With graduation looming at Bakersfield College, students are looking forward to their next steps. For communication students looking to transfer to California State University Bakersfield, they should know what to expect.
CSUB communication majors have three options for the Bachelor of Arts comm degree. Students regardless of emphasis must complete three major required courses; Theories of Communication, Mass Media Law, Senior Seminar, and two elective classes. Each emphasis has its own required courses the required courses for journalism are Issues and Practices in Journalism, Digital Journalism, Feature Writing, and Newspaper Production
Another emphasis in Public Relations, students seeking to study this field are required to take Issues and Practices in Journalism, Public Relations, Public Relations Writing, Public Relations Research, and Public Relations Management.
The third emphasis to round out the department is the youngest of the family Digital Media. Students studying the field will learn about graphic design, video production, animation, web design, and others. Required courses are Media Arts, Digital Video Production, Sound Design for Media Production, and a choice between Producing and Project Management, Media Production Techniques, or Media Writing.
The Communication department has a problem with being short of units. It is common for students to take only the required courses and not have enough units to meet the minimum required unit count of 120, so it is advised for Comm majors to pick up a minor.
New transfer students will also have to complete a Junior Year diversity requirement and the Graduation Writing Assessment Requirement or GWAR. Comm 3088 Gender and Communication covers the diversity requirement.
However, it may be recommended to take another course to cover the diversity requirement as Gender and Communications acts as both an elective and the requirement and could cause a student to need another class to meet the 120 unit minimum.
The unit minimum is the same reason students should take Technical and Report Writing as the GWAR requirement can be met by either taking a test or by passing a designated class. Technical and Report Writing is a designated class and will add three units.
It is important for students to talk with an advisor. Advisor for Arts and Humanities Janine Cornelison said that the main CSUB website hasn’t had the course requirements for Communications majors updated since at least 2016, instead, she directs people to the catalog website where it’s updated yearly that way students know which catalog rights they fall under.