11-27-07

Media Release

OSU Ranks High Nationally in Measure of Faculty Productivity

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new ranking of graduate programs at research universities around the country shows that Oregon State University faculty are exceptionally productive, ranking among the top 10 U.S. universities in eight of the disciplines measured.

OSU earned a top national ranking in Wildlife Science and ranked second in Fisheries Science. The university also ranked fourth in Zoology, fifth in both Plant Pathology and Forest Resources/Forestry, seventh in both Pharmacy and Agricultural Economics and ninth in Science Education. OSU placed in the top 10 in more categories than any other Oregon institution.

The rankings, published in the Nov. 16 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, further cement OSU’s reputation as a leading research university, coming on the heels of other listings earlier this year that ranked OSU tops in North America in Forestry and no. 1 in the United States in both agricultural sciences and in conservation biology, the field most closely associated with the study of climate change.

“It’s gratifying to see our faculty recognized so prominently for their contributions in so many fields,” said OSU President Ed Ray. “We are a research university with a goal of being recognized as one of the nation’s premiere land grant universities to maximize the contributions of our graduates, scholarship and outreach and engagement for the people of Oregon and the nation. This is public acknowledgement of our faculty’s success in approaching that goal.”

The new rankings, covering 173 disciplines, are produced by Academic Analytics, a private company owned in part by the State University of New York. This is the third-consecutive year it has undertaken the “Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index,” which takes into account published research, the number of times other faculty cite that research in their own publications, grants earned by each faculty member and multiple other factors.

Several new factors considered in this year’s index have helped to create a more comprehensive picture of productivity. For instance, grant data from such federal agencies as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation has been included, as have 22,000 scholarly honors and awards and information on 64,000 books purchased by university libraries.

The resulting rankings illustrate the competitiveness of OSU faculty in myriad disciplines. In earning the no. 1 ranking in Wildlife Science, for instance, OSU scored better than many much larger institutions, such as Texas A&M, the University of Minnesota and the University of Florida. In Pharmacy, OSU finished ahead of the University of Texas-Austin and the University of Washington.

“The index’s value goes well beyond the numerical rankings,” said Daniel Edge, head of the OSU Dept. of Fisheries and Wildlife. “For instance, it shows that the work of three out of every four members of our faculty has been cited by other researchers in journal publications. In measurements such as that, the index really gets to the heart of scholarly quality and influence.”

The index is available online at http://chronicle.com/stats/productivity/.