MMC Student Handbook

Welcome to the Master of Mass Communication (MMC) program!

The mission of the graduate program of the School of Communication and Journalism is to advance mass communication’s body of knowledge through research, analysis and application. To that end, we facilitate the development of media professionals, educators and scholars and guide them in developing the requisite academic and mass communication skills to expand their influence within their chosen professions. (Revised September 2017).

Students seek out our program to update and expand their knowledge, skills and competencies in the fields of journalism, advertising and public relations. Our students often comment that they have taken online courses (and in some cases earned online degrees) at other non-profit and for-profit institutions and that our program stands out due to its rigor and quality.
students have consistently rated their satisfaction with all aspects of the program highly, with 90 percent rating curriculum as either excellent or very good and 82 percent rating instruction as either excellent or very good.

The MMC program is a completely online graduate program created as an opportunity for working mid-career communication professionals to get a graduate degree regardless of their location. The program is designed for students to participate in a part-time basis, with 8-week courses that run back-to-back each semester and over the summer term. This means a student can focus their attention on one subject at a time with less risk of being overwhelmed by taking too many credits. While students make take additional credits, we advise them to follow the 6-credit a semester design in order to be successful.

Several graduates of the M.M.C. program have moved up to better jobs after completing their degree and, in some cases, even while they were enrolled because of the classes they were taking. In MMC coursework, we require that students produce professional-level content that faculty with significant professional experience evaluate internally and that working professionals assess externally via the assessment process. In addition to demonstrating an understanding of course content in applied projects, they must do so in extensive course discussions with direct reference to that content.