Department of Communication Studies

Current list of communication studies courses

The communication studies major involves students in critical inquiry and informed practice. Because communication pervades all human enterprise, communication professionals have a special responsibility to create and analyze messages with critical attention to the processes that shape them, the information that supports them, the arguments that are made, and the effects messages produce. Communication is central to our personal and social lives, enables us to participate meaningfully in civic life, and good communication skills are valued highly by employers. Whether the messages are verbal or nonverbal, face-to-face or mediated, private or public, as a communication studies student you will be challenged to create, describe, analyze, explain, and evaluate them as a knowledgeable communicator. Communication studies will help you develop your ability to:

• Analyze communication interaction processes,
• Analyze the interaction between diversity and communication,
• Evaluate the effects of communication in various contexts, 
• Critique rhetorical acts,
• Formulate questions related to communication problems and devise ways to answer those questions, and
• Develop your own communicative competence.