SB 1 Implementation Update: Implementation Committee

Dear Colleagues:

Please see the below update from the Senate Bill 1 Implementation Team. For more information, including full text of the legislation, see the university’s Information on Legislative and Executive Actions website. This resource will continue to be updated regularly.

As a general reminder, all faculty, staff and students at Ohio State can reach out to legislativequestions@osu.edu for questions about enacted legislation and other related changes. Community members can also access the university’s Key Issues webpage.

The implementation team will seek broad engagement from the university community, and we will need to work quickly to meet deadlines and provide guidance to plan for the upcoming academic year. Thank you for your engagement and assistance throughout this important process.

Thank you,

Ravi Bellamkonda, Anne Garcia and Stacy Rastauskas

Updates

The “Advance Ohio Higher Education Act” (Senate Bill 1) was signed by Governor Mike DeWine last month and goes into effect on June 26, though a number of provisions in the bill have delayed effective dates.

The university has set up an implementation committee with representatives from multiple units that work across our campuses. These include the offices of Academic Affairs, Government Affairs, Human Resources, Legal Affairs, Marketing and Communications, Student Life and University Compliance and Integrity, as well as the Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge and the Board of Trustees office. 

The committee is utilizing multiple workstreams so that the many facets of implementation can be completed by the time SB1 goes into effect. The committee has prioritized several complex and time-sensitive provisions, including DEI prohibitions/commitment to intellectual diversity (3345.0217), faculty workload (3345.45) and annual performance of faculty (3345.452), post-tenure review (3345.453), and several more. 

Various offices and university community groups will be engaged throughout the workstream process, such as deans and college leaders, University Senate and other university leadership bodies. Other workstreams have already identified core stakeholder groups, including the Academic Programs Advisory Committee, which includes curricular leaders across the colleges.

Several of these groups have already been engaged as part of initial reviews of implementation considerations. For example, SB1 calls for the elimination of any undergraduate degree program at a state institution if an average of fewer than five degrees is conferred annually over any three-year period, though the chancellor of the Ohio Department of Higher Education may grant a waiver. Vice Provost for Academic Programs Randy Smith has led the effort in the Office of Academic Affairs to identify potentially affected programs and contact their college deans to discuss next steps. Additionally, several deans and faculty have provided initial input into the legislation’s provisions that will impact faculty life and instruction. This work and input will continue along with the broader implementation.

In order to provide full transparency throughout this process, the university will be launching a centralized webpage dedicated to SB1 implementation and the work being done to ensure compliance. The webpage will serve as a communications vehicle for the university wide community, complementing the Information on Legislative and Executive Actions website as well as implementation updates that will continue to be shared.