Communication Studies

Overview

The MA degree in Communication Studies offered by Baylor University is designed to prepare students to use relational, organizational, rhetorical, and media theory and research in order to pursue career goals including advanced work at the doctoral level, careers in academia, and careers in consulting, business, and the media industry.

Graduate education in the Department of Communication socializes students into two crucial forms of knowing. The first approach is humanistic or qualitative. This approach essentially aims to describe the characteristics of various forms of spoken messages. Rhetorical criticism and theory, analysis of argumentation, the production of film and video artifacts, film theory, and the aesthetics of film and video all fall under the rubric of the qualitative approach. The second approach of studying and researching human communication is grounded firmly in empirical methodologies involving such activities as experimental design, statistical analysis, studies of interpersonal, organizational, and small group communication, and the process and effects of mass communication. These two crucial forms of knowing will provide students with the opportunity to study several overlapping concentrations within the graduate program.

Graduate students in the Department of Communication must decide which of three options they will pursue in order to complete the MA degree:

• a scholarly thesis or production thesis

• a professional paper or project
• a professional internship. Each has its own unique set of advantages and each demands proper planning on the part of the student and his/her faculty mentor in order to complete this final requirement of graduation.