Director's Message

HUa (Helen) Wang.

Dear prospective applicants,

Thanks for your interest in our graduate programs!

The Department of Communication at the University at Buffalo is unique: We have world-class faculty who are devoted to cutting-edge and scientific research into communication phenomena and mentoring graduate students to pursue careers in academia, business, and government. In fact, our department is currently ranked #5 out of 144 communication departments (97th percentile) in the Scholarly Research Index of Academic Analytics (combining metrics of publications, grants, awards, and citations). Faculty members are experts in measurement, theory, statistics, academic and applied research – skills that they will impart to you to help you distinguish yourself as a communication graduate student and future scholar.

Overall, our graduate programs (both MA and PhD) emphasize the social scientific study of human communication processes, with coursework focusing on integrating communication theory with current research methods and intriguing topics. Below are some examples:

  • Misinformation and society (e.g., mass media, morality, and extremism)
  • Digital and social media (e.g., technology and well-being, social networks, computational research)
  • Media representations and social influence (e.g., media effects, narrative persuasion, entertainment-education)
  • Health communication (e.g., risk analysis, innovative interventions, program evaluation)
  • Political communication (e.g., political polarization, mediated public discourse)
  • Nonverbal communication (e.g., facial expressions and deception)

Our faculty work closely with students, who have had great success in presenting at (inter)national conferences, publishing in high-impact journals, and securing positions at prestigious intuitions – a testament to the collaborative environment for professional development that we have built at UB. In addition, our graduate students are very supportive of each other, through personal networks, various research groups/labs, and the Communication Graduate Student Association. It is a welcoming and collegial community here. And we are always looking for highly motivated and outstanding candidates. We only admit new students once a year and here are the updated application deadlines:

  • December 1 for all PhD applicants
  • April 1 for international MA applicants
  • August 1 for domestic MA applicants

Please feel free to browse through the details about faculty and graduate students on our website. If you have any further questions about our graduate programs, do not hesitate to contact me at any time.

Best wishes,

Hua “Helen” Wang, PhD
Director of Graduate Studies