With support from President Robert Glidden and Vice President of Research Jack Bantle, the Board of Trustees approved the formation of the Center of Ring Theory and its Applications in June of 2001. Since then, the Center has been supported by Ohio University and private donors. Both President Robert Glidden (1994 - 2004) and President Roderick McDavis (2004 - ) have provided financial support and moral encouragement for the Center's programs, which have benefited Ohio University in several ways.

The Center is housed within the Department of Mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences.  The membership of the center consists of seven faculty members from the various campuses of Ohio University plus seven adjunct members from universities in the area within the State of Ohio (Kent State University, Ohio State University, Bowling Green State University, and the University of Rio Grande).

Since its creation, the Center has become incredibly active in organizing various academic activities. During the past six years, the Center has organized more than 70 tutorial lecture series, colloquium talks, and seminars. All tutorial lecture series hosted since last year are available online so that mathematicians from around the world can participate. Also, the Center has had more than 90 visitors from all over the world sponsored by Fulbright, The Japanese Academy of Sciences, The Korean Research Council, and various other foreign government and private agencies. These visits have lasted anywhere between one week and more than a year.

The Center has signed agreements of mutual scientific co-operation with Moscow State University and the University of Murcia.

In March, 2004, the Center sponsored an International Conference on Algebra and Its Applications. The Proceedings of this conference have been published by the American Mathematical Society's Contemporary Mathematics series. In 2006, a second international conference, devoted to the themes of noncommutative rings, group rings, modules and diagram algebras, was hosted in India jointly by the Center and the Ramanujan Institute for Advanced Study at Madras University (India). This was a highly remarkable and successful cooperative project between the Center and the Ramanujan Institute at an international level. The Proceedings of this conference are going to appear in May 2008 in the Contemporary Mathematics series of the American Mathematical Society. The third such conference on Rings and Things jointly sponsored by three of the regional campuses of Ohio University and National Security Agency (NSA) took place in June 2007. Its proceedings are also being published by the American Mathematical Society in Contemporary Math series. The fourth  conference sponsored by the Center will take place in June 2008 and its proceedings will be published by Birkhauser, Basel-Heidelberg-London-New York  These conferences and their ensuing publications have considerably heightened the awareness of the Center in the international community.

T Y Lam, in his letter for Center review, writes "In Mathematics, the fundamental objects in the study of modern abstract algebra are groups, rings, and fields. Historically, the advances in ring theory have, in particular, heavily influenced the course of developments in the field of Algebra. For instance, the major revolutions in abstract algebra in the first half of the 20th Century were made possible by the work of Emmy Noether in the 1920s on commutative and noncommutative rings (and the modules over them). Since that time, ring theory has played a vital role in the developments of numerous other fields, including linear algebra, representation theory, computations, and the newer fields of coding, cryptography, and algebraic combinatorics. Given this trend, ring theory can be expected to remain an important part of 21st century mathematics."

The Center was reviewed by both internal and external reviewers in 2007. Some of the comments are:

"The Ring Theory Center at OU Athens is a unique institution in that there is no comparable research center in Mathematics where ring theory and its applications are designated as the main subjects for advanced study. From this vantage point, the Center is well poised to make its special contributions to the world of mathematics. In the five years of its existence, the Center has wonderfully fulfilled this role. A number of graduate students at OU have completed their M.A. and Ph.D. studies in algebra, ring theory and coding theory, and moved on to academic and industrial positions. The scientific programs run by the Center have brought a constant stream of high-calibre visitors to Athens, making OU and the State of Ohio a hotbed of activities in ring theory, module theory, and coding theory. The two International Conferences in 2005 and 2006 have provided excellent venues (in both US and India) for the exchange of ideas and presentation of research in the field."

"Algebra appears to have retained the strongest position, with the Center for Ring Theory and its Applications providing a structure that enriches the group."

"Students in ring theory noted that they had been attracted or guided to OU by the reputation of the ring theory group.  In this area, it appears that OU can legitimately claim to be a destination program."

"Among the MS students we spoke to, it appears that the computational MS track is the most popular; while among doctoral students, the ring theory research group dominated."

"Among the ring theory students, I got a definite sense of a positive group dynamic.  It appears that this group has a critical mass of students, allowing them to interact with one another and support one another.  Students in other groups noted and regretted the lack of a similar group dynamic."

"I can only suggest that for graduate students, even more than for faculty, efforts to recruit and build in areas of strength such as algebra remain a high priority."