Our Mission

The Department of Mass Communication believes that higher education should prepare students for career success, but also civic success. We strive to stimulate intellectual curiosity, imagination, rational thinking, thoughtful expression, and independent learning - skills necessary for success in all mass communication fields.

To accomplish this goal we couple practical experience with theoretical course work and support a strong program of co-curricular, extracurricular, and internship activities to help students understand and appreciate the crucial role mass communication has in our democratic society.

We provide students with a well-rounded mass communication experience while also allowing students to create an area of specialization such as audio production, video production, media management, multimedia design, events planning, and others.

In order to keep abreast of the rapidly changing media technology and to competently train our students, we use leading industry hardware and software. Additionally, we will build a professional-quality high definition (HD) digital video production/post-production facility by 2012 and develop a fully HDTV digital workflow soon after.

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"[J]ournalism school and other mass communication curricula are not best used when they train students for the first six months of their employment; they should rather prepare their graduates for the years that follow the first six months: not in the skills which enable the young employee to do well at first, but rather in the understandings which enable him to do well throughout his career. There is no reason why he should not learn some skill, too; but, whenever there has to be a choice of time between learning the vocational skills and gaining the broad understanding of society and mass communication's place in it, the time should always be used for the broader and less immediately useful studies. The schools should aim for the long, not the short term; for on his job the new man can much more easily learn the skills of his job than he can learn to understand human beings, social organization, government, economics and science."

--Wilbur Schramm, Early Mass Communication Scholar

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