Faculty productivity pushes NAU into top 20 for doctoral programs

Northern Arizona University ranks in the top 20 of comparable research universities in a new national ranking of doctoral programs.

The Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index lists NAU at No. 17 of 61 smaller research universities that have up to 14 Ph.D. programs.

The index measures faculty scholarly output, which includes the number of books and journal articles published, journal citations, awards, honors and grants received.

“It is great to see NAU recognized nationally for what those of us here know to be true,” said Liz Grobsmith, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs. “NAU has extremely talented faculty who produce phenomenal work in their disciplines.

“Our own task force report on research and graduate education at NAU cited a highly productive faculty with more than 1,300 publications, exhibits and performances,” Grobsmith said.

Sponsored research support at NAU has increased more than 300 percent in the last decade, she noted.

The Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index is funded, in part, by the State University of New York at Stony Brook and produced by the for-profit Academic Analytics, according to an article last week in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The Chronicle wrote that Academic Analytics calls the new index the “first completely objective measure of productivity.”