The Ohio State University Board of Trustees approved a $42,000 raise and $420,000 bonus for President Ravi Bellamkonda during a Thursday afternoon board meeting. The raise is 3% of Bellamkonda’s base salary of $1.4 million.
The board didn’t discuss Bellamkonda’s raise at the meeting, instead unanimously approving the consent agenda which contained the raise at the end of the meeting.
Bellamkonda was named university president in March. His appointment happened just five days after former President Ted Carter resigned after admitting to an improper relationship with a podcaster seeking public resources to support her private business.
Bellamkonda joined the meeting remotely from Washington, D.C. He said he’s in D.C. after the university was invited to join “a national effort to re-industrialize our country, bring manufacturing jobs back and also support the companies that we have.”
During Bellamkonda’s President’s Report, he played a clip of Vice President JD Vance speaking about the event.
“I'm very proud that we have Ohio State front and center, along with Stanford, Penn State, and a few other great universities with all due respect to our friends in Michigan,” Vance said, referencing a joke he made about excluding the University of Michigan from the event. “I think it's an amazing collection of people, of institutions, of businesses, of thought leaders and of entrepreneurs that we've gotten together in order to make this possible.”
Bellamkonda also spoke about recent initiatives the university has started, including one to increase students' AI fluency, a program to support student start-up companies and Ohio State faculty’s role in launching the Nancy Grace Roman telescope.
