Mission Statement

The Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of New Mexico creates excellence in learning through academic scholarship, teaching, and service to the community and the field. We offer undergraduate majors and minors in communication and in journalism and mass communication for liberal arts and career preparation. We also offer electives and courses that serve the general education programs of the entire university.

Communication is the focus of our scholarship and curricula with emphasis on the understanding and appreciation of diverse messages and meanings. Our scholarship and teaching explore the social skills, societal dynamics, and professional environments of communication from a variety of standpoints: intercultural, interpersonal, rhetorical, health, organizational, environmental, strategic, broadcasting, print journalism, and mass communication.

At the graduate level, the department offers the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in communication. The complex relationship between communication and culture as interaction, artifact, and text is the distinctive focus of these programs. We offer an emphasis on three core areas of communication: intercultural communication, health communication, and mass communication.

Commitments:

• To promote and support the mission of the University of New Mexico.
• To offer academic programs leading to bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees.
• To demonstrate excellence in all endeavors.
• To provide students with the tools needed to succeed in a challenging global work environment.
• To value, embrace, and support diversity as an integral component of communication.
• To understand, evaluate, and produce scholarship concerning the structure, function, dynamics and impact of human communication in a variety of contexts.
• To use the Southwest and international borderland environment to focus the study of intercultural communication.