At the turn of the decade, the School sought to expand its diversity by offering a sequence in Intercultural Studies (later Intercultural Communication) while a series of scholarships were established to attract students of ethnic minorities. Moreover, Diversity in the Mass Media was the theme of the 1991 Murrow Symposium. The Symposium would continue to attract and honor high-profile achievers in the field of communication into the decade and into the new century, such as Keith Jackson, Howard Stringer, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings.

At the graduate level, in 2002 the School began offering a doctoral program, designed to prepare Communication academics of the future with the skills needed for cutting-edge research and high-quality teaching. During the same year, the Consortium for the Study of Communication & Decision Making was founded. This initiative (later known as the Murrow Center for Media and Health Promotion) has brought in millions of dollars worth of grants and research contracts from the state Department of Social and Health Services, Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse and Department of Health, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and from private foundations. Participating faculty have achieved top-ranked status nationally in the areas of advertising research, substance abuse prevention and media literacy research.

In 2003, the School was ranked 6th for communication studies and mass communication research (Communication Research Reports). The continuing growth of the School effectively was symbolized when, in 2004, it opened the doors of the Communication Addition, containing state-of-the-art interview suites, a focus group room, research consortium, telephone survey lab, and more.

By 2006, five faculty were considered “seminal” authors in communication research  (Erica Austin, Elizabeth Blanks Hindman, Bruce Pinkleton, Joey Reagan, Patty Sias), and three faculty from the Murrow School (Annie Lang, Erica Austin and Julie Andsager) had won the prestigious Krieghbaum Under-40 Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.  No other communication school in the country has won more Krieghbaums.

In 2008, clinical faculty member Brett Atwood procured the College’s first grant from The McCormick Foundation to establish a Virtual Journalism Summit featuring workshops and presentations about media within 3D spaces. The same grant was used to establish the Murrow Center 3D Newsroom, a virtual world project that featured 3D “citizen journalism” training kiosks and a multimedia exhibit dedicated to famed broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow.

Also in 2008, The Edward R. Murrow School of Communication was elevated to college status at WSU. Now known as The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, it maintains a solid commitment to undergraduate and graduate student excellence, quality research output, top-rated faculty instruction, and a combination of theoretical and hands-on learning.