About Our Program > The Vision

ABOUT OUR PROGRAM
"Creating Communities of Competent Communicators"

The Vision of the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies is:
To create with colleagues and students discourse communities competent in communication, rhetoric and cosmopolitanism.

The Vision is supported by the core values of our discipline, which complement the values declared in the University vision statement. Our core values, as articulated by the National Communication Association, are:

* Freedom of speech
* Civic discourse
* Ethical communication
* Commitment to social justice
* Commitment to inclusiveness
* Democratic discourse
* Civility

Embodied in our Vision is a desire to help students and colleagues understand that communication not only matters significantly in human affairs, but that its significance is often under-appreciated. Because of the ubiquitous nature of conversation, people rarely understand the complexity and scope of communication phenomena. While the general public readily acknowledges the influence of media messages or the value of communication sills in presenting oneself as competent, few recognize how much our assumptions about the social and physical world are shaped by metaphors, language choices, and particular discourse practices. Our Vision is that as students and colleagues embrace this simple but profound insight, new worlds of possibility become apparent. Instead of simply representing social realities, communication becomes understood as the primary means of creating, sustaining, or altering those realities.