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College of Letters and Science Faculty Document No. 647
April 3, 2003
Recommendation of the Department of Communication and the L&S Graduate Program Committee That the L&S Faculty Endorse the Request for a Preliminary Entitlement to Plan a Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Communication
- What is the need for the program?
The creation of a new program helps alleviate a growing shortage of doctoral graduates in communication at a time when they are needed most. A recent report by the National Communication Association (NCA) noted that between 1973-74 and 1991-92 the overall number of baccalaureate communication degrees granted by US colleges and universities tripled (NCA, 1995 Task Force Report: "Advancing the Discipline," available on-line: http://www.natcom.org/Instruction/DiscAdv/DiscipAdvReport.htm). According to a feature story reported in Spectra (October, 1991; p.2), analysis of U.S. Department of Education data compiled by National Communication Association (NCA) staff, showed that "... the number of bachelor degrees granted in communication have (sic) risen at two to three times the rate of masters and Ph.D. degrees granted in communication." [Spectra is the official newsletter publication of the NCA.] The authors of the Spectra story suggested that rather than remedying this disparity by increasing class sizes, reducing the number of courses available, or hiring adjunct faculty to teach courses, a more attractive alternative would be to "increase the total number of masters and Ph.D. programs in the discipline" (p.2). Many well-qualified baccalaureate and masters graduates are seeking admission to Ph.D. programs but are being denied entry due to a lack of space in existing Ph.D. programs. Current NCA statistics demonstrate a continued rise in the number of undergraduate communication hours being offered and a 5% decline in the number of doctoral degrees granted. The result of this situation is a shortage in the number of faculty members qualified for university teaching at present and in the immediate and long-term future. These findings provide a strong rationale for establishing a Ph.D. program in communication at UW-Milwaukee.
A Ph.D. program instituted now could begin to train new professors to alleviate the shortage of faculty members predicted for the end of this decade. As retirements in the UW System (and nationally) continue to increase, a shortage of new professors is fast becoming a reality. The UWS has widely reported that it expects to lose approximately 40 percent of its faculty by 2010. This is a nationwide trend that affects all academic disciplines and regions of the country. Wisconsin colleges and universities have a very great need for Communication Ph.D.s that is not being met by the current Ph.D. graduation rate at UW-Madison. This unmet demand makes the development of an additional communication doctoral program in the state desirable and we would expect many of our Ph.Ds to remain in the state. Most of them would probably be working as faculty in educational institutions in the state of Wisconsin.
Several factors taken together point to the timeliness of developing a doctoral program in communication at UW-Milwaukee. The availability of graduate students with long-term commitments to doctoral study will significantly enhance the collaborative scholarship and extramural support opportunities of department faculty. The expected need for new professors in this and future decades, coupled with the fact that no other doctoral program in communication exists in Southeastern Wisconsin, clearly indicates the need for and advantages of developing a doctoral program in communication at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Such a program would improve the quality of education provided by UW-Milwaukee, serving the growing demand for advanced communication study by citizens of Milwaukee and southeastern Wisconsin.
- How does the new degree program relate to the institutional mission, strategic plan, goals and objectives?
Establishing a Ph.D. program in Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee represents a natural extension of the urban mission along three lines:
- The department's continued efforts to evolve as a nationally recognized department in the field of communication
Having attained national recognition for publication (prolific researcher rating 19th in overall in the country, Communication Monographs, 1999, p190), the faculty of the Department of Communication is now ready to offer a doctoral degree that will become as well regarded as the MA program. The high quality of the faculty will afford excellent research training and education for doctoral level students, and the presence of doctoral students will provide a synergistic relationship between faculty and student research activities that cannot be achieved with a Master's program alone.
The Department of Communication (in cooperation with the Department of Economics and the Masters in Human Resources and Labor Relations) supports a graduate certificate in Mediation with an enrollment of over 60 students. The department is implementing additional certificate programs in Technical Communication and, with the Department of English, in Rhetorical Leadership. In addition, a cross-program affiliation with the School of Information Studies is under discussion. Department faculty members maintain research collaborations and doctoral committee memberships with several campus units (such as Urban Studies, College of Education).
The Department of Communication is heavily involved in distance education technology programs, and all members of the faculty are fully engaged users of desktop computing and classroom support technologies. Nearly one-third of the department faculty has published research dealing with some aspect of mediated communication. The Department of Communication is a major participant in the College Connections program as a primary contributor to the Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in organizational administration and communication offered to the UW Colleges through the College of Letters and Science. The department also provides an online Communication major (the first class of undergraduates earning online degrees are graduating in the Spring of 2003). In addition, the department plans to offer, with the Department of English, an online graduate certificate program focusing on Professional Writing and Communication. Longer-term plans include the development of an online Master's degree. As institutions of higher learning as well as industry move towards more online and technologically based communication and learning systems, the requirements for well trained and experienced personnel will continue to grow. The doctoral program offers a means to train and expand this labor pool. The potential for online doctoral study is possible and will grow with time. The department is acutely aware of the growing acceptance of, and demand for, online graduate instruction and is exploring such opportunities as they develop.
- UW-Milwaukee's commitment to its stature as a UWS doctoral cluster campus
UW-Milwaukee has added less than a half-dozen doctoral programs in the past two decades. The graduate faculty in the Dept. of Communication has a national/international reputation making it possible to genuinely implement a badly needed graduate program quickly and cost effectively.
Currently in the humanities, only History and English have doctoral programs. The required synergy of programs that complement and strengthen each other improves the entire university. The English and Communication Departments have combined for a graduate certificate in Rhetorical Leadership as well as Professional Writing and Communication. Such programs are furthered by expanding programs in an urban environment that seek such application to enrich the community.
A survey of master's program alumni and chairs of Departments of Communication in Wisconsin (which would be prospective employers of doctoral program graduates) conducted by the department indicates that a doctoral program in Communication at UW-Milwaukee focused on applied communication would fulfill particular needs for faculty for colleges and universities in the State of Wisconsin. The requirements of the UWS system schools to hire persons with backgrounds in applied communication issues (conflict resolution, technological communication, distance learning, health communication, and human resources training and development) argue for an expansion of the current educational mission of UWS doctoral programs.
- UW-Milwaukee's fulfillment of its mission to develop quality graduate programs consonant with a desire to serve the urban environment.
The metropolitan Milwaukee area needs to significantly increase the number of highly educated professionals (in and out of the academy). A doctoral program in communication would draw students with both academic and professional backgrounds. A percentage of students would remain in nonacademic professional occupations and provide a broader scope of local impact on the local economy. Given the focus of the program on applied communication, commercial firms would find the graduates of the program attractive (given the emphasis on conflict resolution, technological communication, and leadership).
Persons holding a doctorate in communication currently work not only in colleges and universities, but also for institutions like the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control, Gallup Polls, as well as advertising and public relations firms. Communication skills in areas such as training and development, public health campaigns, corporate public relations, in both the private and government sectors would generate interest in the community. The addition to the Wisconsin work force of professionals highly trained in applied communication would help improve a sector of the Wisconsin economy that is not served by graduates of UW-Madison's more theoretically focused Ph.D. program.
- How does this new degree program relate to other academic programs in the UW-System, the region, and, if appropriate, the nation?
Currently, the only other communication-related Ph.D. program in Wisconsin is at UW-Madison. Our proposed program, however, does not represent a substantially comparable or competing program. The UW-Madison faculty and Ph.D. program have a different focus than that proposed for the UW-Milwaukee Department of Communication. The Communication Arts department at UW-Madison is an umbrella for program concentrations representing film, broadcasting, rhetoric, and communication theory.
The UW-Milwaukee Department of Communication will emphasize applied instructional and organizational, global and intercultural, and socio-cultural communication practices and paradigms. It is distinguished by, among other things, the exclusion of the mass media and film from the curriculum, while placing a heavy emphasis on studying communication from a multi-modal perspective that embraces a variety of communication contexts but with particular attention to the technological facilitation of personal communication.
The differences between the departments at UW-Milwaukee and UW-Madison represent the distinctions between more theoretically focused and more applied research. For example, UW-Madison's department has courses in conflict but no courses in mediation. UW-Milwaukee has two graduate courses in mediation (five sections are taught every year). The UW-Madison offers one course in health communication, UW-Milwaukee has four with one more course under development. The emphasis is on the examination of the practical consequences of communication action and the research generated by the scientists at UW-Milwaukee is intended to evaluate existing programs and to give advice on application of information for the formation of new interventions. The design of the UW-Milwaukee program focuses on working with various institutions in the community to evaluate and implement programs (the faculty have worked with Milwaukee County Child Protective Services, Milwaukee County Family Court and Conciliation Services, Peace Learning Center, Milwaukee Public Schools, Second Harvesters, Milwaukee City Aldermen, Black Historical Society). The focus of the department is on application of communication knowledge to community improvement.
Geographically, two programs outside Wisconsin might be considered as competitors. These include Northwestern University in Illinois and the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis. Because the proposed Ph.D. program at UW-Milwaukee will concentrate on serving the urban and southeastern Wisconsin region population, however, programs located in Illinois and Minnesota do not represent plausible competition. Academically, however, the proposed program is expected to be qualitatively equivalent to programs supported at comparable institutions, and marketing initiatives will be designed with the intent of competing with other communication doctoral programs just as the department now successfully competes with them in recruiting faculty.
Developing a doctoral program to train competent researchers and teachers will help alleviate existing faculty shortages and maintain the quality of instruction and research currently provided at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Moreover, since there currently are no other doctoral programs in Communication offered in Milwaukee or southeastern Wisconsin, this program contributes to the urban mission of UW-Milwaukee by increasing the stature of the campus and providing additional educational opportunities for advanced Communication study in the urban area.
A Ph.D. program in Communication at UW-Milwaukee will provide an opportunity for advanced graduate work for many people unable to commute to Madison or Chicago. At the same time, the relatively distinctive focus of the UW-Madison Ph.D. in Communication excludes many of the curricular elements of the UW-Milwaukee program. In the past decade, only one UW-Milwaukee communication master's graduate has taken courses in the doctoral program at UW-Madison, eventually dropping out and earning a doctorate at the University of Iowa. The emphases and foci of the Madison and Milwaukee programs represent different approaches to the study of Communication.
- What are the projected sources of resources for this program?
The addition of a doctoral program will require that each year the department offer five additional courses not currently in the schedule. These new courses/sections can be accommodated with one additional faculty member. Alternatively, the addition of three teaching assistants would permit faculty members currently teaching undergraduate classes to be replaced in those courses, freeing them for graduate instruction.
The Department of Communication has two, full-time classified staff members. One staff person is assigned to support undergraduate and graduate programs. The gradual implementation of the doctoral program will not require immediate or substantial additions to staff responsibilities or workload. Immediate additions to staff work loads will be offset with student help.
There are no specific budgetary requirements, beyond the additional needed instructional resources, attached to this proposal. The quality of department faculty is comparable to, or better than, faculties currently employed in many doctoral programs in the field of communication nationally. The department has sufficient resources for clerical and promotional support of the program. It expects to rely increasingly on electronic resources in providing information and connectivity to prospective and continuing students. And, it anticipates incremental increases in S&E as more faculty members are recruited.
The only significant need for increased budgetary support will involve support for graduate students. The department currently has excess enrollment demand in basic and upper level undergraduate courses. Additional graduate assistantship money could be a natural outgrowth of accommodating enrollment and demand for Communication courses.
Department of Communication faculty members have long believed the ability to compete for extramural grants and contracts is reduced by the absence of a predictable pool of advanced graduate students to train and employ in funded research. Clearly, the vast majority of grant and contract monies in all academic disciplines are awarded to doctoral programs. Some faculty members have generated modest levels of grant funding. Department faculty members are eager to increase their efforts at obtaining extramural support. The ability to work with more experienced graduate students on multi-year research programs is one of the important benefits that will be derived from this doctoral program. More importantly, a doctoral program permits the recruitment of faculty with more grant funding potential that would benefit from the ability to have longer term support represented by doctoral research assistants. Given the focus of the program on application of communication research, this represents a realistic goal.
The department also is in the process of implementing strategies for obtaining gifts that to support graduate education and research. Many of the department's alumni now are experiencing career stability that makes its possible for them to be of greater help if approached for contributions of money or time. The ways in which alumni can be engaged to assist the department in pursuing its goals are challenging to discover, but various cues have been provided in the past few years to make the department believe alumni are accessible and stand willing to help.
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