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/Institutions/University-of-Portland/json/2025-2026/Bulletin-local.json
/Institutions/University-of-Portland/json/2025-2026/Bulletin.json
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 conducting 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
Prerequisites
MTH 161
Cross Listed Courses
COM 500
Credits
3
Students make sense of their media ecosystem through close reflection and learning media theories. This course provides critical analysis of mass media, including social media and technology, to explore how students’ lived experiences with media intersect with sensemaking around democracy, attention, and decision-making. Students explore biases, narratives, and assumptions for a more intentional, informed relationship with our media’s ecosystem.
3
Credits
3
Students learn how science and communication intertwine in this politically polarized, AI and Internet era, draw conclusions about those interconnections, and develop their means to understand, communicate, process, and participate in science at interpersonal and systemic levels. Projects, groupwork, discussions, films, and community experts all help unpack communication’s roles in scientific discovery and adoption.
3
Credits
3
Influential leaders speak well. This course helps future organizational and community leaders develop their ability to speak well and influence others. The class helps students to recognize, understand, and apply persuasive and rhetorical theories in order to engage and influence audiences and to promote healthy democratic participation. COM 107 is a prerequisite.
3
Prerequisites
COM 107
Credits
3
Use of rhetorical approaches and methods in the analysis and criticism of contemporary forms of digital media and technology. Students examine the social, political, and aesthetic implications of contemporary media from within a framework of rhetorical theory. Research and analysis skills learned in this course will prepare students to conduct media-focused research projects that engage cultural, political, and social issues through the lens of rhetoric.
3
Credits
3
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
Credits
3
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
COM 530
Credits
3
This course offers, critiques, and updates taken-for-granted presumptions about communication in face-to-face and remote group and team performance and relational dynamics. Applied theories and reflective, hands-on observations, simulations, projects, and analyses help reveal and improve teams’ problem-solving, decision-making, leading, conflict management, and genuine collaboration capabilities.
3
Credits
3
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.
3
Credits
3
This course teaches the basic process and practice of journalism while developing skills in sourcing, interviewing, researching, style, and appropriate story structure for a variety of media publications. Journalists’ role in our democratic ideals and responsibility to provide a platform for robust discussion and debate are discussed and practiced while learning how to evaluate and critique journalism.
3
Credits
3
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.
3
Credits
3
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.
3
Prerequisites
COM 352
Credits
3
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.
3
Cross Listed Courses
ENV 373
Credits
3