Simmons College School of Management

For those of you familiar with Simmons' Master's Program in Communications Management, a significant and exciting change this year is that the program has now found its home in the School of Management, a move that offers a remarkable new set of benefits for our students.

The Communications Management Program, of course, has always led the way in helping to provide future communications leaders with a rigorous, multi-disciplinary approach to refining and developing skills for helping to articulate organizational missions, formulate strategic objectives, and contribute to growth and profitability. Our world-class faculty is drawn from practitioners with one foot in academia and one deeply entrenched in the professional world where they have had, or still have, roles as leaders in organizational communications in both the private and public sectors, and for not for profit and for-profit organizations, alike. In a digital age and as part of a global economy, the program is designed to help students manage an international conversation about how organizations most effectively communicate to their stakeholders, and how to lead these conversations in an ethical, principled, and socially-responsible way. Our graduates add value to their organizations precisely because of the leadership values instilled in all our coursework.

As the newest program in Simmons' School of Management, the MCM Program will benefit greatly from SOM's rich intellectual resources, including selected faculty from its MBA program, ranked as the #1 MBA Program for Women by the Princeton Review; nationally-recognized, one-of-a-kind courses and research examining principled leadership, entrepreneurship, and gender in organizations; a career office designed specifically for helping graduates create robust professional networks and viable employment options; and a renewed mission for the school to energetically influence thought leadership in management as we welcome our new Dean, Cathy Minehan, former president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston , whose stature, experience, and energy promise a renewed time of growth for the School.

I welcome you to review our course offerings, both the core curriculum and the broad group of electives, and read the faculty profiles to get a feel for the breadth of our program offerings, and see how we integrate necessary real world competencies into a rigorous curriculum of tactical, quantitative, analytical, and communications skills so that graduates are fully prepared to assume leadership roles in complex organizations where coherent, compelling, and competitive solutions for communicating are not only necessary, but vital, in a global environment. The MCM program includes men and women from a wide range of backgrounds: corporate communications, advertising, marketing, public relations, design, technical writing, government relations, human resources, and customer service.

I encourage you to attend one of our information sessions; visit the School of Management's state of the art, newly-finished, green building and look around; or speak to our students and graduates and see how the Simmons learning experience changed their lives.

After reviewing these pages, don't hesitate to reach out to either me or any of our committed faculty with questions about the Communications Management Program and how it can help prepare you for a challenging, fulfilling career track. All of us can speak with certainty that the leadership and communications skills that form the intellectual core of our teaching are precisely the necessary knowledge that will help you insure that, as the landscape of business becomes more competitive and expands across global borders, when there is a conversation about how organizations define themselves, our graduates will be the leaders leading those conversations.

Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D.
Director