Gretchen Ritter  Gretchen Ritter is an American academic administrator. She was the Harold Tanner Dean of the Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences from 2013-2018, and the author of two books. She began her term as dean and vice provost of The Ohio State University's College of Arts and Sciences on August 1, 2019. Gretchen Ritter grew up in New York. A "third-generation Cornellian", she graduated from Cornell University in 1983. She later earned a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ritter taught at MIT, Princeton University and Harvard University. She was a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin from 1992 to 2013. She was the director of UT Austin's Center for Women's and Gender Studies from 2004 to 2009, and the vice provost for undergraduate education and faculty governance from 2009 to 2013. Between 2013 - 2018, she served as the Harold Tanner dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University. Ritter is the author of two books, "The Constitution as Social Design: Gender and Civic Membership in the American Constitutional Order" and "Goldbugs and Greenbacks: The Antimonology Tradition and the Politics of Finance in America, 1865-1869". She is a co-editor of "Democratization in America: A Comparative and Historical Perspective". In 2014, Ritter interviewed Justice Ruth Bater Ginsburg at the New York Historical Society.