Communication Program Goals

Public and Professional

1. To develop content creation skills necessary to plan, contract, and evaluate graphic documents for production.
2. To apply research skills and critical thinking to communication in a sustained argument or discussion.
3. To structure messages for specific audiences and develop ideas with appropriate supporting materials.
4. To improve oral and physical delivery in public and group contexts.

Speech and Hearing Science

1. To apply the skill of hearing speech sounds to the process of phonetic transcription.
2. To apply theories of speech and language development to data collected from a normal child.
3. To understand the science of speech and hearing, including acoustics, speech perception and anatomy and physiology.
4. To understand the principles of audiology.
5. Graduating students will apply for and gain admission to graduate programs in Speech and Hearing Science.

Public Relations

1. To provide the student with an understanding of what strategic communications and specifically public relations are and do.
2. To provide the student with an understanding of the appropriate applications of theories and concepts from the disciplines of communication, psychology, sociology and political science.
3. To provide the students with an understanding of the tools used to measure and influence public opinion.

Mass Media

1. To learn how to apply social science research findings, critical theories, and methodologies related to the impact of mass media on American society and culture.
2. To understand local and global impact of new communication technologies on political, social, and economic institutions.
3. To understand the decision-making process in mass media organizations focusing on the organization, economic, technological, and societal constraints on decision-makers.
4. To learn media ethics, law and regulation, and cultural diversity that will train them to become responsible media practitioners.
5. how mass media are produced, reproduced, consumed, and constructed within cultural context.
6. To learn how to conceptualize, develop, plan, and execute a media or multimedia project through the phases of production: pre-production, production, and postproduction.