Former President Walter “Ted” Carter Jr. speaks to The Lantern Jan. 20. Credit: Sandra Fu | Managing Photo Editor
Following the shock and confusion of former President Walter “Ted” Carter Jr.’s sudden resignation, the Ohio State community faces the question: “What’s next?”
The Board of Trustees will now not only have to decide who the next president will be, but how to regain the trust of Ohio State’s students, faculty and beyond, say two experts who study higher education leadership.?
The board set a meeting for Thursday morning to announce the next university leader, though it’s not clear if that person will be the next university president or an interim.?
That decision might already have been made. Quoting an anonymous source, The Columbus Dispatch is reporting that Provost Ravi Bellamkonda will be named Ohio State’s 18th president.? The Lantern has not been able to independently confirm this.
Carter announced on Monday he resigned over the weekend after disclosing to the board he had an inappropriate relationship with someone seeking public resources. That means, if Bellamkonda is Carter’s replacement he also will be Ohio State’s sixth president within the past 14 years, according to Ohio State’s website.
When Matt Mayhew, a Flesher professor of educational administration at Ohio State, learned of Carter’s resignation, he said all he could think was “Oh, my goodness, not again.”
“I think what really hurts the community is this just happened recently with president Johnson, right?” Mayhew said.
Former President Kristina M. Johnson resigned in 2023 after just two-and-a-half years on the job, similar to Carter. To this day, it is still unclear why she stepped down.
Ann Marcus, a New York University professor of higher education focused on leadership studies, said that the process of appointing a new president usually takes a good amount of time to be done properly, and often involves the hiring of a private consulting firm to conduct the search.??
Marcus said that universities typically look for an interim president who can create a sense of stability and reassurance coming from a university insider.
“It may be a provost or dean of one of the schools that’s been there for quite a while, who’s seen as a neutral stable person, and who’s also probably not interested in being president,” Marcus said. “I assume there must be people like that somewhere there.”
Mayhew said the change in presidents also raises questions about Ohio State’s direction and what will happen with Carter’s initiatives, including AI fluency. He said the nature of Carter’s resignation creates a morale issue.
“We don’t have all the context, and we don’t know all the ins and outs, but it sounds like this inappropriateness is something that really is hard hitting to the morale or the community,” Mayhew said. “How do we center this university as great and as excellent, given what we’ve seen recently?”
In an email sent Monday afternoon, Bellamkonda and John Warner, CEO of the Wexner Medical Center and executive vice president, reassured the university students and staff of Ohio State’s success.
“We echo the view of the Board of Trustees that we have tremendous strength, and our momentum is and will continue to be strong,” the email said.
Mayhew said that although the trustees are not responsible for someone’s actions, it diminishes the community’s trust in Ohio State’s leadership.
“Now, they’re not responsible, of course, for any one person’s behavior,” Mayhew said. “But the idea that this seems like a pattern, like we can’t get it right, can’t get the right person installed into the role. I think it does erode a lot of confidence among the Ohio State community.”
Marcus said stability is key in this case due to the unusual nature of having two university presidents resign after a short term, citing Johnson’s resignation. Before Carter, Johnson had the second-shortest term of any Ohio State president in history, per prior Lantern reporting.
“It’s just a shock and it makes people feel anxious and makes some people, you know, feel paranoid, and especially since [Carter] is so new, and the other one, Kristina [Johnson,] I was wondering what happened to her, it sounds like it’s an eternal mystery,” Marcus said. “So people don’t like having to worry about who the president is.”
Despite the board not being able to disclose everything that goes into deciding a president, Mayhew said the board needs to be transparent to regain that trust.
“I think whatever process they put into place to find the new president, I think they should let the community know about the decision-making that needs to be known,” Mayhew said.
Mayhew said students and faculty are receiving similar communication about Carter’s resignation and potential next steps.
So far, Ohio State has sent one email to students and the community, and another to faculty and staff announcing Carter’s resignation. This was in addition to Bellamkonda and Warner’s email to students, faculty and staff.
When searching for a new president, institutions usually bring in an external firm who will present candidates and advise the subcommittee of the Board of Trustees on its selection, and Marcus said that search firms push very hard for total confidentiality.
Marcus identified Isaacson, Miller and The Association of Governing Board of Universities and Colleges, also known as AGB, as two firms that commonly serve in these advisory roles.
“The firm meets with the committee,” Marcus said. “They spend time preparing a job description and they — since some of these firms do a lot of presidential searches — they already have candidates, they vetted one way or the other, but also they’ll then promote the job and screen [and then have] conversations with potential candidates before the search committee actually meets with them.”?
Marcus said that this process can be seen as beneficial by some in the university community but as a major disadvantage by others.
“I have mixed feelings about it. I mean, [the consulting firms] provide a good service, but I think they tend to be overly protective of the candidates in the sense of keeping everything very confidential and nobody knows,” Marcus said. “It’s true that some candidates don’t want to be known to be looking if they’re a sitting president, but the downside of that is that no one is that faculty and students and staff feel completely shut out.”
Mayhew has been at Ohio State for 10 years and he said it is common for faculty to stay longer than the four years students usually attend college. Yet, Mayhew said it is difficult to find stability when there are many shifts among those leading the university.
“It’s really difficult to get your footing as a faculty member to figure out, ‘Okay, what direction are we heading in, and how can I support the institution moving in that direction?’”
Marcus said that if you ask an average college student, many of them might not know who the president of the university is, and many of them may not even care.
“What they want is a stable organization that people have confidence in,” Marcus said. “And I would say that’s true for faculty, too.”
Despite the seemingly constant transitions, Mayhew said that faculty are focused on teaching their students well.
“We do care about our students, and so I think we’re just trying to double down on being as throughout, careful and considerate to our students,” Mayhew said. “I think that teaching well is not something that should change based on who’s in charge.”
Mayhew said that it is common for new presidents to draw back past presidents’ initiatives.
“We have to wonder, are those initiatives going to hold steam, or are we going to just pull out of those initiatives or not support them to the same degree that we were and just wait for a new president to come in and decide what initiatives that person wants to take on,” Mayhew said.
In her short tenure, Johnson is known for removing former President Michael Drake’s Digital Flagship iPad distribution program, which put a free iPad in the hands of every freshman, per prior Lantern reporting.
Throughout his two years as president, Carter introduced the AI fluency initiative, meant to teach students how to use AI as a tool to innovate and learn, and Buckeye Bridge, which provides students who graduated with an associates degree from Columbus State Community College to earn a bachelors at Ohio State for free.
Carter developed a 10-year strategic plan, Education for Citizenship 2035, to focus on academics, research and creative expression, health care, talent and culture, operations and collegiate athletics, according to its page.
Mayhew said that when there are so many transitions between presidents, students and faculty have difficulty knowing what to support.
“Okay, this is our leader. We’re going to support these initiatives, and this is how we’re going to do it,” Mayhew said. “Okay, now there’s going to be somebody new, and who knows if the same priorities are going to be in place for this new president as it was for Carter. It’s exhausting.”
