Ohio University
public university in Athens, Ohio, United States
Ohio University (OHIO or OU) is a public research university with its main campus in Athens, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1804, it was the first university established in the former Northwest Territory. The university enrolled about 25,000 undergraduate and graduate students in Athens as of 2023. It maintains seven regional and extension campuses across Ohio.
Ohio University comprises nine undergraduate colleges, a graduate college, a college of medicine, and a public affairs school. It offers more than 250 areas of undergraduate study as well as certificates, master's, and doctoral degrees. It is a member of the University System of Ohio. The university is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research spending and doctorate production".
Ohio's intercollegiate athletic teams are the Bobcats, and compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) at the Division I level as charter members of the Mid-American Conference. Ohio football has participated in 16 bowl games through the 2023 season.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ohio University” is public university in Athens, Ohio, United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ohio, University and public, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “public university in Athens, Ohio, United States” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1075339. VIAF identifies the subject as 144233742. The Library of Congress control number is n79069797. Authority coordinates are 39.328, -82.100. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1804 and 2023.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Ohio University”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Ohio University primary sources, Ohio University archive and Ohio research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ohio University”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Ohio University” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.