A new integrity czar at Ohio State would be given the power to make sure that the school’s watchdogs are asking tough questions and rooting out problems before they erupt, officials said in a Dispatch interview yesterday.

It’s all part of a plan that will be rolled out today.

Campus officials will ask the trustees’ Audit and Compliance Committee this afternoon to support a plan that would create a centralized office to uphold ethics throughout the university. The full board of trustees is to vote on the proposal on Friday. So far, it’s unclear how much the office would cost.

Ohio State has been studying how it could revamp its compliance office since summer, after a series of football scandals that resulted in the resignation of head coach Jim Tressel, the departure of quarterback Terrelle Pryor, and stiffer-than-expected penalties by the NCAA.

“It’s moving us to a more-centralized structure with additional checks and balances and new best practices that will land us in a better place than where we currently are,” Robert H. Schottenstein, chairman of the Audit and Compliance Committee, told The Dispatch last night.

Trustees announced in June that they wanted Ohio State to consolidate the athletics-compliance program into a centralized office to improve oversight and ensure its independence. To help, the university hired Protiviti Inc., a California business-consulting company that specializes in risk management, and Dewey & LeBoeuf, a New York law firm known for its restructuring expertise.

The two groups reviewed more than 3,500 documents, including compliance reports, organizational charts and training manuals in 12 key areas where compliance serves a critical role. They also met with several university leaders.

Their recommendations call for Ohio State to hire a chief compliance and integrity officer. That person would head a centralized office that would oversee all compliance and monitoring efforts across the university.

The chief officer would report directly to Geoff Chatas, OSU’s senior vice president for business and finance, and Chris Culley, the chief legal counsel,as well as a committee of the board of trustees. That would keep university leaders more informed of the campus’ compliance and monitoring activities, Chatas said.

The university would immediately hire a headhunter for a nationwide search for someone — most likely in higher education, health care/insurance or financial services — to fill that chief compliance position, Chatas said. The school hopes to have someone in place within two months and an office operating within a year.

Ohio State also would hire three new compliance officers, to oversee human resources, enrollment and student financial aid, and academic accreditation and program approval.

The current compliance directors over six other areas — athletics, environmental health and safety, ethics and the Americans With Disabilities Act, health care, information security, and research — also would report to the new chief compliance officer in addition to their current supervisors.

A major goal of the new office would be to provide an additional layer of monitoring, which might have helped prevent the football scandal.

Under the proposal, the new chief compliance officer essentially would be given the power to watch over the watchdogs to make sure they are asking the right questions, to identify potential risks and to close any gaps — all in a timely fashion.

The office also could provide resources to the school’s lawyers to conduct ad hoc reviews and investigations. It also would review tips made to the university’s anonymous reporting line and report its findings to the president, Chatas said.

The proposal also calls for Ohio State to:

• Create a “university integrity committee” of campus officials that would meet at least monthly to ensure that compliance standards have been applied consistently across the university.

• Do a risk assessment every year to determine “financial or reputational” risks related to compliance issues in various departments.

• Adopt a campuswide code of conduct to show the university’s commitment to the highest ethics.

• Develop a university-wide training program around compliance, and enhance existing education programs on the topic in the individual departments, such as athletics, research and the medical center.

“Our goal is to become a model among higher-education institutions,” Chatas said. “We want to have a world-class compliance program.”

epyle@dispatch.com