Haverford Receives Carnegie’s Research Colleges and Universities Classification
Professor of Psychology Rebecca Compton and Katelyn Mann '24 in Compton's lab, where she has been studying the neural mechanisms behind a wandering mind.
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The new classification recognizes institutions that have prioritized research but haven’t consistently been recognized. Haverford is one of 216 schools to receive the distinction.
Because of its commitment to foreground research in a liberal arts setting, Haverford received a new designation from the American Council on Education (ACE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching earlier this month that recognizes institutions with at least $2.5 million in research and development expenditures in an average year.
The new Research Colleges and Universities designation, announced last week, is a result of a shift in ACE and Carnegie’s methodology. As Timothy F.C. Knowles, the Carnegie Foundation’s president, says, the classifications are “the first step to bring a decades-old system into the 21st century,” signaling the “recognition of the range of ways colleges and universities engage in research and development.”
The new Research Colleges and Universities category provides a distinction between research-focused institutions like Carnegie’s traditional R1 and R2 classifications, which require significantly higher research expenditures and doctoral degree programs. Haverford is one of 216 institutions to receive the classification for 2025.
“This classification recognizes the important ways liberal arts colleges like Haverford contribute to scholarly inquiry and discovery,” says Haverford President Wendy Raymond. “Working alongside faculty mentors at the top of their fields, our students participate directly in the production of new knowledge. With this hands-on approach, small colleges like Haverford often outperform larger universities in setting up undergraduates to be future leaders and innovators in a wide range of fields.”
Across Haverford’s campus and academic programs, students and faculty are engaged in a wide range of research, whether it’s studying Carolina wolf spider locomotion or understanding how stereotypes, prejudices, and biases develop in early childhood. Currently, Haverford is supported by 33 active federal grants totaling more than $8.3 million, says Associate Provost for Curricular Development & Research Helen White. Some recent highlights include:
• A five-year $2.25 million from the U.S. Department of Education to support Uplift, a College-wide initiative to improve targeted data analysis across campus while simultaneously boosting graduation rates by 3.5% and fall-to-fall retention among first-year students by 2%.
• A $148,015 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), one of only 13 awarded in NEH’s digital humanities category, to Professor of Classics Bret Mulligan to continue his work on web-based applications that help educators attain greater awareness of the match between reader knowledge and textual difficulty when assigning Latin and ancient Greek texts.
• A $462,351 renewal from the National Institutes of Health to Professor of Chemistry Lou Charkoudian to continue exploring the potential of natural products created by bacteria, which are the source of major antibiotic and anticancer medications.
“A highlight of our work to modernize the Carnegie Classification is the new Research Colleges and Universities designation, which will shed light on institutions that have engaged in research but historically haven’t been recognized for it,” says ACE President Ted Mitchell. “Instead of limiting research designations to the select institutions that award Ph.Ds, all types of colleges and universities will now be celebrated for their research contributions. That’s great news.”
