November 2007
Faculty Productivity Distinguishes BU in
National Index
Six CAS-Affiliated
Programs Rank High
Boston University had
an impressive showing among 375 top research
universities ranked in the 2007
Index of Faculty Scholarly Productivity,
published in the Chronicle of Higher Education
in November. The index measures faculty
productivity by looking at as many as five
factors, depending on the most important
variables in a given discipline: books published;
journal publications; citations of journal
articles; federal-grant dollars awarded;
and honors and awards.
BU’s French Language and Literature
programs, housed in the Department
of Romance Studies at Arts and Sciences,
came in first in the discipline across the
375 indexed institutions. Institutions ranked
below BU in the top 10 include UCLA, Johns
Hopkins, Yale, University of Virginia, and
New York University.
"The
French section has proven once again that
excellence in research is compatible with
outstanding teaching and advising,"
says Professor Christopher Maurer, chair
of Romance Studies. "All of us took
these rankings—as we do any rankings—with
a grain of salt. None of us needed to be
‘ranked’ to realize that this
is an amazing group of colleagues—both
superb teachers and internationally recognized
scholars in film, Francophone literature,
poetry, women’s writing, the nineteenth
century, linguistics, ‘psychology
and literature,’ and other areas.
As chair, I feel—vicariously—very
proud of this group." Maurer notes
that the majority of the French section
was assembled by a previous chair, Professor
Jefferson Kline, "who is a great judge
both of scholarship and of teaching, and
who put together—at the same time—a
vibrant language program that helps our
students master the nuances of French culture."
BU’s English Language and Literature
programs, in the Department
of English, ranked second, behind only
those at Harvard. English at BU ranked ahead
of programs at Columbia, Stanford, and the
University of Pennsylvania, among others
in the top 10. Professor Laurence Breiner,
interim chair of English, notes that the
survey helps lend visibility to areas of
strength about which even department faculty
may not have been fully aware. "While
the productivity survey makes our accomplishments
known to the outside world, I've been most
struck by how it has made my colleagues
known to themselves, " he says. "The
facts were there all along: this is a department
with some 70 scholarly books, and recently
three faculty members with unrelated projects
each won an ACLS grant in the same year,
while some years earlier it was three simultaneous
NEH grants. But thanks to the survey, the
faculty has put the facts together with
surprise and delight."
Other CAS or affiliated programs also ranked
among the top 10 nationally for scholarly
productivity: Bioinformatics and Computational
Biology (#4), Mathematics (#7), Music specialties
(#9), and Biostatistics (#10).
And two more Boston University programs
also scored impressively: Mass Communications/Media
Studies, which ranked at number 1 in its
field, and Social Work/ Social Welfare,
number six.
>>
see BU Today article
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