Jayathi Murthy will be the sixteenth president of Oregon State University in Corvallis. When she takes office in September, Dr. Murthy will be the first woman of color to lead the university.
Oregon State University enrolls more than 26,000 undergraduate students and more than 5,600 graduate students, according to the latest U.S. Department of Education statistics. Women make up 48 percent of the undergraduate student body.
Since 2016, Dr. Murthy has been serving as the Ronald and Valerie Sugar Dean at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. She was the first woman to hold that position. She was also a professor in the mechanical and aerospace engineering department. Before joining UCLA, Dr. Murthy was chair of the mechanical engineering department at the University of Texas at Austin and held the Ernest Cockrell, Jr. Memorial Chair in Engineering from 2012 to 2015. Prior to that, Murthy was a mechanical engineering professor at Purdue University in Indiana from 2001 to 2011 and served as a professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh from 1998 to 2001.
“This is the right place and right time,” Dr. Murthy said. “I am very impressed by Oregon State University. OSU is well-positioned to address the many challenges in how higher education will be best provided in the years ahead thanks to the university’s excellent faculty, staff, and leaders, and its commitment to student success, inclusive excellence, and its long experience and leadership in online education.”
Dr. Murthy added that “Oregon State University is widely recognized in all things related to climate science and resilience, and also in transdisciplinary research related to AI, robotics, natural resources, clean energy, public policy, public health, and the social sciences. This is the time to think big and do big things. I am confident that OSU can be a national leader in the post-pandemic era.”
On diversity issues, Dr. Murthy said that “advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion is a deeply held conviction of mine and is central to my work as an educator and administrator. As an engineer, I have often been the only woman in the room since I was 16. I do not believe in exclusivity or in excluding certain students. That’s not the future I see for OSU. I see broad access for all qualified learners.”
Dr. Murthy received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpura. She holds a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Washington State University and a doctorate in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota.