thumb|The Department of Electrical Engineering at [[Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India]]
An academic department is a division of a university or school faculty devoted to a particular academic discipline. In the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries, universities tend to use the term faculty; faculties are typically further divided into schools or departments, but not always.
Disciplines
The organization of faculties into departments is not standardized, but most U.S. universities will at least have departments of History, Physics, English (language and literature), Psychology, and so on. Sometimes divisions are coarser: a liberal arts college which de-emphasizes the sciences may have a single Science department; an engineering university may have one department for Language and Literature (in all languages). Sometimes divisions may be finer: for example, Harvard University has separate departments of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Some disciplines are found in different departments at different institutions: biochemistry may be in biology, in chemistry or in its own department; computer science may be in mathematics, applied mathematics, electrical engineering, or its own department (the usual case nowadays). Typically, "Departments reflect disciplines with the disciplines representing coherent areas of research and scholarship."
Departments in professional schools, or more so, professional schools at the postgraduate level will be specialized like the school itself, so a medical school will probably have departments of Anatomy, Pathology, Dermatology, and so on.
Structure
alt=A computer screen reading "What can university departments do to help?" on a desk with people sitting at it|thumb|A computer screen reading "What can university departments do to help?" at the [[University of Edinburgh in Scotland]]
Chairs and faculty
"Departments serve as administrative structures."
- Recruitment and retention
- Ensuring good internal relations and coordination between staff
- Research
- Educational reform
- Trust and collaboration
Curricula
"Programs [in Departments or outwith] reflect how disciplines (or combinations of disciplines) form curriculum to teach their disciplines or combinations/intersections of disciplines." The two variables also tend to increase students' perception of how much their skills developed overall.
See also
- Academic major
- Chair (Polish academic department)
- List of academic disciplines