty and university leadership, and seats at the first Olivia J. Hooker Lecture featuring author Ta-Nehisi Coates. 

“I’ve had friends in the (academic) job market say, ‘I just felt like the token,’” said Autumn Bermea, now an assistant professor of human development and family science. “It didn’t feel like that at all. When we came for interviews, it felt very much like, ‘We are here to nurture you, and we value what you’re going to bring to help the department grow.’”

The keys to building a diverse faculty

Just after Steven Stone-Sabali applied for the fellowship, he was offered a tenure-track position at another Midwestern university. Ohio State countered by offering him a visiting professor position and all the supports of the postdoc program. He accepted and has now been hired as an assistant professor of school psychology.

The college’s “public-facing focus” on diversity clinched Stone-Sabali’s decision to come to Ohio State.

“Announcing their values unapologetically signaled something to me in terms of it might be a safer space to embrace my research,” which examines discrimination of students of color in the educational mental health care system, he said. “My research looks at race, essentially. How people respond to that topic can go any type of way. I felt like my research would have a safe home and be supported. I didn’t have to tone it down or be concerned about how people perceive my work.”

Having college leadership proactively back its commitment to diversification signaled the college’s priorities early on, Stone-Sabali said.

“In Black psychology, we have a cultural mistrust of others,” he said. “It’s been shown to be a protective factor, because Black individuals have been harmed in the past by society. So supporting diversity has to be more than just talk; there has to be action to support that.

“The narrative is that all these universities want to diversify. But for some odd reason, they can't figure out how to do it. The dean has done it. That says something.”

See articles in Inside Higher Education and Diverse Issues in Higher Education. 

“Being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is one of the highest honors that a scholar can receive from their peers,” said Gretchen Ritter, executive dean and vice provost of the College of Arts and Sciences. “This is a mark of distinction for Fritz and Stewart and for the impact of humanities scholarship at Ohio State.”

Graf, also the director of epigraphy for the Center for Epigraphical and Palaeographical Studies, is a world-renowned expert in the areas of Greek epigraphy, philology and literature, ancient religions and mythologies, and Greco-Roman antiquity. The impact of his scholarship has reverberated across the fields of classical philology and ancient history.

Graf’s written works have been translated into several languages and include Greek Mythology: An Introduction; Apollo; and Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: The Bacchic Gold Tablets. His latest book, Roman Festivals in the Greek East, studies the development of ancient festival culture in the Greek East of the Roman Empire, shedding light on the fundamental religious changes that occurred.

In 2018, Graf was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, which recognized a “scholarly career that transcends the conventional borders of epochs and disciplines.” Graf has been on the Ohio State faculty since 2002 and served on the Senate Committee on Library and Technology, chaired the Department of Greek and Latin (now the Department of Classics), and was a board member of The Ohio State University Press. He earned his MA and PhD from the University of Zurich.

Shapiro is a leading figure in the philosophy of mathematics whose areas of expertise lie at the intersection of philosophical logic, philosophy of language and vagueness. His research explores the structuralist philosophy of mathematics, the historical development of logic and relationships between modality and ontology in mathematics.

Shapiro’s publications include Vagueness in Context; Thinking About Mathematics: The Philosophy of Mathematics; Philosophy of Mathematics: Structure and Ontology; and Foundations Without Foundationalism: A Case for Second-Order Logic. His most recent work, Varieties of Logic, challenges the philosophy that logic is absolutely general and explores various dynamics of pluralism and relativism.

Shapiro earned his MA in mathematics and PhD in philosophy from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where in 2018 he was honored as a distinguished alumnus of its Department of Philosophy.

Graf and Shapiro join 250 other scholars, scientists and artists inducted this year into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Other notable additions include media entrepreneur and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey, neurosurgeon and medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta of CNN, journalist Mario Hinojosa of Futuro Media Group and NPR, and atmospheric scientist Anne Thompson of NASA and the Goddard Space Flight Center.

“We are honoring the excellence of these individuals, celebrating what they have achieved so far, and imagining what they will continue to accomplish,” said David Oxtoby, president of the American Academy. “The past year has been replete with evidence of how things can get worse; this is an opportunity to illuminate the importance of art, ideas, knowledge and leadership that can make a better world.”

“I can’t think of a more vital, intersectional topic in all of U.S. public life right now than the one we can have at the intersection of race and data,” said Tressie McMillan Cottom, a writer, professor, sociologist and 2020 MacArthur Fellow. “We have as a public, as a society, as a nation, experienced over the last few months just how critical data and race are to the vitality of U.S. civic and public life.”

That plays out in public, visible ways – the marches and protests over the killing of Black people by police officers that helped define much of 2020 – and in invisible ones – the way companies and public institutions collect and use an individual’s data to market services to them or make choices about their futures.

McMillan Cottom, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, spoke as part of the Ohio State Provost’s Discovery Themes Lecturer Program, which invites experts to discuss big societal issues with the Ohio State community.

On Wednesday, McMillan Cottom spoke about the ways in which data and race have interacted in U.S. history, and the ways in which they will shape our society into the future.

Consider Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the landmark case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state laws establishing school segregation by race are unconstitutional, McMillan Cottom said.

In that case, the court’s decision noted testimony and data supplied by two psychologists, Kenneth and Mamie Clark, that showed the clear harm segregation caused to Black children. That data included a comprehensive review of academic studies, which showed the harm segregation caused to children who were Chinese-American, Indigenous, and other non-white races. In that case, McMillan Cottom argued, social science data played a crucial role in the decision, which led to critically needed policy changes across the United States.

And the power that comes from thinking about how data and race combine continues today, she said. Capitalism and racism, she said, are inextricably linked – and the same is true of race, data and online platforms.

“Questions about inequality in our society cannot be fully understood if we do not understand how race and data and platforms co-create each other, much in the way you cannot get capitalism without the invention of race,” she said. “They go together like peanut butter and jelly.”

To for-profit companies, people are more valuable as data than as customers, she said. And, she added, as is usually the case when racism and capitalism collide, not everyone lives that reality in the same way.

For-profit universities use data to target marketing efforts at Black people, especially Black women, she said. Lawmakers setting criminal justice policy use algorithms to try and determine which defendants in a criminal case are likely to break the law again – and those algorithms, she said, often result in worse outcomes for Black defendants than they do for white defendants.

And companies, from grocery stores to online retailers, gather data about customers that customers often do not even realize is being collected.

“It’s deliberate that we don’t know the reach of our data. It’s not opaque by accident,” she said. “And that’s one of the real challenges in how governance has lagged and how our own demand for transparency has lagged among the public.

“The private control of platforms becomes really evident,” McMillan Cottom said. “It’s never free. It may be free to use, but it’s never free: There’s always a price to be paid. And the price for that amplification effect is that you cannot control how that information is received, archived and then triangulated and used.”

One Black Lives Matter activist, she said, was located by police via a comment that the activist made on an Etsy shop.

“That’s the power that is given to platforms,” she said.

And because that power is held by private companies, users do not have the authority or pull to lobby for changes, she said.

“If every time you hear someone say the word ‘app’ or ‘platform,’ you instead think the words ‘economy’ or ‘citizenship,’ then I think you’ll come to the same conclusion I have, which is that platforms have become the economy,” she said. “They’ve become governance; they are the structures of how we work, how we vote, how we live.”

The university’s summer 2020 dean’s list names 1,054 students who have achieved top grades for their work. This includes 713 Ohio students, 120 non-resident and 221 international students.

Criteria for the dean’s list varies by college. It is usually based on the GPA for that specific term and the number of credit hours taken. Many colleges require a minimum of 12 graded credit hours with a 3.5 GPA or higher.

Ohio State is also issuing the list of students who earned degrees at commencement on Aug. 9, 2020. The university awarded 1,763 degrees at the ceremony, including 253 doctoral, 8 professional, 547 master’s, 850 bachelor’s, 73 associate degrees and 32 certificates.

Both the dean’s and graduate lists include Ohio, non-resident and international students. Students are listed by county and then by zip code, city and last name. The files are searchable using the search or find function on your device.

Students may choose not to have their names released under the provisions of the Federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974. Their names have been excluded from the lists.

The lists are available below:

Ohio State ranks 8th among the nation’s colleges and universities and 3rd in the Big Ten with 2,829 students studying abroad in 2018-19, a 3.8 percent decrease from the previous academic year. The university also ranks 3rd in the nation for the number of students participating in short-term programs with 2,660 studying abroad for one to eight weeks during the academic year.

Ohio State ranks 19th in the nation and 5th in the Big Ten with 7,894* international students enrolled in 2019, a 1.5 percent decline in enrollment from 2018, which aligns with the national trend. Students continuing their academic programs and practical training increased by 20 percent while there was a 4 percent decrease in new international students enrolled at the university.

These findings were issued as part of the 2020 Open Doors Report, an annual survey published by the Institute of International Education in partnership with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

A more diverse Ohio State student population studied abroad in 2018-19, with an 8.6 percent increase in those who identified as racial or ethnic minorities participating in global learning opportunities over the previous academic year.

“We have made a concerted effort to provide more opportunities for diverse students to engage internationally,” said Gil Latz, vice provost for global strategies and international affairs. “By partnering with the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, we have extended our outreach and developed new pathways so that every student at Ohio State understands that education abroad is accessible, and most importantly, possible.”

Nationally, European countries remain the most popular destination to study abroad, and Ohio State is in line with the national trend with the most students studying abroad in the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, France and Germany. The top fields of study for Ohio State students studying abroad are business, biological and biomedical sciences, health professions, social sciences, agriculture and engineering.

International students at Ohio State hail from more than 100 countries including China (5,169); India (885); South Korea (379); Malaysia (185); and Taiwan (150). China and India remain the largest source of international students studying in the United States.

The top fields of study at Ohio State for international students include engineering, business, mathematics and statistics and the social sciences, similar to the national trend.

“International students contribute greatly to our Buckeye community, bringing with them new and different perspectives from which we can all greatly benefit,” Latz said. “Ohio State remains committed to providing enhanced programming to help our students adapt to a new cultural environment, while also supporting their academic success.”

The 2020 Open Doors Report is released as part of the nationwide observance of International Education Week Nov. 16-20, a joint initiative established by the U.S. Departments of Education and State.

At Ohio State, International Education Week is celebrated through a number of activities supported by the Office of International Affairs, which facilitates and support’s Ohio State’s international initiatives and advances global opportunities for students, faculty and staff. For more information, visit http://oia.osu.edu/.

* The IIE’s collection of enrollment data for international students includes two categories of students who are not currently enrolled at Ohio State in classes for credit. They include “Optional Practical Training” students who are not taking classes but are continuing their education through practical training in their field of study, and exchange students who are pursuing continuing (non-degree) education.

These four programs have again received the INSIGHT into Diversity magazine 2020 Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award. INSIGHT into Diversity magazine is the oldest and largest diversity-focused publication in higher education.

This is the second consecutive year that all four programs have been named as a Health Professions HEED Award recipient. Ohio State is the only academic institution in the country to have four colleges receive the 2020 Health Professions HEED award. The colleges of nursing, medicine and veterinary medicine have received the award in previous years as well.

“Our standards are high, and we look for institutions where diversity and inclusion are woven into the work being done every day across their campus,” said INSIGHT Into Diversity publisher Lenore Pearlstein.

The award recognizes the university’s efforts in recruitment and retention of students and employees, continued leadership support for diversity, and other aspects of campus diversity and inclusion.

“Ohio State’s colleges are focused on diversity and inclusion as essential components of our mission,” said Executive Vice President and Provost Bruce A. McPheron. “By fostering these values in the health sciences, our students, faculty and staff are prepared to serve Ohioans well in the future.”

Each of the health sciences colleges incorporates diversity and inclusion throughout its student recruitment, teaching, research and service, including the creation and implementation of an Anti-Racism Action Plan that creates a foundation for structural and systemic change.

“I am extraordinarily proud of the continued advancements in diversity and inclusion that led INSIGHT Into Diversity to recognize Ohio State’s health science colleges. Much has been accomplished, but there is undoubtedly more to do,” said Dr. Hal Paz, executive vice president and chancellor for health affairs at Ohio State and CEO of Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. “As educators, researchers and caregivers, we are committed to improving health and building a culture of equity to better care for the communities we serve.”

Below are highlights of the colleges’ diversity and inclusion efforts.

College of Medicine – There is a history of recruiting and supporting under-represented minority students – 24% of students are underrepresented minorities. The college also follows a holistic admissions process, and everyone on the selection committee receives Implicit Bias training. There is diversity among the faculty and college leadership. The college requires a diverse pool of applicants in the hiring process and requires search firms it uses to include diverse candidates in the final pool of all candidates.

College of Nursing – The Ohio State College of Nursing earned its fifth consecutive HEED award, in part because of its ability to build on progress made in academics, research, student engagement and community impact. Several College of Nursing faculty have current research focused on reducing health disparities; the college’s population of underrepresented students increased across academic programs; and the college leveraged technology to host a five-week virtual Summer Success Series that aimed to help develop soft skills in under-represented undergraduate students. The college also formed the affinity group Nursing Students of Color to retain and support students as they move toward graduation, and continued its Health Resources and Services Administration grant-funded work to support the education and development of community health workers to improve the health and well-being of their own neighborhoods.

College of Optometry – The College of Optometry focused on several key initiatives to foster diversity and inclusion in 2020, including: reimagining the role of the college’s chief diversity officer to be more broadly integrated into the structure of the college; enhancing the admissions process for diverse underrepresented students by employing mitigation strategies against implicit bias and searching for inclusive behaviors in all applicants; educating all faculty, staff and students on implicit bias and anti-racism; engaging in purposeful relationship-building between our diverse students and diverse alumni; integrating diversity, equity and inclusion in the policy documents that govern the college; and developing a pathway for diverse underrepresented students to become faculty. The college also updated its Improving Diversity in Optometric Careers program this year to be virtual, ensuring that this annual summer program continued its mission to attract underrepresented minority undergraduate students from across the U.S. to learn about optics, eye anatomy and vision disorders as well as the College of Optometry admissions process.

College of Veterinary Medicine – The College of Veterinary Medicine is focusing on recruiting underrepresented minorities and first-generation students by reducing barriers to enter the profession, providing engaging learning opportunities, and creating an academic community that fosters inclusion. An increase in scholarship awards helps alleviate some of the debt burden many students face. Be Well programming teaches a foundation of health and well-being skills before students enter their professional career. Outreach and engagement opportunities such as the Pet Owner and Pet Care Program and the Veterinary Medicine Outreach Program provide care to underserved populations and unique service-learning experiences for students.

The report, commissioned by the Chicago-based nonprofit Interfaith Youth Core, found that 74% of students have dedicated time to learning about people of a different race/ethnicity, and most students learned about people with different political views and sexual orientations.  

Far fewer students have taken time to learn about specific religions. The survey found that 40% of students devoted time to learning about Jews and Evangelical Christians, 27% spent time learning about Hindus and 22% spent time learning about Latter-day Saints (Mormons). The percentage of students who devoted time to learning about Muslims was 46%, the highest among the religions. 

“Our nation is in the midst of a historical cultural upheaval that is calling new attention to the importance of disrupting hegemonic policy and practices; re-envisioning diversity, equity and inclusion; and improving understanding between communities. This includes different religious communities,” said Matthew J. Mayhew, the Flesher Professor teaching in the Higher Education and Student Affairs Program at The Ohio State University, one of two lead researchers on the study. 

“Institutions must be agents of democratic healing — equipping students with the tools needed to navigate an increasingly diverse world, particularly at a moment when higher education is being reshaped fundamentally by the pandemics related to COVID-19 and racial violence. Our research shows that as we teach about diversity, we need to emphasize understanding of different religious worldviews.”  

The report also found: 

• Sixty-five percent of students reported trying to build relationships with people who hold religious or nonreligious beliefs that differ from their own. Additionally, 63% of students feel that people on their campuses interact primarily with their own religious or worldview communities.
• Students experience college differently depending on their religious identity — and those who are religious minorities often feel unwelcome and unsupported. 
  • Jewish students in particular reported feeling concerns about the climate they faced on their campuses. 
  • While less than 1% of students overall regularly encountered insensitive messages about their religious or nonreligious identity, 7% of Muslim students reported such encounters on a frequent basis, and nearly one-fifth of Muslims reported they often felt pressured to limit when or how they express their worldview.
• One-third of students expressed confidence in their ability to negotiate challenging conversations with people who hold different views, and 59% reported staying quiet at least occasionally during challenging conversations to avoid conflict. 

“Religious beliefs dictate so much of how we interact in the world,” said Professor Alyssa N. Rockenbach at North Carolina State University, the other lead researcher on the Interfaith Diversity Experiences and Attitudes Longitudinal Survey, or IDEALS. ”Our nation needs healing in this unprecedented time. As we grow more polarized and enter a heated election cycle, emerging graduates must be equipped to bridge divides between groups,”

IDEALS outlines steps that campus leaders can take to mitigate challenges to appreciating religious diversity within higher education and nationally.

Mayhew recommends having class discussions about one religion at a time — for instance about Islam and Muslims — to unpack how students think about people with that worldview.

At the same time, “You challenge students to think about their own religious identities without trying to change them,” he said. In his own teaching, he encourages students to consider what they believe, where their beliefs came from, how their religion may or may not have oppressed people over time, and more.  

“When students are supported in this process by a professor who can deftly guide them, without judgment, they come to understand dimensions of their religious selves, who they are in light of their own personal histories and how that affects others,” he said. “The goal is for students to put their assumptions aside and listen to one another.” 

Associate Professor Stephen John Quaye of Ohio State’s Higher Education and Student Affairs Program, which prepares future university and college leaders, teaches a graduate course called Facilitating Intergroup Dialogue in Higher Education. In it and other courses like it, he asks students to think about dominant versus subordinated identities, which include religion.

“This class is focused on students learning skills about how to facilitate dialogues about privilege, power and oppression,” Quaye said. “We focus on topics that people struggle to talk about openly because they're worried about saying the wrong thing, not having a background to do so or just appearing ignorant.”

He has his students develop activities and exercises to facilitate dialogue about a topic. One activity might be to ask participants to develop ground rules prior to engaging in dialogue. Another might be to participate in small-group discussions before bringing students together in the large group.

“By the end of the course,” Quaye added, “students develop deeper awareness of who they are as facilitators and how to address the delicate topics that are often divisive in our society. They also learn that talking about hard topics needs to be sustained over time and really can’t just be a one-shot experience.”

Number of degrees and certificates 
Doctoral - 253 
Professional - 8 
Masters - 547 
Bachelors - 850
Associates - 73 
Certificates -  32

Total: 1,763 

WELCOMING REMARKS: Melissa Shivers, vice president for student life 

PRESIDING OFFICER: Bruce McPheron, executive vice president and provost

COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER: Michael Redd, Ohio State alumnus, Olympic gold medalist and former NBA All-Star for the Milwaukee Bucks

COMMENCEMENT VOCALIST: Mark Wilkinson, Class of 2020 

The hour-long commencement ceremony will begin at 2 p.m. A pre-ceremony program featuring messages from graduates, deans and other university leaders from across all campuses will begin at 1:30 p.m. Both the pre-ceremony and the ceremony can be viewed by livestream on the commencement website and will be broadcast statewide on the Ohio Channel.

When the ceremony has concluded, video of the event – including the pre-ceremony program – will be made available to the public and television stations across Ohio at http://go.osu.edu/summercomm.

Excerpts from the commencement ceremony will be rebroadcast on WOSU-TV, Channel 34, at 5 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 10.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions on large gatherings, no graduates will be physically present. The ceremony, which will be held at the Schottenstein Center, will include a small group of university leaders and guests.

Provost Bruce McPheron will preside and the commencement address will be given by Michael Redd, an Ohio State alumnus, Olympic gold medalist and former NBA All-Star for the Milwaukee Bucks.

Graduates will receive their degrees and a copy of the commencement program in the mail at their permanent address. The university will hold a physical recognition event at a later date when it is safe to do so. Members of the graduating class will be actively involved in the scheduling and planning of that event.

The dean’s list includes a total of 24,776 students: 18,846 Ohioans, 4,109 non-residents and 1,821 international students.

Criteria for the dean’s list varies by college. It is usually based on the GPA for that specific term and the number of credit hours taken. Many colleges require a minimum of 12 graded credit hours with a 3.5 GPA or higher.

In an historic virtual commencement on May 3, the university awarded a record 12,967 degrees and certificates to its largest-ever graduating class ever, including 261 doctoral, 983 professional, 1,983 masters, 9,007 bachelors, 594 associates and 69 certificates.

Both the dean’s and graduate lists include Ohio, non-resident and international students. Students are listed by county and then by zip code, city and last name. The files are searchable using the search or find function on your device.

Students may choose not to have their names released under the provisions of the Federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974. Their names have been excluded from the lists.

The lists are available below:

That was the theme of a 90-minute webinar earlier this week titled “The Role of the Land-Grant University in Addressing Racial Tensions: Part II.” The conversation, sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and The Women’s Place, attracted about 1,100 viewers.

Andreá Williams, the interim director of The Women’s Place, moderated the conversation. She noted that much had happened at the university since the first conversation just last week.

“President Drake announced the formation of a university task force to address institutional racism, greater attention to public health and also a $1 million fund for seed grants to study the causes and effects of, and solutions to, racism and racial disparities,” she said.

James Moore, vice provost for diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer, kicked off the conversation talking about the Morrill Act of 1862, which created land-grant universities.

“This was a call to throw open the doors of higher education to the sons and daughters of farmers shopkeepers and factory workers. The idea to bring higher education to common people was America's first wobbly step on the road to greater inclusion in education. Today is the continuation of that dialogue,” Moore said. “This notion is also found in our beloved university motto, ‘Education for Citizenship.’”

Moore said the university plays an important role in the search for meaningful solutions to the problems facing Black and other communities.

“We are proud that our university has responded to this call before. When more than 50,000 undergraduate students are studying with us and with more than 500,000-plus alumni, we have been given a platform to tackle the big questions about our society, our words and actions in the classroom in the community. We must use our voice to spark meaningful dialogue and purposeful action,” he said.

Trevor Brown, dean of the Glenn College of Public Affairs, discussed the impact of the failure of public institutions.

“I'll just start by calling out the name Rashard Brooks, another person whose life was lost at the hands of the public institution: the Atlanta Police. And that's particularly saddening,” Brown said.

“The university’s birth as an institution is another example. The tortured birth of this institution 150 years ago is something we're celebrating. As we walked into this sesquicentennial and thinking back on the Morrill Act, it's natural to celebrate all the positive things that this university has done, and yet its birth was the result of a lot of harm through the expropriation of lands from indigenous and native populations.”

Amy Fairchild, dean of the College of Public Health, said environmental determinants can impact health – and explained why racism is considered a public health crisis.

“When we talk about racism as a public health problem, we're talking about the ways in which century-old patterns systematically undermine the health of communities,” Fairchild said. “We think about the inequities that are built into our systems of housing, education, access to care and policing.”

Ensuring students understand systemic racism and white privilege has been emphasized in the Moritz College of Law, associate dean Kathy Seward Northern said.

“All of our faculty to think about ways in which systemic racism has influenced the development of law,” she said. “Our goal is to help students to understand by the time that they leave the law school. It’s not just what the rule of law is now, but how it came to be and how various structures influence it.”

Those effects influence more than the law, noted Trudy Bartley, associate vice president for local and community relations, referring to the impact of institutional racism and what it will take to bring about change.

“We at this university have got to start on a level playing field to understand why and how things are,” Bartley said. “From there, start having those conversations, because if you start with people thinking they’re colorblind – they don't see color, that's a problem in itself. But if you have people who are really being insightful and being intentional about looking at themselves and then having the conversation, then I think we can move towards action and change.”

Gretchen Ritter, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, noted the university’s numerous outreach programs – such as the Center for Urban and Regional Analysis, which is exploring how transportation disparities differentially impact opportunity and social mobility – can be an instrument for building change.

“Our Department of African American and African Studies is involved in thinking about the narratives and the literature of the experience of Africans and African Americans and does a lot of work for the Community Engagement Center on the East Side as well,” she said. “And we are deeply engaged in K-12, especially with underserved communities. We work a lot with the Kirwan Institute.”

Art and educational programs also provide opportunities to examine and change attitudes, said Johanna Burton, director of the Wexner Center for the Arts,

“In moments like this, as we're facing a public health crisis, both in terms of COVID and in terms of racism, I think people immediately start thinking about direct action. But if you look at the street, you see how important the symbolic is. People are making art and aesthetic gestures all over.

“Historically, through these gestures and collective modes of messaging, there are traces left behind that also get carried forward.”

The University Institute for Teaching and Learning (UITL) implemented the Teaching Support Program in autumn of 2018 as a signature professional development opportunity. The program was built with strategic partners across Ohio State and designed to use evidence-based approaches and strategies in all classrooms and educational contexts.

Since the program launched, 3,529 full- and part-time faculty have completed at least one component, making the Teaching Support Program one of the most comprehensive teaching excellence programs in higher education.

The program is open to all faculty, but the university has placed particular emphasis on improving undergraduate education. Among this subgroup — full-time faculty in colleges that serve undergraduates — 83% have participated in the Teaching Support Program, exceeding the university’s 70% goal.

“We are so grateful that so many faculty committed themselves to this important work, even at a very challenging time,” said Kay Halasek, UITL director. “By applying evidence-based approaches to the classroom, our faculty are substantively enhancing their ability to help students succeed.”

The Teaching Practices Inventory, part one of a three-part program, is a survey asking faculty members to analyze their goals, assignments and other criteria to understand their own teaching practices and to see how they evolve. Part two includes Teaching@Ohio State, a series of online modules focused on key elements of effective teaching, and a reading and self-reflection. So far, 69% of full-time faculty in undergraduate colleges have completed the second part of the program, far exceeding the university goal of 50% completion.

In a little less than two years, faculty across all six campuses of the university have been learning about and deploying evidence-based practices in their teaching. Teaching faculty were offered financial incentives to participate in the voluntary program.

“Ohio State has made teaching and learning a strategic focus, and the Teaching Support Program is one of our key initiatives to promote teaching excellence,” said Executive Vice President and Provost Bruce A. McPheron. “Our faculty are dedicated to helping all of our students prepare for a lifetime of learning.”

Halasek acknowledged the significant shifts in instructional approaches required and the personal and professional challenges instructors at the university have faced this spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

She said reaching the participation goals set by university leadership is particularly satisfying because the first two parts of the program are the foundation for an ongoing commitment to continued teaching improvement and excellence through part three of the program, the instructional redesign initiative.

In part three, faculty test new instructional or redesign strategies they have used in the past to improve student learning outcomes or experience. Halasek said the redesign program also encourages instructors to reflect on their practices, promotes classroom assessment and builds a community around the pursuit of teaching excellence.

The Teaching Support Program will be integrated into the experiences of all new faculty and will continue to be available to anyone who teaches at the university in the future. UITL and university instructional partners plan to continually refine and update the program in response to new educational research.

Muir, associate director of course design in the Office of Distance Education and eLearning, is part of the all-hands-on deck effort to help instructors and students transition to a world of virtual learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A graduate of the College of Wooster, Muir has his master’s degree in Spanish and Latin American literature from Ohio State.

“I went to graduate school at Ohio State and developed a love of teaching here, and I had the opportunity in the Spanish department to do educational technology work,” he said. “I spent time working in online-only education, which was new to me, but there was a lot of technical knowledge that I gained. [I also gained] a lot of compassion and understanding for adult learners and the role that online education can play in increasing access to education outside of who might traditionally go to a place like Ohio State.”

In mid-March, when the university announced the suspension of face-to-face instruction, Muir and the leadership in ODEE had already started to think about what such a switch would look like and what it would take to get there. In addition to quickly standing up websites for instructors to Keep Teaching and for students to Keep Learning, they were prepared to offer technical support, online help desks and workshops.

Muir said Ohio State was well positioned to make a successful switch to virtual learning because of the culture at the university.

“At a basic level, we have a teaching culture at the university that is different than it is at other places, and it’s actually from the work President [Michael V.] Drake has done. It’s more out in the open and talked about these last few years. Some of that advice and recommendations [on the Keep Teaching website] would’ve been foreign to a lot of people because that wasn’t such a big topic of conversation in the past. But it really is lately.”

Muir said the ODEE help desk was prepared to handle a huge volume of calls in the days immediately following the announcement of the virtual learning initiative. But that wave never arrived. He attributes this not just to the tech-savvy community, but to the university’s culture of collaboration.

“From my perspective, one of the other things that has made this possible is that we have, from the individual instructors and units that my team works with, to Digital Flagship and ODEE … and all these colleges have their own, great operations related to teaching and technology,” he said. “So there is a ton of expertise from staff and every single one of these departments has instructors who have done online teaching or done teaching with technology. It really sounds like these groups of instructors were getting together and helping each other figure this out from day one.”

Which isn’t to say the effort has not come with challenges. Muir said he knows departments have had to work through issues like ensuring the academic integrity of final exams or making sure instructors adapt to the wide technology gaps their students face.

At some point, the physical distancing required to battle the pandemic will end. Students and instructors will again fill physical classrooms across the Columbus and regional campuses. The Oval will abound with student life.

Muir thinks the university’s focus on teaching and learning will continue to improve during this challenging time.

“I think it is an understanding of the human side and the teaching side of what online learning can be,” he said. “I think this is a moment when we can demonstrate and people can have the experience of this technology, where there are 6,000 faculty at Ohio State to doing 6,000 different things, but at its core it connects them to their students and lets them keep doing what they do.”

James Earl Jones. Laurence Fishburne. Chiwetel Ejiofor. Mekhi Phifer. Distinguished black thespians have portrayed one of Shakespeare’s most famed and widely depicted characters for years. But paving the way for those acting legends nearly 200 years ago was Ira Aldridge, the first black actor to breathe life into the Othello role.

Beginning this week, The Department of Theatre will present the play “Red Velvet,” a biodrama retelling the story about how Aldridge broke barriers and opened the door to fellow African American performers. The production is guest directed by actor, director and screenwriter Ted Lange and will be performed Feb. 6-15 at the Drake Performance and Event Center’s Roy Bowen Theatre.

“This play shows you this extraordinary actor who copes with all of the racism of not only the English audiences, but the English actors,” Lange said. “You see the obstacles he had to overcome just to be an actor on the stage.”

Aldridge began acting in New York City as a teenager in the early 1800s. He sailed to England when he was 17 in 1824 to pursue a career in theater, and in 1833, he took the stage as Othello. “Red Velvet” chronicles how Aldridge came into the breakthrough role and its impacts.

The play stars theatre major Sterling Wesley as Aldridge; theatre and English major Ashley Bice as Aldridge’s wife, Margaret; and communication and theatre major Betsy Huggins as Aldridge’s onstage colleague, Ellen Tree. The story documents Aldridge, an American who performed “Othello” in England, both early in his career and later toward the end of his life.

“What drew me [to the role] most was what he did for African Americans — being the first black man to play Othello,” Wesley said, adding that Othello, a black character, would typically be portrayed by white actors in blackface. “Everyone used him as a stepping stone, and he opened up careers for many African Americans to also take on this role. He was a trendsetter.”

Lange, most widely known as the bartender Isaac Washington in the television series “The Love Boat,” was approached to direct the play by Janet Parrott, chair of the Department of Theatre. The pair connected on campus last year when Lange gave a lecture on Hollywood show business. When an opportunity arose to have a guest director for “Red Velvet,” Parrott contacted Lange, who returned to Ohio State to take on the job.

Lange said he’s been impressed with the Department of Theatre’s resources and spaces, as well as the actors’ commitment and willingness to learn.

“The Bowen is a beautiful theater,” he said. “In Hollywood, unless you’re at one of the high-end theaters, you don’t get access to this kind of stuff. I can do things with lights and staging. You’ve got costumes. … In Hollywood, I’m usually working with no budget trying to make it look like I’ve got a budget. But [at Ohio State], I have a budget, and I get to play with the toys.”

The lead role of Ira Aldridge, Wesley says, had a bold, confident presence. Wesley not only has to embody Aldridge’s personality, but he also has to embody Aldridge’s portrayal of Othello.

“It’s interesting acting as an actor and then performing a play within a play,” Wesley said. “The first time I did it in rehearsal, I realized I was playing Othello the way [I] would do it, but really I needed to play Othello as Ira would do it. Ira has a much more confident, more forward, punching style.”

The result? A dramatic, poignant narrative detailing one of the most significant actors in theater.

Show times >>

The Ohio State University has issued the dean’s list for autumn 2019, with the names of 21,175 students who have achieved high academic averages for their work. This includes 16,046 Ohio students, 3,493 non-resident and 1,636 international students.

Criteria for qualifying for the dean’s list varies by college. It is usually based on the GPA for that specific term and the number of credit hours taken. Many colleges require a minimum of 12 graded credit hours with a 3.5 GPA or higher.

In addition, the university has issued the list of students who earned degrees at commencement exercises on Dec. 15, 2019. The university awarded 3,778 degrees at the ceremony, including 208 doctoral, 13 professional, 425 masters, 2,655 bachelors, 468 associates and 9 certificates.

Both lists include international, non-resident and Ohio students. Students are listed by county, and then by zip code, city and last name. The files are searchable using the search or find function on your device.

Students may choose not to have their names released under the provisions of the Federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974. Their names have been excluded from the lists.

Lists are available here:

U.S. News & World Report ranked the university’s online bachelor’s programs No. 1 for 2020 — up two spots over the previous year.

Additionally, Ohio State’s online Master of Science in Nursing program is ranked No. 4 nationally and No. 2 among public universities, with three of the program’s specialties also placing among the top four.

“We are pleased to be among the nation’s top online programs,” Executive Vice President and Provost Bruce A. McPheron said. “Our faculty and staff are committed to the success of all Ohio State students — whether they are on campus or online. This recognition reflects the university’s focus on advancing teaching and learning for all students.”

Ohio State’s online bachelor’s programs and online master’s program in nursing have been ranked among the nation’s top 10 for six consecutive years. The ranking for online bachelor’s programs includes Ohio State’s RN to Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences and Bachelor of Science, Dental Hygiene.

Online graduate programs in the College of Engineering and the College of Education and Human Ecology rose in the rankings in 2020. Engineering programs ranked No. 19, and education programs ranked No. 20 — up six and 18 spots, respectively.

Ohio State’s online graduate engineering programs include the Master of Science in Welding Engineering and Master of Global Engineering Leadership. Graduate education offerings include the Master of Learning Technologies, Master of Arts in Art Education, and Master of Science in Agricultural Communication, Education and Leadership.

"Our online programs provide students the opportunity to experience Ohio State’s academic excellence from anywhere — a modern expression of our land-grant mission,” Vice President and Chief Information Officer Mike Hofherr said.

Ohio State Online degree and certificate programs are taught by the same faculty who teach on campus. Each faculty member works with an instructional designer to reshape the instructor’s on-campus teaching for a technology-rich modality, Hofherr explained.

U.S. News & World Report ranks online programs at regionally accredited institutions with a focus on quality instruction and affordability. Rankings indicators include engagement, services and technologies, faculty credentials and training, and expert opinion.

“We are grateful that U.S. News & World Report continues to spotlight our world-class faculty, staff and curricula as among the very best in the country at preparing students to transform the future of health and improve lives,” said Bernadette Mazurek Melnyk, dean of the College of Nursing and the university’s chief wellness officer. “Our wonderful online students receive the same innovative and high-quality education as students on campus so that they can dream, discover and deliver a healthier world through evidence-based care.”

The most recently ranked programs join several others across the university recognized for academic excellence, including 15 Ohio State graduate programs ranked in the top 10 by U.S. News & World Report. The publication’s “America’s Best Colleges” report ranked Ohio State in the top 20 among public universities nationwide. The university was also recognized in the Best Undergraduate Teaching and Most Innovative Schools categories.

The study provides hope that future generations can overcome division and embrace differences, said Matthew Mayhew, study co-principal investigator and professor of higher education and student affairs at The Ohio State University.

Mayhew and colleagues surveyed students at 122 public and private colleges and universities. The study report, Friendships Matter: The Role of Peer Relationships in Interfaith Learning and Development, reflects attitudes of 7,194 students who responded at the start and the end of their freshman academic year in 2015-16. A variety of races and religions were represented.

Students answered questions about how their close friendships across religious traditions, political ideologies or guiding philosophies — called “interworldview” friendships by the researchers — influenced their outlook of others with different interworldviews.

Mayhew said the implications are powerful.

“We have research that, for years, has shown the first most important effect of college is whether you had a good learning experience with faculty,” he said. “But the second most powerful indicator of all college student learning and persistence, all graduation rates and economic gains, has always been positive relationships with peers. So for the first time, we have some explanatory power for the effect that we’ve been talking about for so long.”

When students arrive at college, most are open to making friends, especially if they don’t have social support coming in. This can be especially true if they’re leaving home for the first time.

More than 70 percent of student respondents said they placed importance on their colleges’ ability to provide opportunities to “get to know” people from different religious and nonreligious perspectives.

“Often, students come from backgrounds and neighborhoods where they didn't see much difference,” said Mayhew, also the Flesher Professor of Educational Administration. “So, on their dorm floor they might for the first time see someone who wears religious garments or other suggestions that they practice a different faith.”

Primed to make friends, they start talking.

“College offers a unique opportunity for people with different beliefs to get to know each other,” he said. “When else in life are you living closely with people new to you, eating meals together, going to class together, studying together?”

By the end of their first year, 64 percent of students who had no interworldview friendships when they began college made at least one friend in the first year, and 20 percent of this group reported making five or more such friends by the end of the year.

“This is striking,” Mayhew said, “because we don’t often see such pronounced results over just nine months of school. It shows how powerful the results are.”

In addition, students of all faiths reported more interworldview friendships with people who were different politically, of a different sexual orientation, agnostic, Muslim, spiritual but not religious, atheist and Jewish. And they were appreciative of those views, even if they didn’t share them.

What’s more, the researchers discovered an overall effect in which students in interworldview friendships also generally developed positive attitudes toward others of all worldviews.

For example, making a close atheist friend encourages students, on the whole, to become more appreciative of Buddhists, evangelical Christians, Hindus, Jews, Latter-day Saints and Muslims at the same time.

“College is our chance to really promote appreciation for all religions by helping students become friends, or by helping them develop the skills to work with each other and really care about each other,” Mayhew said “We want people to understand that those with very different ways of thinking about the world can sit together and be friends.”

The study also suggests that, when tested, these friendships showed resilience. Nearly two-thirds of the students maintained friendships despite incompatible worldview differences.

Specifically, 37 percent of students said they had had a significant disagreement with a friend about religion and remained friends.

And perhaps reflective of the 2016 presidential election and the salience of politics at that time, an even greater number of students — 52 percent — reported having a significant disagreement with a friend about politics and remaining friends.

Mayhew emphasized that college is the place where students are encouraged to explore different ideas. “Part of that exploration is what to do when you disagree with someone,” he said.

“In class, when folks speak up with different perspectives, the context invites disagreement. That’s part of learning, to explore different ideas, and part of the exploration is what to do when you disagree. So you learn that skill and keep the friendship. And, we hope, you keep those skills after you graduate.”

The study asked students to describe how they perceived themselves religiously and spiritually.

Results showed that nearly one-third of students changed their religious and spiritual self-perceptions in their first year on campus.

So not only did friendships that transcended worldview differences have the power to shape pluralist inclinations and appreciative attitudes, but they also changed how students saw themselves.

“We know that peer culture and friendships play a significant role in facilitating change,” Mayhew said, “and college age is a prime time in young people’s development to be offered interesting opportunities for introspection.

“In this distinctive space, students can explore who they are, and society willingly suspends judgment,” he said, also posing this question: If college students explore new ideas, including new views of others and who they are, why not have them explore how to make friends with people who think differently about the world?

So many wars have been waged because of religious differences, he said.

“Many colleges and universities are recruiting large cohorts of international students to come to America,” he said. “If we have their undivided attention for four years, why not invoke some practices that teach them, along with local students, how to productively exchange across religious differences?

“Any skill you adopt to talk between religious differences is probably one you could extrapolate, using it to talk across gender differences, race differences and more. What’s good about this study is it really does prove that friendships matter.”

Because colleges and universities are not set up to engineer friendships, the study authors offer several recommendations:

• Create the conditions – Form a hospitable campus for students of various worldviews. Create spaces where students of different beliefs and backgrounds can interact. If your university is religion based, seeks ways for students to engage with others in the community.
• Set the expectation – Create campus-wide initiatives or traditions that encourage students to reflect upon their friendships and understand the benefits of friendships across difference.
• Model the practice – Consider developing initiatives that encourage contact and foster meaningful interactions across worldviews.

This study began about 15 years ago when Mayhew and study co-principal investigator Alyssa Rockenbach were graduate students. Tired of presenting about college students’ spirituality and religion to empty conference rooms, they forged a plan to study the subject more extensively.

At a later conference, they met Eboo Patel, founder and president of the Interfaith Youth Core, who invited them to gather data from students to make the case for a larger study. About three years later, he introduced them to several funding sources.

As a result, this study, The Interfaith Diversity Experiences and Attitudes Longitudinal Survey, was funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the Fetzer Institute.

The Ohio State University has a program to help build on the connection between art making and teaching. The online Master of Arts in Art Education program is geared toward art educators who want to continue their own development and inspire more development of the students they teach.

“A big aspect of a graduate degree like this is about providing access to graduate-level education to individuals who would not have access to that opportunity otherwise,” said Jennifer Richardson, associate professor of arts administration, education and policy.

Richardson said the graduate students in the program may be the only art teacher in their school building and often are responsible for a large number of students. She said the class allows them to connect with teachers in similar circumstances from across the country.

Students in the online program learn about the latest theory and research to enhance their teaching, as well as curriculum development and assessment strategies. Richardson said the program is tailored to teachers at a variety of points in their careers.

“Maybe one student has gone to school a while ago, while some of them have gone pretty recently. So we’re all in different places in terms of the last time we were in a university setting and in terms of our education,” she said. “Some have done different kinds of professional development and have different kinds of experiences.”

For Brittany Schwarck, an Ohio State graduate and elementary school art teacher in the Gahanna Jefferson school district, the online master’s degree program was a chance to build on her earlier experience.

“I received my undergraduate degree from Ohio State, and had an exceptional experience. The exposure to contemporary and progressive teaching philosophies lit a passion in me for social justice, multiculturalism and student-centered pedagogy,” she said. “I am absolutely the teacher I am today because of my rigorous experiences as an undergrad in this program and the phenomenal relationships I made and still have with my peers and professors.”

The option to expand her education online made sense at this point in her career.

“I decided to pursue my master’s degree online so that it would not disrupt my teaching job. I love my job and I wanted to find a prestigious program that would allow for my very busy work schedule,” she said. “They also challenge me to go further, and push myself intellectually and creatively. I feel invigorated by becoming a student again.”

In addition to learning how to be a more effective art teacher, the online master’s degree program encourages these students to grow as artists.

“So instead of approaching art making in the classroom as ‘I’ll show you this artist, now let’s make something that looks like this art,’ we ask how do we engage in these kinds of thought processes and approaches to our making that enable the art teacher to be creative in the way that they approach teaching itself?” Richardson said. “I find that the art teachers are really excited to be able to think as an artist and return to that space as a way of igniting their passion for art education again.”

Schwarck said the experience has already helped her in her job. She said she was able to take the ideas for one of her assignments and use it to lead a professional development day for her district’s art department.

“I am looking forward for this degree to give me more exposure to contemporary theories and ideas within the field of art education. I always want to be growing and evolving to meet my students’ and the world’s ever evolving needs,” she said. “I am looking forward to passing these experiences on not only through my teaching in the classroom, but through leadership within my district and other professional organizations.”

Ohio State ranks 7th among the nation’s colleges and universities and 3rd in the Big Ten with 2,941 students studying abroad in 2017-18, an 8 percent increase over the previous academic year. The university also ranks 2nd in the nation for the number of students participating in short-term programs with 2,821 studying abroad for one to eight weeks during the academic year.

Ohio State ranks 19th in the nation with 8,020* international students enrolled in 2018, a 12.8 percent increase in enrollment from 2017. The move into the nation’s top 20 and the increase in enrollment can be attributed to more international students participating in Optional Practical Training (OPT) last year. In 2017, Ohio State had 928 students participating in OPT, while in 2018 there were 1,406 students. OPT is a program that offers international students the opportunity to continue their education through hands-on practical work experience that is directly related to a student’s major area of study. The training is authorized by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for a maximum of 12 months.

These findings were issued as part of the 2019 Open Doors Report, an annual survey published by the Institute of International Education in partnership with the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Factors contributing to students studying abroad at Ohio State include: programming geared toward first and second year students, the Second Year Transformational Experiences Program, a university-wide commitment to make international opportunities more accessible to diverse student populations, involvement of more than 100 Ohio State faculty leading programs, and offering close to 60 education abroad opportunities during the first half of summer session.

“One of our institutional priorities is to ensure that Ohio State students are afforded an opportunity to study abroad, experience different cultures and gain a better understanding of their field of study in global environments,” said Gil Latz, vice provost for global strategies and international affairs. “Our faculty-led programs contribute greatly to enriching the international learning experience both in the classroom and abroad.”

International students at Ohio State hail from more than 100 countries including, China (5,251); India (856); South Korea (390); Malaysia (267); and Taiwan (147). Nationally, the leading home countries for international students are China, India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Canada.

The top fields of study at Ohio State for international students include engineering, business, mathematics and statistics and the social sciences, similar to the national trend.

“The value of having international students on our campus is immeasurable and we are committed to providing enhanced programming to help our students adapt to a new cultural environment, while also supporting their academic success at Ohio State,” Latz said. “It is critical to implement activities that encourage cross-cultural interactions and dialogue on differing perspectives in order to enhance the global engagement of all our students.”

The most popular destinations for Ohio State students to study abroad include the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Brazil and Canada. Nationally, the leading destinations for studying abroad are the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, France and Germany.

The top fields of study for Ohio State students studying abroad are business, health professions, social sciences, biological and biomedical sciences, engineering and agriculture, whereas the national trend includes STEM fields, business and management and the social sciences.

The 2019 Open Doors Report is released as part of the nationwide observance of International Education Week (November 18-22), a joint initiative established by the U.S. Departments of Education and State.

At Ohio State, International Education Week is celebrated with a number of activities supported by the Office of International Affairs, which oversees Ohio State’s education abroad programs and international student and scholar services. The office also advances high quality international education programs, scholarships and service activities to promote global opportunities for Ohio State, its faculty, staff and students. For more information, visit http://oia.osu.edu/.

* The IIE’s collection of enrollment data for international students includes two categories of students who are not currently enrolled at Ohio State in classes for credit. They include “Optional Practical Training” students who are not taking classes, but are continuing their education through practical training in their field of study, and exchange students who are pursuing continuing (non-degree) education.

For some, it’s monsters — grotesque creatures that are unnatural yet unnervingly human. For others, it’s the supernatural — old ghost tales and haunted mansions with dark, decrepit pasts. Other terrors take more realistic roots — true crime legends and psychological fears that often blur the lines between fiction and reality.

“Everyone is scared of something,” says Rachel Stewart, fourth-year English student, research assistant at the Thompson Library and horror literature aficionado. “We are drawn to it, and we want to explore it — even if we don’t want to face our fears.”

Stewart, whose senior thesis takes a scholarly examination of vampires, recently curated a selection of horror literature and films on display and available to be checked out on the first floor of Thompson Library. Her selection of terrifying tomes encompasses various eras and authors. Classics such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein give way to more contemporary novels like Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Stephan King’s Cujo.

Stewart’s frightening fiction collection also spans different themes. Horror literature often has underlying subtexts that comments on societal issues and the human condition. The scholarship of the horror genre and the ways different works can be dissected and examined is something that has always fascinated Stewart.

“Horror speaks to a lot of cultural anxieties and fears,” Stewart said. “So I wanted it to be a mix of that as well so people can see this and say, ‘Hey, there is actually really important stuff being said by a lot of these.’”

With the Halloween season approaching, here is a quick list of books Stewart recommends to give you the chills.

Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley and Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker

They’re the classics. I would recommend them to everyone because of their longevity and the interesting things going on there.”

The Haunting of Hill House (1959) by Shirley Jackson

People know her name, but maybe they haven’t actually delved into her or read her work, which is older but still very accessible and still holds up very well.”

Uzumaki (1998) by Junji Ito

Junji Ito writes incredible horror, and it’s visual because it’s manga — like a graphic novel. The whole series deals with spirals, which you don’t immediately think is a very terrifying thing, but the ways he makes the spiral an analogue to so many different things is fascinating. I would not recommend it if you have a weaker stomach because it’s very gruesome and very visual horror, but it’s incredible.”

Annihilation (2014) by Jeff VanderMeer

It’s science fiction, but I would also call it horror because it deals with body horror and the science fiction of you becoming nature and your body mutating as a result of nature, which I think is really interesting.”

Her Body and Other Parties (2017) by Carmen Maria Machado

It’s a very modern short story collection that deals a lot with feminist and queer horror, and it’s fantastic. I think that might be my go-to because that’s what I think is the most accessible. It’s newer stories, so that would be my No. 1 recommendation if you want to dip your toes into horror.”

Criteria for the dean’s list varies by college. It is usually based on the GPA for that specific term and the number of credit hours taken. Many colleges require a minimum of 12 graded credit hours with a 3.5 GPA or higher.

Ohio State has also issued the list of students who earned degrees at commencement on Aug. 4, 2019. The university awarded 1,661 degrees at the ceremony, including 249 doctoral, 17 professional, 495 masters, 750 bachelors, 102 associate degrees and 48 certificates.

Both lists include Ohio, non-resident and international students. Students are listed by county and then by zip code, city and last name. The files are searchable using the search or find function on your device.

Students may choose not to have their names released under the provisions of the Federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974. Their names have been excluded from the lists.

The lists are available here:

The Ohio State University
Sunday, Aug. 4, 2019
2 p.m., Schottenstein Center
 

PRESIDING OFFICER: President Michael V. Drake.

WELCOMING REMARKS: Molly Ranz Calhoun, interim senior vice president for student life.

COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER: Rattan Lal, Distinguished University Professor of Soil Science in the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and founder and director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center.

DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD: The Distinguished Service Award was presented to Gifford Weary, professor emeritus and former chair of psychology and former divisional dean for Social and Behavioral Sciences, and posthumously to Richard A. Hollingsworth, who completed his 35-year Ohio State career as vice president for Student Life, retiring in 2009.

NATIONAL ANTHEM and CARMEN OHIO: Daniel Stein, candidate, Doctor of Musical Arts.

Bella Natole graduated from Bellevue High School. She will begin classes as a first-year student at Ohio State in August. Her interest in the university was a family affair.

“My sister is four years older than me. When I was a freshman in high school, she was a freshman in college and she went to Ohio State. So that was kind of my first time seeing Ohio State, and I just fell in love with it,” she said.

Natole said the decision to switch from a school with a student body of about 600 students to one with about 60,000 was not a difficult one.

“I think I expected myself to be intimidated, but when I got there, it just felt more comfortable than anything,” she said of Ohio State. “It was more exciting than intimidating, which was really cool because when you come from a small town, you expect to be a little nervous about those things.”

Financial aid also contributed to her decision. Natole is the recipient of a Land Grant Opportunity Scholarship. Two students from each county in Ohio are eligible for the award each year and the scholarship covers the full cost of attendance, including tuition and fees, room, board, books and other costs.

Natole found out she received the scholarship while she was applying for other grants and scholarships.

“I was actually filling out some other scholarship forms at the time, stressing over how many I had to do, and so I got on to my financial aid [site] and I looked at it. I probably read it a thousand times,” she said. “It’s probably the best thing that ever happened to me. I was just so excited when I got accepted into Ohio State but [the scholarship] was just incredible.”

Natole comes to Ohio State with the goal of becoming an optometrist. For Derek Michaelis, the engineering program is the draw.

The Bowling Green native attended Otsego High School. Like Natole, he’ll start his career at Ohio State in August. Michaelis represents Wood County as a Land Grant Opportunity Scholar.

He said the financial aid made a difference in his decision to come to Ohio State. He had been considering another Big Ten school.

“[They] didn’t give me anything in scholarships,” he said, so making a choice after receiving a full ride from Ohio State “wasn’t hard at that point.”

Natole and Michaelis are among the 42,000 Buckeye families to benefit from the university’s expanded financial aid programs. Since 2015, the university has devoted more than $150 million to increase support for low- and moderate-income Ohioans.

Michaelis is an Eagle Scout and a member of his local 4-H club and county Junior Fair Board. He said the scholarship support will help him continue his passion for volunteer work.

“It will give me a lot more time to focus on my academics but also I will be volunteering in other activities as I find them,” he said.

But in recently published research, a team of astronomers at The Ohio State University showed that the survey, nicknamed TESS, could also be used to monitor a particular type of supernova, giving scientists more clues about what causes white dwarf stars to explode—and about the elements those explosions leave behind.

“We have known for years that these stars explode, but we have terrible ideas of why they explode,” said Patrick Vallely, lead author of the study and an Ohio State astronomy graduate student. “The big thing here is that we are able to show that this supernova isn’t consistent with having a white dwarf (take mass) directly from a standard star companion and explode into it—the kind of standard idea that had led to people trying to find hydrogen signatures in the first place. That is, because the TESS light curve doesn’t show any evidence of the explosion slamming into the surface of a companion, and because the hydrogen signatures in the SALT spectra don’t evolve like the other elements, we can rule out that standard model.”

Their research, detailed in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, represents the first published findings about a supernova observed using TESS, and add new insights to long-held theories about the elements left behind after a white dwarf star explodes into a supernova.

Those elements have long troubled astronomers.

A white dwarf explodes into a specific type of supernova, a 1a, after gathering mass from a nearby companion star and growing too big to remain stable, astronomers believe. But if that is true, then the explosion should, astronomers have theorized, leave behind trace elements of hydrogen, a crucial building block of stars and the entire universe. (White dwarf stars, by their nature, have already burned through their own hydrogen and so would not be a source of hydrogen in a supernova.)

But until this TESS-based observation of a supernova, astronomers had never seen those hydrogen traces in the explosion’s aftermath: This supernova is the first of its type in which astronomers have measured hydrogen. That hydrogen, first reported by a team from the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, could change the nature of what astronomers know about white dwarf supernovae.

“The most interesting thing about this particular supernova is the hydrogen we saw in its spectra (the elements the explosion leaves behind),” Vallely said. “We’ve been looking for hydrogen and helium in the spectra of this type of supernova for years—those elements help us understand what caused the supernova in the first place.”

The hydrogen could mean that the white dwarf consumed a nearby star. In that scenario, the second star would be a normal star in the middle of its lifespan—not a second white dwarf. But when astronomers measured the light curve from this supernova, the curve indicated that the second star was in fact a second white dwarf. So where did the hydrogen come from?

Professor of Astronomy Kris Stanek, Vallely’s adviser at Ohio State and a co-author on this paper, said it is possible that the hydrogen came from a companion star—a standard, regular star—but he thinks it is more likely that the hydrogen came from a third star that happened to be near the exploding white dwarf and was consumed in the supernova by chance.

“We would think that because we see this hydrogen, it means that the white dwarf consumed a second star and exploded, but based on the light curve we saw from this supernova, that might not be true,” Stanek said.

“Based on the light curve, the most likely thing that happened, we think, is that the hydrogen might be coming from a third star in the system,” Stanek added. “So the prevailing scenario, at least at Ohio State right now, is that the way to make a Type Ia (pronounced 1-A) supernova is by having two white dwarf stars interacting—colliding even. But also having a third star that provides the hydrogen.”

For the Ohio State research, Vallely, Stanek and a team of astronomers from around the world combined data from TESS, a 10-centimeter-diameter telescope, with data from the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN for short.) ASAS-SN is led by Ohio State and is made up of small telescopes around the world watching the sky for supernovae in far-away galaxies.

TESS, by comparison, is designed to search the skies for planets in our nearby galaxy—and to provide data much more quickly than previous satellite telescopes. That means that the Ohio State team was able to use data from TESS to see what was happening around the supernova in the first moments after it exploded—an unprecedented opportunity.

The team combined data from TESS and ASAS-SN with data from the South African Large Telescope to evaluate the elements left behind in the supernova’s wake. They found both hydrogen and helium there, two indicators that the exploding star had somehow consumed a nearby companion star.

“What is really cool about these results is, when we combine the data, we can learn new things,” Stanek said. “And this supernova is the first exciting case of that synergy.”

The supernova this team observed was a Type Ia, a type of supernova that can occur when two stars orbit one another—what astronomers call a binary system. In some cases of a Type I supernova, one of those stars is a white dwarf.

A white dwarf has burned off all its nuclear fuel, leaving behind only a very hot core. (White dwarf temperatures exceed 100,000 degrees Kelvin—nearly 200,000 degrees Fahrenheit.) Unless the star grows bigger by stealing bits of energy and matter from a nearby star, the white dwarf spends the next billion years cooling down before turning into a lump of black carbon.

But if the white dwarf and another star are in a binary system, the white dwarf slowly takes mass from the other star until, eventually, the white dwarf explodes into a supernova.

Type I supernovae are important for space science—they help astronomers measure distance in space, and help them calculate how quickly the universe is expanding (a discovery so important that it won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011.)

“These are the most famous type of supernova—they led to dark energy being discovered in the 1990s,” Vallely said. “They are responsible for the existence of so many elements in the universe. But we don’t really understand the physics behind them that well. And that’s what I really like about combining TESS and ASAS-SN here, that we can build up this data and use it to figure out a little more about these supernovae.”

Scientists broadly agree that the companion star leads to a white dwarf supernova, but the mechanism of that explosion, and the makeup of the companion star, are less clear.

This finding, Stanek said, provides some evidence that the companion star in this type of supernova is likely another white dwarf.

“We are seeing something new in this data, and it helps our understanding of the Ia supernova phenomenon,” he said. “And we can explain this all in terms of the scenarios we already have—we just need to allow for the third star in this case to be the source of the hydrogen.”

ASAS-SN is supported by Las Cumbres Observatory and funded in part by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation, the Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics at Ohio State, the Chinese Academy of Sciences South American Center for Astronomy and the Villum Fonden in Denmark.

The Ohio State University Board of Trustees voted today to increase tuition and fees for incoming Ohio freshmen by 3.3%, which equates to a $358 change from last year’s rate.

The new rate will then be frozen for four years for these students, who are the third class to join the university under the Ohio State Tuition Guarantee. The university will also increase aid packages by $358 so that students with high financial need are unaffected by the change.

The tuition guarantee provides students with predictability about college costs by locking in-state tuition, mandatory fees, housing and dining for each incoming class of undergraduate students from Ohio. The past two entering classes are part of the guarantee, so their costs will be unchanged from their first year at Ohio State.

“We speak often of affordability, access and excellence, and we think all the time about making the university experience affordable for the citizens of Ohio,” President Michael V. Drake said. “The value comes from the quality of the education that we provide and the quality of the opportunities that we provide, and affordability and access are important to make sure that that great value is available to our students.”

The university has also continued to freeze tuition for Ohio students who arrived prior to the guarantee program at a rate that has been frozen since 2012-13. This will be the fifth straight graduating class that never experienced an in-state tuition increase.

Ohio State has placed a strategic emphasis on access, affordability and excellence. Since 2015, the university has devoted more than $150 million to increase support for low- and moderate-income Ohioans. Through the end of the coming academic year, an estimated 42,000 Buckeye families will have benefited from three new or expanded financial aid programs:

• The Buckeye Opportunity Program, which ensures that financial aid covers the cost of tuition and mandatory fees for Ohio students who qualify for federal Pell Grants.
• President’s Affordability Grants, which support more than 15,000 students annually at all Ohio State campuses.
• Land Grant Opportunity Scholarships, which have been expanded to cover the full cost of attendance and doubled to 176 scholarships each year.

Ohio State is also expanding its CarmenBooks program, which provides digital textbooks to students at a deeply discounted rate — often 80% less expensive than traditional texts. A year-long pilot that is continuing through autumn semester is expected to save students more than $1 million.

More than 13,000 incoming students — including first-year students at all Ohio State campuses — will also receive iPad learning technology suites this year through the university’s Digital Flagship initiative, a collaboration with Apple. More than 11,000 undergraduates received iPads last year, bringing the second-year total for this student success initiative to more than 24,000 devices.

The university’s tuition and fees proposals for 2019-20 reflect the current language in the biennial state budget, which is being finalized by the Ohio General Assembly. If approved by the board, Ohio State’s in-state tuition and fees would remain at the median for public Big Ten schools.

In Columbus, in-state tuition and fees would total $11,084 per year through 2022-23 for incoming first-year students. Including the most common housing and dining plans, the total rate for these students would be $23,792.

At regional campuses, in-state tuition and fees for incoming students would be set at $7,912 for the Lima, Mansfield, Marion and Newark campuses and $7,874 at the Agricultural Technical Institute in Wooster. Most regional campus students do not live on campus.

For Ohio students on the Columbus campus who arrived prior to the guarantee program, in-state tuition and fees total $10,037.

Additional tuition and fee proposals include:

• The non-resident surcharge would increase 4.8% for undergraduates.
• Housing and dining rates would increase by 2.2% for incoming students and remain frozen for those in the Ohio State Tuition Guarantee. The most popular plans on the Columbus campus would cost $12,708, compared with $12,434 for students who entered last year.
• Student health insurance, which covers the cost of third-party health coverage, would increase 2%. Most U.S. students utilize private insurance instead of obtaining coverage through the university.

The SciAccess conference, held in the Ohio Union last week, was led by Anna Voelker, the university’s astronomy accessibility program coordinator. Voelker was a 2018 recipient of the President’s Prize, an initiative founded in 2017 by President Michael V. Drake to recognize exceptional students committed to making the world a better place through ambitious, transformational ideas and actions.

“We are here to start and engage in an important conversation in recognizing and working toward removing the barriers faced by students, professionals, researchers and members of the public who have disabilities both in academia and society at large,” Voelker said in opening SciAccess. “We all have one thing in common: a passion for equitable education and accessibility in the STEM field.”

The two-day conference examined the ways science, engineering and mathematics could be more inclusive and accessible. The conference’s support for the mission extended beyond the speakers who appeared or ideas they discussed.

Sign language interpreters supported the sessions during the conference, written programs were available in Braille and rooms were dedicated for quiet periods needed by attendees with sensory sensitivity. Even the nametags for the conference used a color communication system developed by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network to let people know whether or not they wanted to be approached for conversations.

Sessions included presentations from Astronomers Without Borders and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID). Astronomers Without Borders connects people around the world through astronomy, supports astronomy for blind and visually impaired individuals and hosts education programs in developing countries.

Jason Nordhaus, assistant professor of physics at NTID, explained that there’s a need to cross-train more sign language interpreters in science and mathematics – a challenging task.

“Interpreters typically don’t have STEM backgrounds,” Nordhaus said.

Anousheh Ansari, the first female private space explorer, and Temple Grandin, professor of animal sciences at Colorado State University and renowned autism advocate, delivered the keynote speeches for SciAccess. Voelker said the conference attracted about 250 attendees and 60 speakers from around the world.

Peter Kanjo, a University of Toldeo student with a physical disability, said he attended SciAccess to learn about teaching and learning methods for people with disabilities.

“It’s been helpful because I learned other ways people with [disabilities] navigate the system to get help and continue their education,” he said.

As a President’s Prize recipient, Voelker was awarded a living stipend and startup funding totaling $100,000 for her yearlong project focused on disability inclusion in science and astronomy.

In addition to the President's Prize, SciAccess was supported by the Ohio State Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics, the Office of Research, Innovation Studio, Translational Data Analytics Institute and Disability Services.