Tuesday, April 8, 2008

UNT master’s programs win national recognition, No. 1 rank

By Elizabeth Knighten of North Texas Daily

Two NT colleges recently received national recognition by U.S. News and World Report for their master's programs. Both programs received a No. 1 ranking in Texas. The School of Library and Information Sciences received a ranking of third place for its master's program in library and information science with a specialization in health informatics.

"Health informatics is the interface of health information, information technology and information management," said Ana Cleveland of the School of Library and Information Sciences faculty. "It's a discipline that emerged in the 1980s."

Cleveland said information is as vital as the operation and decision-making process itself in health care.

"Health informatics or biological information all have a common focus, and that focus is going to be on organization, analysis, management and use of the information in health care," she said.

Health informatics is moving into the biomedical information field, Cleveland said, and the focus as to whether it's going into the biological aspect of health information and genomic medicine has become a forefront for the program.

She also said genomic medicine is very important for the clinician, researcher or consumer.

"The ranking that we have has given visibility to our school and program, as well as for our university," she said.

Cleveland went on to say that the national recognition of the program opens to its graduates. She also said that the goal the school has is to one day make No. 1 on the national list.

The other school recognized is the the department of public administration for its master's program is public administration. The program ranked ninth in the nation.

Bob Bland of the public administration faculty said there were 269 M.P.A programs in the nation that were evaluated and ranked through a peer evaluation process. The process resulted in NT being ranked No. 1 in Texas and number nine in the nation in the area of city management and urban policy.

Bland said that U.S. News and World Report looked at 10 areas of the school's program and city management and urban policy ranked the highest.

In 2004 the program was ranked 10th.

Bland said the programs have become very competitive to rank in the top positions.

"We feel very good about the fact that we don't have a lot of financial discretion that we can invest in helping build our reputation," Bland said, "but the little that we do have we try to use very wisely to try to make sure that our reputation gets out there and our faculty work very hard to maintain the quality of our program."

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