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Communication & Media

Vail Fletcher, Ph.D., chair

Faculty: Curammeng, Dare, Fletcher, Kerssen-Griep, Lovejoy, Madebo, Nelson-Marsh

The Department of Communication & Media at the University of Portland supports undergraduate and graduate degree programs in communication and organizational communication, while also offering coursework that satisfies University and College of Arts and Sciences curricular requirements. (See the Graduate School section for graduate degree program details.) The bachelor of arts degree in communication offers a program focused on understanding communication and media as central constitutive features of human society. The bachelor of science degree in organizational communication is crafted collaboratively with the Dr. Robert B. Pamplin, Jr. School of Business Administration.

Graduates with these degrees often find work in professional communications, organizing, public policy, public relations, human resources, personnel management, social media, advertising, design, sales, development, multimedia journalism, broadcasting, reporting, and technical and creative writing, among an increasing host of careers relying on advanced communication abilities. For example, Communication & Media graduates from UP currently work in health care, journalism, environmental policy, the law, and political advocacy; mediate collective bargaining agreements, manage employees, coordinate events, write grants, create media products, develop fundraising for nonprofits; provide training, manage and design social media, and are public relations professionals and entrepreneurs. Given the program's global emphasis, graduates are also sought for Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, and other teaching positions and frequently attend graduate school and law school.

The mission of the communication & media program at the University of Portland is to produce ethically grounded students who apply theory and skilled communication practice in mediated and personal contexts. The discipline is rooted in one of the original liberal arts, rhetoric, concerned with how people use and make sense of symbols to reach agreements that permit coordinated efforts. Communication & Media degrees animate the heads, hearts, and hands of students who learn to facilitate meaningful interpersonal, workplace, and journalistic public communication, environmental advocacy, and conflict mediation in contexts ranging from local to international, and advocate the value of working for social good. Our undergraduate and masters degree programs rely on up-to-date scholarship to develop communication professionals invested in sustaining just relationships, organizations, environments, and societies. Students prepare through faculty-collaborative and independent research and applied communication coursework; via internships and other community-based learning; and via optional co-curricular activities such as the Speech and Debate Union. The department's award-winning teaching faculty are active scholars committed to integrating justice and reason in their work.

Learning Outcomes for Communication Majors

Communication B.A. Learning Based Outcomes

Communication B.A. graduates will be able to:

1. Demonstrate engagement in communication inquiry.
  • Interpret communication scholarship, including its paradigms..
  • Frame and analyze issues and phenomena from a communication perspective.
  • Evaluate communication scholarship, including its methods of inquiry.
  • Synthesize communication scholarship in order to design and undertake their own scholarship of discovery, integration, or application.
2. Demonstrate an understanding of communication itself as a multi-modal, transactional, and constitutive process.
  • Recognize the constitutive (not only representative) nature and influence of communication.
  • Identify content, relational, identity, and cultural components embedded in human messaging and meaning-making.
  • Comprehend how their own and other people’s diverse cultural perspectives influence their perception and communication.
  • Articulate distinctions and similarities between mediated and non-mediated communication.
3. Apply disciplinary knowledge in crafting skilled, ethical communication practices that are allied with their specialties.
  • Utilize responsive communication that skillfully engages with others (e.g., social perspective-taking, listening, empathizing, advocacy).
  • Discern compelling communication suited to a situation’s purpose, goals, and context, and adapted to address the diverse needs and perspectives of its audience.
  • Utilize communication to advocate courses of action that advance human rights, dignity, freedom, and equity.
  • Evaluate the ethical elements of a communication situation.
  • Select communication technologies and modalities best for effectively and creatively accomplishing multiple goals in context.
  • Sustain appropriately critical reflection about their own communication practices including in writing.

Organizational Communication B.S. Learning Based Outcomes

Organizational Communication B.S. graduates will be able to:

1. Demonstrate engagement in communication inquiry.
  • Interpret communication scholarship, including its paradigms.
  • Frame and analyze issues and phenomena from a communication perspective.
  • Evaluate qualities of communication scholarship, including its methods of inquiry.
  • Synthesize communication scholarship in order to design and undertake their own scholarship of discovery, integration, or application.
2. Demonstrate comprehension of organizational communication itself as a multi-modal, transactional, and constitutive process.
  • Recognize the constitutive (not only representative) nature and organizational influence of communication.
  • Identify content, relational, identity, and cultural components embedded in human messaging and meaning-making.
  • Comprehend how organizations’ and individuals’ cultural perspectives influence and are affected by shared perceptions and communication.
  • Articulate ways mediated and non-mediated communication operate organizationally.
3. Apply disciplinary knowledge in crafting skilled, ethical communication practices that are allied with their specialties.
  • Utilize responsive communication that skillfully engages with others (e.g., social perspective-taking, listening, empathizing, advocacy).
  • Discern compelling communication suited to a situation’s purpose, goals, and context, and adapted to address the diverse needs and perspectives of its audience.
  • Utilize communication to advocate courses of action that advance human rights, dignity, freedom, and equity.
  • Evaluate the ethical elements of a communication situation.
  • Select communication technologies and modalities best for effectively and creatively accomplishing multiple goals in context.
  • Sustain appropriately critical reflection about their own communication practices including in writing.

Communication major curricula are designed to develop the abilities embodied in these learning goals. Senior students’ capstone projects form the primary means by which the department assesses how thoroughly students have met these learning goals.

Critical analysis and term project papers from a variety of communication courses are additional means by which the department assesses whether students have achieved these learning targets.

Senior Project or Internship Experience

In their final year, B.A. and B.S. students will enroll in the Senior Project Class (CST 475) or the Senior Internship Experience (CST 497). The project demonstrates each graduate’s preparation in communication learning outcomes, and gives students their most independent opportunity to explore a phenomenon of genuine interest with faculty mentorship. Several project options may be available to students in CST 475, including a standard research project, a deep case analysis project, a community-based grant-writing project, or applying communication scholarship to explain, evaluate, and/or improve some aspect of a community-based learning situation in which the student gets involved. In CST 497, students demonstrate capstone work in a theory-to-praxis based project which intersects the learning goals of the communication major and the practice-based community internship experience.