Students from the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences visit NESN studios.

Fusing Critical Theory, Real-World Practice

The department of communication and media offers a major and a minor that emphasizes both applied and media communication.

Communication and media courses bring together critical theory and real-world practice through the exploration of a variety of topics, including health campaigns, sports communication, humor and media, intercultural communication, radio production, newspapers and new media production, and feminist media studies.

The study of communication at Merrimack provides students with an interdisciplinary perspective that embraces the framework of the liberal arts. Merrimack and the liberal arts tradition ensure that students will have a clear understanding that communication fosters both self-expression and democratic compromise. Course offerings in the program are structured with the understanding that communication is the basis for political negotiations, relational development and maintenance, family cohesion and work success.

Communication and Media Offerings

Our communication and media program offers:

• An interdisciplinary perspective that embraces the framework of the liberal arts, orienting the student in both humanities based and social science-focused communication studies.
• A core curriculum that extends through all major areas of the study of communication while maintaining the latitude for individual exploration through electives.
• The opportunity to construct one’s own curriculum based on personal interests that may include interpersonal, organizational, nonverbal, visual, intercultural, health, and mass communication.
• A program design that enables the graduate to incorporate both professional expertise for viable employment and academic excellence for graduate school application.
• A nationally recognized faculty devoted to both teaching and scholarship.
• An advanced and contemporary computer lab that meets the needs of a technology-driven market.
• Video and audio production spaces the connect students with the digitized formats used in current media production operations.

Communication and media encompass verbal and nonverbal language symbols that are spoken, enacted, heard and seen.

To foster an understanding of the breadth and depth of “human meaning-making,” the communication and media program includes courses from the orientations of both the social sciences and the humanities. In so doing, it prepares students to pursue their chosen professional areas or subjects for future study. The major is designed to build a foundation upon which a student may pursue either future study or professional work in law and politics, media organizations, education, business, technological industries, health care or social services.

Majoring in communication and media at Merrimack provides each student with the understanding that the study of communication and media is essential to all of society’s major issues, concerns and the construction of values. Whether one is communicating with one’s self, interpersonally or through a technological medium, the knowledge of communication principles will enhance that endeavor.