Founding Member

The Council on Undergraduate Research in January 2016 presented its inaugural award for Undergraduate Research Accomplishment to Allegheny College. The award recognizes Allegheny for its “exemplary programs providing high-quality research experiences to undergraduates.” This recognition requires campuses to have depth and breadth in their undergraduate research initiatives, as well as evidence of sustained innovation. The council noted Allegheny’s well-designed and developmentally appropriate undergraduate research experience. “Allegheny’s holistic and sustained student development approach prepares Allegheny students for both graduate study and post-baccalaureate employment,” according to the council.
“Allegheny College’s well-designed and developmentally appropriate undergraduate research experience is supported by deliberate scaffolding beginning during a student’s first year, continuing throughout the sophomore and junior years, and culminating in a required capstone research project.”
Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR)
Colleges That Change Lives was researched and written by retired New York Times education editor, journalist, and longtime student advocate Loren Pope. Selections were solely based on his independent judgment and recognized expertise. CTCL, Inc. works with the chosen schools to support the advancement of a student-centered college search process. CTCL hosts well-attended information sessions nationwide in coordination with CTCL school college fairs.
“Today Allegheny shuns the ethos of prestige places and delivers an education at least on par with—and perhaps better than—those places.”
Over 90% of our recent graduating class were either employed or in a graduate/ professional program after graduation. The remaining students were in long-term compensated programs like Teach for America or the Peace Corp or were seeking employment.
For three years in a row, Allegheny has ranked in the top 20% of all colleges and universities in the nation for salaries for early- and mid-career graduates (according to payscale.com).
Allegheny is featured in The Princeton Review’s “The Best Value Colleges: 200 Schools with Exceptional ROI for Your Tuition Investment,” based on our academic rigor, affordability, and career outcomes for graduates.
In spring 2019, U.S. News & World Report asked top academics to name the schools that they think have faculty with an unusually strong commitment to undergraduate teaching. College presidents, provosts, and admissions deans were asked to nominate up to 15 schools in their Best Colleges ranking category with strength in undergraduate teaching.
Washington Monthly’s rankings are unique in that they recognize not only what colleges do for their students but what colleges are doing for the country. The rankings rate the top colleges based on three broad categories: Social Mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), Research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and Ph.D.s), and Service (encouraging students to give something back to their country). The rankings also factor in an analysis of which schools combine higher than expected graduation rates with affordable prices.
ACRoSS is an interdisciplinary forum for the presentation of summer research projects to an audience of students, faculty, and administrators.
Number of students who conducted research with faculty during summer 2019.
Allegheny graduates Emily Smith ’19 and Lauren Ottaviani ’18 received prestigious Fulbright Awards in 2019. Smith is scheduled to travel to Brazil in February 2020 after receiving a Fulbright to serve as an English teaching assistant at a Brazilian university. Ottaviani received a Fulbright to teach English at the University of Antwerp in Belgium starting in the spring of 2020. In 2019, Ottaviani was in Great Britain attending Durham University, where she was pursuing a master’s degree in English literature.
Elisia Wright ’21 and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Janyl Jumadinova presented their collaborative work on “Underwater Robotic Smart-Sensing System for Water Quality Testing” at the 23rd Annual Posters on the Hill event in Washington, D.C. in spring 2019. Only 60 students from over 350 submissions were selected to present their work at this event sponsored by the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR). They also presented the preliminary results of their research project at the 32nd International Conference of the Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society in May 2019.
Candaisy Crawford ’19 and Assistant Professor of Political Science Andrew Bloeser presented their study (co-authored with Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science Tarah Williams), “We Just Don’t Want to See It: The Desire for Authoritarianism and the Diffusion of Responsibility,” at the 2019 Midwest Political Science Association Meeting. The study uses a dataset collected by the Center for Political Participation. The study highlights the erosion of democratic attitudes in the American public and the preference for “strongman” leaders.
Kaylah Pinkney ‘19 received a Boren Scholarship, and moved to Nanjing, China, in the fall of 2019, studying the Mandarin language and the practices of traditional Chinese medicine at Nanjing University. Pinkney graduated with the Class of 2019, receiving a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience with a Chinese Language minor.
Three Allegheny students in 2019 were awarded highly competitive Gilman International Scholarships to study overseas. Yadira Sanchez-Esparza ’22 studied with the Council on International Educational Exchange Liberal Arts Program at three different universities in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Sydney Francis ’21 studied in Jordan, and Marisol Santa Cruz ’20 spent part of the summer of 2019 in India, studying India’s experiments with globalization across its 5,000-year history.
Anna Meyer ’20 was one of 15 undergraduate students in the United States to be awarded a 2019 Research Fellowship from the Endocrine Society. This fellowship will allow her to continue her research project entitled “Characterizing the role of CREBRF and its metabolic-risk variant in glucocorticoid action”. Her project seeks to address gaps in knowledge regarding a novel obesity-risk gene (CREBRF) and its role in the modulation of the glucocorticoid action among broader influences on systemic metabolic homeostasis. Her fellowship included a poster presentation at ENDO 2020, the Society’s Annual Meeting & Expo being held in San Francisco in March 2020, and membership in the society.
“As a nervous H.S. senior, I wasn’t even certain that I would get accepted to a school of Allegheny’s caliber. Four years later I graduated summa cum laude with a full scholarship to the U. of Michigan’s MFA program. Presently, I am pursuing a Doctor of Philosophy degree at Kent State. Not only did Allegheny’s gamble on a statistically lukewarm applicant pay off, but the money I invested in my Allegheny education has paid for itself three times over.”
—Allie Brooks ’07
begin their career immediately (46% employed by graduation; 95% within six months).
directly go on to graduate school and are accepted at rates twice the national average (80-100%).
earn positions in competitive, compensated service organizations, including Teach for America and the Peace Corps.
Allegheny ranks among the top 5% of all schools in the country for the percentage of graduates who go on to earn a Ph.D. Allegheny is in the top 4% in the sciences and top 2% in chemistry.
Forbes places Allegheny among America’s top colleges in rankings prepared by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. Forbes’ annual rankings focus on quality of teaching, graduation rates, low levels of debt and graduates’ career prospects.