The Communication Department's students and faculty are its primary strengths. Student backgrounds are diverse. Most are from southeast Tennessee or north Georgia. A number call the west of Tennessee home, and a percentage of UTC's communication students are "out-of-staters." All share a goal of wanting to prepare well for entry into the professions of journalism and mass communications.
The faculty represent a variety of communication, journalism, and education experiences. Three of seven faculty members hold either endowed chairs or honorary titles based on their teaching, research and service. All communication faculty are involved in student advising and campus-related organizations.
The Communication Department supports three active student organizations with national affiliations: the National Association of Black Journalists, the Public Relations Student Society of America and the Society of Professional Journalists. Involvement in professional organizations and other student-related activities often assists in placing students in the active internship program.
Communication majors and minors are also actively involved in the student newspaper, The University Echo, and the campus radio station, WUTC, offers other opportunities to interested majors.
The Communication Department continues its efforts to support and encourage scholarship related to the region's rich history. Each year the department cooperating with the West Chair of Excellence in Communications and Public Affairs,Dr. David Sachsman sponsors a national conference on journalism history--Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression.
The department's relationships with campus media support and supplement the communication curriculum. The curriculum provides a general mass communication education through a core of seven courses (21 semester hours), with additional course electives offered in "specialty" areas such as newspapers, advertising, broadcasting and public relations. The goal of the curriculum is to prepare students well for a variety of communication and related professions. As a program that subscribes to the guidelines and policies of the accrediting body, the UTC Communication Department is committed to education and training that follows ACEJMC guidelines of Professional Competencies.
The communication curriculum is designed to prepare communication professionals for success in an ethnically diverse and culturally varied environment. For example, former Whittle Communications magazine editor and UTC Communication Department faculty member Elizabeth Gailey teaches an upper-level course, "Race, Gender, and the Media." The course prepares communication professionals for careers in an increasingly heterogeneous community.
The department recognizes the value of a diverse environment in which to teach and to learn. Our graduates will be serving the communication needs of a diverse and multicultural society. The faculty has designed and adopted a strategic plan to develop and to maintain diversity.
For additional information about the UTC Department of Communication, send an email to the department head, Kittrell Rushing at kit-rushing@utc.edu
