Faculty of Kinesiology is No. 1 in North America and No. 10 for sport science schools worldwide

For a third time in a row, UCalgary's Faculty of Kinesiology has been distinguished in the field of sport science. The faculty is once again ranked No. 1 in North America according to ShanghaiRanking’s 2021 Global Ranking of Sport Science Schools and Departments. The faculty moved to 10th from 11th place out of 460 universities in the world.

"This is a truly a remarkable accolade for Kinesiology and the University of Calgary,” says Dr. Penny Werthner, dean of kinesiology. “I am very proud of our faculty’s achievements. We are world-renowned researchers in our respective fields, working on injury prevention, benefits of movement for health and recovery from illness, and high-performance sport.”

Kinesiology faculty members are leaders in areas such as biomechanics, exercise physiology, injury prevention, rehabilitation, neuroscience, nutrition, wearable technologies, exercise and sport psychology, and leadership and social aspects of human movement and sport.

“Not only do our researchers create new knowledge across many disciplines, they also share that knowledge and create opportunities for students to learn and work alongside them. Our scholars ensure our students have multiple opportunities for experiential learning, and to develop curiosity, critical thinking skills, and disciplinary excellence to solve problems that positively impact our communities and change societies,” says Werthner. 

Methodology for rankings

The candidate universities are selected on two criteria. They must be either a sport university or have a sport-related unit, and they must have published a certain number of papers according to the Web of Science in the past five years, demonstrating that they are actively engaged in research. The criteria are based on research output, research quality, and international collaboration.

Universities are ranked on the following indicators of academic and research performance:

• Papers indexed in Web of Science
• Citations to papers
• Citations per paper
• Papers published in top 25 per cent journals
• Per cent of papers with international co-authorship

ShanghaiRanking Consultancy is a fully independent organization dedicated to research on higher education intelligence and consultation. In 2016, ShanghaiRanking started publishing the performance of institutions with sport science schools and departments. It has been the official publisher of the Academic Ranking of World Universities since 2009.