What’s Your Major? by Colleen DeFruscio
“What’s your major?” “CAS”
(blank stare)
“You know, Communications Arts & Sciences.”
(blank stare).
Few people know about the great major of Communications Arts and Sciences and what it means to be a CAS major or minor. In fact, many CAS majors and minors don’t even know what it means. It’s not like “Education” or “Mechanical Engineering” where there is a clear or semi-specific career path; but that’s the beauty of CAS. The Communications Arts and Sciences department at Penn State is substantial in size and offers various pathways for this field of study, including communication and technology, legal studies, rhetoric, organizational CAS, interpersonal CAS, presentation skills, intercultural CAS, political studies and health CAS. Basically, you can take CAS wherever you want to go. Communication is a key component in every aspect of society and human interaction happens everywhere. No matter what field you enter or what career path you take after college, a degree in Communications Arts and Sciences will benefit you.
Not only is the umbrella of Communications Arts and Sciences so broad and so full of opportunities, but each pathway within CAS also contains countless opportunities for combining a CAS concentration with other interests or fields of study. This article will take a look at two pathways in particular, interpersonal CAS and rhetorical CAS.
Keli Steuber, a graduate student, teaching assistant and instructor in the CAS department, took the interpersonal or social science research pathway with her major and plans to stay on the academic track with her career. “(The interpersonal pathway in) Communications Arts and Sciences is such a big field. I don’t think you really figure out where you want to go with it until you get into it, and even then you’re interests change as you learn more and more.” Keli points out that there are opportunities utilizing this type of CAS pathway in the medical field, the business world, advertising and marketing, psychology, education, etc. You can be a social science researcher for a hospital or ask people how they liked a certain commercial; you can study the effects of divorce on children or find out the best teaching methods through research. These are just simple examples.
Keli is interested in researching human relationships and plans to stay on the academic track. “When I started out, I was interested in working with people, and over time specifically became interested in studying romantic relationships and relationship issues. Then I was drawn to conflict areas and transition points in marriages. Things like children, infertility, retirement, empty-nest syndrome and how they affect marriage.” She loves doing research because it gives her an opportunity to sit down and talk with people and learn hands-on about human interactions and relationships.
She encourages students considering this path to, “Focus on something that you love. Researching is your job, and if you are researching something you’re interested in, you’ll like what you do.”
Sara A. Mehltretter (Sam) is a doctoral student, teaching assistant and instructor in the CAS department who took the rhetoric and humanities path with her CAS education. “I started out as a political science major (as an undergrad) and then I took a CAS rhetorical theory class and just loved it. It was everything I loved about political science but incorporated more of the public sphere, looking at the communication aspect (of political science).”
In rhetorical communication, a humanities field, there is a lot of research involved. It’s not just in the social sciences or interpersonal studies that you can research communication methods. Sam’s main interest is researching the rhetoric of war and peace, and her doctorate is focused on American national security. She points out that studying rhetoric is not just looking at ancient Greek and Roman ideas, but is a contemporary field as well.