@a1b2c3d5 I feel like it isn’t up to the president though! Emory is already elite (again the college and the university as a whole competes well with or even outranks some peers above and near us in USNews UG rankings on a global stage- even in US Newsweeks own global rankings), it just wants to be more elite. I suspect it knows what it needs to do in terms of getting there in terms of lay prestige, it just needs to know how to do it and the president needs to be aggressive in terms of doing their part to mobilize faculty and other administrators towards facilitating it. In terms of the college, the Deans and faculty are actually most influential…I would welcome any admins who could raise more money for and properly allocate monies to the b-school and ECAS. I won’t pretend to know what is needed in a new president. If anything get people to send feedback on the new strategic plan. That is something those less “in the know” can successfully provide commentary on simply by reflecting upon their experiences.
@bernie12 It is my opinion that Emory is too complacent with our current ranking; instead I feel we should strive to become a top 10 school. When John Morgan took over the Chair of the Board of Trustees, he said "Emory doesn’t need to ‘change’ who we are to move into the future…Who we are is exactly who we should be.” I find this worrisome because if we continue to drop in the rankings, I don’t believe we can attract high level students and faculty. There is no reason we can’t be a Duke or Johns Hopkins at the minimum. Thoughts?
@a1b2c3d5 : Hate to be blunt, but that is a shallow opinion as Emory of course wants to rise in the rankings (also, stop limiting the conversation to USNW rankings…they mean a minimal amount: Getting good attention in the media or having impact appears more important than our rank as indicated by last year’s application volume which spiked once it fell outside of the top 20. Focus on real outcomes such as job placement, grad. school placement, Rhode Scholars, Goldwater Scholars, Fulbrights, etc. The products that Emory produces speak loads of the school and it is important to enhance it further. But again, we’re already beating and have always been beating or competing well with schools ranked above us. However, the products are what make Duke and Hopkins and any super elite what they are. Usually the ranking comes later). It just hasn’t found a way of doing so yet and does not want to employ the same admissions tactics as some other schools (that is a short term fix often to compensate for the fact that said schools are not academically equivalent to schools they want so badly to rank with) that are more or less in a rush to rise so will find ways to make their “numbers” jump to solidify a certain spot. The fact is: Duke and Hopkins worked really hard to be where they are and it mostly has to do with their research infrastructure. It took them a while. Unlike Emory, they did not become research universities in 1995…they’ve had more time to figure things out and make mistakes (for example, JHU has been known for letting the quality of UG education, especially in STEM, slide. I looked at recent documentation for them to rectify it and, quite frankly, while I would like Emory to try a few things they were considering, for the most part, we are ahead of the curve and have already implemented some of their suggestions on an increasingly large scale) followed by many good moves.
Emory has never really had a hard time attracting top faculty (obviously, the faculty are more reknowned that many of the near peers, the private ones at least), and its inability to attract nobel level faculty likely has more to do with facilities than rankings. Very top institutions and ones who worked hard and took a while to rise establish several institutes that can host big time faculty. For example, Emory, even with its new chemistry could not host a Nobel level faculty member because they would have to dedicate tons of labs to that one person (an example of this already happening is Liotta) and they would likely need special equipment. Liotta is just lucky because Emory has traditionally had the infrastructure he needs for drug discovery. Others who are big and do not use the type of equipment or collaborations he has will flat out need another building. Places like Harvard don’t really have that problem because they will just throw these people in something like Sloan or its many institutes. Emory’s biggest research institutes for say, scientists, are Whitehead, Rollins, Yerkes (not that large but supports and hosts things like the Drug Discovery Center and Vaccine Center), and then the new Health Sciences Research Center. Some of these buildings are quite large, but their equipment is rather underwhelming and uniform.
In the social sciences and humanities, Emory has done very well (there is a reason Creative Writing and English have become so big at Emory) and is extremely well-funded to support serious faculty members and it shows (again, our non-science/engineering research fund allocation far surpasses essentially all peers, including aspirational ones percentage wise). However, Emory has a hard time keeping some promising faculty in this dept…mainly because it won’t pay them more money to stay and higher ranked schools can come poach our faculty (Emory used to be the one doing the poaching for a while).
As for what that trustees member said, they are wrong (or maybe right in that since, but things do need to be done differently). And a current policy that I see in play concerns me in terms of the academics (graduate and undergraduate level). I have an issue with this over-emphasis only on what we are strong at right now and then throwing even more money at it and neglecting weaker but extremely important departments. I don’t know too many schools aspiring to be leaders in undergraduate, graduate education, and knowledge dissemination that decide to essentially let their physics, math, and economics department struggle like hell. Those departments are among the best or ones that have improved dramatically at some top schools (like Duke and Hopkins). This one-dimensional focus on throwing money at life-sciences and health-care affliated fields is a huge weakness and ultimately limits Emory’s influence. I see some effort to rectify this such as more biophysics/physical biology/bioinformatics faculty appointments and the QSS, but Emory doesn’t have great IT/computational infrastructure (especially for a school so rich).
Emory’s current policies with regard to enhancing things at the departmental levels seems much like its pre-professional students…risk averse, which would explain the re-allocation of monies to things we are already extremely good at (like, at the UG level I recommend life sciences at Emory over most of our near peers including Brown and Cornell except for many more specialty things like wildlife/marine biology…where Cornell would shine. Graduate level…obviously Emory is pretty competitive even if it lacks prestige in some senses. NRC rankings in those areas reveal that Emory’s reputation among the raters lags behind the actual quality. The quality metrics fare well against schools more prestigious than Emory but, the reputation ranking is usually lower)…
If you are concerned about USNW rankings, then you are more so concerned about communications and marketing (Emory has always suffered with peer and counselor ratings which suggests a mixture of a) counselors don’t know Emory and b)peers are aware of the bad press from things like the department closures/rearrangements. Emory could also afford to increase its graduation rate I suppose, and I think that has already risen slightly) more so than substantive metrics that really measure what the school is doing to and for students. And yes, communications and marketing is something that needs to be improved. However, they’ve recently hired someone for that and their work is kind of obvious. Go look at most of the grad/professional school websites, most of which have been revamped to something far more eyecatching than before. I believe the ECAS website is next and the admissions website may also receive modifications or another overhaul so moves are being made in that arena already and other media platforms I believe. Emory may also need to try being more aggressive with recruitment and start to pad its incoming statistics some. It need not go the route of WUSTL, Vandy, or Chicago, but maybe at least a Georgetown is a reasonable goal. That way, at least the selectivity metric won’t be the thing working against it. Instead, only more “meaningful” metrics will be what Emory needs to improve.
@bernie12 Thanks for the input, really love hearing what you have to say. Have you ever considered working with/for Emory in some capacity? We need more people like you in administration!
@a1b2c3d5 Agree with you about @bernie12 but first he/she has to learn how to use more paragraph breaks…
Yes, I must lol. But I mainly just try to rant/type and get off of here lol.
@bernie12 I completely agree with your discussion of outcomes. I am a Duke graduate (and therefore biased) but it is worth pointing out that Duke has had phenomenal outcomes over the past few years. Just last year we were affiliated with a Nobel laureate and a couple of Rhodes scholars. That’s nothing to scoff at!
If Emory wants to be a top 10 school it’s going to have to invest in recruiting Nobel calibre faculty and Rhodes calibre students away from schools like Stanford and Duke. That’s not going to be easy to do. This is something that Duke’s stakeholders found out the hard way. It took us a long, long time to break into the ranks of the super elite schools that boast multiple Nobel laureates on faculty.
@NerdyChica : a) D-1 schools seem to have an advantage with Rhodes (many times athletes of some sort, varsity or not, seem to get it) so I’m not betting on that, but we did get one this past round whereas “certain schools with abnormally high SAT scores” (as in higher than Duke and Stanford) did not…no tea no shade.
Emory currently “thinks” it has the infrastructure to handle that level of a faculty member, and can handle super high caliber ones indeed, but Nobel Level I don’t think is supported yet. Aside from physical and technological infrastructure, you also need a much “tougher” environment more welcoming to that sort of intensity in graduate divisions (the support of such research) and in the intellectual environment. In 2007, an article in Emory’s “Academic Exchange” (faculty members discuss different issues at Emory and that issue was on “measuring up”) had one faculty member mentioning how Emory’s attempt to maintain an extremely friendly and ultra-cordial intellectual environment may hinder the integration of a faculty member at that high of a level (basically that other faculty members may not mesh well with that or those folks and it would disrupt the more “pleasant” vibe).
As for students: Must enhance undergraduate areas that most super elites are *or like Duke, have become) great at that we currently are not such as: physics, math, and economics (no! it is not okay for Emory to use the b-school as the substitute to pick up the slack for the weak econ. dept. You actually need consistently rigorous econ. courses that manages to not lose most top students to business school majors/concentrations. Duke getting away from the super duper pre-professionalism it had and gaining much more ground in placing students in academia probably really helped its standing) and to more effectively demonstrate why and how its UG education in things such as the life sciences and various humanities and social sciences is so strong. I’ve seen the marketing and good press for creative writing and English take off, but what about the other fields? Other elite schools are not afraid to get out there and remind students why they may want to choose their strong depts over those are at other seemingly comparable schools. Emory also needs revitalization of special academic opps and programs for newly admitted and highly motivated and talented freshmen (not the scholars program).
Most super elites either have super high level courses to cater to those folks or special learning communities or opps. to attract them and keep them intellectually challenged. This mechanism is spotty at Emory and that is lesser so the case for places like Duke and Hopkins at this stage of their development. Duke for example has nicely tiered STEM classes in most depts and other special opps for incoming freshman. Places like NU and Princeton have Integrated Science Tracks, Penn the VIPER program, I can go one for many schools ranked above 15 or so. Emory merely has an honors math course which just started this year, freshman organic, which every elite has, and the voluntary core, which is indeed very interesting. I have a friend that says something else is in the work pertaining to the liberal arts (linked to the undergraduate portion of the Institute of Liberal Arts, a dept. Emory is/was quite known for really good and quite unusual at)…but that sort of thing should have happened a while ago…Emory actually looked more like higher tier schools for half my time there than it does now and I think that’s problematic.
Point is: You’re right…this stuff takes tons of thought, work, and investments in the correct areas. Takes far more than temporary fixes to game the rankings. Too many people are looking for instant and false gratification. The fortunate thing about Emory is that it hasn’t managed to trick students into thinking it is better than what it actually is by climbing the ranks and doing things like raise scores too quickly which means you have a kind of less complacent student body in terms of demanding changes when needed. That’s always a start and seems to have served Duke well (students there seemed to always demand more in terms of becoming “actually” better from what I’ve read. Being ranked super high was not enough. Just because Duke students are quite happy clearly didn’t make them sheepish or oblivious).
^ You make some great points. I think what Emory needs to do is focus on making a couple of departments truly world class. Duke did that with its English department and med school in the second half of the 19th century and currently boasts world class biochemistry, BME, materials science, and mathematics departments. I think Emory can become a major player in global health or maybe immunology. A targeted effort to improve certain departments will add luster to the entire university. Is Emory poised to become a world leader in any academic discipline? You also have the good fortune of being located in Atlanta. I’m sure some top notch scholars would be interested in moving there.
I’d also argue that marketing does begin to matter once your product is already world class. Chicago languished in relative obscurity for close to a couple of decades before being revitalized by a marketing push. Emory should work on both fronts simultaneously! Also, is the endowment still comprised almost exclusively of Coca Cola stock?
Already is in public health naturally (school opened in 1990 and is consistently ranked in top 10 near much older, more prestigious peers) and is also really well known for certain areas of immunology (again, I think Emory needs more centers to become even better) like vaccines. Has top programs in molecular and systems pharmacology which has likely led (along with help of the chemistry department and the cancer center) to Emory being ultra high on the drug discovery list (as in number of patents or drugs making it to the market. Just behind the UC-system for example). All of the biological graduate programs are gaining more attention because the grant writing course hosted by them resulted in Emory having the most grad. students earn NIH grants I believe. Things like English/Creative Writing, Biology, and NBB (Emory has a ridiculous primate research center so the behavioral biology part is about as respected as the more hardcore neuroscience part), and some others such as political science. However, for English, I don’t think the grad. entity is as renowned. Emory has much work to do in order to grow and enhance its graduate school. Its endowment is really low for example. The force of the graduate school is relatively new at Emory. You have to remember that Emory was indeed more of a liberal arts model in the 1980s and early 90s. A certain president(s) decided to take it in the direction of a research university only after that period. If Emory can continue to grow its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and not just the professional schools (recently Public Health has been enjoying lots of success, and do to USNews changing its metrics, the nursing school just hit the top 10 and will likely stay near it for a while. That will help as before, it was only top 10 among private schools and was more like 25-30 overall). The Business school, even at the graduate level has been surprising many lately with lots of good press from extremely competitive performances in many areas with several much more famous peer schools (I think the new Dean is quite ambitious and knows what she is doing by expanding its influence into healthcare).
However, again, the professional schools cannot do it alone. But again, another issue with Emory is that its excellence in certain areas is obvious, but it is kind of too new to get attention for much of it. And it isn’t a school constantly in the spotlight in media sources other than scholarly literature. New excellence will always have a lagging reputation, especially when other more renowned schools overall are also good in the area (even if not as good or roughly equal). NRC for example has some STEM graduate programs in very close proximity to Duke (sometimes tying, like 1-2 below in most categories or slightly ahead), but the reputation indicators are lower.