300

This course investigates the role of social science research in building knowledge to improve human communication. Students learn about the scientific method and its application in conceiving, designing, and implementing an original quantitative research project.  Students further learn skills in research collaboration and discuss research ethics and how to evaluate and critique others’ research.

Provides students theory and analysis necessary to understand mass media processes and messages as they shape personal, cultural, political, economic and civic life. History and contemporary development of media forms and processes are investigated.

Students learn to interrogate key ways science and communication intertwine, especially in this politically polarized internet era; draw conclusions about those interconnections; and develop their means to understand, process, and communicate science in public and in private. Projects, field outings, lab experiments, films, discussions, and community experts help uncover communication’s roles in scientific discovery.

Influential leaders speak well. This course helps future organizational and community leaders develop their ability to speak well and influence others. The class teaches students to recognize, understand, and apply persuasive and rhetorical theories in order to engage and persuade audiences and to promote the health and well-being of others.

This class challenges students to think, analyze, and write thoughtfully about public messages that influence your experience, profession, life, and culture. Your study of rhetorical theory and criticism will provide lifelong tools with which you can better understand the possibilities and difficulties of forming, using, and evaluating messages that individuals or groups use to influence or change large public audiences.

In this course students develop an understanding of the nature and application of argument in the context of advocacy. Students learn how to create, access, and apply arguments to advocate for the welfare of the marginalized and voiceless. Students study the work of Dr. King to gain an appreciation of what it means to be an advocate who argues well.

This course introduces qualitative research methods as the study of how humans create culture through symbolic communication. Students learn about qualitative methods through application in a semester-long project. Students will develop a research focus, gain access to a research site, design an ethical research study, collect and analyze data, and create an interpretation and representation of the data for others.

This course critiques and updates taken-for-granted presumptions about communication’s roles in face-to-face and remote group dynamics including formation, safety, inclusion, and performance. Applied theories and reflective, hands-on learning (projects, simulations, observations, analyses) help learners investigate and improve phenomena such as decision-making, leading, conflict management, problem-solving, and genuinely multivocal collaboration.

The nature of work is changing rapidly. New professions proliferate, new technologies disrupt, and new social and political changes impact communication inside and outside of organizations. This experiential course prepares students for “future” work. Students will draw from cutting-edge research on labor, organizing, and technology to develop an understanding of the future organization and their role in it.

Study of effective communication of visual messages in the mass media. Students will learn design, concept, and composition strategies for visual media by learning and using visual crafting and formatting software.

Instruction in news gathering, evaluating news, and writing typical news stories. Includes a variety of assignments such as hard news, cultural events, speeches, sports, and interviews. Practice work includes covering local assignments and preparing copy.

Study of theory and practice of creating advertising messages as a creative. Course includes case studies and work on a dynamic set of projects replicating advertising industry creative practices. Key focus of course is also on advertising ethics and a cultural critique of advertising.

Survey course provides understanding of the role of public relations in the profit-making and non-profit sectors, and specific working knowledge of the various facets of the public relations process, including social media. Planning and implementing public campaigns will be discussed.

This course provides an introduction to the field of Environmental Communication, focusing on collaborative attempts to organize and advocate for environmental solutions. Using case studies, students will examine environmental communication in a range of contexts including communities, corporations, nonprofit organizations, governmental agencies, and social movements.

Credit arranged.