Communications
Pathways Within the Communications Division
The Communications Division offers many courses that help students develop communications skills that are indispensable for academic success. The skills you learn in these courses do more than perhaps any other discipline to expand your long‐term employment opportunities in the widest number of fields—including education, law, marketing, medicine, business management, human resources—and many other fields that require strong analytic thinking, problem‐solving, and communication skills.
Within our course offerings, we suggest a few different pathways, or concentrations, to help you start to get focused on a major after you transfer to a four-year college or university.
The Communications Pathway
Students who want writing or speaking to be a central part of their working lives take communications courses in partial fulfillment of a Bachelor’s degree in English. Earning a BA in Communications after two years at West Shore is likely the best goal for students whose career interests include journalism, publishing, broadcasting, marketing, and various kinds of management positions in politics, business, law, and the non-profit sector. See the recommended selection of courses.
The Literature Pathway
Reading and discussing literature helps us integrate into a very wide cultural matrix, enriching our communications, analytical skills, and personal relationships with others. Through close reading, discussion, analysis, and related writing experiences, students of literature acquire the ability to ask meaningful questions about the human experience and to answer those questions with greater certainty and creativity than those who do not read. Earning a BA in English Literature or Comparative Literature after two years at West Shore is likely the best goal for students whose career interests include game design, teaching, publishing, and educational support enterprises.
The Creative Writing Pathway
If you love to write poetry, fiction, plays, creative non-fiction, and even hypermedia works, then you may want to consider a major in Creative Writing. The Creative Writing pathway has some of the most intense, workshop-oriented set of courses the college offers, but you will leave here ready to transfer into a baccalaureate creative writing program almost anywhere. Plus, creative students at West Shore have opportunities to work with or contribute to the College's literary magazine, Dark Matter. Additionally, the Communications Division offers a unique writing program, the Big Sable River Writers' Retreat, a camp experience that combines outdoor activities in the Huron-Manistee National Forest with intensive writing workshop experiences that are guided by both West Shore faculty and visiting faculty.
Two-Year Degree Program
The Communications Division is the proud home of the AA in Digital Literacy degree program, a new, interdisciplinary program that has some of the best transfer and career outcomes of any program at the college. The "Digi Lit" program offers you a sampling of a variety of communications courses (and other, liberal arts and sciences courses) that are then mixed with specific technological and mathematics courses to enable you to become a multi-faceted, 21st-century communicator. We strongly encourage you to read the details about this degree on our Digital Literacy Program page.