IU receives high rankings in faculty productivity for several programs

A survey brought out by Academic Analytics at the end of January ranks 14 programs at IU-Bloomington and two at the IU School of Medicine among the best in the country.\nThe survey, called the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index, ranked IU 10th among all public universities in the U.S. and 23rd overall in terms of faculty productivity.\n"IU is a good institution with a good reputation," said Bill Savage, director of institutional sales for Academic Analytics. "And we are dealing with four measurable variables: federal grants, journal publications and journal citations, book publications and honors and awards."\nAccording to an IU news release, the index recognized six language and area studies programs, as well as the Jacobs School of Music, the department of speech and hearing sciences, the School of Medicine and the Kelley School of Business. The index also recognized the departments of clinical psychology and plant biology.\n"I feel great," said Julie Auger, associate professor in French and linguistics. "We have some of the best programs within the French department, and every faculty member is very productive. We train our students very well and as a result, we are the best program in the country."\nThe French, francophone literature and culture, and French linguistics programs made IU's French program number one. The programs in Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, East Asia and Near Eastern languages followed close behind, ranked at fourth, sixth, seventh, seventh and 10th, respectively.\n"The FSP provides a nice validation of our own performance measures," said Daniel Smith, dean of the Kelley School of Business, in an e-mail. "We have long been recognized as one of the leading business schools in the nation in terms of both research and teaching."\nThe management program at the Kelley School of Business was ranked seventh. Faculty activities in clinical psychology and plant biology were ranked second, and in ecology and evolutionary biology, third. While the Educational Leadership Program at the IU School of Education was ranked eighth, the IU Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences was ranked seventh and cognitive science program was ranked 10th.\nOver 30 institutions use the FSP as one of the tools for strategic planning, Savage said. \n"We have our own research productivity tracking and as such, we will not likely rely heavily on the FSP per se," Smith said. "We track a host of internal metrics of performance."\nNevertheless, the FSP helps each department focus on its strengths for the future.\n"We would try to get even better," Auger said. "Hopefully this would attract better students and colleagues who can build our strengths."\nMunirpallam Venkataramanan, chair of the undergraduate program at Kelley, agreed.\n"The plan is always simple: we always recruit highly regarded fresh Ph.D. students and give them the resources they need," he said. "Their combination with a highly reputed faculty is very productive"