Rankings & Achievements

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• The U.S. News & World Report 2018 America’s Best Colleges guide ranked Towson University 10th in the public Regional Universities (North) category, up from 14th last year.
• In addition, TU is 23rd on the U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Colleges for Veterans” rankings and 57th on its “Best Value Schools” ranking.
• Money magazine ranked Towson University among the nation’s Best Colleges, joining Johns Hopkins and University of Maryland, College Park, as the highest-ranked institutions in Maryland.
• Forbes again named Towson University in its 2017 Best Colleges rankings.
• In Diverse Issues in Higher Education, TU holds the No. 43 position in the magazine’s annual Top 100 list of U.S. colleges and universities that have conferred the most bachelor’s degrees on African-Americans. The ranking includes bachelor’s degrees across all disciplines.
• Washington Monthly ranked Towson University 64th — up 20 spots from 84th one year ago — among the 632 colleges and universities surveyed for its National Universities-Master’s category. Towson University was the highest ranked public university in Maryland.
• TU also ranked 56th out of 363 U.S. public and private universities on the Washington Monthly magazine’s 2017 “Best Bang for the Buck – Northeast” list.

Campus-Wide

• Towson University's 2013 Part 1 Uniform Crime Statistics were the lowest — 5.2 per 1,000 students — among the University System of Maryland's 10 campuses.
• Towson University is Maryland's largest producer of teachers.
• More than 65 percent of the classes offered at Towson enroll fewer than 29 students.
• The Towson University Police Department has received the Governor’s Award for Crime Prevention for 32 consecutive years, more than any other higher education institution in the state.
• More than five percent of the total electricity used at Towson University comes from renewable resources. Ten percent of Towson University’s solid waste is incinerated and used to produce electricity for use on campus.
• Towson University's radio station, WTMD FM (89.7), boasts one of the largest listening audiences of any public radio station in Maryland and won an Emmy in 2013 for its Concert for the Chesapeake Bay.
• Towson University has committed to achieve LEED Silver certification on all new campus buildings. The first building was the LEED-Gold certified College for Liberal Arts, which features a “green” or planted roof, low flush toilets, and a high-performance HVAC system with automated central controls.
• On August 1, 2010, Towson University became the first four-year institution in Maryland to go completely smoke-free.
• Towson University is the first university in Maryland, and one of the first 10 nationwide, to sign the U.S. Department of Energy's Better Buildings Challenge, committing to reduce energy consumption of campus buildings by 20 percent by the year 2020.

Athletics

• Now in its 36th year of NCAA Division I competition, the Tiger intercollegiate athletics program sponsors 19 sports. Tiger athletic teams compete in the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA), the nation's top mid-major conference.
• Since joining the CAA in 2001, the Tigers have won conference tournament titles in football, men’s and women’s lacrosse, women’s swimming, women's volleyball and men’s golf.
• During an athletics history that traces its roots to the 1920s, Towson has sent teams and individual student-athletes to NCAA post-season competition in baseball, basketball, football, golf, gymnastics, lacrosse, soccer, swimming, track and field, and volleyball.
• Tiger student-athletes distinguish themselves in the classroom as well as on the field of competition. More than a dozen Tigers have been named CAA Scholar-Athlete Award winners for their respective sports.

COLLEGE OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS

• The College of Business and Economics is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International for both its business and accounting programs. It is the highest seal of quality business schools can receive and ensures continuous improvement. Less than five percent of schools are AACSB International-accredited and less than one percent are accredited in both programs.
• At Enactus Café in Stephens Hall, CBE students get real-world experience running a business. Students manage every aspect of the business from food ordering and supply control to employee management and marketing.
• Innovative programs include the only e-business undergraduate degree in the University System of Maryland, the system’s first M.S. in supply chain management, and the M.S. in marketing intelligence.
• State-of-the-art technological resources including the T. Rowe Price Finance Lab equipped with Bloomberg boxes, the CBE Behavioral Lab with eye-tracking hardware, and the Supply Chain Innovation Lab featuring industry-standard supply chain and project management software.
• More than 400 students compete in the college’s Live Strategy Case Competition in the capstone course for accounting, business and business systems and processes majors each spring where companies present real case challenges for students to tackle.

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION

• The College of Education is the oldest, largest and preeminent producer of teachers in the state of Maryland. Across the nation, thousands of educators trained at Towson University are now at the head of the class.

• The College of Education hosted events for the 150^th Anniversary Speaker Series, featuring speakers who focused on diversity and education. The series included lectures on climate change, teacher preparation and inequality.

• The Department of Elementary Education, in an attempt to address the growing number of English language learners (ELL) in schools, initiated the first cohort of interns focusing on the needs of ELL learners.  School partners in Baltimore City hosted the new cohort. Maryland has over 55,000 students participating in ELL programs.

• Twelve students received James Patterson scholarships. The students receive a $6,000 scholarship each year, as long as they maintain their intention to teach and the academic requirements for the gift. The amount covers 72 percent of in-state tuition and fees, making the Patterson Scholarship one of the most generous in the TU Foundation. 

• U.S. News & World Report has ranked Towson University as one of the Top 100 Best Graduate Schools in Education for 2017. Towson was one of eight schools ranked at No. 99.

COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS AND COMMUNICATION

• Center Stage, Towson University’s College of Fine Arts and Communication and Department of Theatre Arts hosted Center Stage’s patrons, actors, and staff for the final two shows of their 2015-16 season. In addition to sharing our stage, this collaboration further exposed the Towson University community to the world of professional theatre, and introduced the Baltimore Community to the TU campus. Center Stage staff and visiting artists were welcomed into our classrooms and, in turn, Center Stage invited our theatre students to join their artists on stage and behind the scenes.
• Music Professor Jonathan Leshnoff ranked No. 7 in most performed living composer by US orchestras in 2015-16, according to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
• Broadcast journalism students produce newscasts in the new state-of-the-art HD TV studio, which allows students to produce HD-quality video identical to professional live television broadcasts.
• Nine Faculty members and three alumni received Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist awards in 2016.
• Department of Theatre Arts alumni include award-winning actors Roc Dutton, John Glover and Amy Schumer.

COLLEGE OF HEALTH PROFESSIONS

• The College of Health Professions enrolls more bachelor’s and master’s health care and sport-related students than any other institution in Maryland.
• The Institute for Well-Being is the only on-campus inter-professional training facility in the region where students from different majors work in teams in clinical programs to serve the Greater Baltimore community.
• The Department of Occupational Therapy and Occupational Science has the state’s only combined B.S./M.S. program in occupational therapy.
• The Department of Nursing is Maryland’s second-largest nursing program.
• The Department of Nursing received a $1.65 million Nurse Support Program II (NSP II) grant from the Health Services Cost Review Commission, which is administered by the Maryland Higher Education Commission. The goal of the Nurse Support Program is to increase the number of nurses in Maryland.
• The Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology Program is one of only two state-supported programs and the only one to provide clinical training to both graduate students and select undergraduate students at new, state-of-the art, training centers, the Speech and Language Center and the Hearing and Balance Center, both located in the Institute for Well-Being.
• The Department of Health Science is one of three programs in Maryland nationally recognized for school health and is the largest producer of school health teachers in the state. Its school health program assessments are listed on the NCATE SPA Assessment Library as “excellent examples.”
• The Health Care Management program is one of only two AUPHA-certified programs in the state, and nearly 50 percent of its students are offered positions in the field prior to graduation.

COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS

• Towson was chosen as the home of the Maryland Geographic Alliance, with Virginia Thompson of Geography and Environmental Planning and Todd Kenreich, Director of Med programs in elementary and secondary education, taking leadership roles. The Alliance, supported by the National Geographic Education Foundation, works to improve teaching, resources, and awareness about the world through geographic education. We welcome the close collaboration between the College of Liberal Arts and the College of Education that brought us this ongoing program.
• CLA has a cooperative agreement with the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, for a project titled “Rapid Ethnographic Assessment and Networked Anthropology for Potomac Heritage Trail.” This is an extension into new territory for the anthropological work pioneered by Matthew Durington and Samuel Collins that has won them national attention.
• Grub Street, the undergraduate literary magazine edited by students in the Department of English, continues to win national awards. Recently, the 2015 edition of Grub street  was named the national winner for design by the  Association of Writers and Writing. This award carries a $1,000 prize.
• Psychology professor Bethany Brand is leading the largest and longest worldwide study on the treatment of dissociative disorders. 

HONORS COLLEGE

• The Honors College saw a 54 percent increase in freshmen applicants for fall 2016, surpassing 1,000 applications total.

• Nearly all of the university’s prestigious award winners and finalists are members of the Honors College. The awards represented include the Fulbright Award, the Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship, the Critical Language Scholarship and the Rhodes Scholarship.

JESS AND MILDRED FISHER COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS

• The National Security Agency/Department of Homeland Security designated Towson University as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education in 2002 and in Cyber Operations in 2013. TU is one of only 19 institutions in the nation to receive the NSA/DHS Cyber Operations designation.
• An Center of Actuarial Excellence from the Society of Actuaries for the TU Actuarial Science and Risk Management Program; one of only 17 programs recognized nationwide.
• Towson UTEACH, a nationally recognized program to develop outstanding high school science and math teachers, had its first graduates in May 2016.
• The B.S. in forensic chemistry and M.S. in forensic science are the only accredited forensic programs in Maryland.
• The FCSM receives, on average, $3.8 million of extramural grants and contracts per year. These funds supplement state support, and help improve the student experience in numerous ways.
• Undergraduate degrees awarded by Fisher College have increased from 336 to 591 (76 percent) over the past seven years.

Updated 10/2017