For colleges and universities, being among the ranks of graduate programs highlighted by U.S.News & World Report has become a widely recognized benchmark. For the first time in recent years, Auburn University 's College of Education appears in the publication's 2006 list of America 's top 100 graduate education programs.

Interim Dean Bonnie White attributed the college's placement as No. 82 to a number of factors.

"From an institutional perspective, our conceptual framework plays a central role in preparing competent, committed and reflective professionals," White said. "This ranking certainly speaks to our long-term efforts of being distinctive in our academic, research and outreach endeavors.

"We have also adopted the concept that education is a keystone in building a better future for all," she continued. "By developing that culture within our college, we make decisions that best benefit our students and the education they receive."

The College of Education was the only Alabama college or university to be ranked in the U.S. News list of top 100 graduate programs. The publication considered graduate programs at 190 colleges and university across the country in its 2006 rankings.

The rankings are derived using a number of assessments made by U.S. News of programs' student selectivity, faculty resources and research activity. Twelve quality measures in four major categories are evaluated, resulting in a weighted score for each institution:

• Quality Assessment, which accounts for 40 percent of a program's score, is derived from surveys completed by deans of education schools and colleges, and a sampling of school superintendents, in the fall of 2004. These educational administrators ranked each school on a 1-to-5 scale, and each graduate program received a total average survey score.
• Student Selectivity represents 18 percent of the total rating. The college's graduate acceptance rate is considered, as well as the mean verbal and quantitative Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores for entering doctoral students.
• Faculty Resources include the college's student-faculty ratio, faculty holding awards and editorships, the number of doctoral degrees in education granted to 2004 graduates, and percent of the college's degree-seeking graduate students in doctoral programs. This section accounts for 12 percent of the college's overall score.
• Research Activity evaluates the level at which the college's faculty is engaged in external research, and accounts for the remaining 30 percent of the college's score. This section considers the college's total research expenditures, average expenditures per faculty member, and percent of faculty engaged in research.