MA in Communication
A One-of-a-Kind Master's Program
The Master of Arts in Communication at Saint Mary's College of California (a +1 program) provides students with the ability to communicate through difference to form bonds connecting cultures, to do business across borders, and to build bridges between people.
The only one of its kind in the Bay Area, the MACOMM is a +1 program focused on applied research, highlighting clusters of in-demand skills and competencies that give students an edge in the post-graduate job market. The course of study is designed to be completed in only one extra year after completion of an undergraduate degree from Saint Mary's (applications from non-Saint Mary's students or SMC alumni will be considered, and plans for accelerated graduation are available). Students complete two cross-listed MA elective classes during their final two years as an undergraduate and then continue for an intensive year, earning two powerful degrees on an accelerated timeline.
The Master of Arts in Communication is an accelerated +1 program that offers undergraduates a second degree with only an additional intensive year.
Connecting with People, Connecting with the World
We place emphasis on shared inquiry and critical thinking, equipping our students to work, learn, and live in an increasingly diverse, globalized, and data-driven world. Students can choose to concentrate their four electives on any of our departmental strengths (including intercultural communication, media studies, and media production) or keep their study general. In either case, our curriculum focuses on communication challenges and opportunities in professional settings across cultures. By working closely with invested faculty who bring a range of communication expertise and experience into the classroom, students can leave and make an impact outside of it.
A World of Possibilities
Student engagement in the program will be built on self-reflexivity, awareness, and critical thinking. These skills, coupled with data-driven research opportunities and critical involvement in decision making, embolden students to pursue leadership roles in a variety of fields:
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Cost Effective
As the Summer 2021 Salary Survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers recently reported, getting a Master of Arts in Communication and Media Studies provides an average starting salary boost of 46.8% over a Bachelor's degree in Communication. According to average salaries, that's just shy of a $20,000 premium for getting the advanced degree. Given the cost of our +1 year, that's an excellent return on the investment. The tuition can be paid off in under two years!
International Experience
June International Externship Option
Students have the option of spending their final June working in teams on an intercultural communication project in partnership with an intercultural or international organization. This course works as a “capstone” that synthesizes aspects of all core courses into an applied experience working for a client. Students spend two weeks on campus and two weeks traveling to a client site (international or domestic, depending on current global health and safety conditions) with faculty for approximately two weeks, depending on the scope of the project. Students act as consultants and assist the client organization in the development and execution of a research based intercultural project. The cost of travel for this course is not included in tuition, but is estimated at an additional $4000. Students not opting for this international experience must complete a comprehensive exam.
Intercultural Communication
Relevant education for a changing world
Makiko Imamura, Associate Professor on Intercultural Communication. Joined by Shawny Anderson, Associate Dean of Liberal Arts and Prof. Aaron Sachowitz.
Bridge Course Options for Spring 2023
In COMM 344, students will study communal and non-commercial media production in the context of social movements and grass-roots activism. They will create videos and multimedia content with and about Saint Mary’s College and the surrounding community. The class will develop a student's basic interviewing skills, event videography and rapid-response reporting techniques. Students will familiarize themselves with a variety of tools and methods for the dissemination of digital content. COMM 344 satisfies the Artistic Understanding (Analysis and Creative Practice) and Community Engagement requirements of the Core Curriculum.
Instructor: Jason Jakaitis
M/W 4:00-5:35pm
This course focuses on drag, gender performance, identity, as well as drag's communicative/ rhetorical aspects and its relationship to social justice. Completion of the course will produce a drag and social justice show with Momma's Boyz, a Bay Area hip-hop drag king group. COMM 361 incorporates a service-learning component.
Instructor: Scött Schonfeldt-Aultman
T/Th 9:45-11:20am
This course explores the connection between media and interpersonal relationships by unpacking how social, digital, and traditional media use are related to the formation and maintenance of relationships. Students will examine how media use can influence individuals' perceptions and beliefs associated with romantic, friendly, family, and workplace relationships. This social-scientific course requires students to read academic journal articles related to media theory, interpersonal communication, and the integration of those two fields, as well as to analyze a film for the final project.
Instructor: Veronica Hefner
M/W/F 9:15-10:20am
Curriculum
Course work in the MA in Communication program consists of five required core courses, four cross listed electives, and one of two options for a final "capstone" culminating experience. Students will complete a total of nine courses (36 Carnegie units). The core courses are designed to build mutually complimentary competencies that are augmented by the electives and brought together in either a comprehensive exam or an International Externship (additional cost applies) in June of the final year. Students are encouraged, though not required, to focus their four electives on an area of emphasis, such as Intercultural Communication, Media Studies, or Media Production. All MA courses have an applied component.
Course Descriptions
COMM 300: Theories of Communication
This course investigates the relationship between theories of communication and culture. Students will use case studies to apply a range of communication theories to analyze problems that typically arise in “real world” settings. Students are expected to make a clear connection between a communication phenomenon (e.g., current social issues) and communication theories as they work toward critical engagement with professional communication competencies.
COMM 302: Strategic Mediated Communication
This course examines media and mediated forms of communication as they intersect with cultural, economic, political or social contexts. The focus is on both the analysis and strategic use of mediated communication for various occasions, including development, social change, crisis response, corporate/organizational digital presence, and social justice. The course integrates both critical and practical approaches to understanding effective mediated communication. By the end of this course, students will have completed a digital portfolio that will highlight all of their work in the program as a case study in strategic mediated communication at the individual micro level.
COMM 305: Applied Research Design
This course is designed to focus on methods of data gathering. In this course, students will learn designs of quantitative and qualitative research, such as experiment, survey, interview, participant observation, and ethnography. Students gain research design experience by designing a project to address a particular intercultural communication phenomenon, and the importance of proper research design for professional applications, including project or training assessment and evaluation. Each student’s proposed research project will be executed in the Applied Research Methods course. This is an on-campus course, offered during the regular work week. Students must take this course in the Fall semester of the +1 year. This is the first course of the Applied Research Certificate sequence.
COMM 306: Applied Research Methods
This course prepares students to collect data for a research project using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The primary foci include experiment, survey, interview, participant observation, and ethnography. Continuing from the Applied Research Design course, students will collect data from the previous semester’s project designs, gaining experience in a variety of methods as well as how to work in research teams.
COMM 307: Applied Research Analysis
This course prepares students to analyze a research project using both quantitative and qualitative data analysis. The primary foci of data analysis include (M)ANOVA, regression, and mediation and moderation analysis for quantitative survey data and coding based on the grounded theory approach for the qualitative data. Continuing from the Applied Research Methods course, students will analyze the data, interpret and report the results. This is an on-campus course, offered during the regular work week. Students must take this course in the Spring of their +1 year. This is the third course of the Applied Research Certificate sequence.
COMM 301: Communication and Conflict
This course examines communication that creates, manages, and resolves conflict in various relational and workplace contexts. The focus is on theoretical understanding of conflict and its management and the practical skills of applying non-violent communication. Students learn and examine the sources of conflict, optimal communication skills to facilitate the conflict to resolution, and relational implications for the parties involved in the conflict.
COMM 310: Group Facilitation and Leadership
This course focuses on the development of group facilitation and critical thinking skills for making ethical decisions in diverse organizational, professional, and personal settings. Topics covered in this course include leadership, communication, theories of power, interpersonal dynamics in teams and groups, listening abilities, perspective-taking, practical discussion facilitation, skill building, understanding organizational structure and decision-making processes.
COMM 311: Identity and Intercultural Communication
This course aims to develop a critical cultural consciousness. Students begin by examining their own cultural identities and then learn how to view interactions with others through the lenses of intercultural communication. Through self-awareness and understanding how identity, culture, and communication work together, students learn critical skills to enhance their intercultural competence. Students work in groups to apply these insights by developing a diversity training activity grounded in theories of identity and intercultural communication.
COMM 312: Intergroup Communication
In this course, students conceptualize culture as a branch of larger conversations surrounding social groups. This course is designed to examine the dynamic of intergroup relations and its cyclical impact on human communication, perceptions, and relationships. Applying theories and perspectives of communication, social psychology, sociolinguistics, and history, students explore the relationship between communication and social group membership.
COMM 334: Digital Cultures
This course is a humanities-based exploration of the fundamental concepts of digital culture. The “digital” will be examined as technology, as a communicative and expressive medium, as philosophical precept and paradigm, and as political, social, economic, and psychological force. Students will explore key concepts and theories through the close reading of fundamental texts, study of representative examples of digital work (e.g. websites, gaming, media art, networked and immersive environments), and engage in complementary design and production assignments. As a significant force shaping life in the contemporary world, it is important that students learn how to examine the effect of the digital.
Intercultural Externship
This final experience works as a “capstone” that synthesizes and builds upon the competencies learned in the MA courses. Students choosing this option spend two weeks on campus and two weeks traveling to a site (international unless global health and safety measures requires a domestic site) to conduct an applied research project as a group. Site preference, whenever possible, is given to Lasallian partner organizations working in international settings. Students act as consultants and assist the client organization in the development and execution of a data-driven research project. The cost of travel for this course is not included in tuition.
Examples of previous intercultural and international experiences led by the Communication Department faculty include:
- Centro Bartolomé de las Casas/Colegio Andino, Cusco, Peru
- Municipal Government of Diriamba, Nicaragua
- Bosques de Gaia Organic Farm, Diriamba, Nicaragua
- Taking Root, San Juan de Limay, Nicaragua
- San Carlos Community, Diriamba, Nicaragua
- Sunsplash Reggae Festival, Goa, India
- People's Grocery, Oakland, California, U.S.A.
- Mommas' Boyz, Oakland, California, U.S.A.
- Showing Up for Racial Justice, Oakland, California, U.S.A.
Comprehensive Exam
Students who choose this option complete their "capstone" requirement by completing a 6 hour exam in June split between questions drawn from the core classes and a bibliography of texts chosen by the student that reflect the elective courses and areas of emphasis completed by the individual student for the degree. Students will defend the answers to their exam in a one hour presentation with faculty from the program. There is no extra cost for this option.
During Undergraduate
Two cross listed upper division electives (4 units each). One each semester of senior year is recommended.
Note: not all upper division Comm electives are eligible for cross listing. Consult a faculty advisor.
+1 Graduate Year
Fall
COMM 300: Theories of Communication (4 units)
COMM 305 Applied Research Design (4 units)
Cross listed elective (4 units)
January Term
COMM 306Applied Research Methods (4 units)
Spring
Cross listed elective (4 units)
COMM 302 Strategic Mediated Communication (4 units)
COMM 307 Applied Research Analysis (4 units)
June Term
Either Comprehensive Exam or Intercultural Externship
Explore Further
School and Department Information
Veronica Hefner, Ph.D.
Program Director, MA in Communication
vh10@stmarys-ca.edu
925-631-4861
Collin Skeen
Assistant Director of Admissions and Recruitment
cas38@stmarys-ca.edu
925-631-4190