September 28, 2010 - The National Research Council (NRC) has released results of its extensive, five-year study of 83 doctoral programs in the field of communication. The reports reveals The Ohio State University' s School of Communication to be firmly situated among the elite communication programs in the country based on several metrics. The OSU School of Communication faculty achieved an absolute rank of #1 in research activity (e.g., average number of peer-reviewed publications per faculty member). In addition, the School as a whole achieved a #3 ranking in the field based on its achievements along twenty different criteria - these criteria reflected faculty research (e.g., % of faculty with grants), quality of graduate students (e.g., GRE scores), graduate student support (e.g., % of students with full financial support), and a broad range of diversity measures (e.g., % of female faculty, % of female students).
The extensive analyses conducted on the NRC data identified only five programs which could state with 90% certainty that they rank as one of the top 10 programs in the field. Joining OSU's School of Communication on this list are Stanford University's Department of Communication, the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Journalism & Mass Communication, and the Speech Communication program at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign (now the Department of Communication). This is truly elite company and the NRC rankings are a reflection of the significant advancements made by The Ohio State's School of Communication.
It is important to place the NRC rankings in some additional context. The 2010 NRC report is based on data collected only up through the 2005-2006 academic year. OSU's School of Communication has seen its level of research productivity grow exponentially since that time. A quick review of the broad range of works generated of late by the School 's faculty and graduate students and placed in the field's top peer-reviewed journal outlets (see http://www.comm.ohio-state.edu/AboutUs/Publications.aspx?ID=1) offers much hope that the School of Communication is maintaining its steady progress toward becoming the single best place in the country to study communication.
