Contact Department head Howard Sypher

We believe that the exceptional communication programs of the next decade will need to distinguish themselves in special ways. These programs will have to continue to develop outstanding students, attract outstanding faculty, bring in major grants, be a center for exciting research and innovative teaching, and provide a challenging environment for all. These programs will also have to be global in their vision and reach and connect their students and faculty in new ways.

In an attempt to move toward this goal, we are making efforts to further internationalize our programs. Our department strategy is pretty simple: "Focus on building a few intense, high quality relationships and programs." Toward this end, we have moved to provide faculty with significant international experiences, develop more opportunities for our students to internationalize their programs and build relationships with world-class universities outside the United States.

We are working to do this in several specific ways. First, a number of our undergraduate students have really benefited from summer internships in London and Sydney. These internships are organized through Purdue's Study Abroad Office and through private contractors in London and Sydney. These programs are typically 8-weeks long and involve coursework and an internship in the student's area of specialty. Professors Marifran Mattson, Ralph Webb, and Robin Clair have been involved in these programs over the last few years, and they have been terrific for the participating students.

Second, we have also sent undergraduate and graduate students to participate in the CIMBA/CIU program in Northern Italy (Asolo and Paderno). This program offers business, communication and journalism courses in a campus environment in a small town about 50 miles northwest of Venice. Two or three department graduate students take part in this summer program each year, and we send an average of one faculty member per year to teach over there during the regular semester. Undergraduate numbers vary but over the last four years, about 40 Purdue students have participated in this program. Professor Jay Wang taught in the MBA program last summer, while Professor Josh Boyd will teach in the undergraduate program in January 2007. Professors Austin Babrow, Patrice Buzzanell and I have all taught over there in the past. Faculty members spend one semester teaching in this program.

Third, we have begun to develop program-to-program relationships with universities in Europe and Asia. These relationships with Tsinghua University in China and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL) involve research collaboration and faculty exchanges, and have a strong graduate student research component.

Sypher with some of the office staff of Vision International, a Tsinghua Research Park start-up. While in China, Sypher did a workshop for Vision International. The company hopes to send some staff to Purdue in the next year or so for training

Although department faculty members have visited and lectured at several Chinese universities (Fudan, Peking U, Nanjing U, Beijing Foreign Language U, etc. ) over the last few years, we have focused most recent efforts on building a strong partnership with our colleagues in the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University.

Why Tsinghua? Tsinghua University is a well-known and highly regarded engineering and science university.  It is sometimes called the MIT of China and matches up well with Purdue at the institutional and program level. In the past, we have hosted visiting scholars from Tsinghua, we recruit students from there, our graduate students have taught in their summer language camp, and we are collaborating in several research and engagement projects with colleagues from this university.

In October we collaborated on a "Communication and Public Health" conference in Beijing, where 25 Purdue faculty and graduate students participated. During the same visit, we also co-hosted (with Tsinghua) a workshop on "Crisis Communication and Branding" (led by Professors Jay Wang and Fan Hong) for the CEOs of the major hospitals in Beijing. We are currently working on several other exciting collaborative initiatives with Tsinghua and expect to develop undergraduate student and faculty exchanges over the next few years.

About two years ago, we began working with the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL) in Belgium as part of Purdue's university-wide partnership with KUL. To date we have hosted faculty visits from KUL faculty to Purdue and in fall 2005, we sent eight department faculty members and students to KU Leuven to participate in the formal opening ceremonies for the academic year. We are very excited to be working with KU Leuven. KUL is located in a classic medieval town just outside of Brussels; it is a very high quality institution and the oldest Catholic University in the world, established in 1425.

Keith Roe, executive dean for the Social Sciences at KUL, was here for a visit this fall. Glenn Sparks was a visiting faculty member there in the spring, and Steve Wilson taught at KUL during the fall semester. We expect the first exchange of students to take place next year, and we are working on a proposal for a joint degree program.

In the last year, department and KUL faculty and students have collaborated on research articles, papers and one successful grant from the Belgium government with Purdue as the co-principal investigator (256,000 Euros), so we feel the research collaboration aspect of this program is well under way.

While we do have other plans on the horizon, we feel pretty strongly that we have a global strategy that will help distinguish Purdue's Communication program in the future and add value to the degrees of our graduates.