(Re)Create a (re)New(ed) Communications Program

History

Until about 12 years ago Mills had a very vibrant major in communications.  For reasons we need not rehearse here, we got out of that business just as the shape of the field began to change radically during the first internet bubble.  Around this time schools of library science morphed into schools of information science, fields like sociology, psychology, politics, and computer science all started paying more attention to "communication" writ large.  To make a long story short, we sold at the bottom of a market that's been rising ever since.  And it probably has a long way to go so it would not necessarily be a bad idea to get back into it now.

Resonance

There are obvious resonances with existing programs. Some of Burke's courses are legacy of old major.  We left film studies on the table last year.  We hired recently in marketing in GSB.  There is interest in psychology (Ruch teaches visual thinking which was a part of the communications major) and Sociology (Ryan works in "sociology of information" and teaches network analysis used in social media studies).  Sociology has been fielding course in mass communications recently.  Dovetails nicely with our public radio reporting program and our journalism minor.  Social media analysis related to "big data" in social science. Although the fine arts version of intermedia is more on the creative end of the spectrum than the scientific, there are plenty of resonances there too.