| ARCHIVED MATERIAL | This page is no longer being reviewed/updated. |
Media InformationMIIS Master's Among Top 20International relations program cited
Copyright © Monterey County Herald. All rights reserved.
Foreign Policy magazine named MIIS to its top 20 master's program list after a survey of international relations faculties at 1,199 U.S. four-year colleges and universities. The findings were published last week in the journal's March-April edition "Inside the Ivory Tower" section. MIIS ranked No. 18, ahead of the University of Southern California and tied with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the list, and "only two schools behind (UC) Berkeley and four schools behind Stanford," said Ed Laurance, dean of the Graduate School of International Policy Studies at MIIS. "We're such a small school, and a niche school," he said, "we're very pleased with that." The Graduate School of International Policy Studies has about 400 of the institute's 700 students, and 20 faculty members, Laurance said. The survey, according to Foreign Policy, included all national research universities, masters-granting institutions and liberal arts colleges, as well as seven military colleges. More than 41 percent of all international relations professors in the United States -- 1,112 -- responded to the survey. Most of the schools ranked ahead of MIIS were members of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, Laurance said. Three members of that group -- Duke University, the University of Minnesota and the University of Washington's Henry Jackson School of International Relations -- were not ranked in the top 20. MIIS is an affiliate member of the association, he said, noting that the only other affiliate school besides MIIS listed in the top 20 was the University of Chicago. Twelve U.S. affiliate members were ranked below MIIS. "I would say that Foreign Policy's poll confirms that MIIS has come of age," said William Potter, director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the institute. "It's nice to be in the company of these very recognizable institutions, and I think we deserve to be in that company." He said the survey identified terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as the two most important foreign policy issues the United States will face during the next 10 years, and these are "the foreign policy areas in which MIIS is best know internationally. "Long before the issues of weapons of mass destruction proliferation and terrorism became household words, MIIS pioneered a curriculum to train the next generation of nonproliferation specialists. It is now internationally recognized as the leader in this field." Even before the Foreign Policy survey was published, MIIS graduates had the reputation in academia and foreign service organizations as "the Monterey Mafia," Laurance said. "Go to Geneva, New York or Washington, and you'll find our graduates. Professors at top-flight schools would have had experience with our students and faculty, and our alumni in the field get noticed, and they're asked where they went to school." The institute has a "huge" placement program that puts its students in the field as part of their studies, he said, noting that 14 students from MIIS went to Nicaragua during winter break, accomplished a development project in a city of 100,000, and got credit for their Spanish-language studies, speaking the language to practice their professional skills. "Very few schools can do that." Top 20 master's programs 1: Georgetown 2: Johns Hopkins 3: Harvard 4: Tufts 5: Columbia 6: Princeton 7: George Washington 8: American University 9: University of Denver 10: Syracuse 11: University of California 12: Tie between University of Chicago, Yale 14: Stanford 15: University of Pittsburgh 16: Tie between University of California, University of Maryland 18: Tie between Monterey Institute of International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 20: University of Southern California Source: Foreign Policy magazine
|