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Faculty in four grad programs get top-10 ranking

Jan. 9, 2008

KALAMAZOO--Faculty members in four Western Michigan University graduate programs have earned top-10 rankings in an annual listing of research universities with the most productive faculty.

The third annual Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index ranks per-capita scholarly accomplishment by discipline at the nation's research universities. WMU's science education faculty ranked third in their discipline in the index, while the graduate faculty in educational evaluation and research, counselor education, and applied economics ranked seventh, ninth and 10th, respectively.

The data for the ranking is based on the number of books and journal articles written by faculty, the number of times their work is cited by other scholars, and the awards, honors and grant dollars they have received. The index rates the output of 164,843 faculty members in nearly 7,300 doctoral programs at 375 universities offering doctoral degrees.

For three of the four WMU graduate programs cited--science education, counselor education and applied economics--WMU is the only Michigan school in the top 10. In the fourth category, educational evaluation and research, WMU shares top-10 honors with Michigan State University.

The index is published by Academic Analytics, a Pennsylvania-based, for-profit organization owned in part by the State University of New York at Stony Brook. The third edition of the index was issued in late 2007, and results of the analysis were widely reported in higher education media, including the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The index was originally designed as a tool that universities could purchase and use to compare programs at peer institutions. Results of the first index were not made public. The second index did not include any WMU programs, but the expanded data of the third index brought the four WMU programs into top-10 positions.

Media contact: Cheryl Roland, (269) 387-8400, cheryl.roland@wmich.edu

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