Laurentian cracks top 10 in Maclean's rankings

Dominic Giroux said he's always cautious not to fall in love with the numbers, but the president of Laurentian University said he's pleased with the university's showing in this year's Maclean's magazine annual university rankings.

This year, Laurentian is ranked 10th out of the 19 primarily undergraduate universities in the country, tying with the University of Prince Edward Island.

The top primarily undergraduate university in the country is Mount Allison University, while Nipissing University in North Bay took last place.

In 2013, Laurentian ranked 14th, and just five years ago, the university was ranked 18th in its category. Giroux said Laurentian showed the most improvement of any university in any category this year.

“I'm pleased with this increase of four ranks in the Maclean's rankings,” he said. “I'm always cautious, though, about any ranking, to be honest. I'm mindful that results can fluctuate from one year to the next.”

The rankings are based on 12 performance indicators — student awards, student/faculty ratio, awards per full-time faculty, social sciences and humanities grants, medical/science grants, total research dollars, operating budget, scholarships and bursaries, student services, library expenses, library acquisitions and a reputational survey conducted by Maclean's.

Giroux said often a university's performance is skewed by one indicator or another where they've done very well one year.

But he said he's encouraged Laurentian has improved on eight of the 12 indicators this year, including student awards, student services and national reputation.

The university's biggest increase this year was for medical/science grants, from ninth position to fifth in its category.

Three years ago, as Laurentian created its 2012-2017 strategic plan, it took into account the Maclean's rankings, among others.

One of the strategic plan's goals was to crack the top in Maclean's, a goal it seems to have reached this year.

“I think there's opportunity to continue to improve, but again, I want to be cautious — we could slip by a rank or two next year,” Giroux said.

Under its strategic plan, the university started making making investments in areas such as student services, which is tracked by Maclean's. Faculty recruitment efforts have also paid off in more professors winning national awards.

“It's gratifying to see that many of those areas where we've made deliberate plans and resourced it accordingly are leading to some measurable progress in key indicators,” Giroux said.

The one place where Laurentian ranked last in its category was social sciences and humanities grants.

Giroux said it can be very difficult for professors to receive national grants, and when the success rate is low, they aren't as motivated to apply.

He said the university has had much more success when it comes to receiving medical and science grants.

But with the government's recent announcement that Laurentian's grad spaces will jump by 75 by 2017-2018 — something the university had long fought for — Giroux said he's hopeful social sciences and humanities grants will increase, too.

He said the university is introducing graduate programs in indigenous relations and governance and sustainable northern development.

“Obviously with graduate programs there is greater research intensity that comes along with it,” Giroux said.

Laurentian is also ninth in its category when it comes to student-faculty ratio — roughly where it sat for the past few years — whereas in 2011, it was in third.

“There has been a reduction in the faculty complement when we had a historic deficit,” Giroux said.

“But in Ontario we still have the best student-faculty ratio. I'm comfortable with the fact that we have a very good student-faculty ratio, because as demonstrated, that's not just in our category, it's
across three categories.”

For more on Maclean's university rankings, pick up a copy of the magazine at a local newsstand, or visit www.macleans.ca.