The Department of Communication Arts and Sciences has adopted an expanded and flexible requirement intended to combine work in traditional areas within the discipline with work in a cognate discipline or disciplines. Ph.D. students are required to take a minimum of l5 credits outside the department, although the actual number of credits and the types of courses included are determined by the student's committee in light of his or her specific program and prior training.

This requirement is broadly interpreted by the department to include both courses intended to enhance the student's research competencies (such as foreign languages, statistics, or research methodologies) and substantive work in such fields as history or psychology. Only course work taken outside the department may count toward satisfying this requirement. With committee approval, doctoral students may count courses taken outside communication in partial fulfillment of the M.A. toward meeting this requirement. Further, courses applied toward this requirement need not all be taken in the same outside department.