<p>According to new publications study in the COHE</p>
<p>"Faculty-Productivity Index Offers Surprises
Third annual ranking gives high marks to some lesser-known programs</p>
<p>By PAULA WASLEY</p>
<p>Intellectual heft may seem like a tricky thing to measure, but Academic Analytics says it can be done.</p>
<p>The for-profit company, owned in part by the State University of New York at Stony Brook, recently compiled its third annual Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index a ranking of graduate programs at research universities based on what purports to be the first objective measurement of per-capita scholarly accomplishment. The measurement this year considers several new factors, causing some surprising fluctuations in the rankings."</p>
<p>I don't dispute that Wisconsin and Berkeley have a bunch of super programs, and it's nice if other programs finally get some deserved attention. That said, however, the Academic Analytics "productivity" formula is a pretty bad fit for some disciplines. The way they weight books makes sense in some fields, but not in others. I also think they way they handle faculty awards is problematic. If I'm remembering right, in any given year winning a Fulbright "counts" the same as winning a Nobel. The Nobel is counted for more years but in any one-year time frame, they are equivalent. I say this at a school which has a real dearth of Nobel honors, so it's not self-interest.</p>
<p>No, it would be Davis. You might scoff but schools like UW Ag and Davis have created as much economic benefit as many more high tech majors. Davis helped create the Cal wine industry--how much is that worth. The ag schools have kept things like ag productivity ahead of population growth all over the world. It's not fancy but there is tons of hard research and science involved and the schools get BIG research $$$$ from the ag businesses to do it. Little companies like Cargill and Monsanto. They also fund much of the basic genetics and biochem work.</p>
<p>U. of California at Berkeley - 2007
Discipline* Rank Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index
Agricultural Sciences
Agricultural economics 3 1.51
Agriculture, various 2 1.74
Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Biophysics 5 1.21
Botany/Plant Biology 1 1.94
Microbiology 3 1.69
Toxicology 1 1.99
Business
Business administration 2 2.38
Education
Educational Evaluation and Research 5 .53
Educational Leadership and Administration 2 2.31
Science Education 2 1.13
Special education 3 1.46
Engineering
Agricultural/Biological Engineering and Bioengineering 8 1.08
Chemical engineering 1 1.93
Civil Engineering 4 1.72
Electrical engineering 6 1.46
Engineering, General 3 1.46
Engineering, various 5 1.52
Environmental Engineering 7 1.23
Industrial engineering 1 2.24
Mechanical engineering 2 1.9
Nuclear engineering 8 .66
Operations Research 1 1.39
Family, Consumer and Human Sciences
Architecture 6 .34
Architecture, Design, Planning, various 10 -.18
Nutrition Sciences 2 1.53
Urban and Regional Planning 2 1.64
Health Science Professions
Environmental Health Sciences 1 1.22
Health Professions, various 9 .78
Humanities
Ancient Studies 7 -.21
Art History and Criticism 8 1.05
Asian Languages 2 1.73
Asian Languages 1 1.78
Asian Languages 3 1.17
Asian Studies 5 .77
French Language and Literature 9 .81
Germanic Languages and Literatures 9 1.04
Humanities/Humanistic Studies, General 7 .74
Near and Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures 4 .89
Slavic Languages and Literatures 4 .93
Natural Resources
Environmental Sciences 1 1.95
Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Applied mathematics 9 .84
Astronomy and astrophysics 2 1.93
Chemical Sciences, various 3 1.38
Chemistry 10 1.73
Chemistry 5 1.82
Computer science 3 1.85
Geology/Earth Science, General 1 1.9
Information Science/Studies 5 1.1
Mathematics 8 1.69
Physics, General 4 1.84
Statistics 2 1.77
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Criminal Justice and Criminology 4 1.44
Economics, General 3 2.19
Geography 3 1.47
Political science 3 2.08
Psychology, General 4 1.97
Public Policy 4 1.43
School Psychology 2 1.69
Social Work/Social Welfare 1 2.16 </p>
<ul>
<li>A discipline may appear more than once if it is related to more than one department.</li>
</ul>
<p>A bit more on Monsanto and why they are so important in ag. Soybean is one of the world's biggest and most important crops.</p>
<p>The Agracetus Campus of Monsanto is the largest soybean transformation laboratory in the world. The first successful genetically engineered crop ever produced for the commercial market was the Roundup Ready soybean, produced at Agracetus in 1991, and was one of fourteen successful transformation events. Scientists there used gold bead gene transfer technology coupled with the β-Glucuronidase reporter gene to produce the plant. The actual gun that shot the gold beads and produced the genetic modifications is now owned by the Smithsonian museum in Washington, DC.</p>
<p>Every Roundup Ready soybean in the world has a relative which was transformed at Agracetus. 80% of the world's soybeans are Roundup Ready.</p>
<p>Agracetus was founded in 1981 as Cetus company. Acquired by Monsanto in 1996, the research and development facility is located 8 miles (13 km) west of Madison in the city of Middleton, Wisconsin on 4.5 acres (18,000 m²). The site has 100,000 square feet (10,000 m²) of research space, 35,000 square feet (3,300 m²) of greenhouse space, about 75 employees, and ten laboratories. Output of genetically modified soy plants is many thousands of transformation events per year. Genetically modified cotton is also an important effort at Agracetus.</p>