Bachelor of Science in Communications

Nyack’s multifaceted Communications discipline enables students to identify and evaluate multiple principles of the arts and media from historic, contemporary, and practical perspectives. Our communications students are passionate about the arts and are motivated to become relevant in the world around them through a number of the twenty-first century, technologically-driven, and globally-engaged media outlets.

Why Study Communications at Nyack?

The study of Communications at Nyack College affords students the opportunity to actively engage in an enriching undergraduate experience that presents a rigorous core curriculum enhanced by a myriad of engaging and essential concentration courses ranging from screenwriting to acting.

Additional advantages to studying Communications at Nyack include:

• Small class sizes and seminar-structured daily class activities that give students the opportunity to become an indispensable part of a close-knit department family.
• Essential preparation for prospective careers and graduate studies in the fields of journalism, dramatic art, film studies, film production, rhetoric, and mass media.
• The Communications Department of Nyack College boasts a robust presence on both the Rockland County and New York City campuses. This affords students the opportunity to be in or near New York City and have access to major broadcast media organizations, journalism outlets, and Broadway-caliber theatre companies for internships and future employment.

At a Glance

Specialized Accreditation: Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

What Will I Study?

Communications majors are exposed to in-depth critical thinking relative to the role of the discipline in a twenty-first century, globalized world. Students in the department develop the ability to analyze, assess, and evaluate the media’s influence on society, and are encouraged to apply their Christian perspectives to a range of discipline-specific concepts as future prospects within communication industries.

All Communications students enroll in the following core department courses during their matriculation:

• Communication, Culture, and Technology
• Interpersonal Communication
• Introduction to Communications
• Mass Media and Society
• Public Speaking
• Senior Seminar in Communications Media Ethics
• Storytelling for Communications

Our Mission

Nyack College, a Christian and Missionary Alliance educational institution, through its undergraduate, graduate and seminary programs, pursues its historic mission of preparing men and women to “take the whole Gospel to the whole world.”

Core Values

Nyack seeks to exalt Jesus Christ and fulfill its mission by being:

Academically Excellent The academic excellence of Nyack has been recognized by the Middle States Commission on Accreditation, The New York State Department of Education, and The Association of Theological Schools.

Globally Engaged We live in a world that demands engagement from all of its citizens. Nyack will meet these 21st-century challenges with a commitment that for us dates back to the 19th century.

Intentionally Diverse Nyack is the most ethnically diverse Christian College in the history of American higher education. We celebrate this as an important part of both our effectiveness and our identity.

Personally Transforming This transformation is what occurs when students encounter Jesus Himself on our campus and abandon their citizenship of a self-centered, materialistic world in favor of becoming citizens of the Kingdom of heaven.

Socially Relevant Nyack graduates do more than take the words of Jesus to those who have never heard. Our graduates take the love of Jesus to those who have not known love.

A Little History

Over one hundred and thirty years ago, God ignited an overwhelming love for people of every race and tongue in the heart of a Canadian named A.B. Simpson. In those days, Simpson was pastor of a large and affluent church in Manhattan. In response to what God was doing in his own life, Simpson urged his congregants to reach out to the immigrants who were pouring into the city. He even went so far as to bring the poor and the downtrodden into his church. When he began to do this, many in the church were less than pleased.

So in a Sunday morning sermon in 1882, Simpson declared, “I am not interested in being a respectable Christian.” He left the church and began a new venture in which his burning desire to serve all people could be satisfied. He left his church to start a school in which people would be trained to take the Good News of God’s love wherever this news needed to be heard.

That school today is known as Nyack College.

Since its inception on the back of a Broadway stage in 1882, Nyack College has grown to become an institution of over 2,500 students pursuing a wide variety of graduate and undergraduate degrees on multiple campuses. At the heart of it all, is a burning commitment to bring the good news of God’s love wherever this news needed to be heard.

A.B. Simpson described this commitment as taking “the whole gospel” to “the whole world.” Today, as Nyack College serves students who represent “the whole world,” the result is a diverse and vibrant community unlike any other in higher education.