U.S. News ranks UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences No. 2 in the Northeast

by Jane Stoyle Welch

The school moved up four places from last year on the national list of engineering graduate programs to No. 59, which includes public and private engineering schools that offer doctorate degrees.

“Our continued recognition as one of the nation’s top engineering and applied sciences schools reflects our deep commitment to building a comprehensive and inclusive learning environment that supports interdisciplinary collaboration, creative thinking and experiential learning,” said Rajan Batta, interim dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

“It also reinforces the work of our world-class faculty members whose research is helping to solve society’s most pressing challenges, as well as to the robust infrastructure that we have to support this research.  It is further direct testament to our talented students who routinely win numerous awards and land top-notch industry and academic jobs.”

Of the 214 engineering schools included in the survey, 178 were ranked. The ranking focuses on four major areas: quality assessment, faculty resources, research activities and student selectivity.

The quality assessment is worth 40% of the survey and includes a recruiter assessment by the companies that hire the school’s graduates and a peer evaluation by other engineering school deans and deans of graduate studies at engineering schools throughout the United States.

Faculty resources and research activities are worth 25% each, and include factors such as student-faculty ratios, doctoral degrees awarded, number of faculty in the National Academy of Engineering, total of externally funded research expenditures and average amount of external research funding per faculty member.

Student selectivity accounts for 10% of the score, and includes measures such as mean quantitative GRE score and acceptance rate.

“We have had some phenomenal successes recently, including nine of our early career faculty being recognized with prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER awards, which is reflected in the increase in our ranking” says Batta. “We also saw increases in the number of PhD graduates as well as in research expenditures.”

The news for many of the schools’ graduate programs in specialty areas of engineering was also very good. Industrial engineering moved up into the top 25 graduate programs.

“It is exciting to see our department ranked among the top industrial engineering graduate programs in the country. We are proud of our faculty, staff, students and alumni, whose excellence is a key factor in achieving this milestone,” says Victor Paquet, professor and chair of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

In addition, the school’s graduate programs in aerospace, chemical and civil engineering ranked in the top 40. Mechanical engineering made the largest jump, rising 19 spots in the past five years to be among the top 50 programs in the country.

“This rise in rankings recognizes the excellence in the department and the substantial growth we have had in research funding, faculty accolades and student distinction.  We look forward to continuing this growth and expanding our influence in research, education and impact,” says Kemper Lewis, Moog Professor of Innovation and chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

Graduate programs rankings are based solely on peer assessments by departments heads in each program area.

In addition to New York, the northeast includes Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont.