SC&I Courses

Students develop a professional e-portfolio that showcases: a resume; academic work, professional development courses, certifications and/or military service; social media and other digital assets; relevant audio/video material; professional, community, and school activities; and writing samples.

Students use emerging digital technology to develop and test innovations in journalism and media.  Emerging technologies are applied to journalism and media to create and test new storytelling formats, production techniques, media management strategies, and social media approaches.  Students consider how these innovations can engage citizens across time and space, provide much-needed context and customization to content, interactive entertainment, and new business models to support and sustain journalism and the media in a fragmented, and mobile, digital future.

This course examines the role of communication in society. Taught with a special topics focus in each semester, the course will examine the important impacts that communication processes, relationships, and messages have in society. Topics of focus include corporate social responsibility; community networks; community health campaigns; political communication; communication in civil society organizations among others.  (Offered every fall semester)

This course will serve as a broad introduction to theories, perspectives, and empirical evidence related to organizational communication in a wide range of organizations (e.g., non-profit, for-profit, governmental, communal) and in a variety of contexts (e.g., industry, educational, social services, advocacy). Students will learn about historical, current and future issues; changes and challenges facing organizations; and the communication-relevant aspects of these issues. They will gain practice in applying theoretical perspectives and concepts to actual organizational situations and settings.  

Communication plays a central role in organizations. It can enable organizational members to persuade, motivate, lead, mislead, collaborate, or resist, and it may enhance or undermine relationships. Communication is also central to processes of organizing, such as teamwork, decision-making, knowledge sharing, organizational culture, socialization of employees, the implementation of new technology, member loyalty and turnover, as well as to external stakeholders and interorganizational relationships. The purpose of this course is to augment your understanding of the relationship between communication and organizations (e.g., corporations, non-profit agencies, sports teams, political parties, universities, or volunteer groups). (Offered every spring semester)

(formerly Mediated Communication [pre-2024])

Drawing on existing theory and research, this course examines issues of usage, adoption, and performance of new and established communication technologies in the workplace and other contexts. The course also considers opportunities and challenges that mediated communication presents for both users of these tools and society more generally. The course will expose students to a range of new technologies used by people to coordinate, collaborate, and communication with one another.  (Offered every spring semester)

The MCM Graduate Experience course is a non-credit course that helps new MCM students get acclimated to the MCM Program and Graduate education. It will offer insights in what is expected in the program, writing at the graduate level, introduction to APA and an overview of research. It also helps in understanding what is expected of MCM students in the classroom, both on-campus and online.

This course is will introduce students to a set of social science research methods that are used in the communication discipline and in workplace and organizational contexts. At the end of this course, students should have a basic understanding of several general research methods used by communication scholars and have gained an appreciation for the ethical considerations in conducting human subjects research. Students will gain knowledge and practice of collection methods such as questionnaires, experiments, structured interviews, focus groups, structured observations, and content analysis.  (Offered every fall semester)

Since public relations became a paid profession in the United States in the early 1900s, the industry has undergone an incredible transformation, especially in the past 15 years with the arrival of social media channels. Public Relations History and the Modern World covers the transformation of the public relations discipline from earned media to the PESO (Paid Media, Earned Media, Shared Media and Owned Media) model and will feature a detailed history review, real-time and real-world applications of the PESO Model, and the opportunity to immerse students in experiential learning by meeting and engaging with leading public relations practitioners and applying what they learn to a real-life client situation.

SERVICE, ADVOCACY, AND IMPACT helps students build practical skills in using communication for the greater good. In this course, we will explore the ways that communicators can use their abilities in the context of nonprofit organizations, direct community service provision, or corporate social good. This course will combine instruction, group work and reflection, and a hands-on project with a community organization in order to pair learning with practice. By the end of this course, students will have first-hand, working knowledge of the opportunities and challenges in using communication for public service.

This course examines the nature and impact of the media of mass communication in society. Particular attention is paid to emerging media technology, including the Internet and other digital technologies. Students learn four primary ways new technology influences media and society, including 1) how media professionals and members of the public increasingly create content using new media technologies, 2) the nature of mediated content, 3) the relationships between and among media and relevant publics, and 4) the structure, culture and management of media organizations and systems. Students learn five areas of media technology, including 1) acquisition tools, 2) storage technologies, 3) processing devices, 4) distribution technologies and 5) display, access or presentation tools.

This course examines how media theory can be used to explain the communicative power of citizens, journalists and politicians in the era of mainstream media, and today as American politics has been “rebooted” with the digital revolution.