In the article, the authors examined all issues of The Counseling Psychologist, Journal of Counseling Psychology, Journal of Vocational Behavior, and Journal of Counseling and Development between 1993-2002. As one would expect, almost all of the top-ranked institutions (37 out of 40) housed counseling psychology doctoral programs accredited by the American Psychological Association. There are only 75 APA-accredited doctoral programs in counseling psychology. Only three that did not have a doctoral program made the list—including Illinois State. In fact, Illinois State was ranked higher than half the departments with doctoral programs.

Out of all the other colleges and universities in the world, Illinois State ranks third in publishing in the top-notch counseling psychology journals. There are two noteworthy aspects of this accomplishment. First, these publications come from members of the Psychology Department who are in a variety of subdisciplines in psychology: besides counseling psychology, the faculty come from the fields of clinical psychology, developmental psychology, social psychology, and quantitative psychology. Second, and perhaps most important, 42% of these publications included ISU students as coauthors. "Professors in the Department of Psychology are to be commended for the remarkable job they are doing," said Dean Olson. "Not only are they producing top quality research, but they are also taking the time to engage undergradute students in their research—a quality that separates Illinois State from most other public research institutions."