SC&I Courses

This graduate seminar examines issues of interpersonal dynamics when talking about health and healthcare. Discussion centers on the role of communication in healthcare interactions and examine how communication can facilitate, hinder, or create inequities of care that occurs among patients. The course will review communication among clinicians, patients, and significant others and families. Themes of discussion include patient-provider communication, culture in healthcare, medical mistrust, health literacy, and the role of close others in managing healthcare.

This class focuses on the foundational and contemporary research that makes up the study of interpersonal communication. Its primary goal is to give students an understanding of the origins and the current directions of much of the scholarship on interpersonal communication.

(Below is one sample course that has been offered in the last few years)

Studying talk in social interaction
This course takes up the question of how we use language to communicate and introduces students to the methods and findings of a particular qualitative way of analyzing social interaction called "Conversation Analysis." We will examine video- and audio-recorded, naturally occurring conversations to learn how to look beyond the taken for granted answers to questions about how and why we talk and behave as we do. You will learn about the underlying structures of conversation that make it possible for us to accomplish mundane (and not so mundane) activities of everyday life - agreeing and disagreeing, complaining, complimenting, teasing, telling stories, etc. We will also discuss how we construct our identities and relationships through our ordinary talk.

This course examines the process of evaluating the public relations function. It provides students with practical guidelines for evaluating and analyzing the effectiveness of public relations campaigns. 

Students will connect communication measures of effectiveness to business results, including being able to calculate ROI. By implementing best practices for conducting research methodologies, students will be able to interpret and report findings to determine campaign effectiveness. Students will also analyze historical, award winning PRSA case studies, to thoroughly understand the Barcelona principles and apply contemporary measurement tools to current case studies. The analysis and discussion of real-world case studies will serve as context for the applied understanding of how and why to evaluate a public relations campaign.

Changing beliefs about the role of business in society in the past thirty years have increased the pressure on organizations to define how it addresses higher purposes beyond financial gain.  This is particularly relevant as companies are making long-term commitments to improving the world through mechanisms like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The success of an organization depends on the quality of its relationships with different stakeholders including NGOs and governments. More specifically, an organization develops its activities through a stakeholder network, which affects and is affected by the organization’s behavior. 
Therefore, the concepts of sustainability, organizational purpose and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are becoming more and more crucial. The course aims at defining CSR and how organizations create social impact.  The course will look at new managerial solutions and new performance evaluation and reporting methodologies capable of integrating and improving traditional economic measures.

The purpose of the course is to build a new vision of social impact based on a stakeholder framework. Whether CSR is understood as organizations taking responsibility or society holding organizations accountable, the underlying issues are how about the environmental, social, and governance opportunities and risks that have emerged in today’s globalized, networked world will be explored. 

Through a comprehensive discussion of sustainability communication strategies, media and messaging, this course focuses on how organizations communicate corporate social responsibility to their publics. 

This course examines the powerful new trends in public-private partnerships and new models of private sector interventions in society including responding to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The course explores the intersection of communication, stakeholder engagement and social impact. This course will help students understand how organizations behave in society and the role of the citizen as stakeholder and consumer in helping to influence organizational behavior.

Topics covered include: 1) Crowdfunding; 2) Social Impact Bonds; 3) Competitions and Prizes; 4) Philanthrocapitalism; 5) B-Corporations and Social Enterprises; 6) Pro-bono contributions from the private sector; 7) Use of AI in social impact efforts; 8) Circular Economy; 9) Sustainability investing, and (10) Communication across diverse stakeholders.

What is social impact? How does social impact further the work of NGOs/organizations seeking to do good? What is the benefit in terms of corporate reputation? How is it measured? What are the most appropriate ways to communicate about social impact? This course provides an overview of social impact from the perspectives of both the corporate world and NGOs/organizations that are enabled by corporate social impact engagement. Through publications, case studies, interviews with those involved in social impact activities and team projects, we will assess the influence – positive and negative – social impact can have on the reputation of a corporation. Students will come away with a clear understanding of what social impact is and what it is not, how it can be measured in terms of reputation, and the criticality of appropriate communications related to social impact activities.

This course focuses on various elements of crisis and issues management. In an age when a company’s every move is subject to instant scrutiny and attack, the necessity for effective crisis management is greater than ever and more complicated. The structure of the course revolve around the crisis management process: prevention, preparation, response and long-term. Emphasis will be placed on practical application of crisis communications theory, with the use of real-life case studies, role playing and guest lectures by crisis expert practitioners. This course examines a variety of communication techniques and principles used when an organization faces issues, and or incidents that negatively impact the organization’s reputation. Major aspects of this course will include: the definition of crises in its various forms, the stages of a crisis, the role of the spokesperson and the impact of social media and the crisis response, among others.

This course demonstrates the importance of reputation management as a practice to better ensure organizational health and mitigate risk by augmenting crisis/risk management work. Often environmental scanning – a key reputation management practice – can make strategic communications professionals aware of potential crises, so they can head them off before they occur.

Of particular significance is understanding how the advent of digital media presents a new reputational risk where anyone with a social media account or website can attack or support an organization.

This course explores reputation management through an ethical lens. Not only are ethics an important human quality, but if organizations behave ethically, they are more apt to steer clear of reputational dilemmas. We also approach this course taking diversity and inclusion into account and working to incorporate these important values into reputation management practices.

Digital Journalism is a hybrid hands-on and conceptual course designed to help masters-level students develop introductory-level skills in multimedia reporting (using text, still images and video) while gaining an understanding of the foundational philosophical, ethical and legal principles underlying the practice of journalism in the 21st century.