The Department of Communication Arts and Sciences is committed to the study, teaching, and practice of human communication for the betterment of Pennsylvania, the nation, and the world.

This commitment takes on new meaning during a pandemic and in the face of challenges to the well-being of our local, national, and global community. Locally, the community pulled together in the spring of 2020 to take care of each other: we distributed masks and formed a mutual aid network to share resources, we created a sizable task force of faculty skilled in online teaching to support instructors new to the remote classroom, we remade our course schedule to offer undergraduates the greatest possible flexibility and to improve access to required courses, and we prioritized helping our students get the education they deserve. Our graduate students, who nimbly adapted to both teaching and learning online, were especially impressive under pressure. Their curiosity, work ethic, and morals give us hope for the future of the discipline and for society more broadly.