French, Mass Comm Faculty Earn Top Spots in Review
By Jessica Ullian
Eight Boston University departments earned top-ten ratings in the Chronicle of Higher Education annual Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index, which ranks departments within research universities according to the productivity of their faculty.
The French language and literature and the mass communications/media studies programs earned number-one spots for the 2006 academic year on the index, which measures the publications, federal grant dollars, and honors of each faculty member. Also going to BU were second place in English language and literature, fourth in bioinformatics and computational biology, sixth in social work/social welfare, seventh in mathematics, ninth in music specialties, and tenth in biostatistics.
The index, compiled by the for-profit Academic Analytics, operated by SUNY Stonybrook, looks at 375 research universities that offer doctoral degrees and ranks 164,843 individual faculty. Variables are weighted — a Fulbright award, for example, counts only if it was awarded between 2002 and 2006, but a Nobel Prize if it was awarded within the past fifty years.
"Our department is a mix of professionals and academics," says T. Barton Carter, a professor and chairman of the department of mass communication, advertising, and public relations at the College of Communication, "so what this shows is that we're able to maintain that balance and achieve in both areas: professional training and professional recognition, as well as scholarly recognition of our faculty's research and writing."
Jeffrey Mehlman, a College of Arts and Sciences professor of French and comparative literature and a University Professor, says that the recent division of modern foreign languages and literatures into two departments, romance studies and modern languages and comparative literature, has helped raise the French program's profile, both within the University and in the greater academic community.
"Previously, we had been the thin man caught in the pleasantly bloated body of modern foreign languages and literatures," Mehlman says. "We're out now, et voilà!"
