About Us

The Department of Communication at California State University, Fresno offers a blend of traditional and contemporary understandings of communication.  The program presents a balance of humanistic, social scientific and cultural instruction including communication skills people need to function effectively in education, business, law, public service, government, politics, marketing and management. Students have an opportunity to build knowledge and skill covering the full range of human communication.

Our program requires a comprehensive understanding of the breadth and depth of our discipline, its major theoretical orientations and its major research methodologies. Students investigate issues in diverse cultural settings, which make the San Joaquin Valley, with its tremendous ethnic diversity, an ideal location for study. In this cultural arena, students become effective, ethical creators of communication and critical consumers of discourse while they investigate communication in diverse cultural settings and understand ethical issues inherent in human communication.

Both the major and minor are grounded in the fundamental communication contexts including strategic communication, organizational and professional communication, health, science and environmental communication, cultural and performance studies.

The Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication is designed to provide undergraduate Majors with broad competence in oral and written communication, critical analysis of human discourse and research methods. The Major also emphasizes how this theoretical knowledge is applied in specific contexts ranging from personal relationships to business management to political advocacy. 

In order to assist students majoring in other fields to prepare for careers that will inevitably require skills in oral and written communication, leadership and conflict resolution, the Department offers a Minor in Communication. To meet the needs of business professionals who seek focused training in presentational speaking, problem solving and decision making, leadership, and organizational communication, the Department offers a Communication Skills for Professionals Certificate.

Each year, the Department of Communication sponsors the Peach Blossom Festival.  The festival began over sixty years ago as a joint effort between the Speech Communication and Theater Arts Departments at CSU, Fresno. The Festival was created to help young people realize the importance of reading literature aloud, to teach them about interpretation, performance, how to be an audience member and to give them an opportunity to visit a university campus. Since conception, the Festival has grown tremendously and now attracts schools from as far north as Livingston and as far south as Delano. Today the festival is solely run by the Communication Department.