CST - Communication Studies

This course introduces theories of communication, builds academic writing and research strategies, and considers various academic and career options.

Theory and practice of public oral communication, with special emphasis on issue analysis and argumentation in public communication.

This course provides a relational approach to studying interpersonal communication by understanding how concepts such as affection, conflict, and listening are constrained and enabled in close relationships across diverse contexts. Students learn to see personal agency in interactions that shape quality of life, while also identifying and practicing the importance of dual perspective-taking, inclusion, civil discourse, and freedom of expression.

This course provides instruction and practice in the art of public speaking and debate. Students train to compete in debate and individual events. During classes members will practice debating and speaking. Members are taught reasoning, case writing, rebuttals, and cross-examination.

This course examines how human communication creates and sustains organizations. Introduces knowledge of major organizational communication theories and organizing processes. Students apply theory to interpret and analyze communication patterns for the informational, cultural, and ideological meanings that influence how and why organizing happens as it does.

This course emphasizes critical thinking through the creation of multiple media projects focusing on a singular theme. These projects ask students to address contemporary concerns within multimedia practice and utilize digital tools from flatbed scanners to book publishing software for their production and final output.

Credit arranged.

Communication or organizational communication majors may undertake on-the-job training positions with professional organizations. This course is designed to provide reflective, specific guidance in applying students’ academic experience to a professional communication experience. Students may receive an IP (In Progress) grade until the completion of their internship. May be taken twice. Only 1 credit can apply to the major.

Introduces students to quantitative research methods used to study human communication. Designed to develop students’ ability to understand research ethics, develop research ideas, evaluate and critique others’ research, and conduct original 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.

Participants consult experts, engage in hands-on field outings and lab experiments, and discuss podcasts, films, advice, and stories to unpack communication’s roles in scientifically discovering, examining, and affecting the natural and social worlds. Braiding scientific and communication scholarship, students come away with thoughtful, alert means to understand and engage in the push-pull of communicating science in public and in private. 

Students attain advanced public speaking abilities through study of pertinent rhetorical theories and advanced practice of persuasive speaking.

Introduces students to rhetorical theories and analysis vital to understanding and evaluating key public messages. Students analyze cultural persuasion created in ever-changing forms of mediated messages.

This course examines how to scrutinize, assess and create arguments. Students will learn the nature, uses and limits of argumentation and study arguments in political, religious and social rhetorical contexts, exploring fallacies in argument, the nature of causal reasoning, formal argument analysis and argumentative chains and clusters. Attention is given to cultural standards of reasoning, evidence and refutation.

Introduces students to qualitative research methods used to study human communication. Prepares students to design and implement qualitative research projects.

This course builds knowledge and ability to influence small groups’ development, leadership, decision-making, conflict management, and collaboration. Theory-based problem-solving helps explain and influence groups’ task, procedural, interpersonal, and organizational processes especially regarding dynamics of power among diverse group members. Reflective, hands-on learning activities help apply and assess group principles.

This course focuses on students' individual futures and broader questions about labor and also the changing nature of work. 

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 ad messages as an advertising creative. Course includes case studies and work on a dynamic set of projects replicating ad 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.

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

This course overviews relationships between computer-mediated communication (CMC) and several forms and functions of human activity. It explores how humans use computers to construct knowledge, relationships, and specific realities. Utilizing different social media applications and tools will help identify, explain, and understand interrelationships among CMC, language, and identities.

Survey course designed to increase student's understanding of First Amendment law as it relates to individual citizens, mass media, and corporate communication. Ethical considerations inherent in communication law decisions are emphasized.

East Africa is one of the planet's riches sites of human and nonhuman ecological histories and provides the ideal space to study diversity and ecological entanglement. Topics include environmental communication, eco-tourism, conservation, post-colonialism and neocolonialism, climate change, and slavery and trade.

Communication is a diverse discipline. This course provides students with a framework for understanding the variety of theories that influence what we know about human communication. This course investigates major explanatory theories of communication, with an emphasis on understanding theorizing as a powerful process of constructing knowledge and reality

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.

This course explores barriers to effective communication between members of differing social groups (sexes, races, generations, etc.). Consideration is given to causes of problems and effective strategies for solutions.

An intensive study of orientations toward managing disputes and of specific processes and techniques currently in use. The course includes consideration of both organizational and interpersonal disputes and also focuses on the role of the mediator.

Investigates the dynamics of human communication in building, maintaining, or altering interpersonal relationships. Particular emphasis is given to family communication.

Course provides an introduction to the dynamics of intercultural communication. Content includes learning the importance of understanding one’s own culture, navigating cultural similarities and differences through communication, and negotiating skilled, adaptive identities within and across cultures.

The course examines alternative perspectives on international development, especially gender analysis in intercultural relationships, cross-cultural communication, peace and security, and nation building.  Focusing on dignity and social justice, students learn to analyze, reflect on, and deconstruct narratives about gender and culture in ways that demystify the interplay among individuals, political leaders, non-profits, and the nation in international development.

This course investigates organizations as sites of power, control, and influence. Major topics for the course include understanding organizations as raced, gendered, abled, classed, heteronormative, and more. An underlying theme of this course is to explore and consider how human communication sustains or transforms organizational power, control, oppression, and influence. 

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

Students study theory and analysis of visual public messages to understand the means of visual persuasion by rhetors who create important images, pictures, and designs. Students investigate ethical and influence dynamics of visual message design.

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

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

Provides instruction about news reporting of public affairs. Students learn to research, report, and write in-depth, interpretive, and analytical stories on public affairs in areas such as crime and police, courts, government, politics, and education. Students learn public records requests, common problems and techniques for covering public affairs agencies.

Prepares students to work in an online news environment where emerging devices, technologies, and social media are innovatively changing and challenging journalism practices.  Students learn how to report, write, and produce stories for online news audiences. Students will produce and edit original content with audio, photographs, video, maps, info graphics, and text, and evaluate and critique current online journalism practices.

Students learn how we experience and relate to the environment through various communication processes. The course applies communication theories to critically analyze contemporary discourses and counter-discourses on ecology, environmentalism, and environmental justice. Students utilize existing resources to examine how their own assumptions, beliefs, language, and practices support and/or resist various environmental narratives.

Under faculty supervision, each student works independently on a comprehensive project designed to display advanced skills.

Credit arranged.

Credit arranged.

Credit arranged.

Credit arranged.

Credit arranged.

Communication or organizational communication majors may undertake on-the-job training positions with professional organizations. This course is designed to provide reflective, specific guidance in applying students’ academic experience to a professional communication experience. Students may receive an IP (In Progress) grade until completion of their internship. May be taken twice. Only 3 credits can apply to the major.

Research, study, or original work under the direction of a faculty mentor, leading to a scholarly thesis document with a public presentation of results. Requires approval of thesis director, department chair, dean, and the director of the honors program, when appropriate.

Introduction to methods and findings of critical, analytical, qualitative, and quantitative research and techniques of preparing graduate-level research papers.

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.

This course overviews relationships between computer-mediated communication (CMC) and several forms and functions of human activity. It explores how humans use computers to construct knowledge, relationships, and specific realities. Utilizing different social media applications and tools will help identify, explain, and understand interrelationships among CMC, culture, language, and identities.

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.

Communication is a diverse discipline. This course provides students with a framework for understanding the variety of theories that influence what we know about human communication. This course investigates major explanatory theories of communication, with an emphasis on understanding theorizing as a powerful process of constructing knowledge and reality. 

This course explores and critiques barriers to effective communication between members of differing social groups (sexes, races, generations, etc.). Consideration is given to problems' causes and effective strategies for solutions.

An intensive study of orientations toward managing disputes and of specific processes and techniques currently in use. Course includes consideration of both organizational and interpersonal disputes and also focuses on the role of the mediator.

Introduces students to rhetorical theories and analysis vital to understanding and evaluating key public messages. Students analyze cultural persuasion created in ever-changing forms of mediated messages.

Investigates the dynamics of human communication in building, maintaining, or altering interpersonal relationships. Particular emphasis is given to family communication.

Introduces students to qualitative research methods used to study human communication. Prepares students to design and implement qualitative research projects.

Course provides an introduction to the dynamics of intercultural communication. Content includes learning the importance of understanding one's own culture, navigating culture similarities and differences through communication, and negotiating skilled, adaptive identities within and across cultures.

The course examines alternative perspectives on international development, especially gender analysis in intercultural relationships, cross-cultural communication, peace and security, and nation building.  Focusing on dignity and social justice, students review the research literature to analyze narratives about gender and culture pertaining to several aspects of international development, and to understand best models and practices for such development.

This course investigates organizations as sites of power, control, and influence. Major topics for the course include understanding organizations as raced, gendered, abled, classed, heteronormative, and more. An underlying theme of this course is to explore and consider how human communication sustains or transforms organizational power, control, oppression, and influence. 

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

Students study theory and analysis of visual public messages to understand the means of visual persuasion by rhetors who create important images, pictures, and designs. Students investigate ethical and effectual dynamics of visual message design.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Credit arranged.

Credit arranged.

Credit arranged.

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.

Credit arranged.

Communication or organizational communication majors may undertake on-the-job training positions with professional organizations. This course is designed to provide reflective, specific guidance in applying students’ academic experience to a professional communication experience. Students may receive an IP (In Progress) grade until completion of their internship. May be taken twice. Only 3 credits can apply to the major.

3-6 cr. hrs., 1 or 2 semesters.

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.