33 E. Ida B Wells

Audio is an art and a science. We’ll train you in both. In our lab-based courses, you’ll create, record, and manipulate sound and learn the general theories and practices of audio. After your initial coursework in audio concepts, you’ll focus your studies in one of five concentrations: Music Recording, Live Sound Reinforcement, Audiovisual Systems Integration, Audio and Sound Design, or General Audio Arts.

Turn your passion for sound into a career with an Acoustics degree from Columbia College Chicago. Learn the science of sound through foundational courses in the art and science of audio while you complete a sequence of math and science courses. Analyze how we hear and perceive sounds by studying physiology, neurobiology, and psychology. And learn how acoustical design creates spaces, environments, and products that are safe, useful, and engaging. With the help of our faculty of innovative researchers and our program’s strong network in the acoustics community, you’ll poise yourself for a career in architectural acoustics, environmental noise control, sound perception and cognition, and audio signal and vibration analysis. You can also pursue graduate studies in engineering, architecture, or hearing sciences.

Columbia College Chicago’s Music Technology program focuses on the science of sound—how music technology can be designed, shaped, used, and manipulated for experimental live performances, video games, music compositions, sound installations, and other musical activities. After taking introductory courses in science, mathematics, sound technology, and acoustics, you’ll choose one of five concentrations: Interactive Music Design, Electroacoustic Composition, Perception and Timbre, Programming Audio, and Physical Design.

Journalists today need to be experienced storytellers in a variety of formats. At Columbia College Chicago, our journalism majors discover and tell compelling stories in different media: magazines, features, radio, blogs, podcasts, and broadcast news. To help you succeed in the journalism career path that best fits your interests, you’ll focus on one of our concentrations in Broadcast Journalism (TV or Radio emphasis), Magazine Journalism, and News and Features.

Columbia College Chicago is home to one of the most innovative photojournalism programs in the country. Our faculty members are Pulitzer Prize winners and photojournalists who document for the Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune. They provide a solid foundation in photography technique for equipment ranging from professional cameras to smartphones. You’ll hit the ground running, documenting people and events around Chicago and gaining experience with audio and video to complement your photography skills. In fact, roughly one-third of the curriculum focuses on audio and video, ensuring you’ll graduate as a well-rounded photo and media expert. You’ll take a class in 360 video and virtual and augmented reality and learn how to build your own portfolio website to help you land internships or jobs at places like the Washington Post, Chicago Reader, National Geographic, Vox, NPR, Ad Age, or Crain’s Chicago Business

For many businesses, social media isn’t optional—it’s a requirement. Even nonprofits, startups, and artists are finding that social media has become a critical tool in managing their brand and reaching their audiences. In Columbia College Chicago’s Social Media and Digital Strategy BA program—one of the first programs of its kind in the country—you’ll become a leader in this emerging field. You’ll study consumer behavior, data analytics, content strategy, and content creation to engage digital audiences and enhance brand awareness. Over the course of the program, you’ll build a portfolio that reflects a broad understanding of digital marketing materials and strategy. Aspects of your coursework will draw from programs in Advertising, Business and Entrepreneurship, Interactive Arts and Media, Journalism, and Public Relations. Companies across the spectrum (and the city of Chicago) are rich with internship opportunities you can use to gain real-world experience for a career as a social media manager, digital strategy expert, content creator, brand ambassador, and more.

Understanding advertising theory is good; designing award-winning campaigns for real businesses and clients is better. You’ll do both in Columbia College Chicago’s Advertising BA program. You’ll work with real clients—from local nonprofits to national brands—and finish an internship (or two) in one of the major advertising centers in the country. Learn from faculty members who have worked with Apple, Nike, Calvin Klein, Samsung, McDonald’s, Motorola, Kraft, and others. Working closely with these industry-leading professors and your talented peers, you’ll analyze consumer behavior through creative research techniques, develop amazing concepts, execute award-winning campaigns with cutting-edge art direction and copywriting, and master the art of a perfectly timed Tweet or Instagram story. Your internship experience and professional portfolio may help you land a job as an account manager, copywriter, art director, brand manager, content strategist, content creator, media planner, project manager, or general marketing and advertising pro.

Every industry needs good communicators. The Communication bachelor’s degree program at Columbia College Chicago provides the foundations for skilled communication practice. Through coursework in collaborative teamwork, leadership, oral, visual, and written communication, multimedia production, storytelling, information analysis, and civic practice, you’ll develop the skills needed to thrive in an evolving media environment. At Columbia, you complete your class assignments in a creative environment where you’ll collaborate with students outside your major. You’ll be taught by working professionals in communication fields. You’ll graduate as a professional leader in communication and a cross-platform media practitioner ready to contribute to the intellectual, cultural, and creative fabric of your community and capable of succeeding in a broad range of communication, media, and information industries.

From research to strategy to media relations to crisis communications, the communication skills of engaging the public and shaping perceptions are the building blocks of reputation. Our PR program is designed to prepare students for success in an exciting, fast-paced career with high growth potential. Our faculty are industry leaders who strive every day to educate you on the necessary skills, and get you networking with professionals. You’ll work with real clients, build a portfolio, and discover a curriculum that is integrated with related fields, such as communication, social media and advertising. Upon graduation, you will be ready to succeed in a career path designed to fit your unique aspirations.

Radio is about more than a voice and a microphone. It is about connecting to an audience through whatever audio media platform you use, whether it’s traditional radio broadcasting, podcasting, audio documentary, or other media formats. Columbia College Chicago’s Radio BA program will help you recognize and create dynamic and effective audio content for the audio media platforms of today and tomorrow. As part of your degree, you’ll work in our student-run professional radio station, WCRX-FM, in the country’s third-largest broadcast market. You’ll gain experience in podcasting, voiceover work for commercials, narration, and animation, and learn to develop engaging copy for radio promos, how to pace a radio story, or record an insightful interview. Supported by faculty experienced in the industry as on-air talent, voiceover talent, writers, production experts, and program and content directors, you’ll leave the program with a well-crafted audio media portfolio and be prepared to work in radio broadcasting and its related fields. Our alumni enjoy successful careers as radio personalities, radio talk show hosts, podcasters, voice actors, content managers and providers, radio station directors, and audio producers.

The nationally accredited ASL-English Interpretation bachelor’s degree program at Columbia College Chicago is like none other in the American Sign Language community. A bachelor’s degree—a requirement for a national certification in interpreting—will prepare you for a career in interpreting. Our program has a proven record of strong employability among graduating students. But as a product of a highly collaborative, creatively focused arts and media institution, your education will open the door to so much more. You’ll learn from world-class faculty members who are internationally known in the community for advocating the recognition of ASL as a language and deaf culture as a cultural identity. They are also known as prominent deaf storytellers and artists. Columbia’s excellent reputation in the deaf community opens the door to a wide range of specializations, from educational and performing arts to community-based interpreting opportunities. Our grads work as staff, community, and educational interpreters; video relay service interpreters; and artistic interpreters.

The Deaf Studies bachelor’s degree program at Columbia College Chicago—the only Deaf Studies program in the Midwest—combines insight into the cultural aspects of the deaf community, rigorous instruction in American Sign Language, and exposure to performance and visual art in Columbia’s creative environment. You’ll graduate with connections in the deaf community in Chicago and beyond, prepared to serve as a Deaf Studies specialist and advocate for the community. In addition to being part of one of the most unique communities at Columbia, you’ll take core curriculum classes to gain a well-rounded education that prepares you for work in a variety of fields, from community-based services, educational settings, performance and visual arts, government organizations, and more. And you’ll have the opportunity to pursue creative endeavors of your choice.

You’re a writer, and you want to write. In the Creative Writing bachelor’s degree program at Columbia College Chicago, you’ll write from day one, immediately discovering your creative process as you craft stories, poems, essays, and hybrid texts. Diversity: it’s the name of the game in creative writing at Columbia, where we push boundaries and redefine borders. During your time here, you’ll study works by writers from many different cultures, and you’ll develop your own writing alongside a diverse group of students and faculty members. You’ll choose a concentration in fiction, nonfiction, or poetry to focus on your favorite literary form. But you’ll work within all genres, developing transferrable skills that will help you become a more effective writer. And through our Writer’s Portfolio class and a thesis project, you’ll begin to identify career opportunities as you create a substantial manuscript.

Offering courses in literature, professional writing, and creative writing, the English bachelor’s degree program at Columbia College Chicago weaves your imagination and love of reading with the writing and communication skills that lead to success in the workplace. You’ll study different literary forms (fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and more) as you become a flexible and adaptable writer and thinker. And as a member of Columbia’s diverse creative community, you’ll have access to the college’s robust arts and media resources as you prepare for your career. You’ll graduate with sharp analytical skills, the capacity to write in different forms, and the creativity and critical thinking that are valuable assets to any employer.

The Interdisciplinary Documentary bachelor’s degree at Columbia College Chicago explores the diverse and innovative ways we collectively craft truth in story, image, text, and sound. As an Interdisciplinary Documentary major, you’ll have the chance to create compelling nonfiction narratives in video, audio, journalism, and photography. You’ll also work in new formats like AR/VR, 360 video, and interactive documentary. After graduation, you’ll have a portfolio that spans disciplines and media formats. Your portfolio may land you jobs with documentary production and postproduction companies or may launch your career as an independent documentary filmmaker.

As a Cultural Studies BA student at Columbia College Chicago, you’ll examine how race, ethnicity, gender, class, nationality, and more affect the power structures that inform contemporary culture, and you’ll look at arts and communications through an entirely new lens. Offering courses that address a range of theoretical, historical, and methodological issues, the Cultural Studies BA program prepares you to engage meaningfully with art and culture.

The Columbia College Chicago Academic Center for Tutoring (ACT) provides students from all disciplines, backgrounds, and levels of expertise the opportunity to develop diverse skills and strategies that will enhance their academic success within a safe and inclusive learning environment. Tutoring interactions span a variety of formats and learning environments to meet individual students’ academic demands. Tutors work collaboratively with students to produce knowledge through high-quality individual, small-group and large-group student-centered learning.

Columbia College Chicago provides a comprehensive safety and security program on campus. Our 24-hour Security Command Center includes dispatching capabilities and a sophisticated video surveillance and emergency communications network staffed around the clock. We continuously review the latest technology to ensure we are providing optimal security services to the community. To complement our 24/7 campus security patrols, security officers use a marked security vehicle, Segways and bicycles to provide rapid response to incidents. Columbia has an after-hours Security Escort Program to help students and employees travel safely between campus locations and from campus locations to pre-designated mass transit stations. The Security Escort Program is available seven days a week from 6 p.m.­–1 a.m. during the Fall and Spring semesters.

Built from an old bank vault, our reverberation chamber is a unique opportunity for sound engineers and audio enthusiasts to record and measure audio. You can use the chamber as a recording space as well—it’s fully connected to our classrooms and recording studios via a high-resolution network.

Classroom and learning space for architectural acoustics and vibration studies. The main acoustics classroom offers an intimate learning space for up to 20 students, and is located between the labs for architectural acoustics and vibration studies. Students also have access to top-of-the-line analog and digital instrumentation.

Work on projects at 14 production stations equipped with MBox Pro interfaces and an extensive suite of audio software, including Avid’s Pro Tools, Apple’s Logic, and Cycling 74’s Max. You can also record audio in the lab’s two professional voiceover booths.

Take accurate acoustic measurements or record your own dry, non-reverberant sample library in this room designed to absorb sound waves and vibration.

Collaborate with your peers or work individually on music, sound art, or sound-for-picture projects in these private setups. Our studio facility includes four post-production control suites where small teams of students can work together on music, sound art, or sound-for-picture projects. Two of the suites are equipped with LCD monitors and 5.1 surround audio for Audio for Visual Media or Sound Art work. The other two suites are stereo-only environments and accommodate lab assignments for our studio recording classes.

This facility supports classroom and lab activities for students in the Live and Installed Sound major. Hardware includes a Digico SD8 console, which feeds a high-power 7.3 sound reinforcement/playback system, a 64-channel HD recording system, and a 12-mix high-output stage monitor system.

Fine-tune your skills in our professional-level music production facilities. Used for course projects and in-class instruction, we have three control rooms linked to two studio spaces, complete with absorption/diffusion panels for a variety of instrumental setups and access to the Audio Arts and Acoustics' musical instrument collection, including a Yamaha C7 grand piano.

The Convergence Newsroom offers multimedia opportunities for broadcast journalism students to edit audio, video, and photography, upload multimedia storytelling, and gain experience in reporting on deadline.

This smart classroom features 15 Serato/Traktor workstations and three portable Club DJ Serato/Traktor workstations with flash recorders for hands-on experience during class time. If you're taking related classes, you can reserve the room for practice and to complete assignments.

The space was redesigned in 2019 to allow courses in communication, Journalism, PR, advertising, strategic Communication, and civic media to build a learning environment in supporting student‐centered, agency‐based models of learning. The design of the room allows a deeper engagement in socially-responsive, team-based problem solving, and moving inquiry-based models of connected learning to the center of our curriculum.

The student-run Columbia Chronicle newsroom is a state-of-the-art facility for the production of the award-winning newspaper and its website. The Newsroom houses the most advanced equipment used to gather and report news in print, online, and social media.

WCRX (88.1) FM is Columbia's student-run and operated FM radio station, broadcasting in the heart of the nations third-largest radio market and streaming to the world. WCRX has an impressive array of modern radio technology and services including various broadcast, production, and news studios remote broadcasting facilities, full Associated Press Radio services, and heavily integrated student-run social media and web presences.