Psychology department breaks into Top 10 for research funding

For the first time in its history, the University of South Carolina’s psychology department is ranked among the top 10 psychology departments among 650 colleges and universities nationwide for federal research funding.

The ranking is based on a National Science Foundation (NSF) database and reflects annual federally funded research expenditures granted by all federal agencies for fiscal year 2006.

Federal funding is an indicator of the quality of a university’s scholarly research productivity since grant applications to agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NSF and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) undergo a rigorous review process.

The university’s psychology department generated $9.4 million in research grant funding to capture the No. 10 spot in the ranking, moving ahead of universities like the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Texas traditional powerhouses.

In 2003, the department was 64th in the NSF ranking.

Dr. Charles Mactutus, chairman of the department, attributes the increase to the entrepreneurial spirit of many psychology faculty members and to the effects of progressive departmental and central administrative policies.

“The recruitment of 17 of its current 34 tenure-track faculty since 2002, adding new energy, coupled with the talents of the proven senior scholars, provide the strong foundation for our ongoing achievements,” Mactutus said. “A top-notch mentoring program to assist the early-career faculty, along with clear research and teaching incentives, has helped to create the kind of environment in which the department concurrently promotes the undergraduate curriculum and strengthens graduate training, while enhancing scholar activities.”

This ranking comes on the heels of the yearly release of faculty productivity rankings from Academic Analytics, in which the department’s clinical graduate program was ranked among the top 10 nationally for the second consecutive year. Academic Analytics is a private firm that provides data on faculty productivity to universities nationwide.

The NSF rankings can be accessed online at www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf08300/.

The department of psychology has approximately 850 undergraduate psychology majors and is one of the largest departments in the College of Arts and Sciences. In addition to the three traditional psychology graduate programs (clinical-community, experimental and school psychology), the department has developed research themes that include child and family research, health and social disparities, neuroscience and an emerging focus in quantitative psychology. Graduate students from all programs in the psychology department are training in these research-themed areas, with 19 psychology doctoral degrees conferred this past year.

For more information about the university's department of psychology, visit www.cas.sc.edu/psyc/.