For the second year in a row, Laurentian University has ranked 11th place out of 19 primarily undergraduate Canadian universities in the Maclean's university rankings.
The highest-ranked university in this category in this year's edition of the magazine is Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, while Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia is the lowest-ranked.
Nipissing University in North Bay ranked 16th this year, up slightly from its 17th place rank in 2017.
Laurentian has maintained its middle-of-the-pack ranking for several years now. As previously mentioned, it also ranked 11th in 2017, it was at 10th in 2016, 11th in 2015 and 10th in 2014.
Going back a decade, Laurentian was toward the end of the list of universities in its category, if not dead last.
“Given the challenges that all of the northern institutions are facing around demographics and pressures that puts on budgets, we're happy that we're able to maintain that 11th place,” said Laurentian's interim president, Pierre Zundel.
“We've seen a lot of growth, of course, compared to where we were 10 years ago, and that we're able to maintain that is good.”
But Zundel said he actually doesn't put too much emphasis on the Maclean's rankings, as it's just one data source about how the university is doing.
“We take it seriously, but we don't get too excited about whether we're going up or down a little,” he said.
As usual, there's both good and bad news for Laurentian in this year's Maclean's university rankings.
Last year, Laurentian placed second for total research dollars, and this year it has moved to the top of the list to first place — the only first-place ranking our local university received.
“This was one of the areas of focus in our last strategic plan,” Zundel said. “It's an area of focus in our current strategic plan as well.”
Being successful in research funding proposals is part of the university's “maturing and development,” and allows graduate students to be able to complete their studies, he said.
“That's really very good news for us that we're able to move in that way,” Zundel said.
Laurentian, of course, just opened its new, $30 million Cliff Fielding Research, Innovation and Engineering Building last month, which gives these researchers a state-of-the-art place to do their work.
This year's Maclean's university rankings edition actually features a four-page-long story on Ontario's Indigenous Mentorship Network, a summer school to nurture new generations of scholars to conduct culturally-relevant research on health problems identified by First Nation, Inuit and Métis communities.
The summer school was held at Laurentian University this year, and many local researchers are featured in the article.
Zundel also points out that Laurentian has seen a small improvement in its reputational survey ranking, where it moved from 15th last year to 13th this year. This survey is sent out by Maclean's to university faculty and senior administrators, high school guidance counsellors and businesspeople across the country.
“It means that they are noticing what's going on here and saying that they have a positive perception of it,” Zundel said. “That is something that is important to us.”
Laurentian's worst ranking this year was in social sciences and humanities grants, where it has maintained its 18th place ranking for the past two years.
“That was a bit of a surprise for us,” Zundel said.
“What we're seeing on the ground is actually very positive in that social sciences and humanities area. We've gotten great grants this year from faculty members who didn't have them before. So we're really pleased about that.
“We've got somebody focused on helping our researchers and our faculty members preparing proposal. I think we're going to see some improvement there in the long run.”
In the area of student satisfaction, Laurentian has dropped significantly in recent years — from 13th place in 2016 to 16th in 2017 to 17th this year.
Zundel said this ranking is “of concern” for him because students are at the heart of what the university does, and he and staff members will try to “get their heads around” what's behind this poor result.
“You have to understand these things are a snapshot on a particular day where people are surveyed,” he said.
As for what it's doing to improve student satisfaction, Zundel said construction of a new student centre — a joint project with Laurentian's student associations — is currently underway.
“We continue to work at things like orientation so students are better prepared when they arrive,” he said.
“We had very significant changes to our orientation program this year. Our eye is very closely on this one, and we will be focusing on some things that going forward to improve it.”
