Which Major Is Right For Me?

Television & Digital Media Production  gives you many opportunities to work both in front of and behind the camera. 

Our minor in Live Event Design & Management is a great add-on to a Television-Radio degree if you want to produce TV coverage of live events; you can add a minor during the second semester of your first year at IC.

If you dream of being the next David Muir (he's a 1995 Park alumnus) and anchoring ABC World News, consider our journalism program.

Sports Media prepares you to be that play-by-play announcer or sidelines reporter and gives you skills in media relations and public relations. (Related major offered by IC’s School of Business: Business Administration with a concentration in Sport Management.)

Live events such as concerts, sports, fundraisers, product launches, and corporate meetings and trade shows are a growing part of the communications industry. Our Communication Management and Design degree incorporates courses in event planning and prepares you to be the person who designs and manages communication strategies for businesses and non-profit organizations. If you're interested in experiential marketing (such as pop-up stores, street teams, sponsored events such as parades or cultural shows, or virtual reality experiences), look at our Integrated Marketing Communications major which combines advertising, PR, and marketing. 

Our minor in Live Event Design and Management provides access to courses in event planning, interactive/immersive design, set design, and experiential learning through internships—it's a great add-on to any of our majors at IC. You can add a minor during the second semester of your first year.

Do you like to seek out and report the facts?

IC’s Journalism major incorporates courses that teach you to investigate and write news stories for print, broadcast, and digital outlets.

Or are you more interested in developing creative stories?

As a Writing for Film, Television, and Emerging media major, you’ll learn how to write scripts and tell stories across platforms, from traditional feature films and TV series to games, immersive media, and web series. (Related major offered by IC’s School of Humanities and Sciences: Writing.)

Or perhaps you like to explain concepts or persuade an audience by writing speeches or presentations or ads.

The Integrated Marketing Communications major incorporates writing for advertising and public relations while Communication Management and Design will prepare you for jobs in business or not-for-profits, where you can write content for websites, brochures, educational materials, and executive or sales presentations.

If you want to focus your college study on media production, we have several degrees for you to consider.

Television & Digital Media Production offers coursework in field and studio TV production, editing, special effects, and audio, and will give you a well-rounded overview of the business of broadcast and streaming media. 

Two degrees involve film and photography, and both start with essentially the same coursework: In Cinema & Photography, you choose after your first year to concentrate either in filmmaking or photography. In Film, Photography, and Visual Arts, you pursue both film and photography through your senior thesis and combine these with study in art and art history. (Related majors offered by IC’s School of Humanities and Sciences: Art, Art History.)

In either of these degrees, you can focus on animation, sound or picture editing; narrative or experimental film; or entertainment/commercial practices.

Our Documentary Studies and Production degree teaches you how to tell the most important stories of our time using the power of visual media. This program combines film, journalism, television, and photography so that you the have visual storytelling skills to engage audiences on important issues. You will learn how to produce, shoot, edit, research, and report on stories that matter.

Many students parlay their passion for

• theater into film directing (consider Cinema and Photography or Film, Photography, and Visual Arts) or event/stage design, and apply it to live events (consider combining a major in Park with a minor in Live Event Design and Management);
• music into radio/streaming audio programming or producing musical performances (consider Television & Digital Media Production), audio recording and post-production, or music scoring for television or film (consider Television & Digital Media Production, Cinema and Photography, or Film, Photography and Visual Arts);
• popular culture into preparing to be an agent or publicist for a star (consider Integrated Marketing Communications ) or to become an analyst or researcher (consider a major or minor in Culture and Communication);
• sports teams and athletes (consider Sports Media) into learning how to report sports in print, broadcast, and digital form; promote teams, sports venues, and athletes; and produce live games or documentaries.

While there’s no particular major that will land you immediately in the executive suite of a corporation or Congress, the talents that make you good at leading others can be honed in IC’s Communication Management and Design major. You can learn about how to become a better leader or how to become a professional who advises leaders on their communication strategies. Courses like organizational communication, presentation design, government and stakeholder relations, crisis management, and leadership communications give you both the theory and the hands-on skills to start leading clubs and the student government while you're here on campus, thus enabling you to build your own leadership profile.

While all of Park's communications programs incorporate contemporary media technologies, our Emerging Media degree combines coursework in computer science, interface design, media production, and user testing/audience research. It culminates in labs that prepare you to work in spaces such as the interdisciplinary teams at tech firms that imagine, create, and market products such as apps, VR and immersive experiences, video games, and interactive stories. Graduates of this degree have gone onto careers in educational technology, consulting, and tech firms such as Twitter.

The greatest number of jobs in media are not in "show business" but in other kinds of organizations promoting products or causes.

The Communication Management and Design major is designed for students who want to create and manage the "voice" of a company including its strategies, media, and digital-social media presence. Many alumni work in support of specific causes such as political issues or candidates at non-profits doing fundraising and donor outreach, communicating about sustainability and health issues, or promoting economic development such as local tourism boards. Students specifically interested in diversity and inclusion can prepare for careers in human resources as diversity trainers, recruiters, and consultants.

In Integrated Marketing Communications, you’ll learn to combine the creative and analytical components of advertising, public relations, and marketing to promote a brand or product or organization.

IC’s Journalism and Documentary Studies and Production programs combine courses in reporting and media production with a minor area of study outside of communications so that you have content expertise to inform your reporting. For instance, you can prepare to be a documentary film producer focusing on environmental issues or a financial news reporter or multimedia content creator covering women's and racial equity movements. IC offers 76 minors, including women’s and gender studies, politics, environmental studies, and sociology. You can add a minor during the second semester of your first year at IC.