Welcome to Communication & Media

Welcome to the Department of Communication & Media,

Our faculty and students study, theorize, apply, and practice media, relationships, organizing, health/care, and advocacy. We think about our human communication as paramount to surviving and thriving in a variety of context-rich spaces and places. We consider culture, narratives, identity, and entanglements with the more-than-human world as critical sites of exploration and discovery. 

We are storytellers, big thinkers, visionaries re-imagining new futures, and students who are drawn to study together with us value community, dialogue, and conflict resolution. We know that the world contains an abundance of beauty and struggle, and so we invite our students to dream and act with open hearts and minds, to develop rigorous critical thinking skills, to ask a lot of their classmates and generation. And to leave the world a better place than they found it. We collaborate on humanities and social science research, applied portfolio projects, field-based study, and industry internships. Our majors graduate with broad opportunities across many fields of work in the private and public sectors, competitive and innovative graduate school, leadership roles, Fulbright scholarships, and/or in a variety media roles. 

We embrace difference, value the beauty of impermanence and the opportunity for change it can offer, and actively work to create an interdisciplinary learning environment that centers excellence in teaching, mentorship, and outreach. 

Topics that intrigue us right now: ethical applications of artificial intelligence, critical citizen journalism and biases in newswriting stories, climate change narratives, mediated messages of power and liberation, collaborative teamwork innovations, the future of work, community-building and advocacy in a polarizing world, sustaining resilient relationships, the role of art and rhetoric in freedom-making, storytelling as a medium of belonging, and more. 

We currently offer two interdisciplinary degree programs: (a) Bachelor of Arts in Communication (whose areas of study include: organizing and relational communication, environmental communication, culture and communication) and a (b) Bachelor of Science in Organizational Communication (in partnership with the Pamplin School of Business).

We are excited to help you make the absolute most of your college experience. 

In solidarity,

Vail Fletcher
Chair, Communication & Media Department
fletcher@up.edu