Course Descriptions
CO 100 Human Communication Theories
An introduction to major theoretical perspectives that inform communication scholarship. As the foundational course for the major, emphasis is placed on understanding human communication as a symbolic process that creates, maintains, and alters personal, social, and cultural identities. Students critique research literature in the communication field.
3 semester hours
CO 101 Argument and Advocacy
An introduction to public speaking and the advocacy process, including topic identification; methods of organization, research, selection and arrangement of support materials; audience adaptation; patterns and fallacies of reasoning; uses of evidence; logical proof; and refutation. Students practice and critique informative and persuasive presentations.
3 semester hours
CO 130 Mass Media and Society
This media literacy course offers theoretical and practical tools to critically analyze media texts, as well as understand different ways in which audiences interact with them. Students will inquire into how the pervasive mediation of human experience through mass communicational channels affects almost every aspect of socialization processes and people’s symbolic environment. The interplay between structural constraints conveyed in media’s messages and humans’ capacity to exercise interpretive agency is addressed through lectures, audiovisual examples, hands-on activities, and a variety of assignments aimed at discerning the elements that intervene in the construction and reception of media texts, beyond their apparent components (Prerequisites: CO 100, CO 101.)
3 semester hours
CO 200 Interpersonal Communication Theories
An examination of one-to-one relationships from a variety of theoretical perspectives, focusing on the centrality of communication in building familial bonds, friendships, and work teams. Factors influencing interpersonal communication such as language, perception, nonverbal behavior, power, status and gender roles are studied.
3 semester hours
CO 201 Persuasion
This course develops students' understanding of the major theoretical approaches to the study of persuasion as a particular type of social influence. Specific attention is given to the processes of interpersonal influence and the media's role in changing social attitudes. (Prerequisites: CO 100, CO 101.)
3 semester hours
CO 202 Group Communication
Course designed to study the basic characteristics and consequences of small group communication processes in various contexts, including family, education, and work groups. Interaction analysis and team-building are stressed, as well as examining small groups in process. (Prerequisites: CO 100, CO 101.)
3 semester hours
CO 220 Introduction to Organizational Communication
A historical and communication-centered approach to understanding how business and professional organizations function. Course involves analysis of upward, downward, and lateral communication; communication channels and networks; power and critical theory; organizations as cultures; internal and external public communication, and leadership. Case Study course. (Prerequisites: CO 100, CO 101.)
3 semester hours
CO 231 Media Institutions
The course concentrates on the economic, political, and legal environment of U.S. mass media. Issues include examination of individual media industries, the economic structure of U.S. media markets, media law and regulation, media watchdogs, advocacy organizations, and media users’ forms of collective action. The course’s content is approached through an institutional analysis perspective, intended to facilitate students’ understanding of institutions as dynamic points of confluence for organizations, norms, and individual agents. As part of the course’s requirements, students conduct a research project exploring recent developments and/or decision-making processes within one of the major media institutions covered during the semester. Pre-requisites: CO130.
3 semester hours
CO 234 International Media Systems
This course provides an overview of the economic and regulatory structure of media industries worldwide. It explores the ways in which different institutional frameworks affect mass communication within and across regional borders, in light of relevant theoretical perspectives. In this sense, the course is designed to offer students opportunities to discover a comprehensive picture of common and interdependent processes underlying the individual development of media industries in each region. Students also learn about emerging market and research trends concerning international media. Issues related to free flow of messages, social responsibility, universal access, intellectual commons, participatory communication, developmental communication, and cultural diversity in the global exchange of media messages are addressed through discussion of current, real-life cases, as well as through design and execution of an original research project. (Prerequisite: CO 230).
3 semester hours
CO 236 Gender, Sexuality, and Media
This course is designed to enable students to examine the relationship between the representation of women and the development of personal and social identity. Issues of gender and reception, cultivating consumerism, body image, and developing relevant new images are explored through theoretical readings as well as the analysis of various media, including television, film, magazines, and advertisements. Additional attention is given to alternative media systems.
3 semester hours
CO 238 Communication and Popular Culture
Raymond Williams, a leading 20th century figure in the study of communication and culture, famously remarked "Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language." It is possible that "popular" and "communication" could be considered the other two. Communication and Popular Culture takes the cultural artifacts that engulf us, from fashion to television, and from music to comic books, and removes these practices and texts from being simply "entertainment" or "diversion." In this course we ask what these things mean, how they constitute power, and how they shape and reflect the lived experiences of consumers. This course takes very seriously those things that are typically discarded as lacking substance, and instead susggests that the meanings and impact of popular culture have dramatic consequences for political, social and cultural life in the United States.
3 semester hours
CO 239 Consumer Culture
This course will explore how social meanings are constructed through commodities and material society, how consumer goods and practices create categories of social difference. In particular, the course will focus on the intersections of consumer practices and gender/sexuality, race and class, articulating the relationship between communication and consumption practices and social/cultural identities. Theoretical approaches include Marxism, Postmodernism, and other economic and social critiques, and explore research methods to empirically investigate questions of culture. Students will reflect on questions of social justice in relation to an increasingly materialistic society as they seek to become citizens prepared to "consume with a conscious." Prerequisites: CO 230
3 semester hours
CO 240 Intercultural Communication
This course deals with challenges to communication between people of different cultural backgrounds,emphasizing the ways communication practices reveal cultural values and the role of communication in creating and sustaining cultural identities. Students discuss how differences in value orientation, perception, thought patterns, and nonverbal behavior cause misunderstanding, tension, and conflict in business, education, and healthcare settings. This course meets the U.S. diversity requirement (registration preference given to Communication and International Studies majors). (Prerequisite: CO 100 or IL 10 or instructor approval).
3 semester hours
CO 246 Family Communication
In this course students will come to understand how families are constituted through symbolic processes and interaction; explore the verbal and non-verbal communication behaviors that are developed and preferred in different kinds of families; learn various theories for understanding family interactions at the individual, dyadic, group, and systems levels; analyze family communication patterns using established theories and methods; connect family dynamics to social trends and processes including the roles of the mass media and popular culture; and explore ways culture, class, gender, and sexuality affect and are affected by family structures, roles, and communication patterns. Prerequisites: CO 200 or Instructor Approval. Three credtis. This course also counts toward the Women's Studies minor.
3 semester hours
CO 248 Health Communication
Health Communication will survey the multidimensional processes used to create, maintain, and transform complex scientific information into everyday healthcare practices. A major emphasis is on the processes and complexities of communicating health information in a variety of settings (in hospitals, families, insurance companies, policy organizations, etc.) and through different channels (face-to-face, in medical records, through the mass media, etc.). We will study the verbal and nonverbal communication behaviors of providers, patients, families, insurers, and others in health care contexts, as well as health-related messages in the mass media, in order to understand effective and problematic communication about illness and health. (Pre-requisites CO 200 or 230).
3 semester hours
CO 309 Research Projects in Communication: The Capstone
Course developed to provide students an opportunity to demonstrate their expertise as communication scholars through discussion and evaluation of contemporary research in communication. The course involves examination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies in understanding the research design process. As members of research teams, students design and conduct research projects related to their areas of concentrated study. 'Capstone' course for the major. (Prerequisites: CO 100, 101, 201, 231, senior status)
3 semester hours
CO 320 Communication Management: Training and Consulting
Course examines selected aspects of the practice, resources and issues surrounding communication training and development. Course focuses on the techniques and strategies used by business and professional communication trainers, internal and external consultants, to assess and diagnose communication problems as part of an overall process of organizational growth and change. Various research methodologies in communication are examined (e.g., interviewing and the Communication Audit) as diagnostic tools. (Prerequisites: CO 220, 221, junior or senior status)
3 semester hours
CO 321 Communication Processes in Organizations: Negotiation
The general objective of this course is to review and explore, through simulation and experiential learning, negotiation as a communication process in and among organizations. The course focuses on core concepts and approaches to negotiation and exercises the negotiative process in a contemporary context. The course is open to majors and minors in Communication and in other disciplines related to the study of humans and their organizations in the world of work. Each participant carries out individual as well as team work and contributes on-time and proportionately to the team preparations and class simulations. (Prerequisites: CO 100, CO 101.)
3 semester hours
CO 329 Contemporary Topics in Organizational Communication
This is an upper-level, undergraduate seminar for students in the Organizational Communication emphasis of the major. The course provides an opportunity to examine in depth particular theories of organizational communication or to conduct research about communication in particular types of organizations. Emphasis is on contemporary theoretical and/or methodological approaches to the close analysis of interpersonal, group, and intercultural communication in organizational settings, or strategic communication practices of organizations with their external audiences/publics. Topics may include: Organizational Communication in the Global Economy, Communication in Healthcare Organizations (attached as a sample syllabus), Gender and Communication in Organizations, and Communication in Organizational Crisis.
3 semester hours
CO 331 American Media/American History
This course examines the role of the mass media in American history, and the history of the American media industries. Beginning with an overview of the earliest media of symbolic interaction, the course examines why different media come into being, how they function in society, and their social impact. Students come to understand how media have been influential in maintaining social order and as agents of change. The emphasis is on the evolution of American mass media from Colonial print and oral communication to today's e-communications, with some attention to other national media industries and international perspectives as relevant. (Pre-requisite: CO 230 or instructor permission).
3 semester hours
CO 335 Globalization, Media, and Culture
Globalization, a complex and transformative process that influences our lives at every level, has produced the increased flow of goods, capital, people, knowledge, images, crime, pollutants, drugs, fashion, viruses, and beliefs across territorial and ideological boundaries of all kinds. This course focuses on the role of communication media (radio, television, film, computers) in the processes of globalization and examines the impact of
globalization on cultural representations, cultural identity, and international relations. (Prerequisites: CO 230 or IL 10 and junior or senior status).
3 semester hours
CO 339 Topics in Media Theory & Criticism
This course provides an opportunity to examine in depth particular media theories or to conduct careful media analysis and criticism. Emphasis is placed on contemporary theoretical and/or methodological approaches to the close analysis of television, radio, newspaper, the internet, and/or magazine texts in order to understand the ways meaning is constructed and situated within the larger social context. Topics may include "Mass Media and Democracy," "Television Criticism," and "Children and the Media." Students may take CO 339 up to two times with different topics. (Prerequisite: CO 230).
3 semester hours
CO 342 Technoculture & the Information Society
This course focuses on theoretical approaches to the social role of new communication and information technologies. It examines different ways of thinking about the relationship of technology to society and explores how such theories shape our understanding of the role of new media in transforming the ways we work, consume, create, and participate as citizens. Students will apply these theories over the course of the semester to a research project on the development and application of new media technologies. (Prerequisite: CO 230).
3 semester hours
CO 348 Risk Communication
Risk Communication examines the communication theories and research that underlie the study of risky behaviors and the development of effective responses to perceived risks. This course provides an understanding of how communication impacts our assessment
of risk, critical thinking and policy making about risk prevention and response, and the creation of preventive programs and campaigns. Students will evaluate and explore the multidimensional processes involved in researching and responding to sustained risks or
emergency situations, utilize communication theory to develop appropriate campaigns, and assess their success or failure. Topics may focus on health and environmental
risks, security, or disaster response. (Prerequisites: ANY of the following: CO 201, 230, 248 or instructor approval.
3 semester hours
CO 349 Special Topics: Constructing Social Identities
This course will focus on a specific context where social identities are negotiated through particular discursive practices. Emphasis will be placed on the verbal and non-verbal communication behaviors that are appropriate in this context, and through which people constitute and perform their identities. Topics may include examination of symbolic practices and communication norms in families, self-help groups, TV talk shows, cyber communities, social movements, genders/sexualities, etc., using approaches such as symbolic convergence theory, social constructivism, ethnography of communication, and conversational analysis. Students may take this course up to two times with different subtitles. Prerequisites: CO 340 or Instructor Approval.
CO 396-397 Independent Study
The purpose of independent study in Communication is to offer students an opportunity to investigate thoroughly communication concepts, theories, or issues presented in a previously completed Communication course. An independent study will not substitute for any other required course(s) in the Communication program. These investigations must be scholarly in intent. An independent study may be taken only twice. (Prerequisites: Junior or Senior status, and a Communication faculty member's sponsorship.)
3 semester hours
CO 398-399 Internship
The primary goals of Communication internship are: (1) to acquire first hand knowledge about the field of work; (2) to experience new professional activities and relationships; (3) to apply conceptual knowledge and skills in communication in the work environment; and (4) to experience the problems and successes of efficiently and effectively communicating within a complex organization. An internship may not substitute for any other required course(s) in the Communication program. Students may take an internship for credit only twice. (Prerequisites: 3.0 overall G.P.A., junior or senior status; CO 396 fall, CO 397 spring)
3 semester hours
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