Photo by: Rachel Roark
The Sturm College of Law and the Graduate School of Psychology placed among the top 100 in the U.S. News and World Report’s 2009-2010 rankings of the best graduate programs in the country.
The law school ranked No. 77 overall, tied with seven other schools, while the school of psychology was No. 91 overall, tied with 10 other schools.
The law school jumped 11 spots in ranking this year, from No. 88 last year.
Dean José R. (Beto) Juárez, Jr. attributes this jump to an improvement in bar exam pass rates, an increased amount of spending on education and a lower student-to-faculty ratio.
Though movement up or down a few spots is common from year to year, Juárez said this year’s significant move up was encouraging.
“Moving up in rankings is never going to hurt,” he said. “We are in admissions season right now, and it will certainly help us get more students to enroll, and will help attract more faculty to teach our students.”
The Sturm College of Law’s place in the top 100 for the past eight years is a reflection of its “superb faculty, wonderful students, state of the art building and long standing academic programs,” said Juárez.
The Department of Psychology’s ranking is also due to a combination of factors, including nationally recognized and respected expert faculty members, said department chair and professor Rob Roberts.
“You are learning from people who are actively contributing to the field you’re learning about,” he said. “The faculty are really helping to push the field forward.”
The research-active education that both graduate and undergraduate students receive also contributes to the department’s strength.
“Most of our undergraduates work in the lab at some point in their career,” Roberts said.
The department is particularly strong in children’s clinical research programs and biologically and psychologically integrated neuroscience, he said.
As well as the strength of individual subfields, the department-wide, cross-disciplinary collaboration of faculty and students bolsters the department.
This synergistic relationship between subfields creates an “atmosphere of intellectual excitement,” Roberts said.
Though important statistical indicators, rankings are a rough indicator of quality in a program and must be taken with a grain of salt, he said.
Like the psychology department’s intellectually exciting atmosphere, the law school also has valuable qualities not accounted for in rankings.
Juárez cites the cohesive feeling of the Sturm College as something that doesn’t factor into rankings but sets the college apart. Inside, students are working together, working with faculty and people are talking, which is not something you see in all law schools, he said.
“The most difficult for outsiders to recognize are the things that make the Sturm College of Law great,” said Juárez. “It’s a feeling you have when you walk inside the building. It’s a community.”
