Extended Accelerator Program - Bachelor of Arts - Communication Studies

The Extended Accelerator Program (EAP) is a three-semester program that includes an immersive English-learning experience. The program gives students firsthand practical and cultural understanding of the Gonzaga University campus and the Spokane area through its contextual curriculum. Upon successful completion of the program, students progress into the second year of their undergraduate education with a full year’s worth of academic credits.

The mission of the Communication Studies Department at Gonzaga University is to cultivate a sophisticated understanding of the process of communication as symbolic action. The department provides a theoretically grounded and experiential education that prepares students to analyze, produce, deliver, and critique human communication in its many forms. The department prepares students with rhetorical skills (eloquentia perfecta in the Jesuit rhetorical tradition), a refined sense of judgment and discernment, and the ability to carefully adapt communication practices to any given context and audience.

The power of communication is inescapable; it affects people everywhere and is central to all aspects of people's daily, social interactions. The Communication Studies department teaches students to embrace communication as the central means of creating, maintaining, and transforming social realities. Communication Studies equips students to carefully analyze the way people co-create social realities and cultures through communication and to discern how these social realities affect communities, for better or worse.

Majors and minors gain experience analyzing and proposing solutions to complex problems confronting the human condition because a deep understanding of communication creates limitless possibilities to improve the world. They interrogate the consequences of communication processes and discover and produce knowledge about communication practices. Gonzaga teaches students to leverage the power of communication to create more just and equitable social worlds.

The department is committed to nurturing a diverse, inclusive community of scholars who think critically and engage responsibly with the problems and issues of communities through exemplary, ethical communication via multiple modes of address. It builds on an ethos of social justice to prepare graduates to address contemporary issues and challenges as leaders in the community, the public arena, and the world. Research shows that the most successful people in any profession are exceptional communicators.

Communication Studies classes help students develop the skills employers demand such as the ability to work effectively in team settings, analyze information necessary to make decisions and solve complex problems, communicate with people inside and outside an organization, and influence others. Gonzaga University prepares students for a broad range of careers spanning advertising, marketing, public relations, government, non-profit organizations, and other leadership positions. Graduates also pursue advanced graduate studies in media research, law, business, education, medicine, cultural studies, and other humanities and social sciences. Communication Studies is also home to the University’s nationally renowned intercollegiate debate program, which has its own facility, Conway House.

In short, Communication Studies provides students with a critical understanding of the reasons why people think, feel, and act in particular ways; the leadership know-how necessary to make a difference in the world; and the skills that employers seek.