Melissa L. Gilliam, the executive vice president and provost of The Ohio State University and a distinguished educator, scholar, research scientist, and physician, will be Boston University’s 11th president, the Boston trustees announced on Wednesday. She will assume the post July 1, 2024.

A national leader in faculty recruitment and student success and a champion of diversity and inclusion, Dr. Gilliam also is a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and of pediatrics whose scholarship focuses on developing interventions to promote adolescent health and well-being.

Beyond her background in science and medicine, Dr. Gilliam, who studied English literature at Yale and got her master’s in philosophy and politics from the University of Oxford, said she was raised to embrace the societal importance of arts and culture.

Her late father, Sam Gilliam, was a pioneering abstract painter who was known for a career of continuous experimentation and innovation. And her mother, Dorothy Butler Gilliam, was a trailblazing journalist and the first Black female reporter hired by the Washington Post. Her parents instilled in her an intellectual curiosity and a firm belief in the importance of civic engagement and public service.

Dr. Gilliam will come to Boston from Ohio State, a sprawling midwestern university and one of the largest public institutions in the country, with 15 colleges, more than 7,500 faculty members, and over 60,000 students across six campuses.

“I’m really excited about how engaged Boston University is in the city and how engagement has been a hallmark of BU,” Dr. Gilliam said in an article in BU Today. “I’m looking forward to hearing from people, learning and listening. I lead by listening, collaborating, and empower- ing other people. That is the best way to run big organizations, to get everyone excited and engaged, and doing more than they think they’re capable of doing. This philosophy is core to shared governance, an essential component of a thriving university.”

“From the very beginning, I was able to form that connection to Boston University,” says Dr. Gilliam, who also earned a Master of Public Health from University of Illinois Chicago. “And I always knew it as a place that was going places that other institutions weren’t.”

Boston, and Boston University, will be familiar territory for Gilliam. She graduated from Harvard Medical School, and for one of her summer projects there, she collaborated with BU School of Public Health researchers, joining them in Ecuador on a project aimed at understanding the health of elderly people.

Now, more than two decades later, Dr. Gilliam, 58, returns. She succeeds Robert A.Brown, who served as BU’s 10th president from 2005 until stepping down over the summer. His 18-year tenure saw BU quadruple its endowment, open its doors to a more diverse student body, and establish itself as a leading private urban research institution and a global leader in fighting infectious diseases.

Several BU alumni voiced their excitement regarding Dr. Gilliam’s selection, including Lynn Adrine, an organizational strategist and media and journalism consultant.

“It is inadequate for me to say ‘I never thought I’d see the day,’” Ms. Adrine wrote on LinkedIn and also told the Richmond Free Press. “But Boston University has a long tradition of bold leadership. It is proven here (by Dr. Gilliam’s selection). I am a proud alumna. And it’s a great day to be a Terrier!”

Kenneth Freeman, BU president ad interim since Mr. Brown’s departure, will remain in the post until Dr. Gilliam begins in July and will help her transition into the role during the spring.