About

1. COMPASS
2. About

Photo Credit (top image): Anna Sullivan / Unsplash

The Consortium on Media Policy Studies (COMPASS) is a program administered by the Media, Inequality & Change Center (MIC), a project of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers University's School of Communication and Information. It places summer Fellows at major national and non-profit institutions in Washington, D.C. 

The program is open to students from seven schools: The Annenberg School for Communication at Penn and the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers, as well as Penn State's Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, the University of Michigan's Communication Studies department, the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin's Moody College of Communication, and Cornell University's Department of Communication.

Past COMPASS Fellows have been placed in congressional offices, the State Department, the Federal Communications Commission, and a variety of research and advocacy organizations such as Common Cause, Free Press, and the New America Foundation.

In addition to their work with the institutions where they are placed, students will participate in a weekly seminar taught by a leading scholar on the mechanics of the policy process, including how Communication scholarship can assist policy makers.

By the end of the eight-week period fellows will have acquired an in-depth understanding of a particular topic or area of concern, and gained in-depth experience with the policymaking process.

Washington DC Summer Fellowship Program on Hiatus

The MIC Center is not currently accepting applications for the COMPASS Summer Fellowship Program. The program will be on hiatus for the summer of 2025. Please continue to check back in for updates on the future of the COMPASS Program.

Our Mission and History

In 2003, a group of department chairs and deans from Communication Studies programs around the country formed the Consortium on Media Policy Studies. The current sponsoring programs include the following universities:

• Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
• Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California
• Moody College of Communication, University of Texas at Austin
• School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University
• Communication Studies, University of Michigan
• Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University

Other universities are invited to participate, and can contact Annenberg School for Communication Professor and MIC Director Victor Pickard for more information.

The purpose of the consortium is to build bridges between the needs of policy makers and the study of media and communication technologies. COMPASS seeks to train more graduate students in the areas of media policy, law, and regulation; we are dedicated to making the academic study of the mass media and communication systems more relevant to and informing of national and international policy planning and regulatory proposals.

Our initiative seeks to address the paucity of well-informed, well-researched media policy and regulation and the threat this poses to democracy, both in the United States and around the world. We seek to stimulate and generate a new cohort of scholars, activists, and policy-makers who can deal with the realities of contemporary U.S. state and business power and the resultant democratic deficit experienced by people here and around the globe.