Media, Communication and Information

Christopher Braider, Transitional Dean
478 UCB  •  phone: 303-492-5007  •  fax: 303-492-0969  
website: www.colorado.edu/cmci

The College of Media, Communication and Information (CMCI) prepares students for careers as engaged and effective citizens endowed with deep understanding of the historical and contemporary context of human communication and expression. Mindful of the active role communication plays in shaping human relationships, CMCI trains graduates to study and practice constructive interaction among people, communities, industries and publics. The college equips students with the skills needed to produce, gather, archive, curate, analyze and evaluate the flood of information, messages, images, sounds and ideas that populate our complex and rapidly evolving global media landscape.

To these ends, CMCI resourcefully combines disciplines newly extended and empowered by digital media and the social and cultural transformations those media engender. These include established scholarly, creative and professional fields such as media studies, communication, the history and interpretation of film and television, journalism, advertising and video production in its cinematic, documentary and broadcast forms. But the college also houses both the fast-growing field of information science—a discipline that, through inquiry and innovation, tackles the problems and opportunities facing an increasingly networked society—and the emergent disciplines of intermedia art, design, music, writing and performance.

In giving these activities a collaborative home, CMCI facilitates innovative interactions among them. Its academic structure accordingly stimulates cross-disciplinary cooperation at all levels of curriculum, research and creative work. Further, CMCI promotes the transformational exchanges it nurtures within its own walls for campus-wide benefit. Its organization thus fosters outreach to—and student and faculty participation from—other schools, colleges, centers and facilities throughout CU Boulder and the wider Colorado community.