Undergraduate Minors
Whether you select a minor based on your career goals or personal interests, there are many benefits. Potential employers recognize graduates with a minor as:
- Determined
- Eager to learn
- Willing to put in the extra effort
- Capable of handling additional workloads
A minor can make you more marketable. Employers look for employees who specialize within a specific sector and are often willing to pay such individuals higher salaries. It can also be a meaningful talking point during an interview. An interviewer gets to know you personally and realizes your interests.
Here are the minors we offer in the Communication and Media Department:
Business Communication
This minor will help you shape and affect business operations and decisions easily through advanced communication skills.
The courses you will be expected to take will deepen your understanding of business operations and how to handle industry situations. You will have the skills to analyze the practicality of a decision and its effects on the involved parties. You will also learn how to make the best choice for both the company and client while defending your reasoning, help others understand your point of view and you understanding theirs.
Communication
Every workplace will require you to have a deep professional understanding of people. You will also be expected to have impeccable writing skills and speech. With a communication minor, this will all be accomplished.
You will take courses such as Writing for Communication, which is designed to advance your writing style. Courses such as Communication Theory, Communication Ethics and Logical and Rhetorical Analysis, as well as other electives, are all designed to strengthen your understanding of society and how people think and react.
Film Production
Film is one of the most important forms of media ever invented. As it continues to evolve, it is found in the roots through to the bleeding edge of emerging media. From YouTube, TikTok and Instagram accounts with the most followers, to the websites of Fortune 500 companies, to network news and the most watched television shows, all motion picture media looks to cinematic storytelling to show the way.
The film production minor places a premium on narrative storytelling using motion picture industry standards to create commercially viable, creatively powerful productions. Students who choose to pursue a film minor will enroll in courses instructing the many tiers of visual authorship that make filmmaking the invaluable form of media it has become. Whether the goal is to pursue one of the tens of thousands video jobs available in any industry, be the next indie documentary darling or produce for the silver screen of Hollywood, the film production minor is the first step of the journey.
Social Media
It is no secret social media is an amazing tool and is becoming essential in most occupations and business operations. With a preexisting understanding of the power and influence of social media from the onset of your career, you will be a more valued employee and potentially secure a higher salary.
With courses such as Contemporary Public Relations, Social Media Strategies, Social Media Communication, Social Media Production, Advertising or Mass Communication Law as well as Graphics or Persuasion and Propaganda, you will learn how social media goes from what seems to be simple day to day use to a much deeper marketing tool in many prosperous businesses.
Sports Communication
If you have an interest in communication, journalism, public relations, advertising, ideography, promotion, or even event planning and never-ending love for sports, this is the place to be!
You will be required to take courses in Public Relations or Social media Strategies, Production, Sports Writing, Social Media & Sports, as well as other electives offered within the department. These courses will provide you will a deeper understanding of te work of sports firm the perspective of a company or business. Depending on your ambition, this minor will help you aspire to work within the sports industry in many capacities.