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THE COMMUNICATION STUDIES CURRICULUM

Our curriculum teaches flexible knowledge and skills that transfer to a variety of settings. We are committed to preparing you not only for a career, but a lifetime of learning.

Our focus areas allow you to explore your interests in communication in depth. Whether you want to learn how people form relationships and work in groups (Applied Communication), how citizens and politicians argue and advocate to solve problems and advance causes (Rhetoric), or how film, television, and new media shape our identities and society (Media), we have courses just for you!

 

See a complete list of undergraduate courses in Comm & Film here

 

The program goals for a B.A. in Communication are linked to six key areas:

Performance: Students will demonstrate competence in producing messages in various media for different purposes, audiences, and contexts.

Analysis and Critical Thinking: Students will analyze, interpret and evaluate messages across various forms and contexts.

Knowledge: Students will understand and apply communication and media theories and methods as appropriate to their concentration.

Ethics and Diversity: Students will articulate ethical principles and apply them in diverse communication contexts. Students will recognize and appreciate individual and cultural similarities and differences.

Mediated Communication: Students will understand the impact of media forms on communication processes.

Social Engagement: Students will understand and implement communication in their personal and public lives to respond to local, national, and global issues.

University General Education Program (41 hours)


See Graduation from the University for the University General Education Program requirements.

College and Degree (B.A.) Requirements (6-9 hours)


The College and Bachelor of Arts requirements are in addition to the University General Education Program requirements that are listed above.

The Major (33-39 hours)

Major Core (6 hours)

All students must take

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: History and development of the discipline of communication; emphasis on rhetoric, social science and media; theories and models of communication.

  • Credit Hours: (3) (included in the University General Education Program)
    Description: In this class students will gain greater competence as communicators and develop skills that will enhance their personal, professional and public communication, adopting techniques that increase their effectiveness, reflect their identity and correspond with their scholarly and professional goals.
 

NOTE: 
A 2.0 cumulative GPA and a grade no lower than a C- is required for all courses completed in the major. In addition, all students must fulfill the requirements for one of the following concentrations:

Communication Studies (33 hours):

         OR

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: This course gives students the tools to interpret and evaluate persuasive messages in various contexts. It covers specific methods of criticism, as well as how to produce independent research on rhetoric and media. This course includes writing and presentation requirements. PREREQUISITE: COMM 2100 and 2101

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Synthesis and extension of knowledge in communication studies; demonstrated integration of learning and positioning to move on as individuals, citizens, and/or professionals. Students will apply communication concepts and methods to engage in the course topic or theme and carry out a capstone research project. PREREQUISITE: COMM 3330, or Comm 3331

Plus Two Courses From Each of the Following Areas:

Applied Communication

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: This class provides a foundation of gender theories used in communication research and applies these theories and concepts to the way gender becomes instituted within our culture. The class deals with institutions such as family, religion, work, education, media, and government. Students will gain a better understanding of the role communication plays in the formation, navigation, maintenance and disruption of institutional gender expectations and norms.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Study of communication systems and problems in contemporary organizations with emphasis on the role of communication in corporate culture and organizational change.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Development of health literacy as an area of concern in healthcare including patient/provider interactions, public health campaigns, health education, healthcare reform, and health insurance.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Examination of the fundamentals of public health communication as well as the latest public health communication innovations, tools, technologies, research and strategies.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Principles underlying communication designed to influence attitudes or behavior; approaches to motivation, perception, message structure, attention, reasoning, audience analysis, persuasability, and attitude change; items for analysis drawn from speeches, advertising, radio, television, film, and new media.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Exploration of communication theory and practice from perspective of listening; philosophical, practical, personal dimensions of listening as an art of being as well as a mode of doing.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Theory, research and practice regarding dyadic communication.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Study of group communication theory emphasizing group membership, member perceptions, group development, group processes, and group outcomes.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Theoretical, philosophical and practical exploration of dialogic communication and relations.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Special problems encountered in communication among races; readings, discussion, and field study of how prejudice, stereotypes, and self-concepts can affect communication; exploration of methods to minimize these problems.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Special problems encountered in communication among people of different cultural backgrounds; focus on understanding communication between and among people with different national/cultural backgrounds and functioning more effectively in multicultural settings.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Theories and methods of conflict management and resolution focusing on practical communication skills.; concepts of perception, listening and peacemaking emphasized.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Exploration of principles, theories, and philosophical approaches to ethics of human communication; emphasis on decision-making, critical thinking and awareness of personal responsibilities as a sender and receiver of messages.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Non-analytical approach to communication theory and practice; holistic-communal perspective of relational experience; benefits of silence, stillness and solitude are interrelated with the values of openness, receptiveness and responsiveness. This course approaches the study of communication from a contemplative perspective; from a deep consideration of the challenge to live deliberately.

Rhetoric

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Theories of argumentation with an emphasis on developing skills in analyzing, reasoning, and using evidence in political advocacy. Students will learn the role of advocacy, debate, and deliberation in public decision-making. PREREQUISITE: COMM 2381.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Investigation of rhetorics of U.S. culture; focus on how constructions of class, gender, race, and sexuality work in contemporary television, film, music, and advertising.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Speeches and rhetoric of African-Americans; emphasis on spokespersons such as Walker, Turner, Douglass, Washington, DuBois, Malcolm X, King, Davis, and Jackson.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: The purpose of this course is to analyze and critique the way rhetorical discourse creates and defines Southern culture and identity.  Specific attention will be spent on facets of southern culture such as leisure, the arts, religion, sports, politics, tourism, place, commemoration and historical narratives. How the South is defined in terms of race, gender, and class identity will be key features of the course. 

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Investigation of various forms of political communication; texts drawn primarily from current political disputes in the U.S.; focus on improving basic skills of critical thinking and writing about civic life.
  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: This course aims to explain the rhetoric that surrounds social protest-both from the protesors and the resisters. More specifically, we will define the social movement, explain its development, and look at the specific rhetorical strategies that movements generally employ. By the end of the course, students should be familiar with several specific social movements and have a better understanding of the rhetorical construction of social protest.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: History of gender topics in U.S. public discourse. The course covers gender and rhetorical theory analyzing the social and cultural significance gendered voices and topics have played and continue to play in US history. Focus is given to various 19th, 20th and 21st century issues.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Exploration of interrelationships between human interaction, created places and natural world; emphasis on communication environment, broadly conceived, and its effect on community.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Introduction to history and practice of rhetoric as the art of civic engagement in a democracy; focus on key terms, ethical assumptions, and interpretative tools of rhetoric study; analysis of contemporary and historical cases in local and national controversy.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Study and practice of principles and techniques of discussion, dealing with current problems of wide interest and significance.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: This course is designed to explore rhetorical perspectives and practices of leadership. By the end of the course, students should be able to understand, analyze, and evaluate rhetoric’s potential relationships to experiences and practices for contemporary leadership and demonstrate fluency with a range of rhetorical choices for effectively critiquing and exercising ethical leadership.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: This course gives students the tools to interpret and evaluate persuasive messages in various contexts. It covers specific methods of criticism, as well as how to produce independent research on rhetoric and media. This course includes writing and presentation requirements. PREREQUISITE: COMM 2100 and 2101

Media

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Social, political, and aesthetic dimensions of television in contemporary culture.


  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Examination of long tail phenomenon and other theories behind convergent media; people and organizations producing and distributing work on the Internet and other alternative channels; new distribution forms challenges and assumptions about how mass media should and does work.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Historical survey of motion pictures from medium’s pre-history to 1940; emphasis on narrative film.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Historical survey of the major movements, genres, and themes in narrative film from 1940 to 1980.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Development of non-fiction film as rhetorical and expressive form; analysis of individual films, genres, and filmmakers.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Examines how gender, and consequently race and sexuality, are represented in film. Specific attention is given to feminist approaches in film studies.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Major themes and styles in international and U.S. narrative film from 1980 to present.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Survey of classic and contemporary monster films exploring monstrosity as a social and cultural category for organizing, classifying, and managing change.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: Examine and critically evaluate the many facets of Reality TV; attempt to identify the roots of our increasingly voyeuristic society, understand the production values of reality-based programs, and speculate as to what the future holds.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    Description: This course will examine science fiction and styles of international and U.S. narrative film from 1960s to present. The course argues that science fiction has become one of the most important genres of contemporary cinema. The course asks how science fiction cinema has dealt with uncertainties of modern day life, including, but not limited to, human extinction, technological advances, and robotic and cyborg entities.

  • Credit Hours: (3)
    In an age of environmental challenges with erratic weather events, national and international emergencies, learning about the environment is not enough as it requires actions. These actions can be performed effectively by a communicator such as media professionals, and communications specialists. “Ecocinema – Criticism and Practice” is designed to encourage and prepare you to understand the relationship between community-engaged stewardship and the environment. Moreover, it enables you to create your own project that can effectively address the pressing environmental issues in your own communities.  

Plus 6 Additional Upper Division Hours of Comm Electives

Electives (12 - 20 hours)

Completion of courses to bring the total to 120 semester hours.

Honors Program

To be eligible for admission to the Communication Honors program a student must meet the following requirements: (1) declare a major in Communication, (2) have completed 12 hours of Communication coursework, (3) have Department of Communication faculty member as an adviser, and (4) make an honors application to the adviser. Applications may be obtained from the director of the honors program or from the department office.

To be awarded departmental honors at graduation with the designation “With Honors in Communication,” a student must fulfill the following requirements: (1) maintain a 3.5 GPA in communication coursework, (2) maintain a 3.5 GPA overall, (3) complete all Department of Communication major requirements, (4) complete an independent thesis or an independent film/video project sponsored by a Department of Communication faculty member consisting of six hours over two semesters: three hours in research preparation (COMM 3330, COMM 4381, or COMM 4891 ), and three hours in completing the thesis project (COMM 4999), and (5) successful defense of the thesis.

Typical 4-Year Communication Studies Concentration Sequence

Freshman Year

Semester Totals 30-31 hrs

Sophomore Year

Semester Totals 32 hrs

Junior Year

         OR

Semester Totals 30 hrs

Senior Year

  • Applied Comm Course 2 (3) Credits / Units: 3
  • UD COMM Elective (3) Credits / Units: 3
  • UD Elective (3)
  • UD Elective (3) Credits / Units: 3
  • Elective (3) Credits / Units: 3

  • Elective (1) Credits / Units: 1
  • Credit Hours: (3)
  • Media Course 2 (3) Credits / Units: 3
  • Elective (3)
  • Elective (3)

Semester Totals 28 hrs


Total Hours: 120-121


Total Hours Required for Graduation: 120

* Must satisfy University General Education Program Requirement