The communication department is currently developing and looking to add a master’s program.
“Dr. Taylor really wants to expand the college as we become a university,” Dr. Jerry Zurek, chair and communication professor, said. “He is encouraging many departments to see if their program would be a good fit for a graduate program.”
With this addition, students will be able to enroll and earn their master’s in communication after completing the required 33 credits for the degree.
“Our master’s program as well as the other master’s programs now being launched at Cabrini are designed to boost enrollment and drive revenue for the college,” Dr. Dawn Francis, assistant professor of communication, said.
The addition of the graduate program has been in the works now for about a year. Francis went on to say, via email, that students who have already graduated from the college could possibly feel inclined to return in order to pursue this new opportunity.
“Many students who graduated with their bachelor’s degree in COM from Cabrini, and who have worked professionally for several years, may want to return for a master’s from this department because they found value in their Cabrini COM education and they would like to extend that,” Francis said.
The existing undergraduate communication program already offers students a solid, hands-on experience in communication, journalism, multimedia and secondary education.
“I believe we have a very strong undergraduate program,” Zurek said. “That has always been our focus to have the best undergraduate program that we can possibly have.”
The master’s degree offered will be in strategic communication.
“I think that the program as we are currently imagining it will help students who
are in the earlier stages of their careers, and looking to move from a tactical role to a more strategic role,” Dr. Felicity Duncan, assistant professor of communications, said in an email. “It will equip students with skills in project management, strategic thinking and content development.”
“There are many communication master’s programs in the Greater Philadelphia region,” Francis said. “In order for ours to be competitive, we needed to research and design a program that is unique and offers something different from our competitors.”
There are a lot of factors to be taken in to consideration when adding a master’s program factors include faculty to teach the courses, how long the courses will run, recruitment, cost and so on.
“We will need to determine whether our existing faculty will teach some of these courses or whether we will need at least one additional full-time faculty member in COM,” Francis said. “That topic is still under discussion.”
“If the program is approved in its current format, the department would need to hire an additional faculty member,” Duncan said. “If it grows, we may need more faculty and staff.”
“We want to make sure that if we institute a graduate degree, the students who pay the tuition, will get an equal value of career advancement,” Zurek said. “We don’t want to just take in students and their tuition if we can’t really improve job prospects.”
Undergraduate students may now have the possibility of taking one or two graduate classes their senior year.
“They can put that on their transcript, go work for a couple of years and then come back and finish their masters,” Zurek said.
It seems that all parties involved, most notably the students, will benefit from this addition.
Be advised that the communication master’s program is still in the works and must be approved by a variety of boards and administrators before it is implemented.
“If approved this Spring, we anticipate marketing the program and enrolling participants through Fall 2016, and having students begin their coursework in January 2017,” Francis said.
