Academic units[1] constitute the building blocks of the university. OSU’s success in research, teaching, and outreach and engagement stem from supporting faculty and student excellence through efficient, right sized, and relevant academic units. At OSU, our academic units are collaborative and in addition to their disciplinary strengths, many units cooperate to provide interdisciplinary academic programs, research, and outreach.

Academic Unit Assessment (AUA) has replaced arduous decennial reviews of individual programs. AUA is designed to be efficient, data-driven biennial assessments of academic units in order to provide OSU leaders, especially deans, with continual, clear, data-driven insights about the strengths and weaknesses of units. Findings from AUA may result in college- or institution-level decisions to innovate, expand, restructure, reduce or sunset programs. AUA was piloted during academic year 2022 and is now being implemented fully.

[1]These include colleges and units within colleges, i.e., schools or departments.