Subject Description
Communication Studies

COMM 498 | Internship Seminar

This scheduled weekly interdisciplinary seminar provides the context to reflect on concrete experiences at an off-campus internship site and to link these experiences to academic study relating to the political, psychological, social, economic and intellectual forces that shape our views on work and its meaning. The aim is to integrate study in the liberal arts with issues and themes surrounding the pursuit of a creative, productive, and satisfying professional life. Students receive 1.0 unit of academic credit for the academic work that augments their concurrent internship fieldwork.

COMM 482 | Communication in Personal Relationships: Online and Off

This advanced course focuses on describing, explaining, and predicting communication processes that occur within the context of close relationships, with a focus on the effects of technology on these processes. The field of personal relationships is interdisciplinary, with scholars from areas such as communication, family studies, and social psychology all contributing to knowledge about communication in relationships. Similarly, mediated communication research is conducted by scholars in various fields -- including communication, computer science, and sociology.

COMM 460 | Technology, Organization, and Globalization

This course is one possible capstone of the organizational studies curriculum. Students consider how communication and collaboration technologies influence the creation, content, and pattern of knowledge networks within and between organizations. The course focuses special attention on recently emerging organizational forms including the virtual organization, the network organization, and the global organization. The remainder of the course examines how communication technology systems are changing the very fabric of our work experience in the twenty-first century.

COMM 450 | Health and Relationships

This course is the capstone of the relational and behavioral studies and health communication curricula. Students will review current research that intersects interpersonal, family and health communication, considering its methodological, critical, and practical implications. Students taking this course should be knowledgeable about relational and health theories and research reviewed in other related courses.

COMM 444 | Advanced Rhetorical Studies

This course is the capstone of the rhetorical studies curriculum. As such, it presupposes that students grasp the analytic techniques introduced in COMM 244 and the conceptual issues introduced in COMM 344. Its purpose is to examine exemplary forms of scholarly inquiry in rhetorical studies in order to better prepare students to engage in independent and creative scholarly inquiry.

COMM 399 | Supervised Research

This course provides research experience in either social science or the critical/interpretative research tradition for juniors and seniors. Students assist a department faculty member in various aspects of the research process (e.g. reviewing literature, gathering and analyzing data, etc.). Students must prepare and submit a written summary of their research work for a final grade. Interested students should contact the department chair to see what research opportunities are available in a given semester.