Our Mission

Priorities 

We are strongly committed to identifying and obtaining the resources that are essential to realizing our mission and vision. We know that the core ingredients for success fall into three categories: Scholarly Excellence, Facilities and Technology, and Community Building. In what follows, we review past accomplishments and look toward the horizon in each area. 

Scholarly Excellence 

• In recent years we have been thrilled to add many new stars to the bright constellation that is the Communication Arts faculty and staff, through a combination of support from alumni and the university. We have also made significant strides in research productivity and teaching innovation as a result of increased research and teaching support for faculty. As a recent decennial departmental review exercise has shown, we continue to stand out as one of the most sought-after communication graduate programs in the world. Looking ahead, we hope to raise the global profile of the department in all areas, through continued advances in scholarly productivity.
• Getting there will involve:
• More awards and scholarships to help recognize and support top-quality student work.
• Providing our faculty and staff with crucial support for innovative research.
• Critical efforts to retain existing faculty and replace those who will soon retire. 

State of the Art Facilities and Technology

• Again through a combination of support from alumni and the university, we have recently made advancements in establishing the state-of-the-art digital infrastructure and facilities required for conducting cutting-edge research and providing the best communication arts instruction possible.  Most notable among these achievements are the Hamel Family Digital Laboratory and recent upgrades to our film production equipment, other computer laboratories, as well as the screening facilities in Vilas 4070. Pushing the envelope in the communication field requires an ongoing effort to educate our students in state-of-the-art facilities and technology.
• Specifically, staying on the cutting edge will involve sustained support in:
• Technology maintenance: these needs are felt not only in the equipment that serves our instructional mission, but also in the day-to-day needs of our faculty in pursuit of their many research agendas.
• Facilities: For everyone in the Communication Arts community, facilities are a matter of creating an environment for success, as well as building on our shared identity as a distinctive group of students and scholars in pursuit of knowledge about human communication.

Sustained Community Building Efforts

• Members of the Communication Arts Partners (CAPs) board are certainly aware of the great strides our department has made over the past few years in terms of creating a lively and insightful community dedicated to alumni support of the department’s continued excellence. Students have also benefitted from recent advances in advising, internships, and career/professional programming, as well as an upgraded set of social media communication initiatives. Together these advances have helped to create a true sense of community surrounding Communication Arts at UW-Madison. A number of assessment efforts in recent years point to significant opportunities for us to further expand community building around the department.

• In the coming years, we hope to build on our significant momentum in this area in three ways.

• As noted above, strategic renovation and improvements could help us literally create the space for a sense of community to thrive and grow surrounding the department. The improvement of common spaces shared by faculty and students is a particular goal in this area. 
• We seek to build an infrastructure to support a vast and powerful network that connects current and former students with our faculty and Communication Arts partners around the world. While we can easily envision our route to this goal, we also know it will take dedicated investments to get there.
• Finally, we also wish to explore the possibilities for and the conditions under which it may be worthwhile to create staff resources exclusively dedicated to development initiatives for Communication Arts.

Diversity & Equity Committee Mission Statement

The Department of Communication Arts strives to be a supportive and empowering place in which to learn and work. We recognize that there are historically marginalized communities at the university, and that we have the potential to perpetuate structural inequality as well as the responsibility to work against it. We are committed to creating a welcoming and inclusive climate for all students, faculty, staff, and visitors, regardless of race, religion, national origin, sexual identity, gender identity, ability, age, parental status, or any other aspect of identity. Affirming UW-Madison’s strategic diversity interests, our department endeavors to:

• Increase access and opportunities for underrepresented students, first generation college students, and women
• Eliminate the achievement gap between majority and underrepresented students
• Recruit, support, and retain more diverse faculty, staff, and students, and
• Prepare all of our students, staff and faculty to thrive personally and professionally in a world that is diverse, global, and interconnected.

Comprised of representatives from each of the four areas, the Diversity and Equity committee works to develop concrete strategies to improve our department’s climate while also serving as a point of contact for those with relevant questions or concerns. Specifically, we:

• Gather and communicate information about issues related to climate, diversity, and equity on a regular basis
• Provide education and training for faculty, TAs, and instructional staff about issues of diversity and equity in the curriculum and in the classroom
• Promote efforts to recruit, support, and retain a diverse student body, and
• Serve as a resource and liaison for those who have experienced incidents related to bias, harassment, or other issues related to climate.