Michael V. Drake, who has served as president of Ohio State University since June 2014, has announced that he will retire from that position next year. Dr. Drake is the fifteenth president of Ohio State and the first African American to serve in the post.
Dr. Drake will remain in his post until at least the end of the academic year while a search is conducted for his successor. He will remain at Ohio State as a member of the faculty.
President Drake served as chair of the board of directors of the Association of American Universities from 2017 to 2018. In 2018, he became the first Ohio State president in nearly four decades to serve as chair of the board of directors for the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the oldest higher education association in North America. And in 2019, Drake was elected chair of the board of governors of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Before being named president at Ohio State, Dr. Drake was chancellor of the University of California, Irvine. He had held that post since 2005. Earlier, he was the director of education and research for the 15 health science schools of the University of California system.
Dr. Drake began his higher education career at Sacramento City College but transferred and graduated from Stanford University. He earned his medical degree at the University of California, San Francisco. An ophthalmologist, he began his academic career as an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco.
