New Jersey Institute of Technology on Thursday said it once again achieved an R1 status — the highest designation — by the Carnegie Classification.
First published in 1973, the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education is the measure used by rating organizations and governmental agencies to describe colleges and universities. Institutions that grant doctoral degrees are divided into three tiers that represent their level of research activity in terms of research & development expenditures and doctorates awarded, with the coveted R1 indicating “very high research activity.”
NJIT President Joel Bloom noted, “Maintaining the R1 designation is a major achievement for NJIT and is the direct result of our faculty, researchers and staff, as well as the investments we have made to support their research.”
NJIT’s continuing status as an R1 institution demonstrates the university’s sustained growth of research and innovation. NJIT’s ability to secure major research grants will continue to foster transformative discoveries in areas ranging from health care and medicine to sustainable technologies and data analytics. NJIT is one of only 146 universities nationwide to earn the R1 ranking and one of just three R1 universities in New Jersey, joining Princeton University and Rutgers University–New Brunswick.
“NJIT is very proud to have again earned this designation, affirming the strength and capacity of our research programs,” said NJIT Provost and Senior Executive Vice President Fadi Deek. “NJIT’s commitment to high-impact applied research is a cornerstone of our strategic plan. Our efforts in this area have yielded major research grants for our faculty and success for our doctoral programs.”
NJIT’s strategic plan, “Building on a Strong Foundation — NJIT 2025,” names research as one of the university’s five critical priorities and positions it as a driver of other strategic priorities. NJIT’s key objectives in research include promoting collaborative research, fostering innovation and entrepreneurship, and promoting research partnerships with the goal of becoming nationally and internationally recognized for high-impact research.
The university supports research in numerous ways and takes seriously its role in nurturing talent on campus. Since 2010, NJIT has hired 156 new faculty members across STEM and other disciplines and has increased its tenured and tenure-track faculty to over 320, 50% of whom were hired in the last 10 years. These faculty have also developed exciting new courses and programs, including financial technology, data science and cyberpsychology.
Supporting the prodigious growth in research, NJIT is now home to 140 labs, centers and research institutes with the strategic plan guiding the university to play a leading role in five emerging areas of multidisciplinary research — bioscience and bioengineering, data science and management, the environment and sustainability, material science and engineering, and robotics and machine intelligence.
NJIT also offers students the opportunity to conduct research even as undergraduates, and many spend significant time working closely with faculty in these hubs.
