Communication Degree Programs
Where Passion Meets Action
Undergraduate Degrees
Communication Studies Concentration, BA/BS
Offered as a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science Major
This degree program offers a 100% online option.
Our Communication Studies concentration provides a high-touch social and intellectual experience that helps students learn how to navigate interpersonal, group and organizational cultures.
Social Media and Public Engagement Concentration, BA/BS
Offered as a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science Major
The Social Media and Public Engagement concentration provides students with practical and critical skills required to live, work and make their mark in the modern media landscape.
Academic Minors
Digital Journalism Minor
Offered as a Secondary Discipline Minor
Learn media writing, visual storytelling fundamentals and social media strategy in the Communication Program’s Digital Journalism minor.
Communication Studies Minor
Offered as a Secondary Discipline Minor
This degree program offers a 100% online option.
Students in non-Communication majors and disciplines can round out their intellectual and professional development by studying interpersonal, group, organizational and media communication in our Communication Studies minor.
Certificate Program
Certificate in Environmental Communication
Offered as an Academic Certification
SOU’s Certificate in Environmental Communication provides learners with the practical skills necessary to communicate topics regarding science, sustainability, and the environment to a public audience. This program serves as a strong foundation for students who aspire to professional roles in environmental communication, such as community outreach, public relations, advocacy, and journalism.
Certificate in Management of Human Resources (CMHR)
Offered as an Academic Certification
The Certificate in Management of Human Resources (CMHR) equips candidates with specialized skills to work with the most important resource at an organization – people.
*Co-organized with SOU School of Business
Certificate in Professional Social Media
Offered as an Academic Certification
The Certificate in Professional Social Media provides a fast-paced credential with which learners can improve their practical, strategic and creative capabilities for online media production in the 21st century.
Micro-Credential
Broadcast News Production
Offered as an Academic Micro-Credential
The Broadcast News Production badge introduces students to basic skills and technologies entailed in the production of broadcast journalism through the filter of news programming for local television stations. Students complete reporting and production tasks encompassing both field and studio broadcast contexts.
Comic Studies
Offered as an Academic Micro-Credential
The Comic Studies badge synthesizes courses in the study and production of comic art. Students develop skills in illustration and the creation of comic narrative, and also exercise a critical and scholarly understanding of comics media as a dynamic, pervasive, and economically significant genre in contemporary society.
Design Thinking and Lean Entrepreneurship
Offered as an Academic Micro-Credential
By completing this badge, students develop concrete skills of creativity and innovation that are directly relevant to current practice in industry, governance and public advocacy. The badge emphasizes lean entrepreneurship, design thinking and visual thinking as methods by which students can devise transformative solutions to complex problems. These skills are urgently needed in organizations that seek to respond to rapid change encountered in contemporary business, media, technology and policy contexts.
Film Business and Management
Offered as an Academic Micro-Credential
By completing Southern Oregon University’s 12-credit badge in Film Business & Management, students demonstrate their ability to develop screen properties, raise production funds, create shooting schedules and budgets, and create marketing plans and festival submission strategies for independently-produced films. The Film Business & Management badge provides a strong foundation for students interested in working in production offices or in project development for the entertainment industry.
Global Communication
Offered as an Academic Micro-Credential
The Global Health and Communication badge confirms student literacy in media, communication, and communities within an international and global context. Completion of the badge entails robust exploration of colonialism / post-colonialism / anti-colonialism, identity, development and globalization. Students examine historical and current events through multiple perspectives. This badge aims to explore the intersectionality between international, global, gender, generational, and more, through communication, critical/ cultural studies, and feminist frameworks.
Health and Crisis Communication
Offered as an Academic Micro-Credential
The Health and Crisis Communication badge develops students’ expertise in the areas of health communication, health promotion, health-related technology and social media, and health-related risk and crisis communication. The badge will serve students who are interested in pursuing careers or further study related to health, such as public health or healthcare administration.
Multimedia Journalism
Offered as an Academic Micro-Credential
The Multimedia Journalism badge provides students with a compact introduction to the essential practices of professional journalism in the 21st century. It fully commits to traditional journalistic values such as reporting, verification and ethics. Meanwhile, this badge gives students practical experience in journalistic reporting using skills in social media and visual storytelling relevant to contemporary practice in the industry.
Persuasive Communication
Offered as an Academic Micro-Credential
Learners who successfully complete the Badge in Persuasive Communication will be able to apply persuasive skills in private relationships, in the workplace, and in public citizenship. Those who earn the badge will not just gain skills to be personally persuasive; they will also grow in the ability to critically analyze persuasive messages sent to them in verbal, written, and nonverbal channels through all forms of media.
Social Media Strategy
Offered as an Academic Micro-Credential
By completing Southern Oregon University’s 12-credit badge in Social Media Strategy, students demonstrate their ability to conceive, execute, and assess social media campaigns on behalf of clients. The Social Media Strategy badge provides a strong foundation for students interested in securing entry-level employment with clients or employers in marketing, public relations, advertising, or journalism.
Visual Storytelling
Offered as an Academic Micro-Credential
The Visual Storytelling badge combines basic skills in visual communication and photographic storytelling suitable for entry-level practice in media professions such as journalism, professional social media, and content marketing. Students exercise their skills both in creating original visual content, and designing digital documents to narrate brand or journalistic messages.
Contact Communication
SOU Communication Program
Britt Hall 240
1250 Siskiyou Blvd.
Ashland, OR 97520
541.552.6673