UNLV graduate schools earn high rankings

Friday, April 1, 2005 | 11:05 a.m.

U.S. News and World Report has ranked two of UNLV's graduate schools in its Top 100 listings, including a first-time appearance for the College of Education and a second listing for the Boyd School of Law.

Both schools also earned top 25 rankings for specialty designations in the 2005 Best Graduate Schools edition, which officially goes on sale Monday. The specialty designations are voted on by deans at other schools and are thus especially prestigious, UNLV officials said.

The College of Education broke into the top 100 at No. 82 for its graduate programs in education, according to lists released Thursday by U.S. News. Its program in educational psychology was tied for No. 19 in the nation along with Arizona State University.

"It's incredible," Ralph E. Reynolds, chairman of UNLV's educational psychology department, said of the ranking.

The listing surprised Reynolds, because even though he was pursuing a national ranking, his department has only offered doctoral programs since 2001.

"We weren't ranked on the list at all four years ago; we weren't even on the horizon."

After being ranked No. 82 in the nation in 2004, only one year after receiving accreditation, UNLV's Boyd Law slipped slightly in the rankings to No. 90, according to the lists. U.S. News ranks 179 American Bar Association accredited schools.

The law school, however, earned three top 25 listings out of nine ranked specialties, including No. 7 in the country for its legal writing program, No. 15 in conflict resolution and No. 22 in clinical training.

All are areas of focus for the eight-year-old law school, Morgan said, as Boyd offers additional courses in those areas and offers additional programming and resources through the privately funded Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution and the Thomas and Mack Legal Clinic.

Morgan said that he takes all of U.S. News rankings with "many grains of salt" because everything depends on how your school stacks up against other schools according to U.S. News' rankings.

"We are a better law school this year than we were last year, which goes to show that the rankings are interesting," Morgan said.

At the same time, Morgan said he is "very glad to be in the top 100."

U.S. News ranks graduate schools on several different criteria, including peer and professional assessments, selectivity, job placement and/or graduation rates.

The education criteria also looks at research dollars brought into the university, and the law school criteria includes bar exam passage results.

The UNLV law school rivals Ivy League schools like Harvard University in selectivity, admitting only 11.6 percent of applicants compared with 11.3 percent at Harvard, according to U.S. News. UNLV received about 2,500 applicants for 150 spots in the fall, Morgan said.

UNLV also rivals higher placed schools on its student and faculty ratio, but its "Achilles' heal" is its bar passage results, Morgan said.

According to the U.S. News listings, UNLV has the lowest bar passage rate out of all 103 universities in the top tier, at 57 percent. Nevada, consequently, is said to have one of the hardest bars in the country and also has one of the lowest bar passage rates, with only 65 percent total passing the bar.

"We're working very hard to try to improve that," Morgan said, adding that the school has hired a full-time faculty member to work with students on academic support and test-taking skills, and has a new bar committee to review the school's curriculum to make sure students are learning what they need to pass the bar.

"We don't want to make it a bar review kind of law school, ... but we are trying to do more internally to better prepare our students for the bar."

Both Morgan and Tom Pierce, interim Dean for the College of Education, credited their faculty for the schools' high rankings. Both schools have made a point to hire nationally known scholars.

The education psychology department, for example, includes editors for three of the top journals in that field, as well as several professors who serve on editorial boards for various journals.

That gives UNLV professors a lot of influence over "what is considered good," and brings national attention to the program, said Reynolds, a nationally known scholar himself and co-director of UNLV's Center on Evaluation and Assessment.

The U.S. News rankings will bring the department and the college more attention, Pierce said.

"I think the recognition is a great reward for the hard work that has been going on here for many years," Pierce said.

At the law school, the specialty areas honored are all directed by top scholars Morgan said he "stole" from other universities. For example, Morgan stole Jean Sternlight, director of the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution, from the University of Missouri a year-and-a-half ago.

Missouri is ranked No. 2 in the nation for conflict resolution.

Terrill Pollman, director of the school's legal writing program and Annette Appell, associate dean for clinical studies, are also nationally known, Morgan said, and have helped recruit other leading scholars to the school.

UNLV President Carol Harter said excellent faculty and graduate students are key to the success of the institution in her praise of both the law school and the College of Education.

The "outside verification" from U.S. News shows that the university's investments over the last 10 years "are starting to pay off," Harter said.

"It shows the increases in excellence across the university."