Specialization in Applied Communication Studies offers a generalized preparation for the professional world. It gives priority to clarifying relationships among basic research, theory, and applied concerns in the workplace. Recognizing the increasingly important need for strong oral and written communication skills, this specialization is well suited for those students intending to enter careers such as sales, management, training, personnel, and human resources, as well as various careers in medical and legal settings. The upper division curriculum consists of 45 units in communication courses. Specialization in Critical-Cultural Studies develops skills for understanding and affecting human communication and culture.
Students examine criticism, culture, and communication from interpersonal to media interactions.
They develop the ability to think clearly and act effectively as preparation for careers as professional communicators, media critics, communication educators, agents of change, critics of rhetoric, interpreters of culture, and other areas of critical activity and culture. Critical studies and cultural studies have emerged in recent decades in numerous countries and various disciplines as important centers of intellectual activity. This specialization offers courses, concepts and abilities that draw from these important developments and opens up a diverse set of opportunities. The upper division curriculum consists of a minimum of 45 units, to include courses in communication and television, film and new media. Specialization in Interaction Studies recognizes interaction as the original and fundamental communication process as well as the predominant means through which social life is accomplished.