Northern Illinois University
Department of Communication
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Grad Comm is the Graduate Student Advisory Council for NIU’s communications department. The Grad Comm Executive consists of three elected second-year communications graduate students and two first-year elected representatives. Our role is to help all students in the department enjoy the academic experience as much as possible. With this in mind, we plan various social events that any communications student may participate in.

Grad Comm also sponsors and administrates voting procedures and ceremonies for the Excellence in Teaching Award. We arrange “brownbag lunchtime” and colloquium speakers who present exciting and informative speeches about topics of interest to all communications students.

We also act as a liaison between the faculty and students. We get together as a group of students and discuss issues, both positive and negative, and then those issues to the faculty. The professors at NIU are very accessible, but Grad Comm believes that it helps, from time to time, to give students an amplified voice regarding issues of interest to them. Of course it is important to speak directly with your professors about course matters, but sometimes there may be issues that affect the student body as a whole and that is where Grad Comm can help communicate those issues.

We want to do all that we can to support our fellow students and have a great time doing it. That is what Grad Comm is all about.

Grad Comm represents every communications student and each student can benefit from being involved with Grad Comm through committees, the aforementioned social events and attending speeches by some of the most influential communications specialists. We encourage every student to be a participant in Grad Comm’s mission to make the academic experience as enjoyable and productive as possible.