It is captured in the work of Robert T. Oliver, a pioneer in the areas of public address, persuasion, intercultural communication, and propaganda. It is present in the scholarship of Carroll C. Arnold, a founder of Philosophy and Rhetoric and author of numerous important scholarly essays. It is continued today in the work of a faculty that includes current and past editors and editorial board members of virtually every communication journal, that publishes its research regularly in the major journals of the field, and that values teaching to a level not always encountered in a major research institution. It is present in the work of our graduates, prominently displayed in the literature of the profession and in college classrooms, as well as in business and professional settings across the nation. But most richly, the tradition is lived daily in the joint pursuits of the professors and students in the Department of Speech Communication.
Graduate study is an intense and stimulating intellectual experience.
In a relatively brief period of time, you will pass from an informed student to an expert in your special field of study. You will grow in your command of information, to be sure, and in your mastery of methodologies for processing information. But most of all, you will learn to wonder, to ask questions, to cultivate curiosity, and to recognize that the best answers are those that lead to new and even more puzzling questions. The knowledge a graduate student needs is not easily defined. The department's primary goal is to help you become an independent scholar.