Communication Studies is the perfect major for students with multiple interests and diverse talents because the discipline provides theory, tools, and techniques for analyzing, managing and improving communication in every arena of professional and personal interaction.  Our faculty value students who are eager to learn from and contribute to a flexible, challenging, and cutting-edge academic environment.  Courses in Communication Studies will challenge your mind, broaden your views, and develop in you an increased awareness of and skill in communication practices.  Our goal is to prepare students to take their place as responsible leaders, engaged citizens, and pioneering problem-solvers in their communities and chosen fields of work.  To serve this goal, our scholarship and teaching are multidisciplinary, practical and innovative.

Our world-class faculty members teach courses and undertake research projects that blend theory with practice for productive, engaged criticism.  Students in Communication Studies learn to evaluate and produce communicative texts that adapt to changing situations and audiences.  As a result, the undergraduate curriculum in this major rigorously prepares students for future work and study in any number of diverse fields, such as law, political organizing and public affairs, marketing, advertising, public relations, consulting and many others. You'll gain that professional opportunities abound and include a wide range of career choices.  Communication studies integrate aspects of both social sciences and the humanities. Much of the work being done in the field is academic in nature. As a social science, the discipline often overlaps with sociology, psychology, anthropology, biology, political science, economics, and public policy, amongst others. From a humanities perspective, communication is concerned with rhetoric and persuasion (traditional graduate courses in communication studies trace their history to the rhetoricians of Ancient Greece).

A focus on research development sets communication studies apart from general communication degrees. Many of the students that chose the field do so in order to pursue doctoral level ambitions^. Requirements for undergraduate degrees focus on preparing students to ask questions relating to the nature of communication in society and the development of communication as a specific field.