Gaylord College Offers New Online Master's Program

Designed for upwardly mobile professionals, Gaylord College’s fully online master of arts in strategic communication and digital strategy prepares students to lead in the 21st century.

Classes begin in January 2021, and those interested in beginning the program then can apply today. Details about admission requirements, costs and more can be found on the program's website.

“We couldn’t be more excited about being able to bring our online master’s to market,” said Dean Ed Kelley. “This is a great way to extend our brand at Gaylord and OU with a degree that will help graduates advance their careers in the media world.”

The college has talked for nearly a decade about having an online graduate program, but it has almost always been a question of resources, not interest, said Peter Gade, director of graduate studies. Since then, the college added two graduate certificates and also began meeting with colleagues from other universities about how they were running their online programs.

Then, OU approached Gaylord College last winter when it started the OU Online initiative. The college began working with the OU Online team and the university’s preferred consultant for online education, Elsmere Education, to determine what the opportunities were. Gade said the college also did its own research through surveys to learn why people wanted to come back to school and what they wanted to learn, and also looked at peer and aspirational institutions while creating the curriculum.

In many ways, alumni were additional inspirations for the program, sharing over the years how they would like to see an opportunity like this, whether it be because of a strong affiliation with OU or a desire to continue their association with the university, Gade said.

All students will take the same 11 courses for a total of 33 hours, which mix conceptual education with a focus on how it’s applied professionally. The courses are:

• Introduction to Research Methods
• Marketing & Media Analytics
• Social Media Marketing
• Digital Behavior
• Professional Seminar in Strategic Communication
• Crisis Communication
• Management & Leadership
• Cross-Cultural Communication
• Digital Strategic Communication
• Ethics of Strategic Communication
• Strategic Planning & Brand Strategy

“We’re interested in those people who quite frankly are trying to make the transition in their careers in several ways,” Gade said. “They may want to update or expand skills that are both digital and perhaps marketing and data-based. We’re also looking for people who are trying to make that transition in their careers, who want to become more of the thinker and planner and person who can step back from the day-to-day skill base and what they’re doing and start to think more broadly about their careers and the opportunities that might be afforded to them. It’s a move to management, and it’s perhaps a move from a kind of doer to a thinker.”