The First Responders Foundation is proud to announce University of Nebraska President Ted Carter as the keynote speaker for the 2021 9/11 Luncheon of Honor. The luncheon will be held on September 10th from 11:00 am – 1:00 pm at the Marriott Downtown in the Capitol District. Click here for more information and tickets.
2021 Keynote Speaker for the 9/11 Luncheon of Honor: University of Nebraska President Ted Carter
President Ted Carter leads a four-campus university system that enrolls nearly 52,000 students and employs 16,000 faculty and staff on campuses in Lincoln, Omaha, and Kearney, plus academic divisions and research and extension centers across the state. He serves as chief spokesman and chief executive officer for the system, which operates on a $2.8 billion annual budget and includes a flagship Big Ten institution, a world-renowned academic health sciences center, Division I athletics programs, and preeminent institutes focused on water and agriculture, national security and defense, infectious disease and early childhood education.
Regent Jim Pillen states about President Carter, “Ted’s character and integrity are second to none. He has a proven focus on the success and well-being of students, faculty, and staff. He has a deep appreciation for the role and mission of higher education. And he is a public servant in every sense of the word”.
In his first year at the University of Nebraska
He faced the unexpected and unprecedented challenges presented by COVID-19 – Carter has led with a focus on the land-grant priorities of access and opportunity for students and families. He launched the Nebraska Promise, a financial aid program guaranteeing free tuition for low and middle-income Nebraskans, and implemented a multi-year budget plan that included a two-year, across-the-board tuition freeze. The result was system-wide growth in enrollment, including record gains among underrepresented students.
Carter oversaw the awarding of a $92 million federal contract for the university’s National Strategic Research Institute, one of only 14 University-Affiliated Research Centers in the country conducting exclusive research for the Department of Defense. During Carter’s tenure, the NU system has been ranked among the world’s top 100 institutions for earning research patents, the Omaha campus was selected as the home for a new federal counterterrorism research center, the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources launched a new effort focused on rural vitality, and the medical center opened an education, training and preparedness facility that positions Nebraska as the world leader in the fight against infectious disease.
U.S. Naval Academy
A retired Vice Admiral, President Carter has a distinguished record in education, partnerships, and military service, having come to Nebraska from the U.S. Naval Academy, his alma mater, where he served as superintendent from 2014 to 2019. He is the longest continuously serving superintendent – the Naval Academy’s equivalent of a university president – by special request of the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Naval Operations. Carter oversaw all functions of the institution, including leadership of 4,400 students and 1,500 faculty and staff, management of a $500 million budget, and oversight of academics, facilities, admissions, and policy. During his tenure, the academy was ranked the nation’s No. 1 public university by Forbes Magazine.
President Carter earned his bachelor’s degree in physics and oceanography.
He graduated from the Navy Fighter Weapons School (Top Gun) in Miramar, Calif., in 1985. Carter was commander for the Carrier Strike Group Twelve, in which he commanded 20 ships, two nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and two carrier air wings that were deployed to Afghanistan and the Arabian Gulf. He is a naval flight officer with more than 6,300 flying hours and has completed 2,016 carrier-arrested landings, an American record. He also has educational credentials from the 18-month-long Navy Nuclear Power School, the U.S. Air Force Air War College, the Naval War College, and the Armed Forces Staff College.
Carter authored the document that changed the Navy’s approach to suicide and sought to reduce stigmas around mental health issues. Suicide rates dropped by 25 percent a year after the steps outlined in Carter’s document were implemented.
President Carter, the son of an English teacher, was raised in Burrillville, R.I., a rural, one-high school town in the northwest corner of the state where he became an accomplished clarinetist and baritone saxophone player. He and his wife, Lynda, live in Lincoln and have two adult children, Brittany and Christopher.