UNC ranks 30th worldwide among all universities

UNC-Chapel Hill has been ranked 30th in the world in the 2018 Academic Ranking of World Universities by the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, moving up three slots from last year's 33rd-place ranking. Out of public universities in the United States, UNC is ranked ninth.

“It's certainly recognizing the expertise and the earned reputation of our faculty, particularly in the natural, social and biomedical sciences,” said Katie Bowler Young, director of UNC Global Relations.

The ShanghaiRanking measures universities on a variety of factors, including the number of Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals won by faculty and number of faculty papers published in reputable publications.

Among UNC’s programs, the dental school was ranked second worldwide. Other top programs include public health and statistics at fourth, pharmacy at fifth and nursing at sixth.

“We are the highest ranked of all of UNC's programs, and the rankings confirm what we know to be true, which is, this is an amazing dental school with special programs and special people that work really, really hard every day to get us that ranking,” said Scott De Rossi, dean of the UNC School of Dentistry.

The UNC School of Nursing improved from 10th place in the world rankings last year to sixth place for 2018. Beyond the number of Nobel Prizes faculty won and papers published, assistant nursing school professor Jennifer Alderman believes the School is special because of the professors that foster a caring spirit.

“We have amazing students from diverse backgrounds,” Alderman said. “We also have tremendous faculty who are world-renowned in the field. I think also, we care. We're nurses so we care, and I think that makes a big difference with how we run things and how we care for our students. We care for each other.”

Alderman said the school continuously works to improve its curriculum.

“Our curriculum, it had been a while since it was revised, and we really needed to update it for the 21st century, including increasing global initiatives and increasing the diversity of our program and diversity of our faculty,” Alderman said.

De Rossi said the UNC School of Dentistry is on a similar upward trajectory. For the next few years, he said he wants increasing global partnerships to be the greatest area of improvement for the school.

“That would provide an opportunity to recruit even higher-ranked faculty, very prestigious faculty from across the globe," De Rossi said. "It would expand our research portfolio and our research in a way that would be publishing in really top journals demonstrating that our dental school is the global model of oral health education and care."

Young said the University hopes to continue bringing a global emphasis in the future. The FedEx Global Education Center is a large part of allowing students to learn about perspectives that may be different from their own, she said.

“In this current Campaign for Carolina, one of the priorities (that) has been set forth is around cultivating a campus in which a global mindset is expected and nurtured,” Young said. “I think there are a lot of people on campus who have spent their careers dedicated to topics around international education and global areas of study, and it's very exciting to have that kind of support and commitment from the University.”

university@dailytarheel.com