BusinessWeek recently ranked the E. Claiborne Robins School of Business at No. 15 among American undergraduate business programs.
The school dropped from No. 12 last year, but has maintained a position inside the top 25 undergraduate rankings since BusinessWeek first published a list in 2006.
This year's ranking includes a third-place ranking for academic quality and fifth-place ranking for student satisfaction.
Nancy Bagranoff, dean of the Robins School of Business, said the relationship between faculty and students was consistently what set the business school apart from other schools.
"I've taught at a lot of different schools, and I've never quite seen anything quite like this," Bagranoff said. "Often, when you talk to students about their school, they might talk about the basketball team or clubs. But here, they talk about their teachers."
Daniel Paik, an assistant professor of accounting, said the relationship between students and professors was much stronger at Richmond than larger schools where he had taught.
"At Brigham Young University, I taught a class of 150 students," he said. "The relationship between student and professor is much more desirable at Richmond."
Paik said he had come to Richmond because of the connection he had felt with the business school's faculty, as well as the business school's reputation. He said rankings had not affected his decision to teach at Richmond, but that rankings affected reputation.
Bagranoff said that she believed the rankings were inherently capricious because of certain ways the schools were ranked.
When the number of employers indicating a familiarity with a program was less than the median of all schools in the ranking, the employer survey score was reduced proportionately, according to BusinessWeek.
"One of our faculty members ran a regression analysis on the size of the school versus the recruiter ranking, and of course, he found a correlation," Bagranoff said.
Junior Joey Greener, a campus tour guide, said that he had always reminded prospective students and parents that one of the best parts of Richmond's business school was its size.
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"Where most of these top-ranked business schools have large lecture halls, the students at the Robins School of Business can receive an amazing education in those small classes," Greener said.
Bagranoff said focusing on helping students with professional development was one of her goals. She said this meant helping students through the Career Development Center and the development of employer relations.
Contact reporter Jenna Robinson at jenna.robinson@richmond.edu
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