In a survey evaluating faculty productivity in American universities, five programs or departments in the George R. Brown School of Engineering ranked in the top five and two were number one. One non-engineering program, Religion/Religious Studies, ranked fifth nationally.

“Ever since I came to Rice I’ve been impressed with our hard-working and dedicated faculty. The results of this survey back up my contention that the George R. Brown School of Engineering features some of the finest faculty in the country,” said Dean Sallie Keller-McNulty.

Academic Analytics, a for-profit company partly owned by the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has compiled its third annual Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index — a ranking of graduate programs at research universities based on what the company purports to be the first objective measurement of per-capita scholarly accomplishment.

Academic Analytics took the number of professors in a given program, the number of books and journal articles they wrote, the number of times other scholars have cited them, and the awards, honors, and grant dollars they have received, and applied an algorithm to the combined data. Go to http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i12/12a01001.htm for a story on the ranking in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

In Electrical Engineering, Rice finished first, with 92 percent of the 36 faculty showing a journal publication. Computer Science also finished in first place, with 96 percent of 24 faculty showing a journal publication.

In Computer Engineering, Rice was tied for fourth place with Stanford University, with 92 percent of 36 faculty members publishing.

Agricultural/Biological Engineering and Bioengineering finished fifth, with 96 percent of the 24 faculty members showing a journal publication.

In Computational Science, Rice finished 10th, with 83 percent of 12 faculty publishing.

The only ranked non-engineering program included in the Academic Analytics survey, Religion/Religious Studies, placed fifth, with 73 percent of the 11 faculty showing a book publication and 18 percent showing a journal publication.