US News & World Report ranks several disciplines within the College of the Liberal Arts among the nation's elite. Two specialties in Penn State's psychology program, ranked No. 36, are listed among the nation's top six: industrial and organizational psychology (No. 4) and developmental psychology (No. 6). The University's sociology program ranks No. 17, in part due to its top-five program in the sociology of population. The crime, law and justice program is ranked No. 7.

Our industrial/organizational psychology program, ranked among the top 5 in the nation, does highly visible scholarship in the areas of leadership, recruitment and retention in the military, and is now undertaking work in homeland security.

Our Population Research Center is one of the top 10 in the country.

An analysis of Political Science departments globally has concluded that Penn State is among the top 40. The analysis, conducted by Professor Simon Hix of the London School of Economics, strove to provide an objective assessment of political science departments worldwide, and also places Penn State's program among the most rapidly improving departments in the U.S. Hix based his analysis on publications in 63 political science journals worldwide.

Our English department graduate program in African-American literature and rhetoric, so far as is known, trains more African-American Ph.D.'s than any other comparable department in the U.S.

Our two World Campus bachelor's degree programs in Arts and Letters (B.A.) and Organizational Leadership (B.S.), enable us to reach students from all over the world.

Our Health Communication program, within the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences, has entered into a partnership with the American Medical Association to provide continuing education to doctors about communicating with patients.

Our Center for Language Acquisition holds National Language Center support for its research and assessment in the area of advanced language training in critical languages.

Our Bioanthropology program, one of the first to bring the systematic study of biology to anthropology, is recognized worldwide for its cutting edge work in both paleoanthropology and the genetic patterns of different human groups.

We have two MacArthur fellows, Alan Walker and Leeann Newsom, both in anthropology. (Walker is also a Fellow of the Royal Society, Britain's equivalent to the National Academy of Science).

We placed a Ph.D. in Economics, Roland Fryar, in the Harvard Junior Fellows program, an elite group of the best 15 or 20 junior faculty in all fields. Fryer was featured in an article in the New York Times Magazine and is causing quite a buzz in his field.

Our Hemingway project, led by Sandy Spanier, draws national attention to Penn State's predominant place in the field of traditional American literature studies. James West, Spanier's colleague, is the official editor of the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

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