On November 28, 2022, Ohio State President Kristina Johnson announced that she would be leaving her job. In a press conference announcing her retirement, Johnson, 65, said she had to make the “difficult decision” but that it had been an honor to work for the university and its “intelligent, passionate and dedicated community.”
She said that she scheduled her resignation to allow for the find a replacement and a “seamless transition” to new management for Ohio State, which has roughly 60,000 students in its university office in Columbus and another 5,000 spread over five regional sites. Before becoming president of the Buckeyes in 2020.
The engineer and former secretary general of the US Department of Energy served as chancellor of the public university system of New York. She has guided OSU through difficulties like the COVID-19 epidemic and legal action related to a long-running sex abuse scandal, even while enjoying its successes like increased expenditure on research, billion-dollar construction projects, and increasing donor funding.
Without factoring in research money, fringe benefits, retirement payments, and potential bonuses, her leaving salary will be $927,000. The complete compensation package will likely amount to higher than $1.2 million annually.
“Since I started working somewhere At Ohio State University in August of 2020, we have accomplished so much on so many various fronts despite significant setbacks like the COVID-19 epidemic, “said Johnson. “I’m incredibly proud of everything we’ve managed to accomplish together. This has been an opportunity to work with this talented, committed, and enthusiastic team and to support this exceptional university.
Kristina Johnson will leave her position at the end of the 2022–23 term.
The tenure of Kristina M. Johnson, which will conclude in 2025, will be the foremost in the institution’s history. Ben Johnson, a spokesman at Ohio State, confirmed that the probe was an assessment of performance. Johnson’s desire to depart early was known to the institution, according to him, and the customary performance review had not been completed.
The university’s accomplishments since Kristina’s arrival, she said in her statement, are something that she is proud of. She acknowledges that it was tough to decide to leave, but she did so early to allow the university time to recruit a replacement.
In November, there was no review for president Kristina Johnson of Ohio State.
By Johnson’s 2020 offer letter, the board of trustees at Ohio State conducts an annual evaluation of the president of the institution each fiscal year, which runs from July to June. The trustees also collaborate with the president to define a set of goals.
Her yearly assessment is based on those objectives, and the results of that evaluation are normally presented during the committee’s meeting in November on talent, compensation, and governance. At the board meeting in November, no such evaluation of Johnson was conducted. Rather, the trustees spent almost two hours during the executive meetings before only briefly considering other personnel decisions.
The university’s salary database shows that as of September 30, she was making $927,500 a year. Michael V. Drake, the former president of Ohio State University, announced his resignation in November 2019 after receiving a favorable performance review and a 2.5% pay boost, increasing his yearly income to around $892,000.
They did not, however, authorize a bonus this year, unlike in previous years. In addition to her base salary, Johnson also receives a yearly allowance of $85,000 for extra expenditures, including a car and tax services, as well as $200,000 in retirement funds from her university and $50,000 annually to assist her research and education.
When did Kristina Johnson become president of Ohio State?
Having spent the previous three years as the program’s chancellor at the Ohio State University, Johnson joined Ohio State in May 2020. 2020 September 1 marked the start of her formal term as president. Before that, she spent two years as Johns Hopkins University’s provost and eight years leading Duke University’s engineering school.
After that, she established a few for-profit companies and rose to the position of a top official in the US Department of Energy under the Obama administration. During her first president of the University Lecture in February 2021, Johnson outlined a bold set of objectives for the university to achieve over the ensuing ten years.
Her objectives included establishing Gray and the Scarlet Advantage, a program to provide a zero-debt bachelor’s at scale, employing at least 350 additional tenure-track faculty and staff, and tripling the university’s research spending. Johnson referred to his ambitions as a personal mission at the time rather than merely plans. Johnson claimed in her statement that her experience at Ohio State had also given her “great personal joy.”
She remarked, “Veronica and I instantly felt welcomed as contributing members of the universities and surrounding communities.” We want to express our gratitude to Ohio State’s outstanding teachers, staff, alumni, parents, and supporters, as well as to the whole Buckeye Nation, particularly my administration and also the Directors, for their support as we scaled new heights together.
We hope the future is the greatest for every one of you and The Ohio State University. The Columbus Dispatch’s higher education reporter is Sheridan Hendrix. Get her education-focused weekly Extra Credit here, as well as her mobile newsroom newsletter, Mobile Newsroom, here.
