ChE Graduate Program Tops at LSU

The 2005 edition of U.S. News & World Report ranks our graduate program 50th among chemical engineering programs in the country. While a handful of other graduate programs at LSU ranked in the top 100 among their specialties, including civil and environmental engineering in 65th place and mechanical engineering in 82nd, ours is the only graduate program at LSU to be ranked in the top 50.

Our efforts are certainly rewarded with this news, but we realize that we must continue the hard work in order to maintain this level of excellence, as well as to further our reputation as a top-tier chemical engineering program.

In addition to this proud achievement, a recent study conducted by Professor James Garand of LSU's Department of Political Science found that incoming chemical engineering graduate students for fall 2002 ranked above all other incoming graduate students at LSU. Focusing on verbal GRE scores, quantitative GRE scores, and undergraduate GPAs, Professor Garand found that our students ranked above the incoming students in all other graduate disciplines at LSU.

Kalliat Valsaraj has worked exceedingly hard to recruit top students from within the U.S. as well as abroad since undertaking the duties of graduate coordinator in 2002. His efforts have been rewarded with the results of Professor Garand's study, as well as by the ranking reported in U.S. News & World Report. We congratulate him on the exceptional job he has done. We are very appreciative of all the hard work and effort undertaken by our exceptional students and faculty that has gone in to making our graduate program one of the best (if not the best) on campus.