Northwestern Master of Science in Communication logo

Lu Bai ’12 first experienced life in the United States during an exchange program that took her from Beijing’s Peking University to Atlanta during her sophomore year of college. That journey helped her understand how different countries approach education.

“Through the exchange program, I realized there’s more than one way to learn,” she explains. “I’ve always been interested in American culture, and my time in Atlanta solidified that.”

Bai decided she wanted to continue to explore new ways of learning by attending a graduate program in the United States. She was looking for a master’s degree that prioritized real-life skills and strategies like networking, leadership, and decision-making.

“Traditional marketing and communication programs don’t always highlight those soft skills, but they were most important to me,” she says. “I wanted to build confidence in these areas and practice working and collaborating with folks who have been in the job market or in Corporate America, especially since I was entering the program with no work experience. That’s why I chose the Master of Science in Communication (MSC) program at Northwestern.”

For Bai, who now works at Salesforce as a principal solution engineer, the MSC program has made all the difference when it comes to her ability to manage complexity, lead collaboratively, and deliver effective communication.

As an international student, these capabilities were especially important. “We aren’t always being offered many job opportunities,” she explains. “It’s a constant battle. But my MSC gave me confidence to stick with it. Even with English being my second language, I knew I had excellent communication skills and people skills. You don’t use all the skills you learn during the MSC program at once. You continue to draw on what you learned as you continue in your career. This has been the guiding light for me.”

After graduation, Bai began working for an investment banking company while also stepping up to chair the MSC International Student Committee (a role she held through 2022) so she could help other international students navigate studying and working in the United States.

A few years later, an interview at Oracle landed her in the technology industry—and she hasn’t looked back. She worked as a sales enablement and marketing consultant for a mentor she met through the interview process; she then followed her mentor to Stroz Friedberg to manage Salesforce administration for more than 100 users.

Bai’s expertise in Salesforce implementation then led her to new opportunities with Salesforce partner organizations like Bluewolf and Sikich. In 2020, she took on a principal solution engineer role with Salesforce directly.

But Bai says it wasn’t her technology prowess or strong tech background that helped her find her calling in the technology industry (she didn’t know much about technology when she landed her first tech role). Instead, it was her communication and problem-solving skills.

“My differentiator is communication: being able to work in a collaborative environment and serve as a translator who can go back and forth between IT and business,” she explains. “Every technology company is looking for that.”

Thanks to her MSC, she is able to play a pivotal role in selling autonomous AI and industry CRM solutions to Fortune 20 consumer packaged goods companies, helping them understand the transformative power of Salesforce software. Her love for her job motivates her to continue her work in technology for as long as she can. In the future, she hopes to take on high-level leadership roles that will allow her to not only maintain her connections with customers but also help her introduce more people—especially women—to careers in technology.

“This is such a promising industry, and I love being on the cutting edge and at the frontlines of problem-solving,” she says. “Companies are looking for great communicators who can present value and the art of the possible to customers. As a communicator, you get to be a painter. You get to be a translator. You get to be a matchmaker. You get to think big.”

For Jenna Rogers ’19, the decision to study communication as an undergraduate was an obvious one. After studying speech communication at the University of Arizona, her father had gone on to own a small business for more than three decades. She was inspired to follow a similar path as she realized how much he enjoyed his work.
During her sophomore year at Arizona State University (ASU), Rogers took a civil communication course that opened the door to new career possibilities. It was a facet of communication she found fascinating. When ASU rolled out a certificate program in civil communication just a year later, she quickly added it to her major.
As she earned her bachelor’s degree and certificate, Rogers also held various jobs: interning for Harlem Globetrotters, teaching young girls how to water ski, drafting documents for a law firm, and serving customers at a bakery. By the time graduation arrived, she had dedicated just as many hours to working as she had to studying.

“I grew up in a biracial, bipolitical household,” says Rogers. “When I was first exposed to the study of civil communication, I realized that’s what I’d grown up around and been practicing my entire life. And through some of my work experiences as a student, I realized the impacts of poor interpersonal communication, especially when you throw it into a conference room behind paychecks, titles, and hierarchies.”

So, when it came time to wrap up her undergraduate journey with an honors thesis project, it didn’t take long for Rogers to choose her area of focus: improving workplace productivity, collaboration, and cooperation through civil dialogue.

MSC Creates an Unexpected Path to Entrepreneurship

After graduation, she moved to Chicago to start her full-time career working for a large company, but it wasn’t the positive experience she expected. This disconnect motivated her to broaden her understanding of communication in the workplace.
“The Master of Science in Communication (MSC) program was a very natural next step to do that,” she explains. A self-proclaimed “CEU,” Rogers continued to work in a corporate role by day but was an entrepreneur by night, building out the framework for what’s known today as Career Civility, her communication consulting firm.
While her business was initially a side job, losing her full-time position after the birth of her second child gave her an unexpected opportunity. “As a new mom of two, when I found myself without a corporate job, I knew it was time to put the foundation I had built to the test,” explains Rogers.
In January 2024, she took Career Civility full-time. Now, more than a year later, she’s making her first hire and watching her business grow every day. And she credits her success in part to what she learned during the MSC program:

• Applying Professor Leslie DeChurch’s advice about networking and prospecting to build her business.
• Sharing Professor Paul Arnston’s quotes on listening when she leads workshop presentations.
• Referencing Professor Randy Iden’s insights to educate organizations on communicating with people at all levels during periods of change.
• Using Professor Amy Hauenstein’s guidance to create curriculum based on adult learning styles.

“Even coursework that I didn’t think would contribute to my career is coming back around,” she explains. “I used everything I learned during the MSC program to launch my business.”

Using Communication as a Tool to Build Better Workplaces

Through Career Civility, Rogers’ mission is to help organizations use communication to create better workplaces for future generations. She does this by directing workshops, supporting employee resource groups, and guiding leadership teams through critical moments like:

• Onboarding and everboarding
• Providing and receiving feedback
• Creating cultures of productivity
• Reducing workplace conflict

She has even returned to Northwestern to lead workshops for students, staff, and faculty about building resilience and communicating burnout.

In addition to working with organizations, she also offers plenty of valuable advice for entry- and mid-level professionals through online courses and social media and newsletter content. Case in point: Every Tuesday, she posts a quick reel to share tips on crafting better emails. She dedicates Mondays to responding to questions from her followers.

As Career Civility continues to grow, Rogers envisions building a business that will meet employees wherever they are, whether that means onsite childcare, paid parental leave for men and women, or something else. “I want to build a business that offers the type of support I needed when I was working in the corporate world. I want to lead by example.”

Bob Rowley is often introduced as “This is Bob Rowley, who spent a life in communication.” Bob Rowley is the Northwestern Assistant Vice President of Media Relations and a Medill School of Journalism lecturer. He spent 30 years working for the Chicago Tribune, was a White House correspondent, Pentagon correspondent, national correspondent based in Dallas, lived in Mexico covering Latin America, where his daughters were born, and in Toronto and Jerusalem, going back and forth covering a dozen wars and different kinds of stories. He has worked in higher education for about eight years, first at Elmhurst College and now Northwestern University. After graduating from the Northwestern MSC program at age 59 in 2013, he became the first president of the MSC Alumni Association.

At what point did you enter the program and why was this the right time for you?

After I came back from living abroad in 1998 and was working in Chicago, Elmhurst and Evanston for more than a dozen years, it was time for me to do something I always wanted to do: get a Master’s degree to learn and in order to be able to teach.

Communications, specifically, came up in a couple of ways. When I left the Chicago Tribune, I had a wife and family to support and two daughters in college. So, I needed to find something that wasn’t unstable like print journalism. I found my skills were valuable in other fields, such as higher education. My journalism skills were valuable in a field I used to believe was very different from journalism.

I came to Northwestern with a plan: to swim in a bigger pond working at a larger research university, to do things I hadn’t done yet in journalism, to get my masters, and to teach at Medill School of Journalism. I originally thought, “Am I too old to do this?” While younger people in my cohort  were quicker with technology I brought much more practical experience, and we were able to learn a lot from each other that way. I learned as much from my cohort, in some ways, as I did from my professors.

Why was Northwestern MSC the right program for you?

Out of all the programs I looked at, the MSC degree stood out, because it had so many interesting courses. I shopped around for programs, but I realized everything I was looking at had something to do with communication. The MSC program was a way to look at the best that was known and thought in the world about communication.

In the 33 years I was working in print journalism, technology changed everything.

It’s common to learn about communication only from the little perch of one’s career, but my professors looked at it in an academic context and most importantly, a global context, and kept up with the changing world. I was so enamored with this degree, my cohort, and professors, that I was so excited to go back to school at age 58. The program made me a better teacher now at Medill.

What is something you’ve learned that has made an impact on your professional and/or personal life?

I took a course about managing information for innovation, which became extremely valuable to the work I do. Our final project was to apply this to somewhere in our lives. An MSC colleague and I interviewed everyone at my Northwestern office and did a report on how to bring more innovation to the office and make people completely open to new ideas. We learned how to best nurture new ideas, be more creative, and encourage our employees. I applied some things we learned in class into our report on how we do things in this office. I found now that I’m a better manager because of this class and others. Instead of being closed to new ideas, I’ve learned to say “yes, and?,” not simply “no.” I also observed how my professors taught, to learn effective teaching strategies for current Medill classes I teach.

What was your favorite aspect of MSC at Northwestern?

It made me understand the big picture of communications, the business world, and my own profession and job here at the Northwestern. They teach you the best that is known and thought in the world, the latest cutting edge technology, why communication is important, how to communicate well, the best practices, how to think strategically, and how to lead. It’s not just communicating one on one, but it’s also how to gather all those ideas and knowledge you take in, keep them in mind, and think about what message you want to take out there on the road.

What advice would you have for anyone considering the MSC program?

If you’re interested in communication, leadership and strategic thinking, and want to understand a very complex media world that is changing every nanosecond and how to navigate in that world, this is the program for you. If you’re strictly interested in business school, this is not the program for you. The difference between the MSC and an MBA is that the MSC is more broad and will teach you those necessary skills about leadership, but also more broadly about the communication landscape in 21st century. You can get bits of many other programs through the MSC, but it’s much more than that.

We are in an age where communication is all the more important. We live in an era of fake news and alternative facts, which makes it even more important to understand the tools of communication and how to use them effectively to cut through all of the noise and get your strategy and message out there. It’s a great program for that — thinking and navigating in a complex communication world.

Can you talk about the value of the MSC network and whether you’ve been able to keep in touch?

The class of 2013 was a very tight cohort, and the idea for an alumni association came about after we graduated. We wanted to create an alumni association to create the same cooperative, collaborative affinity as we had with our cohort. In March 2015, I became the first president of MSC Alumni Association, and now am co-chair of mentoring panel for the MSC Alumni Association. I have had a number of meetings with current students or fellow alumni who are interested in getting involved in networking for future career purposes.

We host a lot of events. We just had MSC Professor Jason DeSanto speak to us in an extraordinary two hour lecture. No one wanted to take a lunch break, but instead we all wanted to keep asking questions. That’s just one example of how much the program energized me and the different cohorts, to the point that some of us would’ve gone into a PhD program if they offered one.

I stay in touch with three quarters of all the 84 people in my cohort. Every year I hold a tailgate party for our 2013 alumni. The MSC Alumni Association has made staying in touch both among cohorts and across cohorts much more doable. We often have an event in which alumni are invited to be panelists and to network with current students, which helps connect the different generations.

Robert Hariman can’t seem to get out of the Midwest. He grew up in North Dakota, went to school in Minnesota, had his first academic appointment in Iowa, and has been at Northwestern since 2004. He likes Evanston and the Chicago metro area for its combination of big city amenities and egalitarian values. He loves Northwestern for many reasons, not least its commitment to both world class research and exceptional teaching.

Hariman has been active in all three areas of academic life: teaching, research, and service.  While at Drake University, he was designated the Iowa Teacher of the Year (1990) by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. At Northwestern, his undergraduate courses include the study of problems of democratic speech in classical Athens, a survey of persuasive practices in contemporary visual culture, and a project-oriented study of environmental art and advocacy.

His graduate teaching is primarily devoted to courses in rhetorical theory, and it has included topical attention to photography and photojournalism, parody and other forms of political humor, and public emotions, among others. He also has taught in the MSC program, offering a core course in managerial ethics.

A primary focus of Hariman’s research has been on role of photography and especially photojournalism in public life. He and co-author John Lucaites built a research program that produced the books No Caption Needed: Photojournalism, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy and The Public Image: Photography and Civic Spectatorship, as well as many shorter works, including the blog (now dormant but still online) Nocaptionneeded.com, which analyzed images in the news media. He also has been active in research in other areas, including the study of political judgment and a critique, with co-author Francis A. Beer, of the doctrine of political realism in international relations. His work has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, and French.

Hariman was no stranger to institutional service when he arrived at Northwestern, and since then has served in several different capacities. Beginning in 2007, he served for six years as Chair of the Department of Communication Studies. For much of the time subsequently, he was Director of Graduate Study for the degree in Communication Studies/Rhetoric and Public Culture. His service also included being Chair of the University Program Review Council and President of the University Faculty Senate.

Now he is stepping into the role of Director of Graduate Studies for the MSC program. “We live in interesting times,” he remarked, “which amplifies the significance of MSC’s focus on preparing students for organizational leadership.”

Hariman has been reviewing every aspect of the program through this lens. “Given our curriculum and faculty, we start in a very strong position. But the stakes are getting higher, and continued engagement with technological and social change and continued adaptability by both individuals and organizations is essential.”

“Furthermore, the purpose needs be more than near term success narrowly defined. Higher education should be teaching students how to be life-long learners, and how to both do well personally and contribute to building a better world.”

Jeanne was most recently a host of a television morning news talk show in Chicago for nearly 8 years and has had a 30-year career in radio and television. Her passion for media began in high school and continued at WNUR radio during her undergraduate degree at Northwestern. Jeanne believes in the importance of integrating experiential learning and academics in order to be able to truly organize and fully learn from our experiences.

At what point in your career did you enter the MSC program?

My undergraduate degree was from Northwestern and it was in psychology. I wanted to take a little break before graduate school, and instead I ended up having an entire career in the media. I had been working on “You & Me” for 4 or 5 years when I first entered MSC. However, I always had a life goal of going back to graduate school because I love school and love learning. The problem was that most of my learning between my undergraduate degree and the MSC was on the job– it was valuable but it was more like enrichment because it wasn’t academically rigorous.

So why was this the right time for you?

As my career changed, I changed too and I learned different things. Eventually, I realized that I wasn’t going to remain in broadcasting forever. The industry has changed a lot in the years that I’ve been in it and I realized I need to prepare myself for the next thing. I thought, maybe going back to school will help me codify and organize what I know. Sometimes what you’ve learned in life doesn’t have a place because it hasn’t been organized in the way that learning in an academic environment helps you to do. The coursework helped me to understand another layer of how to truly learn from my experience in broadcast, and that was what I wanted.

I enjoyed going back to school, and going back to Northwestern was very important for me too. I’m glad I waited until later in life (20+ years after undergrad) to go back to school. I was able to appreciate my Northwestern experience a lot more. I also brought a lot of my own experiences to the program and put it in perspective.

Why was MSC the right program for you?

I did a lot of research on different programs and already had an idea of what I wanted to do after broadcast. Eventually I decided that a graduate degree in communication was right for me. I wanted something a little different and broader in scope than what my career has been and covered all the different ways we communicate across the board.

In the end, the MSC turned out to be perfect for me not only because of the courses, but also because of the other people in my cohort. When you’re on air, your workflow and interactions with others happen very differently than in other businesses and industries. Through my classmates, I was able to learn about interactions in different industries.

What is something you’ve learned that has made an impact on your professional life?

Michael Roloff’s Change Management class was one of the first classes I took. To begin with, I love him and his style of teaching.

In an industry that constantly shifts according to people’s tastes, changes in technology, and new modes of media, my entire career has been about change. Thanks to this class I was able to analyze all of those different changes I had been through, and put them into context in order to understand how to manage them better. A lot of people have preconceived notions on how you implement change, not realizing there might be a better way to do it.

Any interesting or unique projects you worked on during your time in the program?

I really enjoyed my project in Professor Roloff’s class, because I was able to make it more personal. It was about analyzing a change management scenario. I chose changes that a coworker and I wanted to implement. It had to do with some workflow challenges for our team and the changes didn’t quite work the first time we tried. We used the material from the class to understand the different factors involved and how to adjust to them. I even followed up with him later about what worked and what didn’t. Every class that I’ve taken has applied to what I’ve already experienced or something that I’ve lived with in my industry and career, and I’m positive many students in my cohort felt the same way.

What advice would you have for anyone considering the Northwestern MSC program?

If you think the program might be right for you, it probably is. No matter where you are on the spectrum of experience, there is something in the program for you if you are interested in communication and becoming a better communicator. There is always room to get better and get to the next level. The program is so valuable because in everything we do, we are always communicating, negotiating and needing other people to understand us to accomplish goals.

Dear MSC Community,

We are thrilled to share some exciting news with our students, faculty, alumni, and wider community. MS in Communication has officially received a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) designation. Effective September 2022, the MSC program will be recognized as a STEM-designated program in “Digital Communication and Media/Multimedia”, CIP Code: 09.0702.

What does a STEM Designation mean?

A STEM designation is more than just a label; it signifies that our program meets the rigorous standards the U.S. Department of Education sets forth in the STEM field. This recognition reflects our commitment to equipping our students with the skills, knowledge, and experiences necessary to thrive in these critical areas.

How do students benefit?

STEM designation provides F-1 international students with a possible 24-month employment extension of a 12-month Optional Practical Training (OPT) authorization (36 months in total). Please visit Northwestern’s Student Employment page for additional details on OPT.

U.S. Citizens and Permanent Residents also benefit as STEM skills are sought by employers and typically lead to better-paying jobs. Our students may now seek scholarships and assistance from organizations supporting STEM programs.