Undergraduate Program
On behalf of the faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates of the Department of Communication at Purdue University, welcome to our department's website. I hope you will find the information here useful for learning about our innovative undergraduate and graduate programs, our outstanding faculty, our broad and diverse research interests, and the many student and faculty events that help maintain our tradition of excellence.
Our department is part of Purdue University's College of Liberal Arts and consists of six interdependent units that focus on a broad array of human communication, encompassing health, interpersonal, and organizational communication, media, technology and society, public affairs/issue management and rhetorical studies. We have 31 full-time faculty, 81 teaching assistants, and 25 part-time instructors. Our outstanding undergraduate program is the largest of the eleven departments in the College of Liberal Arts. Our graduate programs are ranked among the very best in the country.
As department head, I am proud to be a part of our community of scholar-teachers. Our department not only plays a central role in the teaching and research missions of Purdue University but addresses critical issues facing the world today; issues related to health, democracy, power, public discourse, diversity, globalization, the changing nature of our personal and public lives, and the impact of traditional and emerging communication media on individuals and groups. In our classrooms, our research, and our service activities we strive to forge links between theory and practice, to build bridges between individual and collective action, and to serve our students, our university, and our local and international communities. Our faculty regularly receive national and international recognition for outstanding research and teaching from a number of professional associations and are among the most prolific scholars in communication worldwide. Our alumni are highly successful in the academic, corporate, and private sectors.
I believe it is our diversity of interests, specialties, perspectives, methods, and styles that make the Department of Communication an exciting and challenging place to pursue undergraduate study, graduate work, or an academic career. I hope these pages capture some of that excitement. Please let me or any other faculty or support staff know if there is any further information you would like to have.