Three international rankings recently placed The University of Western Ontario’s Faculty of Social Science among the Top 100 faculties in the world.
The Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council ranked the faculty 82nd in the world for 2010. (The faculty was ranked 82nd in 2009 as well.) The rankings measure research productivity and impact.
The QS Corporation, which was the Times Higher Education list developer until 2010, ranks the faculty 96th in the world, 4th in Canada for 2010. (The faculty was ranked 95th in 2009.) The rankings include, but are not limited to, reputation, graduate education excellence, research and awards.
The prestigious Academic Rankings of World Universities in three of the last four years placed Social Science in the Top 100 as well.
Jerry White, Social Science associate dean, spotlighted a couple reasons for the success.
For this round (2010-11), the faculty’s grant application success rate with the Social Science and Humanities Research Council was 58 per cent with 15 successful applications out of 26 applications.
“This is far above the national average success rate of 36 per cent for social sciences across the country, and better than the Ontario success rate of 39 per cent,” White says. “Every department in social science was the recipient of one or multiple research funding awards which indicates the depth of capacity in the faculty.”
In addition, successful Western researchers received a much higher rate of funding than either Ontario universities (12 per cent higher) or the Canada average (14 per cent higher).
“These are certainly top tier results mark Western’s Faculty of Social Science as a national leader,” White continues.