Communication Studies Core Courses

What courses are offered in the major?

The College’s official catalogue offers detailed descriptions of all courses. Below are quick “takes” on the courses, emphasizing what they will teach you.

The first two courses equip students with the basic skills.

COMM 210 – Principles of Public Communication
Learn the fundamentals of preparing and delivery a public presentation.

COMM 215 – Interpersonal and Small Group Communication
Learn what research says about one-on-one and group communication; practice effective conversational and group communication skills

A third course should be drawn from a menu of courses, among them are the following three.

COMM 220 – Argumentation
Study how to construct effective arguments in a variety of disciplinary contexts; practice offering them orally

COMM 221 – Oral Interpretation of Literature
Study how to use voice and gesture to offer an effective rendition of a poem, a story, or a dramatic scene.

COMM 225 – Media Writing
Develop an understanding of how different media work and develop skills writing copy, designing documents, and planning visual components in traditional media and new media

The next two courses are, arguably, the crucial ones in the discipline. They provide the theoretical and methodological foundations for advanced coursework in the major.

COMM 301 – Communication Theory
Explore the frameworks through which communication studies researchers view interpersonal, group, organizational, public, and mediated communication.

COMM 302 – Communication Research Methods
Master the social science methods used to design, conduct, and analyze gathered data from research studies in communication.

Students choose among these classes[J1] , steering their program in the direction they desire. Students may also petition the program director to count courses in cognate areas in this group.

COMM 303 – Communication Law and Ethics
Learn how the courts have interpreted the 1^st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as media have expanded from public assembly and press to broadcast to cyberspace; discuss the range of ethical questions facing those in a variety of communication situations.

COMM 307 – Political Communication
Survey political campaigns since the 1950s; learn about how American presidents, the U.S. Congress and Supreme Court communicate.

COMM 308 – American Campaigns and Elections
Investigate contemporary political campaigns, especially how they have used media resources and how media have covered them.

COMM 309 – American Public Address
Explore the texts of the 20^th Century’s most important speeches as well as the contexts in which they occurred.

COMM 311 – Rhetorical Criticism
Learn many approaches to interpreting critically a wide variety of “texts” from public speeches to public places; discover what theoreticians such as Aristotle, Burke, Foucault, and Bakhtin contribute to one’s understanding of public discourse.

COMM 330 – Advanced Interpersonal Communication
Explore in much more detail than in COMM 215 the research on one-on-one communication in relationships ranging from the intimate to the academic; learn about the positive and negative dynamics of such relationships.

COMM 331 – Advanced Group Communication
Explore in much more detail than in COMM 215 the research on communication in groups. These groups might be work groups, peer groups, or community groups. Learn how group communication can go right and go wrong.

COMM 332 – Intercultural Communication
Explore how communication varies from culture to culture, both among nations and within the United States. Learn especially how those cultures most unlike the mainstream one in this nation differ in their communication behaviors from that mainstream.

COMM 361 -- Gender Issues in Communication
Learn how communication differs with gender; discover how gender is portrayed in the media; explore how communication and gender interact in contexts such as relationships and careers.

COMM 450, 451 – Internship in Communication Studies
Work and learn in a variety of job contexts ranging from corporate communications to public relations to broadcasting.

This last course culminates the major.

COMM 495 – Capstone Seminar in Communication Studies
Join other seniors in investigating a “problem” area such as adolescence or lack of civic engagement or man- or nature-caused disasters from a variety of communication studies perspectives. Do and present your research relevant to the chosen “problem” area.