This paper is concerned with the vibration and stability analysis of thick rectangular plates resting on elastic foundation, which is distributed over the particular area of the plate. A two-parameter (Pasternak) model is considered to describe the elastic foundation. The eigenvalue problem in 3-D domain is numerically solved by a combination of the finite element and differential quadrature method (DQM). The energy principle is employed to derive the governing equations in the framework of three-dimensional, linear and small strain theory of elasticity. The in-plane domain of the problem is discretized using two-dimensional finite elements and spatial derivatives of equations in the thickness direction are discretized in strong-form using DQM. As a first endeavor, the mixed FE-DQ method has been employed for 3-D buckling and free vibration analysis of rectangular thick plates partially supported by an elastic foundation. The accuracy of obtained results is validated by comparing to the few analytical solutions in the literature.