Contact: Sarah Nicholas
STARKVILLE, Miss.—A brand new on-line diploma program at Mississippi State is giving new choices for college kids interested by incomes a communication bachelor’s diploma with an emphasis in communication and media research.
Provided by way of Mississippi State’s Heart for Distance Training and directed by the Division of Communication, the diploma equips college students to “specialize within the principle, critique and observe of communication, equipping college students to speak successfully and ethically in various contexts,” in response to the curriculum description.
Graduates in communication and media research are ready to pursue jobs in neighborhood outreach and engagement together with advocacy work, neighborhood organizing, diplomacy, grant writing, non-profit work, politics and public affairs. The focus additionally equips college students for skilled careers in occasion planning and fundraising, human sources, philanthropy, publishing, gross sales, and speech and technical writing.
“Coordinator Dr. Melanie Loehwing, and now Interim Coordinator Dr. Pete Smith, together with modern school, have led this cost,” mentioned Terry Likes, professor and head of the communication division. “This evolution led to a reputation change to ‘communication and media research’ to higher mirror the character of the focus and its future.” The sooner title was communication research.
Likes added that the focus has greater than tripled from 21 college students enrolled in 2011 to 71 in 2021. “With this development got here a necessity to supply programs throughout totally different modalities—face-to-face and on-line—to satisfy the wants of a altering pupil demographic.”
Smith, an affiliate professor of communication and program advisor, mentioned the division was among the many first on campus to supply programs through distance schooling.
“This diploma is an extension of that mission—to offer an schooling to those that search it however who could not have the sources, time or the comfort to journey to campus,” Smith mentioned. “As with every on-line diploma, college students will get the identical alternatives that our face-to-face college students have—a top quality schooling by way of first-rate instruction.”
The brand new diploma program, authorised by the Mississippi Establishments of Larger Studying board, requires a 2.0 minimal GPA for entry. For extra info or to use, go to: https://on-line.msstate.edu/comm/.
A part of MSU’s School of Arts and Sciences, the Division of Communication is on-line at www.comm.msstate.edu.
MSU is Mississippi’s main college, accessible on-line at www.msstate.edu.