/Institutions/University-of-Portland/json/2021-2022/bulletin-local.json

/Institutions/University-of-Portland/json/2021-2022/bulletin.json

Communication Studies

Vail Fletcher, Ph.D., chair

Faculty: Dare, Fletcher, Kerssen-Griep, Lovejoy, Macey, Nelson-Marsh

The communication studies (CST) department 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 CST graduate degree program details.) The bachelor of arts degree in communication offers a program focused on understanding communication as a central constitutive feature 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 relations, personnel management, social media, advertising, design, sales, development, print and online journalism, broadcasting, reporting, and technical and creative writing, among an increasing host of careers relying on advanced communication abilities. For example, CST 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, CST graduates are also sought for Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, and other teaching positions. CST students also frequently attend graduate school and law school.

The mission of the communication studies (CST) program at the University of Portland is to produce ethically grounded students who apply theory and best practices in oral and written communication. The discipline is rooted in one of the original liberal arts, rhetoric, concerned with how people use symbols to reach agreements that permit coordinated efforts. CST 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 for truth and social good. Our undergraduates and masters degree programs rely on up-to-date scholarship to develop communication professionals invested in sustaining just relationships, organizations, climates, and societies. Students prepare through faculty-collaborative and independent research and applied communication coursework; via internships and other community-based learning; and in co-curricular activities such as the Speech and Debate Union. The department's award-winning teaching faculty are active scholars committed to integrating social justice and reason in their work.

Learning Outcomes for Communication Studies Majors

CST B.A. Learning Based Outcomes

CST Communication students must be able to:

1. Demonstrate they can engage 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 they comprehend 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. Demonstrate they know how to apply disciplinary knowledge to craft skilled, ethical communication practices allied with their specialties. Students comprehend how to:

• Utilize responsive communication abilities that skillfully engage 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.