The University of Montana and Montana State University Earn High Ranking Among World’s Universities for Research and Developmement Excellence

Officials at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, one of the oldest institutions of higher education in China, have ranked the top 500 universities in world for academics and research in 2004.

The University of Montana comes in at 378 on the list, ahead of U.S. counterparts such as the University of Nevada-Reno, the University of Wyoming, Utah State University, Auburn University, Boston College and Brigham Young University-Provo. Montana State University landed at 436 on the list.

"It’s interesting to see how well we fared," said Daniel Dwyer, UM vice president for research and development. "I think our ranking shows that — even though we are tucked away in the mountains of Montana — world-class teaching and research is going on here."

The Shanghai list can be found online at http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2004/2004Main.htm. It ranks universities by several indicators of academic or research importance. Among these are alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes, highly cited researchers, articles published in the journals Nature and Science, and academic performance with respect to institution sizes.

Dwyer examined the databases used to formulate the list, and found UM scored points for educating Harold Urey, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934. Urey earned a bachelor of science degree in zoology from UM in 1917. Then he did groundbreaking work on atomic structure, absorption spectra and the molecular structure. From 1940-45 he also was director of war research for the U.S. Atomic Bomb Project. UM has a lecture hall named in his honor.

Dwyer said UM also scored points for its world ranking from a highly cited papers database, which mentions current UM researchers Tom Martin and Steve Running. UM scientists have had an unprecedented number of papers published in Science and Nature in recent years.

According to the Shanghai list, the top three universities in the world are Harvard and Stanford in the United States and Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

Contact: Daniel Dwyer, UM vice president for research and development, [email protected] http://www.umt.edu/research/ (406) 243-6670.

Contact: Thomas J. McCoy – MSU Vice President for Research, Creativity, and Technology Transfer [email protected] http://www.montana.edu/wwwvr/index.html Phone: 406-994-2891

http://news.umt.edu/index.asp?sec=1&too=100&eve=8&dat=1/13/2005&npa=586