Leading with vision
Vice President and Dean Cathann A. Kress
Dr. Cathann A. Kress has served as Vice President for Agricultural Administration and Dean of the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) at The Ohio State University since 2017 and was reappointed for a second term in 2022. She provides strategic leadership for the college’s statewide teaching, research and Extension mission, which includes OSU Extension; the Agricultural Experiment Stations and the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center; and the Ohio State Agricultural Technical Institute in Wooster. She is also a full professor in Agricultural Communication, Education, and Leadership.
Before joining Ohio State, Dean Kress was Vice President for Extension and Outreach at Iowa State University, where she oversaw its 99-county campus network and served as a professor in the School of Education. She has also held senior leadership roles at the U.S. Department of Defense, directing national partnerships between military communities and land-grant universities and at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where she led Youth Development and National 4-H Headquarters. Earlier roles include Assistant Director of Cornell Cooperative Extension at Cornell University, faculty positions at Miami University and academic advising within the University of Iowa.
Dean Kress serves on several boards, including the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Board of Trustees, the State of Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board, the Ohio Expositions Commission, the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST) Board of Trustees and Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Ohio. She is a former member of the National 4-H Council Board and a past chair of the administrative heads section of the Board on Agriculture Assembly, Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities.
She earned her bachelor’s degree with distinction from Iowa State University and her master’s and doctorate from the University of Iowa, where she was an American College Testing (ACT) Special Research Fellow.