Today, we unveil the 2016 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings. Simply being included in this list of 200 scholars is an honor, given the tens of thousands who might qualify. The ranked scholars include the top 150 finishers from last year, along with 50 "at-large" nominees chosen by the 26-member selection committee (see yesterday's post for a list of committee members and all other requisite details). The metrics, as explained yesterday, recognize university-based scholars in the U.S. who are doing the most to influence educational policy and practice. The rubric reflects both a scholar's larger body of work and their impact on the public discourse last year.
Please note that all university affiliations reflect a scholar's institution as of December 2015.
Only university-based researchers are eligible for the rankings. (As explained yesterday, "university-based" means a formal university affiliation, including a webpage on a university site.) After all, the point is to encourage universities to pay more attention to the stuff of scholarly participation in the public square. The term "university-based" provides some useful flexibility. For instance, Margaret "Macke" Raymond runs the evaluation outfit CREDO. However, she is an accomplished academic with a university affiliation at Stanford. So she's included. The line is admittedly blurry, but it seems to work reasonably well. The bottom line is that this is a serious but inevitably imperfect attempt to nudge universities, foundations, and professional associations to do more to cultivate, encourage, and recognize contributions to the public debate.
See this related story. Read the full article on the Education Week website.
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