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Department Rankings

The National Research Council (NRC) has just published its long-awaited report evaluating over 5,000 doctoral programs in 62 fields at 212 universities in the United States.  The prestigious NRC reports are prepared every 10-15 years and are widely considered to be the most thorough and rigorous evaluations of U.S. PhD programs.

We are very pleased that the 2010 NRC Report ranks UCSB 2nd among the 106 schools that offer PhD degrees in chemical engineering, and that our College of Engineering is ranked 4th, with 4 of our 5 departments in the top 5, including the #1 ranked Materials Department.
The NRC program evaluations are based on two principal metrics denoted by S and R. The S metric is widely considered to be more significant because the R metric is weighted in favor of large departments.  The highest ranked ChE programs are shown in Table 1, based on their average S and R metrics.

NRC rankings

 

It is noteworthy that UCSB was ranked #14 in the 1995 NRC report and was not even ranked in the 1982 report, due to our small number of PhD graduates.  Thus our department’s meteoric rise from unranked to 2nd place in 28 years is truly extraordinary, and without precedent.  The credit for this remarkable achievement belongs to past and present generations of faculty, staff and students.  Special credit is due to the faculty members who founded our department in the mid-1960s; to our department chairs and vice chairs for their inspired leadership; and to the campus administrators for their strong support over the past 25 years.


Further information concerning the NRC report methodology and the ranks of other UCSB PhD programs is available from the Graduate Division (http://www.graddiv.ucsb.edu/nrc/).  For example, our ChE program is tied for 1st place (with Caltech) based on another important metric, Research Activity.