Case Western Reserve’s health law program leapt to fifth in the nation and pediatrics climbed to 14th in U.S. News & World Report’s annual graduate and professional school rankings released Tuesday. Those gains, coupled with a seven-point jump, to 30th, for the Weatherhead School of Management’s Part-Time MBA, signaled the university’s ability to make meaningful gains even as some programs struggle.
Last fall Max Mehlman, chair of the school’s Law-Medicine Center, published the highly praised book, Transhumanist Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares: The Promise and Peril of Genetic Engineering, and also won a major grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the implications of using genetic science in the military. Meanwhile the center’s co-director, Sharona Hoffman, has published several influential journal articles regarding electronic health records and, more recently, the drug shortage crisis. Finally, center associate director Jessica Berg, published and presented on an analysis of the role of social media postings in assessing treatment preferences for patients no longer able to declare their desires.
The law school also had another top-ranked program, this one in international law, which dipped two slots from last year, to 13th in the nation. This May, Michael Scharf, the school’s associate dean for Global Legal Studies, launches one of the university’s first two MOOCs (for Massive Online Open Online Course), “Introduction to International Criminal Law.”
The university’s School of Medicine also slipped slightly, from 24th last year to 25th this year, despite improving its overall score by two points (to 63 of 100). Nevertheless, the school’s family medicine maintained its standing at 12th in the country, while pediatrics moved up two notches over 2012’s standing.
The Weatherhead School of Management, meanwhile, held its overall position at 52nd for the second year, although the 2012 ranking represented a 28-point jump over the previous year. Weatherhead School organizational behavior professor Richard Boyatzis is teaching the university’s other MOOC, “Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence.”
Some of the magazine’s rankings are calculated only every few years. Social work, for example, saw its last update in 2012, when the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences’ program climbed to No. 9. Similarly, U.S. News last ranked nursing in 2011, when the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing stood at 15th. The magazine does not rank dental programs.
Finally, the Case School of Engineering fell four slots to 51st, and the biomedical engineering program slipped from 10th to 14th.
For more information on the rankings, visit the U.S. News website.