The Department of Communication and Media Studies, housed in the UST Faculty of Arts and Letters, was established at the turn of the new millennium, tasked to administer both the Communication and Journalism programs. The Department is the biggest in the Faculty of Arts and Letters in terms of student population. While it has benefitted tremendously from the liberal arts tradition of the Faculty, the Department is envisioned to become a separate institute in the future, leveraging on its strengths to be able to expand its curricular offerings and become a premier school of communication and journalism in the region.

The journalism program of UST is Southeast Asia’s first communication or journalism-oriented degree program (first offered in 1929). The initial degree was Bachelor of Literature major in Journalism. When the old Faculty of Philosophy and Letters subsumed the BA programs of the College of Liberal Arts (which became the College of Science) and became the Faculty of Arts and Letters in 1964, the degree became Bachelor of Arts major in Journalism. In 1967, UST began to offer the Communication Arts (now B.A. in Communication) degree program. The program produced its first graduates in 1971.

A testament to industry recognition of the Department is its dominance of the annual Philippine Student Quill Awards, where it has won the “School of the Year” award for UST for seven consecutive years, from 2014 to 2021.