Ohio University President Roderick McDavis earned about $3,000 in outside income and gifts in 2010, according to an earnings report he filed last week with the Ohio Ethics Commission.
The filing, which is required of all the state’s elected officials, candidates for public office, appointees and high-level public employees — including university presidents — lists McDavis’ total income and gifts.
McDavis disclosed that OU and the OU Foundation, the university’s fundraising arm, had paid for $24,520 for his travel last year in addition to $380,000 in salary.
He received a 1 percent boost in pay when across-the-board raises were approved for OU faculty last year. He is ranked seventh of 10 in terms of wages for Ohio’s four-year public university presidents.
The travel totals reported by McDavis only account for presidential travel, and do not include development and fundraising travel, said Becky Watts, McDavis’ chief of staff.
McDavis has served as the head of the OU Foundation since former-Vice President Howard Lipman left OU in December.
“We’re getting into the much busier phase of the development campaign,” Watts said.
The only outside income reported by McDavis was compensation for two panel appearances last year. He was paid $647 for appearing on a panel hosted by the American Council of Educators and $355 for participating in a NCAA panel on academics.
In addition to income, McDavis and his wife Deborah received more than $2,000 worth of gifts last year.
McDavis accepted a handful of gifts related to OU football’s Dec. 18 appearance in the R+L Carrier New Orleans Bowl. He reported receiving a Fossil watch, a cooler and two Tiger Woods collection shirts in conjunction with the bowl game; however, he did not report price estimates for those gifts.
Higher Ed Holdings, which gave McDavis an iPad last April, is a Texas-based company that sells OU distance-learning support.
The company gave an iPad to every attendee of a conference held at its facilities last year, Watts said.
The company did not return calls seeking comment about the gift.
McDavis’ financial disclosure was much more detailed than that of Ron Erickson, president of nearby Hocking College.
Erickson, who has been the head of the 6,000-student college in Nelsonville since 2009, reported that the college was his sole source of income and travel expenses, but did not provide figures as to how much he was paid and how much of his travel was compensated last year.
A Hocking College spokeswoman could not provide Erickson’s current salary as of press time.
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