May 2001

U.S. News Names Several Mason Programs as Best in the Nation Several of George Mason University's academic units were placed in the national spotlight recently in the annual "Best Graduate Schools" edition of U.S. News & World Report magazine. Two of the university's academic units--the School of Law and the College of Nursing and Health Science--and two individual degree programs--the Industrial/ Organizational Psychology Graduate Program and the Master of Public Administration (M.P.A.) Program--were singled out as being among the best in the nation. The School of Law was ranked 47th in the nation, making it the youngest law school in the magazine's first tier and, according to Dean Mark Grady, "the fastest rising law school in America." "No single person or program is solely responsible for our success," says Grady. "Rather, our rise to the first tier after a scant 20 years in operation represents a concerted effort by many to create and sustain a strong, innovative law school in the heart of Northern Virginia's technology community. As the youngest law school with a tier one ranking, we are poised to reach even greater academic excellence and solidify our standing as one of the best law schools in the nation." George Mason's College of Nursing and Health Science was ranked 36th among institutions offering health disciplines, which marked the sixth time the college has gained this distinction. Dean Rita Carty describes herself as "proud" of the achievement, noting that it comes as a result of the outstanding efforts on the part of the faculty and students. The Industrial/Organizational Psychology program was ranked eighth in the nation, making this one of the highest rankings ever for a program at George Mason. According to Robert Smith, Psychology Department chair, this program, under the leadership of Richard Klimoski, "has rapidly developed from a strong program into an exceptional one." He notes that with support from a number of research grants, notably the Army Research Institute and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and significant student support from the Consortium of Universities, this program has developed a strong reputation for methodological rigor and research contributions in areas of leadership, selection and training, and team functioning. The M.P.A. program was ranked 46th, marking the second year in a row that this program has been among the top 50. This particular ranking was based on a survey of 259 M.P.A. programs nationwide. Each year, U.S. News & World Report re-evaluates graduate programs in five major disciplines: business, education, engineering, law, and medicine. As explained by the magazine, programs are ranked using objective measures, including entering students' test scores and faculty/student ratios, and reputation ratings drawn from inside and outside of academia. Sometimes, however, changes or adjustments in those measures are made by the magazine that negatively affect universities and their academic units. Such was the case for George Mason's Graduate School of Education (GSE), which last year had tied at 50th. GSE fell out of this year's rankings because of a modification in the education model that increased emphasis on doctoral degree programs. "Our remarkable achievement in last year's rankings was facilitated by careful attention to the quality and productivity criteria used by U.S. News' system to rank education schools," says GSE's interim dean, Martin Ford. "As a result of this year's methodological change, older universities with large and/or highly selective doctoral programs and a high proportion of their graduate students in doctoral programs received a boost." "Although GSE fared well on the research funding criteria," Ford continues, "the modest size of our doctoral student population as compared with master's students and the program's moderate level of selectivity were enough to knock us down a notch, which was all it took to knock us out of the top 50." Last year, Physics and Astronomy professor Robert Ehrlich conducted a study on how to improve George Mason's national ranking and its academic reputation. Among Ehrlich's recommendations were for the university to promote programs, rather than colleges, in a manner that allows all individual programs equal possibility of exposure and to make an increased effort to help individual academic departments and faculty members bring their interesting work to a wider audience. --Compiled by Elena Barbre, Jeremy Lasich, Patty Snellings, Carrie Secondo, and Daniel Walsch