Points of Pride

Photo: Aerial shot of WMU main campus in Kalamazoo, MI.

  • The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching places WMU among the 76 public institutions in the nation designated as universities with high research activity.
  • In its annual ranking of the nation’s 4,000 colleges and universities, U.S. News & World Report consistently lists WMU as one of the nation’s top 100 public universities. More.
  • WMU is one of only 97 public universities in the United States to be granted its own chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s most prestigious academic honor society.
  • WMU’s Lee Honors College, one of the nation’s first honors colleges, serves as the scholarly home to more than 1,000 academically talented students. It has graduated winners of the most prestigious academic awards, including Truman, Goldwater, Udall, Fulbright and Gates Cambridge scholarships.
  • With an enrollment of 25,000, WMU is one of the 100 largest universities in the nation.
  • Researchers from WMU’s College of Arts and Sciences teamed up with city of Kalamazoo to make it the first city in the continental United States to use trap grease as a fuel source for its city buses. More.
  • U.S. News & World Report ranks WMU’s programs in occupational therapy, physician assistant and speech pathology among the top 50 in the nation.
  • WMU’s Haworth College of Business is one of the 20 largest undergraduate business programs in the United States.
  • Western began offering extension classes in 1905, just two years after its founding. Today, the University is home to eight branch campuses across Michigan, all of which provide primarily graduate and professional education.
  • For more than a dozen years, WMU jazz studies students have kept the School of Music among the top three schools in the nation for the number of awards received from Down Beat magazine. More.
  • The new College of Engineering and Applied Sciences building is located on the 265-acre Parkview Campus, which is also the site of the University’s Business Technology and Research Park, one of the 11 areas designated by the state as a Michigan SmartZone for economic development.
  • In 2005, the College of Health and Human Services moved into its new home, a high-tech, 200,000-square-foot building on the University’s Oakland Drive Campus. More.
  • The College of Aviation, located at W.K. Kellogg Airport in Battle Creek, occupies 95,000 square feet on 20 acres, and it is one of the largest and most innovative aviation programs in the nation.
  • Construction was completed in 2006 on WMU’s new $28.5 million chemistry building. The 83,000-square-foot facility is complete with high-tech lecture halls and safe, energy-efficient and interactive laboratories. More.
  • The University is known worldwide as a center for medieval studies, and each May some 3,000 medievalists from every state and 25 nations converge on WMU’s campus for the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, the largest and most comprehensive academic gathering in the world for those who focus on the Middle Ages.
  • WMU ranks first in Michigan and second in the nation in the use of wireless computing technology on a university campus, according to a 2005 study conducted by Intel. More.
  • The University’s Medallion Scholarship program is one of the largest merit-based programs in the nation. Each spring, some 600 to 800 of the nation’s top high school seniors travel to WMU’s campus to compete for one of its $40,000 awards.
  • WMU’s Department of Theatre is widely recognized as one of the nation’s best undergraduate programs and is a regular winner of American College Theatre Festival awards. More.
  • Sunseeker, the solar racecar of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, finished among the top six in each of the past two North American Solar Challenges and earned the award for best design in both races. More.
  • The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education consistently ranks WMU’s College of Education among the nation’s top 10 producers of professional educators. In 2004, WMU won the Association of Teacher Educators Distinguished Program in Teacher Education award.
  • WMU’s Department of Paper Engineering, Chemical Engineering and Imaging is the only program in the world to have, on a single campus, pilot plants that can take a project from paper pulp to the printed page. The department was first in the nation to have a high-speed paper coater available for non-affiliated research.
  • The Haworth College of Business is among 25 percent of U.S. business schools that are accredited at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. It is among a select 10 percent of U.S. business schools that have additional specialized accreditation for their accounting programs.
  • WMU’s internationally renowned College of Health and Human Services is the highest NIH-funded allied health school not associated with a medical center.
  • The Sky Broncos precision flight team from the College of Aviation won the 1983,1998 and 2002 National Intercollegiate Flying Association national championships and has placed among the top three in every national competition for 15 consecutive years. More.
  • WMU’s graduate program in engineering management was named the best in the nation by the American Society for Engineering Management, while the University’s undergraduate program was ranked among the top three. More.
  • WMU’s Evaluation Center was the first of its kind and remains one of the top such centers in the world. Among its clients are the U.S. Marine Corps; U.S. Department of Education; National Science Foundation; several state departments of education; and the Alger, Heifer, Kellogg and MacArthur foundations.
  • Visit the Year’s Top News page for more WMU accomplishments and points of pride.