Undergraduate Studies in Speech Communication

In survey after survey, personnel officers and business leaders identify communication skills as the most important attributes they seek when they hire new employees. Communication is central to the activities which most define our humanity. Communication competency plays the central role in our family lives, in establishing and maintaining our friendships, in our religious activities, in our participation as citizens and in our pursuits of profession and livelihood. The study of speech communication improves your skills in conceiving, organizing, delivering, and interpreting public as well as interpersonal messages.

As a liberal art, however, the study of speech communication seeks not only to improve your skills, but also to enrich your understanding of the processes that underlie effective or ineffective communication. For what purposes do individuals and groups communicate? How can conflict between roommates, employees, or nations be understood and resolved constructively? How do nonverbal and verbal messages influence attitudes and beliefs? What communicative strategies do people employ in various situations such as testifying before a government agency or evaluating an employee? What accounts for the success of the great orators of history? How do communication patterns differ across cultures? The study of speech communication addresses these questions.

The study of speech communication can help you become a more effective message source in public speaking and in interpersonal situations. Conversely, it also helps you to become a more effective consumer of the public and interpersonal messages which bombard you daily, to analyze and understand your communication environment. You may learn about the workings of a political campaign or the patterns of talk between physicians and patients. You may learn to dissect Malcolm X's speech on "The Ballot or the Bullet" or a transcript of a job interview. You may learn why women and men sometimes seem to talk past each other, or why current political leaders sometimes seem to speak in "sound bites" rather than with sound reasoning.