Old Dominion University Paper Format & Writing Requirements

Old Dominion University at a glance

Norfolk's public research university, famous for TELETECHNET's pioneering satellite courses, maritime and supply-chain programs beside the Port of Virginia and coastal-resilience research in one of America's most flood-exposed cities.

The campus sits in Norfolk, Virginia, operates as a public institution, and enrolls about 24,000 students — a scale that directly shapes how writing support works. Founded in 1930 with an acceptance rate around 87%, ODU pairs selective admissions with the large-course writing loads typical of its category.

Citation styles Old Dominion University actually requires

ODU courses predominantly require APA 7 or MLA 9 or Chicago or IEEE. That is not a trivial preference: it decides your title page, heading levels, in-text punctuation and reference format on every graded document.

• APA 7: used across social science, nursing and business courses
• MLA 9: used across humanities and writing-sequence courses
• Chicago: used across history, fine arts and some social science seminars
• IEEE: used across engineering and computer science courses

Verify against the specific course syllabus anyway — instructors can override departmental defaults, and the first paper is where they enforce it.

The writing requirement, decoded

ENGL 110C starts composition and most majors add a discipline-coded upper-division communication course; the Writing Center inside the Learning Commons at Perry Library keeps evening slots for commuter and online students.

Plan the sequence early: composition requirements compound, and students who defer them discover the advanced seminars — where the writing-intensity lives — conflict with major courses later. The registrar's degree audit shows exactly which flags remain; check it each semester.

Three things about Old Dominion University papers that surprise new students

• ODU built TELETECHNET in 1994, a satellite network delivering live courses to community-college sites across Virginia — the ancestor of ODUGlobal, whose online sections still grade discussion posts as attendance.
• Maritime and Supply Chain Management cases use live Port of Virginia terminal data, and course reports have reached port officials who sometimes send replies.
• Norfolk floods on sunny days, and civil-engineering assignments hand students the same NOAA tide-gauge records the city's resilience planning uses.

None of these appear in the course description. All of them appear in the rubric. Students who learn them in week one report smoother first-semesters than students who meet them at the deadline.

Assignments Old Dominion University students face most

• Research Paper — most frequently assigned across ODU's programs
• Essay — most frequently assigned across ODU's programs
• Case Study — most frequently assigned across ODU's programs
• Coursework — most frequently assigned across ODU's programs
• Capstone Project — most frequently assigned across ODU's programs

Popular programs at ODU include maritime and supply chain management, nursing, computer science — each pairs the assignment list above with its own capstone or practicum expectations, detailed on our subject pages.