Departments are the basic units responsible for the programming and development of teaching and research support, and bring together teaching and research staff in one or more areas of knowledge.
The USC has 50 departments distributed in five major areas of knowledge: Ten in health science, 13 in science, 16 in social and legal science, 4 in engineering and architecture and 7 in arts and humanities
The departments are responsible for programming, developing and monitoring the teaching assigned to their respective areas of knowledge in accordance with the curricula of the degrees, PhD programmes, USC-specific master's degrees and specialisation and continuing education courses.