Education college ranks in U.S. Top 50
For the 12th consecutive year, USU’s College of Education ranked in the top 50 of the U.S. News and World Report’s 2012 edition of “America’s Best Graduate Schools” placing 29th.
“We are the only college in Utah to be in the top 50,” said the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services Dean, Beth Foley. “It is very impressive to maintain a ranking in the Top 50 for that long of a time period.”
Foley said most of the programs in the college have 100 percent job placement. Some of those programs are psychology, early childhood and communicative disorders. The college also produces the most public school teachers, special educators, and communicative disorder specialists in the state.
Although the college was ranked 29th overall, they received the fifth most external funding, securing $33 million of grants and contracts over the past year. This puts the college above Stanford, Harvard and Northwestern in the amount of research dollars received.
To give a comparison, Foley said the University of Utah received $5.4 million and placed 66 in the overall ranking. BYU received $600,000 and placed 91st.
The Department of Special Education and Rehabilitation had two programs ranked in the top 20: The Rehabilitation and Counseling Program, which ranked ninth in the nation, and the Special Education Graduate Program, which ranked 17th.
Department head of special education Ben Lignugaris-Kraft said, “Because we have a productive faculty and work well with our students. If you ask our students – undergraduate through doctoral students – why they chose to come to USU, they will tell you is because of the quality of the faculty.”
Foley said, “The U.S. News and World Report looks at 11 different things when ranking each school. Some of these include an assessment of the program by the super intendent, peer assessments between deans of other college’s of education grad studies, graduation and retention rates, faculty resources, student selectivity, CRE scores, percent of faculty who have awards and research expenditures.”
Foley explained the tests make up the ranking and consecutive rankings build a good reputation. It is mainly the reputation that brings students who want to attend the best college of education. She also explained many students are drawn because they want to do research with the faculty members who are well-known for their research.
A first-year master’s student in USU’s special education program, Kerry Shea came to USU from Minnesota because of the diverse program and the desire to do research with Lillian Duran, an assistant professor in the education school.
“I knew USU had a really great program and I would be able to get experience in many different ways in terms of focusing on behavior analysis and culture diversity,” Shea said. “I had also done research with one of the professors, Dr. Duran, and was really interested in the work she was doing and I wanted to continue to work with her.”
Lignugaris-Kraft said Shea came from Minnesota specifically to work with faculty and had not originally intended to obtain a master’s degree in special education, but has now learned a lot.
The Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services is currently working on more than 200 research projects.
– kayla.barclay@aggiemail.usu.edu