By Jackey Locke

The Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science is fourth overall and first in industry partnerships among comprehensive Canadian universities.

The findings are based on Times Higher Education’s (THE) World University Rankings for 2021.

THE uses information obtained from multiple sources to compile rankings and highlights leading universities across various disciplines, including general engineering; electrical and electronic engineering; mechanical and aerospace engineering; civil engineering; and chemical engineering.

More recently, Times Higher Education released its 2022 engineering stats, based on 2021 data, which indicate a sixth-place ranking among the comprehensive Canadian universities, again first in industry partnerships and up to third in the international outlook category.

“While we slipped in the overall ranking, we held our top position in industry partnerships and rose to third place in international outlook,” said Dr. Greg Naterer, dean, Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science.

The most-recent statistics follow a long-term trend of improved rankings for the faculty over the past five years, and are indicative of overall impactful growth.

Since 2018 the faculty’s ranking metrics have improved for research, teaching and citations, with a 25 per cent increase for research, 60 per cent for teaching and 40 per cent for citations.

Times Higher Education rankings are weighted with research, teaching and citation impacts carrying the most weight to the overall scoring, at 30 per cent each. International outlook and industry income account for 7.5 per cent and 2.5 per cent, respectively.

For research, ranking is based on several indicators, including papers by faculty members, research funding to professors and reputation. Teaching includes doctorates-to-bachelor’s degrees ratios, doctorates-to-professors ratios, reputation, institutional income per professor and student-to-professor ratios.

Citation impact is a measure of the average number of times a university’s published work is cited by scholars globally. Dr. Naterer says that all indicators point “upwards.”

“Over the past few years, the faculty’s research intensiveness has increased to become among the highest of engineering schools in Canada in terms of the graduate student-to-faculty ratio,” he said.

“As a measure of the growing impact of our research outcomes, the average number of citations annually to research articles, per professor, has more than tripled since 2012.”

Dr. Octavia A. Dobre, professor, research chair and the faculty’s associate dean (research), is among the faculty’s most impactful researchers in terms of citations (more than 11,000) and h-index (49), according to Google Scholar.

The h-index is a metric that indicates both the productivity and citation impact of publications of a researcher.

Dr. Dobre says the faculty has improved its score and ranking in terms of citations every year – clear evidence of the outstanding research that faculty members, students and post-graduate fellows perform.

“To support our researchers in increasing the visibility and impact of their publications, the Engineering Research Office organizes seminars and panels about publications and monitors the data accuracy under citation databases such as Scopus and Web of Science,” she said.

“It is through the continuous dedication and excellent results of our researchers, as well as our supportive efforts that the citation ranking will continue to increase.”

With files from the Engineering Research Office.