<p>I keep coming across rankings for undergrad and grad Chem Eng programs, and see UW is right up there with MIT/Princeton/ ect... How did a public university get such high honors?</p>
<p>Just look at the accomplishents of those professors at UW. They are among the best. I think Chem Eng employment track record is very good. I personally know of a couple of very good graduates before I knew the university.</p>
<p>Some early UW profs basically wrote the book on CHE. UW many departments that compete with other top schools. Biochemistry, psychology, economics, sociology and many others.</p>
<p>Flagship U’s generally have the size and research dollars to put together the outstanding departments. These schools were set up to be the research places for this. The federal and state governments have given money to insure places for research and education to be. Research land grant and sea grant institutions, for example. Once you have a good core it is easier to draw faculty and money to enhance it- the rich get richer. Look at the history of the top private research U’s- you will see huge donations that made their status possible. In the case of the prominent east coast private institutions they have had the benefit of receiving donations for hundreds of years- and at the cost of their public U’s. Those private U’s were in place before states set up anything equivalent- the reputations of the Ivy league schools drew funding instead of the flagship U’s. In California there are public U’s with equal standing as the timing was different than on the old east coast.</p>
<p>It is less common for private U’s to be able to support the very costly science and engineeering programs. When you look at overall college rankings you are seeing the combined strengths of all departments, including the cheaper to maintain liberal arts ones. You are also seeing the mission of a college affecting those rankings- public U’s are expected to educate all of the students of their state, not just a select portion of them. They are also expected to provide graduates in needed occupations, unlike private schools. You take a stellar core of the public flagship U and add in many other layers that diminish the overall school in the eyes of the ranking organizations. You typically won’t even find agriculture departments at most private colleges, for example.</p>
<p>Wisconsin has traditionally valued education at all levels (the first US kindergarten was in Watertown) so for the state to have spent money for college departments at UW to develop top departments is not surprising. Once a department is considered good more money becomes available to give the department an even better chance of being one of the best as other sources are willing to donate money. A willingness to pay professors brings in top quality ones, who then bring in grant money from public and private sources. Hopefully current economic pressures won’t undermine this much.</p>
<p>The UW Chemistry department is also highly ranked- giving a good foundation to chemical engineering students. The Chemistry department is also known nationally for its chemical education efforts- this influences the teaching of undergrads as well.</p>
<p>Thanks for the feedback. I am the parent of a student who is considering it among other schools (pub and private). I am also an engineer (not chemEng though ) and educated in one of those east coast private schools, and to be frank, I have never heard of UW’s ranking in engineering or science before until now. It sounds like a lovely big state school with plenty of spirit but to be in the top 10 in Chem Eng year after year is hard to believe. There are 49 other states that have similar universities and I don’t see their names on these rankings so it is puzzling. That said, I like to think I have an open mind and I am headed out there for a few days to see why it is so great. I hope it is as good as their rankings indicate as it would result in an outstanding value. A top ten education for the price of a state school?, even for out-of-state students it represents a great deal. Besides, I have never been to Wisconsin and would like to see what it looks like.</p>
<p>Thanks again.</p>
<p>Maybe this will help from the Columbia U history of ChE at Columbia</p>
<p>" A fundamentals-based approach, exemplified by the classic textbook on transport phenomena published by Bird, Stewart and Lightfoot at the University of Wisconsin, became the standard for chemical engineering education in the United States. Detailed mathematical modeling became a well-accepted tool for this purpose, and an integral part of chemical engineering training." </p>
<p>[Transport</a> Phenomena (book) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Phenomena]Transport”>Transport phenomena - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>UW also gave the first PhD in ChE in the US and UW trained PhD’s went on to lead many other departments in the US.</p>
<p>
This is an odd comment to make, especially with respect to engineering programs. Outside of MIT, Stanford, and CalTech the best engineering programs are usually to be found at public U’s. UC-Berkeley, UIUC, Minnesota, Georgia Tech, Michigan, Purdue, UT-Austin as well as UW all have almost cross-the-board top 20 engineering departments. In Chem E, UC-Berkeley, Minnesota, UW, and Texas usually figure into the top 10 and have done so for decades.</p>
<p>This would seem to be the bread-and-butter of public U’s: maintaining a well-trained pool of engineers and technologists for their states’ economies. At least it would be the easiest part of the mission to cost-justify.</p>
<p>“…Never heard of UW high ranking in science”</p>
<p>Really. I nearly missed that. Are you aware at all of science rankings anywhere? Do you know which school has been in the top 5 in total research funding for the last couple decades if not longer and currently is one of three schools with over $1 Billion in research funding?
Had a professor make the cover of Time–twice
“Thomson is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the recipient of numerous awards and prizes. He was on the cover of TIME magazine’s “America’s Best in Science in Medicine” feature in 2001 for his work with human embryonic stem cells,[11] and again in 2008 when the magazine named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people in the world for his derivation of human induced pluripotent stem cells.[12] In 2011, Thomson was co-recipient, with Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, of the King Faisal International Prize and the Albany Medical Center Prize.”</p>
<p>Look up Warfarin in the dictionary–one of the greatest life saving drugs ever invented. </p>
<p>[Warfarin</a> | Define Warfarin at Dictionary.com](<a href=“Warfarin]Warfarin Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com”>Warfarin Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com)</p>
<p>And many more discoveries way too numerous to list.</p>
<p>Your east coast private school is not likely ranked anywhere near the top public schools in engineering- if it were one of the very few private schools such as MIT your professors would have been going to conferences with their peers at the public U’s mentioned. </p>
<p>A major problem on the east coast is that there were established private schools that dominated college education before public colleges were begun- many rich/powerful alumni gave/give to them instead of insisting their states have comparable flagship schools.</p>