– Johanna Lukk, COMM ’14 and Carolyn White Bartoo, COMM ’88

Our Department of Communication is making some big waves in the competitive waters of academic research.  We’re recognized as a national leader in scholarly research output. The Communication Institute for Online Scholarship (CIOS), a non-profit supporting computer technologies used in communication scholarship and education, recognized UD’s COMM Department has given us a ‘tip of the hat’ for outperforming much larger programs at other universities.

Our COMM Department offers both undergraduate and masters level programs for students – but that’s not news. What IS news is that CIOS recently noticed that our hard working professors crank out such uniquely high levels of results that we exceed the productivity levels of not just our peer MA-only communication departments; but we also meet, and in many cases, BEAT larger, longer, and typically more well-funded graduate communication programs at other universities which grant doctorates.

Although much of this is an “inside baseball” academic distinction, it’s really significant because normally MA-only programs have lower scholarly output rates than larger, Ph.D.-granting institutions. But not UD COMM . . . we ranked in the same ballpark as the top 25 Ph.D. grant programs in the entire country. Way to go UD COMM scholars! David and Goliath stories do actually happen!