COLUMBUS, OHIO — Ohio State Chairman Walter “Ted” Carter Jr. resigned Monday after revealing an “inappropriate relationship” with a woman seeking public resources for her private company.
Carter (66 years old) said in a statement that he resigned voluntarily after informing the university’s Board of Trustees of his mistake. He did not clarify the nature of the relationship and said that he would leave with his wife, Linda.
“For personal reasons, I have made the difficult decision to resign from my position as president of The Ohio State University,” he said. “I disclosed to the Board of Trustees that I made a mistake by allowing inappropriate access to Ohio State’s leadership.”
Ohio State is the nation’s sixth-largest university, with more than 60,000 students, more than 600,000 living alumni, a football team, and a top-ranking medical center. Carter supervised the budget for the fiscal year 2026, which totaled $11.5 billion in revenues and $10.9 billion in expenditures.
The university brought Carter On board in 2023 From the University of Nebraska System. He is also a former superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy and holds the national record for detained aircraft carrier landings with more than 2,000 accident-free landings.
He filled a vacancy in Ohio left by the mid-decade resignation of President Christina Johnson, which remained largely unexplained. The engineer and former Undersecretary of the US Department of Energy was chancellor of the New York public university system before taking her position. He joined the Buckeyes as president in 2020.