Dr. Lori Varlotta took office as the 23rd president of Antioch University in August. In a recent interview with the News, she discussed her visit to the village and potential future plans for the Midwest campus at 900 Dayton St. (Submitted photo)
Varlotta takes the helm at Antioch University
- Published: November 11, 2025
When Lori Varlotta took office as the 23rd president of Antioch University on Aug. 11, she jumped right into getting acquainted with Yellow Springs.
Within her first few weeks, Varlotta hosted a patio gathering at the Winds Café for Miami Valley education and civic leaders — a group that included local elected officials, members of the Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce and administrators from nearby universities.
“It was wonderfully attended by about 30 local leaders and colleagues from other Miami Valley universities,” Varlotta said. “We were out on the patio for two-and-a-half hours.”
The gathering marked the start of what she called a “co-creation” of the university’s next chapter — one that could eventually include new uses for the Antioch University Midwest campus on East Enon Road.
“Antioch Midwest is such a beautiful building, in a wonderful community, that’s underutilized,” she said. “So we’re looking for local partners who might want to lease part of the building — particularly those that have a nonprofit or an educationally oriented mission.”
Varlotta added that the site could also serve a future role in the university’s expanding health and wellness programs. Antioch University is considering whether the Midwest campus might host low-residency sessions for its national School of Graduate Nursing and Health Professions.
“We find that Midwest sometimes is literally centrally located,” Varlotta said. “Because we’re a national school, we have people coming in from both coasts. … We haven’t made that decision yet, but [Midwest] might be a really good location, since the building is in fantastic shape. There’s lots of space, and it’s fairly easy to get to — lots of parking.”
Those possibilities could line up with the university’s developing partnership with Miami Valley Hospital. Varlotta said the university is in the early stages of building relationships with Miami Valley, noting that hospital systems often want to “grow their own in terms of nurses and PAs and nurse administrators.”
“So building these health-related partnerships is something that’s very high on our priority for the Miami Valley,” she said.
A future partnership with Miami Valley Hospital could mirror the strong ties between Otterbein University’s nursing program and Columbus-area hospitals — partnerships now part of Antioch University’s network through the Coalition for the Common Good, a higher education system the two universities co-founded in 2023. The coalition grew out of a decade-long partnership and formally brought Otterbein’s nursing program under the Antioch University umbrella.
“The Coalition for the Common Good will be a consortium coalition, as the name suggests, of undergraduate institutions who give their graduate programs to Antioch University, so that Antioch can scale them up,” Varlotta said.
She described the coalition as a way to help mission-aligned colleges focus on undergraduate teaching while sharing Antioch University’s national infrastructure for graduate and professional programs.
“In order to join the coalition, you have to have a commitment to social justice and equity,” she said. “It’s very mission-driven.”
Josh Jacobs, the university’s vice president of institutional advancement, said the university’s structure — nearly 95 percent graduate students across five campuses and online programs — makes it uniquely suited for such a collaboration.
“We’re able to create frictionless pathways for adults to experience this hands-on learning in a unique way,” he said.
For Varlotta, who has led universities in both California and Ohio, Antioch University’s identity remains anchored in its birthplace.
“The fact that we started in a village as close-knit as Yellow Springs allowed us to have this wonderful legacy of community connection,” she said. “That little piece of Antioch and Yellow Springs lives in every program that we offer, literally from Seattle, Washington to the east coast of Keene [New Hampshire].”
Antioch University shares its origins with Antioch College; the college began operating in 1852, with abolitionist Horace Mann serving as its first president. The single campus expanded into a university system in the 20th century, which was renamed Antioch University in 1978 to reflect its multi-campus reach. After the university closed the college in 2008, alumni revived it in 2011 as an independent institution, licensing the Antioch College name from the university.
That history has sometimes made for a complex relationship between the two Antiochs. But Varlotta said her first visit to Yellow Springs included a promising start toward renewed connection: lunch and a campus walk with Antioch College President Jane Fernandes.
“She very hospitably invited [Vice President of Institutional Advancement] Josh [Jacobs] and me to lunch,” Varlotta said. “We talked about the ways that the two institutions could partner in serving students.”
Varlotta said she and Fernandes discussed potential academic “pathways” between the institutions — streamlined options for Antioch College graduates to move into master’s programs at the university.
“Wouldn’t it be great to increase the number of students who get both a bachelor’s degree from Antioch College and a master’s degree from Antioch University?” Varlotta said.
After lunch, the two presidents walked the Antioch College grounds in search of Horace Mann’s headstone.
“We share Horace Mann as part of our legacy,” Varlotta said. “It was my first day in Yellow Springs — and what a great way to start it off.”
In describing the university’s philosophy, Varlotta returned repeatedly to its longtime mission — experiential education rooted in democratic values and social justice.
“Students have real-life academic projects that are connected to the communities where they live and learn,” she said. “Our claim to fame is a connection between living and learning.”
That connection, she added, thrives in Antioch University’s intergenerational classrooms, where second-career professionals learn alongside younger students.
“We have long-time professionals who are changing careers that have a whole life of experience behind them,” she said. “That kind of intergenerational learning is something else at Antioch.”
Now a few months into her presidency, Varlotta described her work as carrying forward Antioch University’s long tradition of social-justice-driven education while helping shape its next chapter.
“I am optimistic,” she said. “Our mantra has always been to win one for humanity and the teaching of democracy. We live in a world where the teaching and living of democracy has never been more important, and if we can model [that] … in an authentic way, I can rest a little easier.”
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