What to Expect
The Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies recruits by inviting faculty and students into Duquesne University's story of Education for the Mind, the Heart, and the Spirit. We educate the whole person within the University mission of Catholic and ecumenical values committed to liberal arts and professional education. We build upon the University story, which frames the department commitments: communication research and development, the ethical difference, and walking the humanities into the marketplace. Research, a clarity of commitment to communication ethics, and engagement with the marketplace permit faculty and students to understand who we are, thereby enabling an informed decision about whether or not to join this intellectual community.
Our recent faculty hires reflect the University mission commitments: to Catholic and ecumenical values, to the pragmatic and theoretical importance of communication ethics, and to a textured understanding of the marketplace that includes the academy and professional life outside the campus community.
We invite students into a learning environment attentive to narrative ground and the historical moment. We seek to discern and offer answers to questions confronting the human condition from a humanities grounded rhetoric and philosophy of communication perspective. Our department educates the next generation of communication professors whose primary mission is to educate undergraduate students.
Scholar-Teacher Model of Learning
Our faculty work within a dual commitment of a teacher-scholar model of student accessibility and a scholar-teacher commitment to publication and public intellectual life. We are situated within an assumption that the story is greater than the individual members. The story guides faculty and student interaction.
Embedded Inquiry
The department openly encourages value-laden inquiry, applied rhetoric, and public admission of the limits of theory and practice. Embedded agents working within stories and historical particulars offer possible answers and temporal suggestions, not universal proclamations.
My time as a graduate student in the Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies at Duquesne was transformational. At the core, the program taught me how to use theory as a guide to leadership. I walk theory into my marketplace every day, and the communities I serve depend on my ability to do so. Duquesne allowed me to be responsive to the demands of my sector and to grow as a professional.