About the School

In fall 2021, the School of Communications faculty, staff and advisory board began thinking about the goals we might set in our next five-year strategic plan.  At the fall 2021 advance, faculty were asked to use sticky notes to write headlines of what they thought the School of Communications should accomplish under the four Boldly Elon themes: Learn, Thrive, Connect and Rise.

These headlines were compiled into a Google document, and faculty were asked over the next six months to add more headlines while the school’s focus shifted toward its ongoing curriculum revision. Headlines from the Google document were shared with the School’s National Advisory Board at its May 2022 meeting and with the school’s Student Advisory Board in its April 2022 meeting. Both Boards were asked to identify their top five headlines.

At the May 2022 Board of Trustees meeting, the top headlines from Both Boards, built on faculty input from the Google document, were presented to Trustees, organized under the Boldly Elon themes.

At the fall 2022 retreat, faculty were asked to identify their goals in writing for the coming year across four areas: personal, department, school, and university. These were all collected and time was spent at the retreat for faculty to express some of their goals.

Goals identified by faculty and staff at the fall 2022 retreat were typed into a word document, providing two comprehensive documents of faculty feedback from both the 2021 and 2022 retreats.

At the October 2022 faculty meeting, faculty and staff discussed the draft plan and provided comments, and additional input was invited through early November. At the November 2022 meeting, faculty voted to adopt this plan.

To formalize this document, all feedback from faculty, staff, and the student and professional advisory boards were analyzed for key themes, or “codes.” Those codes were then aggregated into general strategic areas. Those areas were then given a broad term or name and then matched within the framework of the Boldly Elon strategic plan. Because the school’s strategic direction might not fully match Boldly Elon, the plan below includes each Boldly Elon theme with an associated category that emerged from the School of Communications strategic planning process. This process ensures some relationship – even if tenuous – to the university strategic plan while codifying feedback into a plan that is both consonant with and divergent from Boldly Elon.

• Secure successful COSMA accreditation for the first time in department history, ushering in a new era of recognized quality for the sport management department.
• Prepare a self-study for successful ACEJMC re-accreditation that continues to position the school as a gold standard for quality.
• Complete a curriculum revision that is responsive to the needs of students and aligns with school and university strategic priorities, including the development of a signature project for all School of Communications majors.
• Explore curricular partnering with other schools for interdisciplinary minors in health communications and global and film cultures.
• Support the creation of a four-year mentoring model, with formal and informal mentoring opportunities in the School of Communications.
• Achieve national awards recognizing the school as outstanding in its disciplines with a focus on student, faculty and programmatic awards and top 10 rankings.
• Increase undergraduate research quantity and quality across the school by emphasizing course-embedded research earlier in the curriculum, more fully engaging COM undergraduates in one-on-one research projects (such as Lumen Prize, University Honors, NCUR, SURF, SURE), and reframing faculty mentorship with student media as a form of undergraduate research.
• Develop high impact experiences, courses and programs such as global engagement master classes and Drone Day that differentiate the School of Communications and contribute to a reputation as innovative and forward-thinking.
• Explore the future and potential content areas of graduate programs in the school, including degree offerings such as an MFA and/or MA.
• Strengthen the Interactive Media master’s program by diversifying student pathways into the program, including 3+1, dual degree and enhancements to ensure its cutting-edge curriculum.

• Invest in the culture of the school by emphasizing community and promoting health, wellness and work/life balance through a plan originating at the committee level.
• Provide a wider range of options for faculty, staff and students in DEI training including seminars, workshops, speakers and alumni mentoring programs.
• Actively participate in the Advancing Equity Initiative toward hiring of more diverse faculty members in the school, particularly from Latinx/BIPOC backgrounds.
• Invest in informal and formal structures that provide community and support for underrepresented students in the school.
• Develop succession plans for student media, organizations, clubs and school committees to build in redundancies and ensure smoother operations across transitions.
• Evaluate the organizational structure of the school in light of its continued growth and emerging needs.
• Explore the best use of the Steers Pavilion by considering non-classroom space for specific functions within the school.
• Lead conversations across the university exploring a centralized advising center to allow faculty to focus more fully on mentoring and coaching.

• Create intentional and sustained relationships among departments, with other schools, among majors and programs, with other universities (including HBCUs), the local community and through projects that position the School of Communications as a leader in collaborative projects and work.
• Support opportunities for faculty and staff to teach and research abroad in tandem with exploring an international program or Elon Center with a communications focus.
• Strengthen relationships with school alumni and build linkages to current students and academic programs.
• Advance analytics and numeric literacy as core competencies through the curriculum and through co-curricular opportunities.
• Assist the NC Local News Workshop and NC Open Government Forum by helping secure funding mechanisms to expand their missions and ensure long-term financial health.
• Leverage school resources and student organizations to galvanize local independent media and support organizations that serve the public good.
• Explore the role the School of Communications can play in the establishment of new regional learning centers and the strengthening of Elon in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C.

• Grow financial support for student internships and experiences.
• Increase faculty and staff funding for travel and research.
• Explore the possibilities of additional summer programs housed in the school.
• Work with admissions and internally to increase the number of our majors with an emphasis on declining areas of enrollment such as journalism.
• Position student recruitment and retention as a shared responsibility by preparing faculty and staff to present the school holistically and with an authentic voice.
• Augment the national reputation of the school by considering naming opportunities for School of Communications programs and exploring endowed professorships.
• Increase the school’s four-year graduation rate from 85 percent and to 90 percent in six years.
• Launch a process to ensure the school’s technology and equipment remains cutting-edge and prioritize the budgetary supports to remain technologically current.