Graduate Courses

CST 500 Research and Writing

This course investigates the role of social science research in building knowledge to improve human communication. Students prepare graduate-level research papers while learning 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.

3

Cross Listed Courses

CST 300

CST 501 The Rhetoric of Politics

Students study the American political culture using rhetorical framework. They evaluate the rhetorical strategies used in campaigns, issues, create, maintain, and denigrate our political institutions. They examine the political strategies used in deliberative and constitutive rhetoric.

3

Cross Listed Courses

CST 401

CST 502 Critical Studies of Social Media and Protest

This course draws on critical media theory to investigate social media through its ability to organize for change, undermine governments, and polarize. Students learn to challenge corporate definitions of social media bringing the world together, and receive tools to analyze logics by which social media sites function. This course uses local and global case studies to explore topics such as protest, identity, political economy, and surveillance.

3

CST 503 Communication Law

This graduate-level survey course is designed to develop an advanced understanding of First Amendment law as it relates to citizens, mass media, and democratic practice. The course examines core questions about how communities function and how civil society can be constructed and maintained through free and robust public discussion from diverse and antagonistic sources.

3

CST 510 Communication Theory

This course develops the ability to identify and analyze assumptions underlying theoretical models of communication that shape knowledge about ourselves, others, and reality. The course investigates major explanatory theories of communication. Students develop foundational knowledge about the communication discipline, equipping them in all other courses as graduate students.

3

CST 511 Communication Across Barriers

This course investigates dynamics of differences that frame, enable, and constrain people’s communication opportunities across diverse social identity groupings. Focusing on ‘isms’ related to race, gender, sex, social class, ability, sexuality, and age, its learning activities apply theory and scholarship to understand, integrate, and more insightfully navigate interactions across the welcome range of human differences.

3

CST 516 Communication, Conflict, and Peace

This course explores how to communicate during conflict in ways that create intimacy, connection, and peace in relationships, organizations, and society. This class begins by developing contemporary theory about communication, conflict, and peace. Students apply this theoretical frame to inform and shape practical skills that aid in ethically and constructively engaging in conflict communication.

3

CST 520 Rhetorical Theory and Criticism

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.

3

Cross Listed Courses

CST 320

CST 525 Radical Relationships: Love, Care, Grief

Students learn about and explore romantic, familial, platonic, earthly, and sometimes “radical” relationships through various interpersonal, mediated, and culturally-situated communication concepts and theories. Special focus is given to the ways love, care, and/or grief inform our lived experience(s) over the life cycle. Topics span philosophies of birth, death, suicide, joy, fertility, queerness, eco-spirituality, and otherness. 

3

CST 527 Argumentation and Advocacy

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.

3

Cross Listed Courses

CST 327

CST 530 Qualitative Research Methods

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.

3

Cross Listed Courses

CST 330

CST 531 Intercultural Communication and Identity

This course integrates social scientific, interpretive, and critical scholarship connections between cultures and interactions. Encoded in communication, it unpacks how people’s cultures shape – and are shaped by – their socio-cultural realities, identities, and interactions across boundaries. It also applies that knowledge to help learners advance their cultural sensitivity, engagement, flexibility, and effectiveness in intercultural situations.

3

CST 532 The Global Commons: Gendered Storytelling, Feminist Futures, and Liberation

Students learn about the ideology of “the global commons” by considering what stories are told and what stories are hidden, whose positionalities are celebrated and whose are disappeared, and how liberation may be possible for our future work and relationships with/in the era of climate collapse. Special attention is given to indigenous, feminist, flora, and fauna ways of knowing.

3

CST 533 Critical Perspectives on Work, Labor, and Organizing

This course explores current organizational issues from a critical perspective. Students use organizational communication theory to unpack various topics including gendered and raced labor, culture and identity, work/life balance, and organizational power and decision-making. An underlying theme of this course is the transformative potential of meaningful work in various contexts, such as for-profit, nonprofit, and global organizations.

3

CST 534 Researching Organizational Life: Identity, Culture, Voice

This course offers an advanced investigation of organizational culture. Students will identify symbolic organizing practices and ideological meanings tied to them, and examine how plural cultural meanings and beliefs inform organizing practices. Topics include organizational ethnography, cultural diversity, and social justice. Drawing from interpretive and critical traditions, students will design and implement an advanced research project.

3

CST 535 Visual Culture

Examines the cultural significance and accomplishments of visuality. Considers the social and political implications of “looking” practices, the impact of “representation” in contemporary culture, and the circulation of images (through virality and sharing practices). Specific focus on race, gender and class and the role that visual images play in cultural perceptions of and practices toward race and racialized bodies. 

3

CST 540 Media Criticism

Students study and write media criticism which closely analyzes messages as cultural repositories of meaning or which investigates the interaction between media and culture. Emphasis is on the method, stance, and purpose of media critics.

3

Prerequisites

CST 520 or instructor permission

CST 545 The Rhetoric of Film

Explores the influence of film on American culture. Students explore theories and ideas concerning film, society, conflict, visual persuasion, and narrative. Students view popular American films as focal points for lecture and discussion.

3

Prerequisites

CST 520 or instructor permission

CST 552 Public Affairs Reporting

Provides instruction in news reporting of public affairs, including crime and police, courts, governments, politics and education. Students learn about the problems and challenges of serving a watchdog role over the institutions and processes that shape civic life. Includes an advanced investigative reporting component in which graduate students produce a series of investigative stories on an important public issue.

3

CST 553 Multimedia Journalism

Students evaluate and critique current online journalism practices and gain experience in editing, collaborating, and producing multimedia stories.  Students analyze current digital storytelling practices of big and small news organizations in order to address some of the key ethical and entrepreneurial challenges associated with digital journalism, including commenting capabilities and revenue streams.
3

Cross Listed Courses

CST 453

CST 581 Advanced Business Communication

Course designed to help students attain professional-level competence in oral and written business communication. Students learn rhetorical principles and apply them to business communication situations, such as: making formal oral presentations, conducting meetings, and writing business correspondence and reports.

3

Cross Listed Courses

BUS 581

CST 583 Instruction and Leadership

This course unpacks leaders’ communicative means to engage people’s thought, attention, motivation, and learning. Students examine research, theory, philosophy, and instructional communication practices designed to increase credibility, flexibility, comfort, and effectiveness in teaching-learning leadership situations. Students develop their own teaching philosophies and learn about sharing memorable information, facilitating teamwork and discussion, and developing productive, satisfying teaching-learning relationships with others.

3

Cross Listed Courses

BUS 583

CST 590 Directed Study

Credit arranged.

Variable

CST 591 One Time Course Offering

Credit arranged.

Variable

CST 592 Seminar

Credit arranged.

Variable

CST 593 Advanced Research

This course is for students nearing completion of their academic program. It will provide an opportunity for students to explore a research project in more depth and explore areas of special interest in communication. Course is graded A-F.

Variable

CST 595 Advanced Research

Credit arranged.

Variable

CST 597 Communication Internship Practicum

This course provides reflective, specific guidance in applying communication theories to a professional communication setting. Students learn how to observe and apply theory to practice, increasing their understanding and ability to function successfully in a professional communication setting by working directly with a qualified internship supervisor and academic internship director. May be taken twice, only 3 credits apply to major.

3

CST 599 Graduate Thesis Project

This course is under the direction of a faculty adviser, leading to a scholarly thesis document with a public presentation of results. Students demonstrate advanced knowledge and research expertise in the communication field by designing, conducting, and implementing an original thesis study. The course must be taken twice for 6 credits, which fulfills two degree elective requirements.

3

CST 599X Thesis in Progress

Registration for any graduate student who has received the grade of IP in CST 599 is required while the thesis is in progress. Fee: $50.

0