Graduate Degrees in Communication
The graduate program in Communication at the University of Colorado Boulder is both highly rated and well respected. If you are interested in critical, engaged, or applied communication research, there is no better program in the United States to consider.
The Department of Communication offers both the master of arts (MA) and doctor of philosophy (PhD) degrees, with areas of emphasis in Community and Social Interaction, Organizational Communication and Rhetoric and Culture. With a graduate student-to-faculty ratio of just 2:1, MA and PhD students craft personalized programs of study within or across areas of the department. Caring, individualized mentorship is a hallmark of graduate study in the department.
Typically, MA and PhD students are supported throughout the academic year by teaching and research assistantships. Financial support is also available for conference travel, research projects, and, frequently, summer research and teaching.
Graduate students and faculty in Communication utilize a range of social-scientific and humanistic research methods. The diverse array of scholarship conducted in the department is integrated by cross-cutting themes that include design and practice, culture and democracy, and community and justice. Running throughout the program is an exploration of new technologies and emergent forms of communication, a critical/cultural studies approach and a commitment to educating students to become engaged citizens and social change agents.
Faculty in the department are among the most prolific scholars in communication, with the National Research Council (NRC) awarding the department a top 20 ranking for research productivity. They are also among the most visible members of the discipline, having served in leadership positions on major journals and professional associations. Graduate students in Communication routinely publish in prominent scholarly journals, receive top paper awards at major conferences and are recognized for outstanding teaching and service.
The Department of Communication is distinguished by a vibrant and convivial culture uniquely suited to graduate study. MA and PhD students add their voices by serving on most departmental committees and the Communication Graduate Student Association, Colloquia, research lunches and data sessions also provide regular opportunities to participate in cutting-edge scholarly exchange.
If you would like to join this extraordinary community, apply today to the Graduate Program in Communication!
Graduate Degrees: Communication
We are done accepting applications for our fall 2025 graduate program cohort in Communication. We open our application for a new cohort every two years; please see the application deadlines.
Application deadline for beginning studies in academic year 2027-2028:
Dec. 1, 2026
The Department of Communication offers both the master of arts (MA) and doctor of philosophy (PhD) degrees, with areas of emphasis in Community and Social Interaction, Organizational Communication and Rhetoric and Culture. MA and PhD students craft personalized programs of study within or across areas of the department. Caring, individualized mentorship is a hallmark of graduate study in the department.
Typically, MA and PhD students are supported throughout the academic year by teaching and research assistantships. Financial support is also available for conference travel, research projects, and summer research and teaching.
Interested in applying to the COMM department? Share your contact information below, and we’ll let you know when the next application cycle opens.
Get Info: Communication Graduate Degrees
Faculty and students in this area consider ways that practices and processes of interaction in natural contexts create, sustain, and change sociocultural scenes, particularly communities. For theses and dissertations, students select a theoretical issue about social interaction and/or community that crosses contexts, and/or study social interaction within a specific social site.
Sample foci include the communal functions of social interaction; use and circulation of communication ideas in society; communication activism for social justice; cultural communication; local practices of democracy and environmental governance, training programs for mediation or parenthood; and enactments of ethnic, racial, and gender identities in various contexts.
- A distinguished faculty that is recognized via numerous awards, including two distinguished scholars of the National Communication Association
- A focus on how microlevel communicative practices affect and are affected by macrolevel societal structures and processes
- Monthly research lunches exploring ongoing projects conducted by faculty and/or graduate students
- Monthly informal meetings to analyze discourse materials from faculty and/or graduate student research projects
- Connection to an interdisciplinary group of faculty and a graduate certificate program in Culture, Language, and Social Practice (CLASP) to study language and society from an interdisciplinary perspective, acquiring a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to the sociocultural analysis of language
For a detailed list of courses with descriptions, see the University Catalog.
- Readings in Community & Social Interaction
- Applied Communication and Community Problem Solving
- Language, Ideology, and Identity
- Deliberation and Public Engagement
- Dialectics of Community
- Discourse Analysis
- Ethnography of Communication
- Community-based Research Methods
- Lori Britt, Assistant Professor, James Madison University (PhD, 2010)
- Jone Brunelle, Internal Communications Assistant, International Labor Organization (MA, 2014)
- Angie Davlyn, Director of Development and Evaluation, ACCESS Roaring Fork (PhD, 2012)
- Maggie George, Associate Director, Class Programs, Cornell University (MA, 2013)
- Kell Delaney, Product Experience Designer, Conversant (MA, 2012)
- Ryan Hartwig, Associate Dean and Associate professor, Azusa Pacific University (PhD, 2010)
- Peter Jensen, Assistant Professor, University of Alabama (MA, 2012)
- Jessica Robles, Lecturer (tenure-track), Loughborough University (PhD, 2011)
- Amy Thompson, Psychotherapist, Psychotherapy Aspen (PhD, 2014)
Community and Social Interaction Graduate Faculty
Faculty Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion • Assistant Professor
COMMUNICATION • COLLEGE LEADERSHIP
We are committed to the study of organizational problems that matter. By this, we mean pressing ethical, political, and practical concerns regarding the relation of social and material worlds in an era of neoliberalism. We prioritize communicative explanations of organizing practice in a range of contexts. Topical interests include (but are not limited to) the character of work amid contemporary capitalism; the communicative organization of security, violence, risk, and disaster; communicative, immaterial, and affective labor; globalization and transnational flows of organizing; social movements; financialization; governmentality; alternative modes of organizing; and matters of difference such as dis/ability, queer, and postcolonial relations.
- Communicative Constitution of Organization (CCO)
- Organizational Collaboration
- Nonprofit and Civil Society Sectors
- Alternative Organizing, Globalization and Transnationalism
- Identity Related to Work and Organization
- Interpretive and Critical Methodologies
- Security, Violence, Risk, and Disaster
- Relations of Power and Difference: Race/Ethnicity, Neo/Postcoloniality, Gender and Sexuality
For a detailed list of courses with descriptions, see the University Catalog.
- COMM 5600 Seminar: Organizational Communication—3 credit hours
- COMM 5610 Organizational Ethnography—3
- COMM 5620 Readings in Organizational Communication—3
- COMM 6730 Constitutive Approaches to Organizational Communication—3
- COMM 6740 Theory and Philosophy of Organizing and Organizations—3
- COMM 6750 Critical-Cultural Approaches to Organizational Communication—3
- Nick Burk (PhD, 2017), Assistant Professor, Cal State University, Chico
- Elizabeth Eger (PhD, 2017), Texas State U. - San Marcos
- Kate Harris (PhD, 2013), Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota
- Jamie McDonald (PhD, 2013), Assistant Professor, University of Texas at San Antonio
- Sara McClellan (PhD, 2012), Associate Director, WestEd
- Sarah Blithe (PhD, 2012), Assistant Professor, University of Nevada, Reno
- Amanda Porter (PhD, 2011), Assistant Professor, VU University Amsterdam
- Julie Williamson (PhD, 2011), Organizational Consultant
Organizational Communication Graduate Faculty
The rhetoric and culture area offers a distinctive program that integrates contemporary rhetorical approaches with cultural studies and the interpretive turn in social science. Area members are linked by a common interest in historical and historically inflected studies of rhetoric and its media, including discourses, technologies and bodies.
Rhetoric and culture are studied in the context of popular, public and intellectual cultures, via historical, ethnographic, textual and critical methods and frameworks of analysis. The program, thus, combines traditional rhetorical education with a contemporary focus, offering diverse methodological training to produce cutting-edge critical work and innovative theory development.
- Emphases in rhetoric and culture, space and place, rhetoric of inquiry and ethnographic approaches to rhetorical studies
- Combines traditional rhetorical education with a contemporary focus and offers diverse methodological training to produce cutting-edge critical work and innovative theory development
- Collaboration with faculty in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric and participation in the interdisciplinary Rhetoric Workshop, to develop a distinctive multidisciplinary perspective
- Active student chapter of the Rhetoric Society of America
- Monthly research lunches exploring ongoing projects conducted by faculty and by graduate students
For a detailed list of courses with descriptions, see the University Catalog.
- COMM 5300 Seminar: Rhetoric—3 credit hours
- COMM 5310 Contemporary Rhetorical Criticism—3
- COMM 5320 Readings in Rhetoric—3
- COMM 6310 Rhetorical Criticism—3
- COMM 6320 Rhetorical Theory—3
- COMM 6330 Rhetoric of Inquiry—3
- COMM 6340 Rhetoric and Civic Community—3
- COMM 6360 Social and Cultural Theory—3
- Chris Ingraham, assistant professor, North Carolina State University (PhD’15)
- Diane Keeling, assistant professor, University of San Diego (PhD’11)
- Amanda LeBlanc, PhD Student, University of South Florida (MA’14)
- Jennifer Malkowski, assistant professor, California State University, Chico (PhD’14)
- Joshua Morrison, adjunct faculty, Ivy Tech Community College (MA’14)
- Susana Martínez Guillem, assistant professor, University of New Mexico (PhD’12)
- Megan Morrissey, assistant professor, University of North Texas (PhD’13)
- Allison Rowland, assistant professor, St. Lawrence University (PhD’14)
- Christy-Dale L. Sims, lecturer, University of Denver (PhD’13)
Rhetoric and Culture Graduate Faculty
