Dr. Nikki Delk (right), assistant professor of biological sciences, directs student Sana Merchant in her lab. Delk's research focuses on cancers that are incurable once they have metastasized.
The 2015 edition of The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, which was released on Feb. 1, included UT Dallas, UT Arlington, Texas Tech, and the University of North Texas in its list of the 115 American universities classified as “Doctoral Universities – Highest Research Activity.”
These four Texas universities thus join UT Austin, Texas A&M, Rice, and the University of Houston in this classification. The Carnegie Classifications for doctoral institutions are issued every five years, and use the terminology Moderate, Higher, and Highest research activity to classify doctoral universities. The classifications are based predominantly on aggregate research expenditures.
Dr. Hobson Wildenthal, UT Dallas president ad interim, in responding to the Carnegie announcement, noted, “Our inclusion in this highest classification of research activity is an expected result of the increased size of the UT Dallas faculty and the commensurate increase in our research funding and expenditures. It is also to be credited to the initiatives launched in 2009 by the Texas Legislature, designed to increase the number of national research universities in Texas.
“Since the Carnegie Classifications are based largely on the aggregate quantity of an institution’s research, it is noteworthy that UT Dallas is much the smallest of the Texas public universities in this Highest class. This testifies to the high research productivity of our distinguished faculty on an individual basis. This change in classification for UT Dallas is merely a milepost in our ongoing strategic plan to build UT Dallas into a research university of the highest quality, one that has true national and international impact.
“The next such milepost that UT Dallas will pass is fulfillment of the last of the criteria set by the Texas Legislature for participation in the National Research University Fund (NRUF). This should occur during the coming biennium. We continue to keep our attention focused on growing a high-quality major national research university. This new classification and the impending NRUF qualification provide only early markers of progress along the way to our much more ambitious longer-term goals. The fundamental values and achievements of UT Dallas continue to be the recruitment of outstanding students and faculty and the creation of the optimum environment for learning, growth, and achievement in which these talented individuals can flourish. All other good things will follow from this focus.”