Dear Colleagues,
I am thrilled to be joining The Ohio State University in January as your executive vice president and provost.
Ohio State is one of the great land-grant universities in our nation. This is a place with tremendous scale and reach — more than 66,000 students, 8,600 full- and part-time faculty, 15 colleges, four regional campuses and a presence in each of the state’s 88 counties.
But more important than scale is the impact of Ohio State’s academic community. Through education, research and community engagement, all of you work every day to bring the “Education for Citizenship” motto to life in service to Ohio, the nation and the world.
This is exciting work, and it is in this spirit that my family and I are excited to be returning to the Buckeye State. My own faculty career began as an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University, which also is where my wife Lalita earned one of her graduate degrees. She and I can’t wait to call Ohio home once again. This time we’ll have our goldendoodle, CJ, with us, and we look forward to having our two adult children visit often.
As President Carter shared yesterday, my leadership philosophy is to relentlessly pursue excellence. As a provost, my view is that this is only possible when we enable faculty, staff and students at all levels to express themselves through scholarship and the pursuit of knowledge and new ideas. In doing so, we can fully realize every part of our academic mission through education, research and service.
I commit to you that I will give it my all to help Ohio State and its incredible faculty, students, staff and alumni thrive and pursue excellence in all they do.
I have much to learn from you, and I look forward to listening to your ideas and aspirations in the months ahead. In the meantime, I send you my best wishes for a productive and invigorating autumn. I look forward to meeting you on our campuses soon.
Ravi V. Bellamkonda
Incoming Executive Vice President and Provost