Student Research

Communication & Media Research and Career Development

As a Communication & Media student you will develop several original research projects that will deepen what you know and help you explore your own sought-after professional and scholarly expertise.

Some of those research projects are carried out in collaboration with your peers and faculty and shared at professional conference settings. UP's Provost's office often helps fund COM students' conference participation. 

Besides joining your own works with that wider conversation, conferences immerse you in key puzzles, technologies, methods, breakthroughs, and applications currently top-of-mind for media and communication scholars and professionals. Conferences show you scholarship norms and opportunities, let you question and network with creators of your COM courses’ scholarship and graduate programs, and expose you to cutting-edge thought as conference works often are 1-2 years ahead of ideas shared in journal publications!

With faculty mentoring, UP COM students submit and share their works at these annual communication and media conferences, plus at other topic-based cross-disciplinary conferences opportunities that emerge:

• The Northwest Communication Association (NWCA) conference is a small regional convention held each April in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho (January submission deadlines for consideration). 
  
  
• The larger Western States Communication Association (WSCA) regional convention happens each February at a location in the US American West, with summer submission deadlines for programs and competitive paper considerations. 
  
  
• The flagship National Communication Association (NCA) convention is held in November each year somewhere in the USA. Papers and programs must be submitted by February deadlines for inclusion consideration.
  
  
• The International Communication Association (ICA) convention happens annually in June at a location usually outside the US. Submission deadlines are in October for inclusion at the following summer’s conference. 
  
  
• The Iinternational Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) is a worldwide media and communication organization that hosts an international conference every year in the summer. Submissions are due in February.

Our faculty also regularly offer SURE (Student Undergraduate Research Experience) grants that involve COM students collaborating on faculty-led research projects via the Student Undergraduate Research office.