Skip Navigation

Communication Division

Message from the Chair

Welcome to the Communication Division web pages. The Communication Division is committed to the highest standards of academic excellence in both scholarship and student learning in a context of Christian values. Our greatest resource is our high quality faculty and students. The Communication Division's core mission includes a commitment to educating and strengthening students for lives of purpose, service, and leadership. As such, we take great pride in the quality of our academic curriculum, co-curricular programs, and scholarly research.

The Communication division offers undergraduate degrees/majors including the following; Bachelor of Arts in Advertising, Communication (Intercultural/International or Organizational Communication sequences), Journalism, Public Relations, Speech Communication, and Telecommunications ( Broadcast news writing or Radio and Television Production sequences). The Communication Division offers two Graduate Degrees: Master of Arts (MA) - Communication and Master of Science (MS) - Communication. The Communication Division enrolls approximately 600 undergraduate students and 35 graduate students. Most of the Division courses and co-curricular opportunities take advantage of the state of the art Center for Communication and Business building located on Pepperdine University's Malibu campus.

Communication Division offers courses designed to:

  • Teach students the core traditional liberal arts discipline of the study of human communication, which ranges from Classical rhetoric to 21st Century communication technology and processes.

  • Teach students research and assessment skills to be informed and critical listeners, consumers, and evaluators of communicated messages in a wide variety of contexts and situations.

  • Teach students the theories of communication including how language, messages, human interaction, perception and listening, and/or mediating technological processes function.

  • Increase awareness and understanding of the developments, functions, and implications of the symbolic and technological "communication revolution" in society, organizations, families, cultural institutions, mass media, and human relationships.

  • Teach students to be mindful of how language, culture, reference frames, interplay with perception and understanding in order to maintain a nonjudgmental ethical perspective of others regardless of gender, ethnicity, culture, or background – building a core principle of seeking to first understand others and only then seeking to be understood by others.

  • Teach students the skills, ethics, and values necessary to be socially responsible and effective communicators including the skills of listening, effectiveness and creativity.

  • Teach students to communicate ideas, facts, perspectives, and feelings in a wide variety of media, channels, contexts and situations.

  • Prepare students for successful college work and beyond through General Education instruction in the fundamental liberal arts of speech and rhetoric.

  • Prepare students for success in graduate or professional school.

  • Prepare all students for vocation, personal life and service.

  • Prepare students for specific careers in communication dependent professions, including Advertising, Public Relations, Journalism, Broadcasting, Television/Film/TV/Radio industries, Human Relations, Corporate Communications, Training, Editorial, Screen, and Feature writing, Speechwriter, Critic, Employee Development, Sales, Political Communication management, Ethics Officer, and Continuity Communication.

Special Programs and Study Opportunities

Every Seaver College student, regardless of major, is invited to consider participating in the many Co-curricular opportunities hosted within the Communication Division. These include the intercollegiate Debate program, AdWaves (student advertising agency), Pepperdine Communication Association, TV station (cable-casting locally on channels 6 and 26), radio station (KWVS/FM 101.5), annual Student Video Festival, weekly newspaper The Graphic and The Graphic on-line, the magazine Currents, the creative writing magazine Expressionists, and our yearbook Impressions.

For Communication Division majors, special student groups provide opportunities for professional contact, recognition and honor, national competitions, and national conferencing include Pepperdine chapters of: Sigma Delta Chi, (national journalism society); Alpha Epsilon Rho, (national broadcast honor society); the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences; American Advertising Federation; Public Relations Student Society of America; and Lambda Pi Eta, (honor society of the National Communication Association).

Internships are included in every plan of study within the Division and permit Communication Division majors to learn experientially what they have been introduced to in the classroom. Students' intern with all types of industries and companies and in a wide variety of career related capacities.

Students learning opportunities for first hand involvement with faculty's research work; including assisting the use of critical, qualitative or empirical field and/or experimental research methods. Recent or on-going faculty research includes; studies of internet advertising, broadcast correspondents' use of internet websites during the Iraq war, computer mediated "virtual groups," PR strategies for company reputation repair, crisis leadership communication characteristics, corporate surveillance of employee communication behaviors in the workplace, and rhetorical analysis of significant public figures.

An economics professor writes about the importance of communication studies. Professor D. McCloskey observed that: ". . . we are living in a communications revolution comparable to the invention of printing . . . In an age of increasing talk, it's wiser talk we need most. Communication studies might well be central to colleges and universities in the 21st century." Furthermore, two significant reports by the Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University call attention to the importance of communication education to the complete undergraduate education. Communication studies are the hub for college learning and study.

The area of communication studies is both ancient and as up to date as tomorrow and can provide a framework for all other areas of liberal arts study.

I hope that you will have an opportunity to join with us as we investigate the exciting and pragmatic field of the study of communication in all of its diverse forms and formats. I invite you to read on and explore the many possibilities and opportunities that await you in the Communication Division.

Warmly,

Robert C. Chandler, Ph.D.
Chair, Communication Division
Blanche E. Seaver Professor of Communication