Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Umit Ozkan and her path to Ohio State commencement speaker

With a career spanning over 40 years, Umit Ozkan has made a name for herself, paving the way as a woman in the chemical engineering field. 

In addition to being a College of Engineering distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Ohio State, Ozkan has been elected to boards like the National Academy of Engineering, given over 350 presentations and has over 14,000 citations of her work. 

Aug. 3 will be Ozkan’s first commencement speech to the summer Ohio State graduating class — and she hopes to inspire future leaders through her own experiences. 

“I’m confident she will share valuable insights to graduates in every field of study as they take their next steps in building lives of leadership and service,” Ohio State President Walter “Ted” Carter Jr. said in a press release.

Ozkan grew up in Turkey as the youngest daughter in a lower-to-middle-income family. While she may not have had many materialistic things, her family showered her with support and a strong love of education, Ozkan said.

“My parents were very supportive,” Ozkan said. “They kept saying that, ‘you can do anything you want,’ especially my father, and I think I believed him, so I decided to come to the U.S. for graduate studies.”

Ozkan said that while it was not easy for her family to let the youngest daughter fly so far away from home, they were supportive. 

Ozkan finished her studies at Iowa State University with a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and was offered a full-time position at Ohio State in 1985, Ozkan said. 

She was the first woman to be a faculty member in the chemical engineering department at the university.

“When I was finishing my Ph.D. and looking for faculty positions in the entire country, there were fewer than eight or nine chemical engineering female faculty in the entire country,” Ozkan said. “In terms of blazing trails or breaking glass ceilings, I think you could say that I’ve done that.”

Ozkan served as the associate dean for research in the College of Engineering and is currently the chair in the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State — the first woman to hold the latter position, Ozkan said. 

Ozkan was honored with “pretty much every award” in the College of Engineering, and was the first woman to be awarded most of them. Yet, she prides herself more on her breaking gender barriers within a male-dominated field. Furthermore, Ozkan appreciates all the people she has worked with, from Ph.D. students to researchers and undergraduate students. 

“I was really fortunate to work with some incredibly talented young men and women in my research group,” Ozkan said. “I’m there to kind of encourage them, push them, but they’re the ones who do the hard work.” 

Ozkan has the awards and accolades to show for her hard work and commitment to her field, but her proudest moment of her career is watching her students succeed. 

“It’s not really my accomplishments that make me proud, but it is my students’ accomplishments that make me proud,” Ozkan said. “There are so many of them that are people who are doing incredible things.”

Ozkan said that “observing them and saying, ‘well, maybe I had a little contribution to that,’ just makes it all worthwhile.”

Outside of research, Ozkan keeps in touch with many of her past students and colleagues, from receiving baby pictures, learning about new promotions or even catching up over dinner. 

“We may go to the same conference, and we usually have a group reunion, like a little dinner or lunch, so that’s always wonderful to catch up with them,” Ozkan said. 

In 2020, Ozkan became one of the department chairs. When COVID-19 began, Ozkan was faced with many changes within her department. In addition to teaching a large undergraduate student body, she was working with over 100 Ph.D. students, on top of faculty, staff, alumni and parents. 

“It’s a lot, but I love it, especially if I feel like I’m making a difference in people’s lives — it just motivates me,” Ozkan said. 

Despite her accolades and longstanding tenure with the university, Ozkan was surprised when she was asked to be the summer commencement speaker. Her first thought was, “is this a joke?”

“It’s a big honor,” Ozkan said. “There aren’t that many faculty members who are asked to be the commencement speaker. It’s a little unnerving, maybe intimidating, and so I’m a little nervous.” 

Although the speech has not been written, Ozkan said she plans to speak from the heart, so the audience can not only hear her story but feel it. Ozkan knows graduates don’t want to hear “great-sounding words and long sentences,” so she hopes that her life experience and honesty can motivate not only the students, but also the family and faculty attending. 

Ozkan has had her fair share of public speaking events about her research, with 350 conference presentations and speaking at over 200 invited seminars, but those topics were all technical, she said. Those flowed naturally for her, but now she has to convey her thoughts and feelings into a speech to a graduating class years younger than her. 

“Some of the things that I am hoping to convey are universal, and that is trying to do the right thing, not having a fear of failure, because if we all fail, that’s life, right?” Ozkan said. “You have to fail to succeed.” 

Ozkan also wants her speech to focus on her identity as an immigrant, urging people to connect with those who may differ from them because  “if we reach out and talk to people that we disagree with, we will find out that there is so much more in common.”

Ozkan will be delivering the summer commencement speech at the Schottenstein Center at 2 p.m. on Aug. 3.