The University of Montana was recently recognized internationally by the Center for World University Rankings for quality of education and training of students as well as the prestige of faculty and quality of their research. Vice President for Research and Creative Scholarship at UM Scott Whittenburg said UM was placed 604 out of universities worldwide, placing them in the top 2.8 percent of more than 22,000 degree-granting institutions of higher education.

"We were ranked in the top three percent in the world in terms of the impact of the publications that come out of our research," Whittenburg said. "The citations, when faculty members publish in scientific journals, when faculty members and researchers at other institutions find that work of interest, they will put it in their own publications and they will site that work that we've done. This is based on citation indices. It shows that the work our faculty are doing are of importance to people at other universities."

Whittenburg said despite worldwide competition, it’s not surprising that UM got the recognition that it did.

"Well, this is actually not surprising for us. We also were recently ranked in the top 300 universities in the world by the Shanghai Rankings and part of that was the impact for journals and the service that we do as a university," Whittenburg said. "Recently we've been ranked quite highly in member of these rankings that do international rankings. We weren't surprised. We know it speaks to the quality of the faculty and the research that's being done by our faculty and our students."

UM President Royce Engstrom was also thrilled to hear the university was once again recognized among the top universities across the globe.

"The research of UM's students and faculty members extends from communities in Montana to locations around the world, and this ranking recognizes the impact of that work."

UM is among 293 institutions in the country to be featured in the 2014 rankings, and was ranked number 177 nationally.

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