Features

Activities

Stay active this winter without having to leave the comfort of the indoors with everything from ice skating to rock climbing available on campus.

Biological Sciences Greenhouse
Longing for a lush, tropical escape? Head down to south campus and check out the Biological Sciences Greenhouse in which more than 12,000 tropical and desert plant species are housed.

Ice Skating
Or, if you’d rather embrace the cold, visit the OSU Ice Rink for the ultimate indoor winter experience. Open skating sessions take place on these dates.

Department of Theatre Productions
Give your Netflix account a breather, and go get a taste of the magic of live theater. Many productions by the Ohio State’s Department of Theatre take place on campus, and a student discount on tickets is offered. This season’s mainstage lineup includes Stupid F---ing Bird by Aaron Posner (March 2–10), The Coast of Illyria adapted by Jennifer Schlueter with Cece Bellomy (April 14-21), and many more.

OUAB Events
Whatever you like to do for fun, the OUAB probably has it covered. Check out the jam-packed calendar of Ohio Union Activities Board (OUAB) events for February and March. With free movie showings every Wednesday, a variety of fitness classes, and everything from speed dating to karaoke to cooking workshops, the Union is your one stop shop for indoor adventure.

Rock-climbing at the ARC
Get your workout in and your adrenaline going with rock climbing at the Tom W. Davis Climbing Center, located within the Adventure Recreation Center on West Campus, featuring two state-of-the-art climbing walls, 25 ropes, and over 4,000 square feet of climbing surface.

Little-known Food and Coffee

If you think you can stand to tear yourself away from the dining hall for a meal, check out these unique campus dining locations.

Heirloom Café
Step into the the Heirloom Café at the Wexner Center for the Arts for a delicious and ultra-ethical meal. Serving tasty, seasonal breakfast, lunch and dinner dishes, the Heirloom makes almost all of its food in-house, and purchases ingredients from Ohio farmers and businesses as often as possible. A plethora of vegetarian and vegan options are available, and almost every single-use product in the café can be recycled or composted.

Connecting Grounds
Not only is connecting Connecting Grounds at Scott House campus’s newest location for delicious coffee and fabulous baked goods, you’ll also know exactly where your coffee is coming from.  Made possible by a partnership between Student Life’s Dining Services and Buck-I-SERV, a variety of direct trade brews are featured.

Brennen’s Café
In the mood for something a little more gourmet? With delicious salads, sandwiches, flatbreads, coffee and desert, Brennen’s Café in the Biomedical Research Tower has all of your breakfast, lunch, and frozen yogurt needs covered, and at a reasonable price.

Jack and Benny’s Barnstormer Diner
Jack and Benny’s Barnstormer Diner at the Ohio State University Airport has all your greasy spoon favorites from the campus area Jack and Benny’s, plus after breakfast you can climb up the terminal building’s control tower to watch the planes take off.

Museums and Displays

Your time at Ohio State is a time to soak up as much knowledge about the world as you can, both within the classroom and outside of it. Enhance your learning experience and zoom in on one or more of your personal interests with Ohio State’s on-campus museums and displays.

Museum of Classical Archaeology
Visit Ohio State’s Museum of Classical Archaeology for a blast from the past. Get up close and personal with blocks of ancient writing, ancient tools and weapons, prehistoric pottery, and more, for free and right here on campus.

Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum
Feast your eyes the world’s largest collection of comic strip tear sheets and clippings right here on campus at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. The museum also displays manuscript materials and original art.

Historic Costume and Textiles Collection
Calling all fashion-conscious and historically inclined! The Historic Costume and Textiles Collection houses clothing, fabric and accessories from the mid-18th century all the way up until present day fashions.

Wexner Galleries
Head over to the Wexner Center for the Arts for some serious visual and intellectual stimulation. The Wex’s galleries are featuring an exhibition by contemporary artist Noah Purifoy called Junk Dada this winter, which will showcase assemblage sculptures and mixed-media constructions created using everyday-life objects.

Study Nooks

It’s cold outside, so it’s the perfect time to really devote yourself to your studies. But finding the perfect on-campus study spot can end up being quite the daily workout — the first place you try is too crowded, the second not quiet enough, and the view at the third is nice, which proves too distracting! Keep these lesser-known locations in mind the next time you’re on the hunt.

Orton Memorial Library of Geology
Located in one of the two oldest buildings on campus, Orton Hall, the Geology library is almost never crowded, is only a short walk from Thompson Library, and is without a doubt the quaintest and most geode-filled study space on campus.

Architecture Library
The Architecture Library, located in a two-story glass box in Knowlton Hall, is another seldom-crowded study location.

Student Leadership Center in the Union
This ski-lodge-themed, two-story space on the second floor of the Union, complete with a fireplace, comfortable couches and a wooden deer head carving, is probably the coziest winter study space on campus. However, it can get noisy, with conversations babbling and music playing in the background.

Smith Lab Study Areas
Hit the books in the middle of an abstract rocket replica at Smith Lab, or in the more traditional study space outside it.

Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Building
Hunker down at the new CBEC building for a casual but usually quiet study space against a backdrop of colorful lights in the shape of aromatic hydrocarbon rings.

Must-see Winter Events

Don’t miss these annual campus traditions, back again this winter and just as much fun as ever.

Denman Undergraduate Research Forum
Did you know that Ohio State was recently rated one of the top 50 research universities in the nation? Get a peek at your peers’ research, get ideas for some of your own, or just feed your brain some fresh knowledge at the Denman Forum on March 30.

Freedom Festival
Discover the impact of soul food on the black community, visit a farmer’s market at the Union, ponder ways to end world hunger, and more at Student Life Multicultural Center’s 2016 Freedom Festival, running February 22–March 1. This year’s theme is food justice, and an event related to that topic will be available for students each day of the week.

Explore Columbus

For an Ohio State student, exploring the city doesn’t have to break the bank.

D-Tix and COTA
All you need is your Buck ID to get anywhere Columbus for free on the COTA bus — just swipe your ID when you get on.  Click here to explore routes. Plus, check out D-Tix — discounted tickets to events throughout the city for Ohio State students.