The communications department at Lewis and Clark College (Portland, Oregon) has grown from two faculty with three declared communications majors in 1965 to six faculty with 135 declared majors in 1984. The department curriculum is subdivided into three central areas of study: rhetoric and public address, interpersonal/organizational communication, and mass media. Each area of the department has an associated set of activities and internships, and there is a separate theatre department. The communications department, which views communications as both a liberal arts/humane study and a career-oriented preprofessional field, seeks to integrate theory, research, and skills. Rhetoric and public address classes clearly fit the classical conception of the liberal arts and humane studies. Since the students in interpersonal communication classes are thinking, listening, evaluating, and learning constantly how to synthesize and integrate information from a variety of disciplines and subject areas and to apply the results to current problems, interpersonal communication also fits the mold of liberal arts. These same communication studies are also very much career oriented, preprofessional, or skill related, such as public speaking, organizational communication, and journalism and broadcast communication. Far from being purely skills courses, they are what Aristotle would have described as humane arts if taught from a research knowledge base and with perspective. (HTH)