UBC admissions blog

Do you want the tools to understand and respond to social change? Are you looking to use writing and communication to make a social impact? Do you want the skills to communicate information and ideas across platforms?

UBC’s Vancouver’s School of Journalism, Writing, and Media has just launched two new minors that students can enroll in starting this year: Writing and Communication and Journalism and Social Change.

Minor in Writing and Communication

 UBC Vancouver’s new Minor in Writing and Communication will strengthen your writing and communication skills and provide you with a way to explore the role of writing and communication in your own academic discipline, as well as across other academic disciplines, cultural communities, and public contexts.

In the program, you will have opportunities to practice and enhance the impact of your writing and communication in a variety of contexts and engage in conversations about the role of writing and communication in negotiating identity, community, culture, knowledge, and power.

Why Choose the Minor in Writing and Communication?

Open to undergrad students across faculties at UBC, the new Minor in Writing and Communication prepares you to communicate in today’s world.

• Experience multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary learning: Join students from across UBC to explore the writing and communication used in different academic disciplines, communities, and professions and explore what it means to communicate within group and across divides.
• Build confidence and practical skills: Gain hands-on experience developing writing and communication skills you need to thrive at UBC and beyond — learn how to tailor your communication style to each situation, to reach your audience and your goals.
• Gain critical perspective and transformative agency: Tackle pressing questions about writing, communication, ethics, and power and come away with experiences and tools you can use to make writing diverse, equitable, and inclusive.

Start with WRDS 200 — an open-enrolment “big ideas” course that lets you sample themes explored in the Minor. Finish with WRDS 400 — a limited enrolment capstone course, where you create a portfolio of your work in the Minor and complete a project identifying challenges and opportunities for social impact beyond UBC.

Minor in Journalism and Social Change

Facts matter more than ever and we need accurate, verifiable information to understand the complex global and local worlds that we live in.

UBC Vancouver’s new Minor in Journalism and Social Change will give you essential journalism skills and knowledge to effectively communicate information and ideas across various communities and platforms through the lens of social change.

The Minor in Journalism and Social Change gives students across all majors the opportunity to develop skills and knowledge needed to inform, engage, inspire, and prepare them for the digital communication economy. Students will gain fundamental journalistic capabilities grounded in principals of verification social responsibility, and effective engagement with communities by learning essential techniques and concepts for gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting factual information to diverse publics.

What will you learn in the Minor in Journalism and Social Change?

1. Journalism skills. You’ll learn responsible information-gathering and verification skills, while considering key questions such as the source purpose and content of a news story, information gathering techniques, credibility, and impact of news and other media messages on individuals and society.
2. Critical thinking and analytical news literacy. You’ll explore the need for more meaningful, socially conscious, and community-focused storytelling, especially in the context of ongoing social-justice movements, the climate crisis, and other aspects of social change.
3. Ethical relationship-building across communities. You’ll receive foundational training in communicating and engaging across a broad range of communities, while learning to understand the context behind key events and social transformations in those communities.
4. The role of journalism in social change. You’ll sharpen your understanding of social change and learn how to engage with and assess journalism’s role and responsibilities in times of social change and political unrest.

Questions? Contact UBC’s Vancouver’s School of Journalism, Writing, and Media.