EIU Master of Arts in Communication Studies

Welcome to the Graduate Program
in Communication Studies at EIU 

We are delighted that you are interested in our program. The Department of Communication Studies at Eastern Illinois University celebrates a long and distinguished history, having granted masters degrees since 1965.

Our program is organized along three academic concentrations: Strategic Communication, Human Communication Processes, and Critical/Cultural Studies. Each option area offers students four distinct yet related courses, and all of our students take the department core, which focuses primarily on the theoretical and methodological approaches in our field. We also offer a special topics course as part of our core in an effort to introduce students to current trends in the field. We are also delighted to offer an option in Communication Pedagogy that better prepares students to teach at two-year and four-year institutions. Eastern graduate students can choose to complete their degree requirements with either a traditional academic thesis or a creative thesis, which focuses on an applied project of the student’s choosing.

You will discover that we have built a graduate community dedicated to the education of our students in both the professional and academic aspects of our field. Our graduate students present their academic research at numerous national and regional conferences and have had the distinction of publishing a number of manuscripts. Several of our graduate students also invest their time and effort in creative and applied projects.

Our dedicated and engaged graduate faculty has provided the foundation for our long and successful tradition as a graduate program at EIU. Our faculty has made significant theoretical and applied contributions to the field over the years. They consistently publish original research, building on and advancing current theoretical and methodological perspectives, while also presenting their work at national, regional, and special topic conferences.

Many of our graduate students hold assistantships in the department where they often teach as the primary instructor in our Introduction to Speech Communication class. They also teach lab sections of our applied communication class, serve as teaching assistants to our large lectures, or as research assistants to faculty. Other students in our program maintain campus assistantships outside the department in such places as the Center for Academic Technology Support (CATS), the Student Union, the Housing Office, the School of Continuing Education, the Student Recreation Center, or the Health Education Resource Center. Our program consistently and successfully places graduates into the field of their choice, including professional positions in organizations, teaching positions at two-year and four-year institutions, and in Ph.D. programs.

This is an exciting time to be a member of the Department of Communication Studies at Eastern Illinois University. We encourage you to explore our web site and learn more about our program. If you have any questions or want to learn more about the opportunities for graduate studies in communication at Eastern Illinois University, contact our Graduate Coordinator, Dr. Angela S. Jacobs (asjacobs@eiu.edu).

We look forward to hearing from you!

Angela S. Jacobs, Ph.D.
Graduate Coordinator
Professor