Welcome to Columbia College Chicago’s Course Catalog

The course catalog is your path to find information on admission policies and procedures, graduation requirements, academic regulations, as well as detailed descriptions of academic majors, minors, and course offerings.
 

About Columbia College Chicago

Columbia College Chicago educates students for the real world through hands-on training in the arts, media, and communications. Surrounding and infusing this practical career preparation is a strong framework of required courses in the liberal arts and sciences. A Columbia education combines the pragmatic and the theoretical, the entrepreneurial and the academic. Thanks to our faculty members’ immersion in the working world and our location in the heart of downtown Chicago, Columbia students and graduates are surrounded by exceptional internship and career opportunities.
 

Mission

Columbia College Chicago is an undergraduate and graduate institution whose principal commitment is to provide a comprehensive educational opportunity in the arts, communications, and public information within a context of enlightened liberal education. Columbia’s intent is to educate students who will communicate creatively and shape the public’s perceptions of issues and events, and who will author the culture of their times. Columbia is an urban institution whose students reflect the economic, racial, cultural, and educational diversity of contemporary America. Columbia conducts education in close relationship to a vital urban reality and serves an important civic purpose by active engagement in the life and culture of the City of Chicago.

Columbia’s purpose is:

• to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of the arts and media and to encourage awareness of their aesthetic relationship and the opportunity of professional choice among them;
• to extend educational opportunity by admitting unreservedly, at the undergraduate level, a student population with creative ability in or inclination to the subjects of Columbia’s interest;
• to provide a college climate that offers students an opportunity to try themselves out, to explore, and to discover what they can and want to do;
• to give educational emphasis to the work of a subject by providing a practical setting, professional facilities, and the example and guide of inventive faculty members who work professionally in the subjects they teach;
• to teach students to do expertly the work they like, to master the crafts of their intended occupations, and to discover alternative opportunities to employ their talents in settings other than customary marketplaces;
• to help students find out who they are, discover their own voices, respect their own individuality, and improve their self-esteem and self-confidence;
• to offer specialized graduate programs that combine a strong conceptual emphasis with practical professional education, preparing students with mature interests to be both competent artists and successful professionals.
   

History

Columbia College Chicago was founded in 1890 as the Columbia School of Oratory. At the time, the school occupied just part of a single building and students studied Elocution, Voice Culture, Visible Speech, Literature, and English.  Since then the College has not only grown to 10,000 students and more than 100 programs, we have earned a reputation for being a world leader in arts and communication education.  More about our history…
 

Accreditation

Columbia College Chicago is accredited at the graduate and undergraduate levels by The Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.  Columbia is accredited as a teacher training institution by the Illinois State Board of Education.
 
For more information about Columbia’s accreditation, please contact:

Higher Learning Commission
230 South LaSalle Street
Suite 7-500
Chicago, IL 6064-1411
800-621-7440
312-263-0456
Fax 312-263-7462
info@hlcommission.org
 
Columbia College Chicago is an independent and unaffiliated institution of higher education.

Contact Information

Columbia College Chicago

600 S. Michigan Avenue

Chicago, Illinois 60605 (map)

Main Switchboard: (312) 663-1600

Request Information from the Admissions Office
 

Equal Opportunity

Columbia College Chicago complies with all local, state, and federal laws and regulations concerning civil rights. Columbia College Admission and practices of the College are free of any discrimination based on age, race, color, creed, sex, religion, handicap, disability, sexual orientation, and national or ethnic origin.