Summer 2016
COMM 588: Special Topics in Interpersonal Communication—The Evolution of Family
Communication
Prof. Sylvia Mikucki-Enyart, Online through Continuing Education , July 18 th
– August 10 th
Myths about the “good ole days” of family permeate Western culture. This course will provide a rich historical perspective of the American family to decipher family “fact” from “fiction” and to demonstrate how the historical context has shaped communication within the family as well as how communication has influenced perceptions of family—past, present, and future. Graduate students will be responsible for completing all of the course assignments as well as writing an additional paper that contextualizes an aspect of family communication within a historical context.
Fall 2016
COMM 533: Case Studies in Public Relations
Prof. Hyosun Kim, Tuesdays & Thursdays, 2:00 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.
Case Studies in Public Relations provides a broad background and understanding of how PR professionals deal with the demanding and dynamic environment of corporate, government and nonprofit public relations. This course will examine public relations from a management perspective. In doing so, this class will discuss various factors that affect how public relations is practiced in organizations to include identifying stakeholder groups, understanding message development, accommodating diversity and recognizing ethical issues. The class assignments include case brief write and presentation, exams, and group work. Graduate students are expected to complete all these assignments.

Graduate students will also turn in a research paper at the end of semester as an extra assignment.
The paper should include literature review and through analysis of a PR case, so students can use their paper as writing examples or journal publications.
COMM 542: Organizational Communication Laboratory-Training & Development
Prof. Cade Spaulding, Mondays & Wednesdays, 9:35 a.m. – 10:50 a.m.
Training is part of almost every position within an organization. For example, employees leaving an organization are often asked to train those who will replace them, in-house or hired trainers develop training programs for professional development programs, seasoned workers are asked to train new hires “on-the-job”, and the best leaders often do all they can to impart the lessons they’ve learned to the rising generation. The focus of this course is on theory and skilldevelopment of instructional design, delivery, and assessment of training outcomes for adult learners. The final training project for the graduate portion of the course will be to design and deliver an actual needs-oriented training workshop for a community/campus organization.
Graduate students may elect to do this as a team, in partners, or individually. A conferencelevel analytical research paper connected to the topic of the training workshop is an integral part of fulfilling this project.
COMM 543: Organizational Communication Assessment
TBD, Tuesdays & Thursdays, 11:00 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
COMM 545: Small Group Communication
Prof. Cade Spaulding, Mondays & Wednesdays, 2:00 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.
This course will focus the theory and practice group-level and multi-team system.
Graduate students may engage in a skills-centered application of course theories and concepts by developing a community outreach project with outcome-centered deliverables or elect to write a conference-level analytical research paper on a course related topic of their choice.
COMM 557: Media and Popular Culture
Prof. Alex Ingersoll, Wednesdays, 2:00 p.m. – 4:50 p.m.
Popular culture is based on conditions of cultural mediation that have only become widespread in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century with the rise of mass literacy and electronic broadcast media. These forms of mediation—books, newspapers, electronic, and digital media—have come about through intensely commercial processes associated with increased corporate conglomeration and for-profit communication. This course is an introduction to and survey of various methods to analyze the field of popular culture, not only as culture created “by the people” or as culture created to “manipulate” people, but as a space in which meaning and

the very possibilities for understanding reality and the world are produced. Popular culture is the location where the reality of the people is made, understood, and potentially transformed.
Popular culture does not just shape our sense of the world through its representations but also through the forms of its technologies and how those technologies shape our practices of communication and daily living. Popular culture re-makes our sense of what is real in the world, which in turn affects what we think is possible and desirable as well as who we think we are, what we want, and how we are connected to the spaces in which we live. This means that when we criticize popular cultural representations and technologies we are engaged in the effort to redefine what kinds of media we want to share with others as we attempt to build the world together. Therefore, this course requires you to analyze the world from the perspective that it was created by us—that humans have made the world the way it is.
COMM 582: Health Communication
Prof. Timothy Halkowski, Mondays & Wednesdays, 11:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
This course is an overview of central topics and analytic domains in health communication. Therefore we will read and discuss research covering the interpersonal, organizational, and mass communication levels of analysis. Within the interpersonal realm of health communication, we will give special attention to the ‘experiential’ aspects of illness and disease, and the ways in which these are affected (as well as constituted) by features of communication. Within the organizational realm we will focus on several areas, including the communicative and interactional work of medical interpreters. Within the mass communication domain, we will consider the theoretical underpinnings and methods of several examples of health campaigns. We will also look at ways that Web 2.0 is changing health campaigns & health care interventions.
COMM 589: Personal Communication Topics—Relational Communication
Prof. Sylvia Mikucki-Enyart, Mondays & Wednesdays, 2:00 p.m. - 3:15 p.m.
Relational communication is an advanced interpersonal course that examines the theoretical mainstays of interpersonal communication research. Utilizing seminal scholarship along with contemporary research, the course aims to help students develop a rich understanding of interpersonal communication theory as well as a keen eye for evaluating and developing interpersonal research. Graduate students will be expected to complete all course assignments and develop a research proposal on a selected aspect of interpersonal communication.

COMM 590: Seminar—Political Communication
Prof. Tamas Bodor, Tuesdays, 11:00 a.m. - 1:50 p.m.
More than two millennia separate us from Aristotle who made the above comment. By now, after they lost “the support of the people,” most of those kings have been gone. Instead of kings in a traditional sense, we now have elected officials: mayors, judges, legislators, and among others, of course, presidents. Yet, the fate of these modern, elected “kings” is subject to the same, awesome force Aristotle talks about: it is the opinion of the public that puts them into office and discards them when time comes. It is a pervasive notion that this force, called public opinion can be managed. Indeed, what else could account for the billions of dollars spent on political advertising?
This course introduces you to the theory and practice of “public opinion management” on political matters, or in other words: political communication. Even though the primary focus will be on modern presidential campaigns, the topics to be covered are of relevance to political communication at all levels of contemporary American politics.
COMM 590: Seminar—Provider-Patient Communication (Tentative)
Prof. Tim Halkowski, Mondays & Wednesdays, 3:35 p.m. – 4:50 p.m.
This course will focus on the interactional organization of everyday provider-patient communication. We will work our way through this topic, from the opening moments of the health care visit to the closing moments. All the way through the health care visit, we will be working to understand how patients and doctors use communication and interactional methods to achieve features of the medical encounter.
The central goal of this course is to investigate communication by patients (& their family members, friends, coworkers, etc.), as well as doctors (and other health professionals) in outpatient health care settings. We will be particularly concerned with communication by patients, (with their doctors and others) as it is used to manage the experiences of illness and disease.
COMM 701: Introduction to Communication Graduate Studies
Prof. Tim Halkowski, Mondays 5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
In this course we will cover the basics of the historical, theoretical, conceptual, and philosophical foundations of the field of communication. We will also be learning about the construction of a brief literature review, and about key features of scholarly writing.

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COMM 720: Seminar in Mass Communication
Prof. Liz Fakasis, Wednesdays, 5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Please contact Professor Fakasis for more details about the course.