11 New Minors Available in Comm

This past school year, the Department of Communication has been working hard to create 11 new minors with the collaboration of other departments. Dr. Karl Bailey, Coordinator for the Behavioral Neuroscience Program, analyzed the trends in various departments relevant to communication; the study showed that the departments were losing majors but gaining minors, and this gave the department the idea to create new minors to facilitate this need.

The department has been collaborating with different departments to share courses because the discipline of Communication is interdisciplinary. The department wanted to create minors that would help students in other majors gain additional skills for use in the workplace.

Two types of minors have been developed because of the study. One type is with the collaboration with other departments or majors, and the other type offers skill sets that correspond to majors offered in the Department of Communication at present. The beneficial thing to note is that none of the new minors require any new classes to be offered. The classes have been grouped differently to help simplify and focus the minors to skill sets that will be needed in the work force, without the need to create new classes.

Dr. Delyse Steyn, Chair of the Department of Communication, said, “We believe our divisional strategy of packaging existing classes into social sciences skill-development minors offers a service to the campus community and may help attract students into our classes in the departments.”

In addition to developing skill sets that reflect various career tracks, the minors also prepare students for internships by the packaging of courses. “As a liberal arts school and an interdisciplinary program, we’re honored to collaborate with different campus departments to offer students such specified career tracks. It’s an opportunity for them to enhance their futures and skills,” Steyn said.

The minors will be added to the 2012-2013 Academic Bulletin, first appearing in the Fall semester. However, students may begin registering at any time to help fulfill course requirements. Course requirements are available from the Department of Communication.

View a list of the new minors available in Communication.

By Lindsey Hollister