Eight top-10 disciplines, including No. 1 in wildlife science

As the morning sky turned from darkness to gun-metal grey, Oregon State University professor Douglas Robinson was already hard at work at Finley Wildlife Refuge, counting geese honking and flying from McFadden Marsh to forage in nearby fields.

“This is typical of most projects that people in our department do,” Robinson said.

But he’s doing a lot more than just monitoring wildlife. Robinson is part of a $750,000 study that aims to attach tiny cell-phones to feathered creatures to track them, and helping with a $2.5 million project on the differences in birds from the tropics and North America.

That research is partly why OSU’s wildlife science staff was top-ranked in the nation for graduate program faculty productivity, according to a recent study.

“We have a good group of very active faculty,” Robinson said. “It’s nice to be coming out on top when you’re compared to some pretty great programs in the country.”

OSU had eight top 10 disciplines overall in faculty productivity, which was the most for an Oregon institution, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The University of Oregon had four top-10 rankings, while Portland State University had one. Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland had three top-10 disciplines.

“A pretty good showing for OSU on this,” said Todd Simmons, OSU assistant vice president for university advancement.

The study, done by Academic Analytics —a company partly owned by the State University of New York — ranked 375 universities and colleges in 173 different categories.

OSU also ranked second in fisheries science; fourth in zoology; fifth in forest resources and forestry; fifth in plant pathology; seventh in pharmacy; seventh in agricultural economics; and ninth in science education.

“I’m delighted. … I’m totally dumbfounded we got both one and two,” said Dan Edge, head of the OSU Department of Fisheries and Wildlife.

Edge noted that the rankings considered both tenure-track staff and courtesy professors, who might teach and have office space at OSU, but are employees of federal or state agencies or private companies.

The ranking looks at the number of professors in a program, and takes the books and articles they’ve written, the number of times scholars have cited them, and the awards and grant funding they’ve received.

In 2006, OSU was in the top 10 in zoology (sixth), agricultural economics (seventh) and plant pathology (eighth).