The College

Emerson College educates students to assume positions of leadership in communication and the arts and to advance scholarship and creative work that brings innovation, depth, and diversity to these disciplines.

This mission is informed by core liberal arts values that seek to promote civic engagement, encourage ethical practices, foster respect for human diversity, and inspire students to create and communicate with clarity, integrity, and conviction.

As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, the College has made and will continue to make adjustments in how we deliver curricula and services. We remain committed to providing students with a quality educational experience, relying on various modalities and interfaces to support teaching and learning.

Emerson College graduates are socially responsible citizens, clear communicators, creative thinkers, and informed inquirers.

Founded in 1880 by Charles Wesley Emerson, noted preacher, orator, and teacher, Emerson College has grown into a comprehensive college enrolling nearly 4,000 undergraduate and graduate students from 50 states and 60 countries. The original concentration on oratory has evolved into specialization in the fields of communication studies; marketing communication; communication sciences and disorders; journalism; performing arts; visual and media arts; and writing, literature and publishing. 

Since Emerson’s founding, the elements of human communication-the spoken word, the written word, the gesture-have changed in both form and substance, and the media through which they flow have evolved and multiplied. Radio, motion pictures, television, and the sciences of speech pathology and audiology have all developed during the past century.

Throughout its history, Emerson College has shown the capacity to respond to and meet the needs of education in communication and the arts. Emerson was the first college in New England to establish an educational FM radio station (WERS in 1949), one of the first colleges in the nation to establish a program in children’s theater (1919), and one of the first colleges in the nation to offer undergraduate programs in broadcasting (1937). Among its other pioneering achievements, Emerson offered professional-level training in speech pathology and audiology (1935); established a closed-circuit television broadcast facility, WERS-TV (1955); and created a Bachelor of Fine Arts in film (1972).

Today, Emerson continues this tradition of innovation in communication and the arts. For example, since 2016, the College has offered a Bachelor of Fine Arts in the Comedic Arts-the first such program in the nation specifically designed to integrate comedic writing, performance, literature, media, and production across all comedic formats. The College is organized into two schools and an institute: a School of the Arts, a School of Communication, and the Marlboro Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies. 

Concurrent with programmatic evolutions and academic reorganizations, Emerson has continued to upgrade the technology and the facilities necessary to support the curriculum. Emerson’s radio and television stations both offer webcasts in addition to traditional broadcasts, and the state-of-the-art Tufte Performance and Production Center opened in Fall 2003. In Spring 2010, the College opened the multi-use Paramount Center, which includes a 596-seat live performance theater, performance development facilities, the Bright Family Screening Room, and a residence hall. 

In March 2014, Emerson College Los Angeles celebrated the opening of its new facility in Hollywood. Designed by award-winning architect Thom Mayne, the sustainable 10-story structure can house up to 217 students and includes wired classrooms, an open-air screening and live-performance space, a Dolby Surround 7.1 audio post-production suite, a 4K screening room, computer labs, mixing suites, and a planned green screen motion capture stage.

In Summer 2017, the College opened a new Dining Center and a new residence hall at 2 Boylston Place. At more than 18,000 square feet, the multipurpose Dining Center has seating for 530 and provides much needed social spaces for the urban campus, including a performance stage area and a meeting space for faculty and staff. In 2019, the College reopened the renovated Little Building residence hall that now houses 1,035 students and provides them with 16 lounges and 6 kitchenettes.

Emerson’s expansion into Boston’s cultural district has brought it within a few city blocks of the site where the College was first located in 1880. This return to the College’s roots has been accompanied by a renewal of its commitment to foster innovation and excellence in communication and the arts.

In 2020, Emerson and Marlboro College completed their planned alliance, through which Marlboro moved its academic programs to Emerson. Emerson welcomed a number of Marlboro undergraduates to matriculate and a number of Marlboro tenured, tenure-track, and emeriti faculty to teach starting in the Fall 2020 semester.

Emerson College is fully accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education and is a member of the Council of Graduate Schools.

Emerson’s Commitment to Equity, Access, and Social Justice 

Equity, Access, and Social Justice are core values and commitments of Emerson College. Emerson is committed to fostering a living, learning, and working environment where all members of our community can thrive. We believe student success is not possible without active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity and examination of matters of inequality across all areas of the College-with people; the curriculum; the co-curricular experiences of students; and with our intellectual, social, cultural, and geographical communities. Emerson is committed to building vibrant communities by fostering the skills necessary for meaningful engagement with increasingly complex societies and the world through deepening anti-oppressive practices.