Dr. Karla Zadnik Receives ASCO Lifetime Achievement Award

The Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry (ASCO) has announced that Dr. Karla Zadnik is the organization's 2024 Lifetime Achievement award recipient. The ASCO Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes an outstanding individual who, over an extended period of time, provided exceptional leadership to ASCO and to optometric education; made outstanding contributions to the optometric community; and displayed exemplary commitment and dedication to the association.

Dr. Zadnik is the interim executive vice president and provost of The Ohio State University and the interim dean of the university’s College of Public Health. As interim executive vice president and provost, Dr. Zadnik leads Ohio State’s Office of Academic Affairs, which oversees the university’s academic enterprise—including 15 colleges, four regional campuses, University Libraries, and units that support academic experience and operations for the university’s more than 65,000 students and 8,400 faculty members.

Most recently, Dr. Zadnik served as dean of Ohio State’s College of Optometry. Additionally, she has served as the lead dean for the university’s seven health science colleges and chaired the Biomedical Sciences Institutional Review Board.

A Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry and a prominent patient-oriented researcher in the field of optometry and vision science, Dr. Zadnik is an Ohio State Distinguished Scholar and the Glenn A. Fry professor of optometry and physiological optics. She earned her OD and Ph.D degrees from the University of California, Berkeley School of Optometry and was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame in 2023. She is a past president of the American Academy of Optometry, ASCO and the National Board of Examiners in Optometry.

Dr. Zadnik was the study chairman for the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Collaborative Longitudinal Evaluation of Ethnicity and Refractive Error Study and she chaired the first-ever NIH-funded multicenter study based in optometry, the Collaborative Longitudinal Evaluation of Keratoconus Study.

“I’m incredibly honored and humbled to receive this award. It means so much to me that my work lets me focus on things that really matter, alongside talented Ohio State faculty, staff and students,” said Dr. Zadnik. “My ability to serve and promote optometric education and vision research through the American Academy of Optometry, Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry, and the National Board of Examiners in Optometry has been icing on the cake.”       

*Thank you to ASCO for providing the content above.