After a faculty senate vote March 30, and rumblings over this past year, Quinnipiac University’s School of Communications is introducing a new graduate certificate in digital and multimedia journalism for fall 2026.

With the introduction of this certificate, the SOC hopes to provide students with skills that help bridge the gap between traditional journalism skills and those of modern day newsrooms.

The courses selected for the certificate are aimed in the direction the SOC envisions journalism moving towards, with it primarily focusing on journalistic content that individuals create and distribute across social platforms using video, social, audio, photographic and other similar tools.

The certificate also fits into the current trends in hiring communicators, such as storytelling techniques and processes that can work across all platforms, according to the State of Connecticut Office of Higher Education.

With the current state of Quinnipiac’s financial aid system and the cost-benefit analysis, prospective students tend to pursue graduate degrees in journalism. This certificate offers a more cost-effective option for those interested in pursuing their graduate degree in this field.

“It’s really a great way to upskill the skills that you would have already learned as an undergrad…So we really designed this program to sort of be (the) future, looking towards what newsrooms are looking for and they’re looking for content creators. And so we specifically chose courses which sort of fed into that idea,” Professor and Chair of Journalism Ben Bogardus said.

The certificate is primarily aimed at students in the Media Studies in Interactive Media program and requires 12 credits for completion. To maintain a spot within the program, students must maintain a minimum grade point average of 3.0 and have already attained a bachelor’s degree.

“There are the things that we don’t teach in the undergraduate that someone doing a three plus one program would want to have that they haven’t had already,” Bogardus said. “So we decided to go to the root of a certificate, which is sort of a smaller degree program.. You still get a diploma, you still put it on your resume, but it’s not an entire master’s degree.”

With this new addition to the SOC, administrators hope that students will be able to develop resume building skills within areas that aren’t currently widely offered through the school – audio production, social media and digital storytelling, mobile multimedia and with emerging technologies such as AI.

With the dismantling of the MS in Journalism program which was a result of low enrollment earlier this year, the SOC has been gradually working to allow students greater leeway in which classes they are able to take and get elective credits for. Ergo, if a public relations major wants to gain skills in podcasting or filmmaking, they will have the option to. This ensures students are well versed in the communications space.

While the SOC is making efforts to focus on content creation classes with the introduction of this new certificate, administrators also aim to emphasize the connections between different majors and different programs, and the importance of taking classes in a field that may not be one’s own in order to benefit them post grad.

“All the courses are designed so the students can list those things on their resume as discrete skills that they have,” Bogardus said. “So someone looking to hire in a traditional newsroom that’s looking to expand into the social sphere, can say this is something that we could really use in our newsroom, and hopefully get to our students’ jobs absolutely outside of this program.”

With the recent announcement of a content creation minor coming to Quinnipiac in the fall 2026, the SOC is offering the certificate in Digital and Multimedia Journalism as a similar track available only to graduate students.

Bogardus emphasized the school moving more into the content creation sphere with the introduction of these new programs.

Students can find the graduate certificate in digital and multimedia journalism in their course catalogs for more information beginning July 1.