The faculty and staff of the School of Communication Studies are committed to scholarship, teaching, and service in ways that improve the community and offer directions for change in the world. Accordingly, we seek students who want to challenge themselves to develop their potential in and out of the classroom.

All of our undergraduate students are Communication Studies majors, but each pursues a concentration in one of three areas:

• Communication and Public Advocacy: Students concentrating their studies in Communication and Public Advocacy focus on the integration of political and legal communication theory and practice emphasizing the role of communication in argument, debate, and politics, including the ethical and rhetorical implications of constitutional guarantees and persuasive strategies characteristic of contemporary political communication. Recent graduates are attending nationally-ranked law schools, working as state legislative staff, lobbying in Washington, D.C., and managing political campaigns.

• Health Communication: Health communication graduates are concerned with meeting people’s communication and knowledge needs in such areas as the relationships between patients and their health care providers, family dynamics, dissemination of health information, and cultural and gender influences on communication. Recent graduates are employed in health care organizations as patient advocates or in human resources, national non-profit health agencies, and as pharmaceutical company sales representatives.

• Organizational Communication: Students focused on organizational communication are aiming for professional careers in business, education, government, industry, or the nonprofit sector. The skills and competencies acquired through this concentration enable students to understand the dynamics of, and function more effectively in, organizational structures. Recent graduates are employed in major consulting firms, national financial service providers, conference planning companies, and information management organizations.

 Your concentration is the means through which you develop a specialization, while exploring the broad spectrum of human communication. The concentrations provide a focus to the major but are not intended to be career specific. Each concentration provides skills and competencies applicable to a variety of potential careers.