Master of Science in Environmental Policy

COM 500 Reading & Res Communication 3.0 Credits

Introduces graduate study in the communication program. Presents issues and concepts for this course and other graduate courses. Focuses on issues such as reading complex texts, both theoretical and research-oriented. Also introduces the range of fields in professional communication.

COM 510 Technical Writing 3.0 Credits

An intensive workshop course in writing technical abstracts, proposals, manuals and reports. Focuses on developing reader-centered documents for a variety of audiences and purposes through the use of a number of styles. Aids students in developing greater awareness of the varieties of rhetorical situations and styles found in their careers.

COM 520 Science Writing 3.0 Credits

An intensive workshop course in communicating scientific information to the public, including reading and discussion of science journalism. Focus is placed on how to translate and reinterpret technical and scientific information for a general readership.

COM 530 Techniques and Science of Photography 3.0 Credits

Introduces the techniques of photography. Enhances students understanding of photography to better enable them to use photographs and services of photographers as communicative media.

COM 540 Technical and Science Graphics 3.0 Credits

Covers the design and production of graphic materials for technical and scientific purposes. Allows students to begin to understand the visual aspects of communication. Focuses on the use of type, art, and photographs to reinforce the written message.

COM 550 Video Production for Science & Technology 3.0 Credits

Introduce the techniques of studio and field video production for technical and science subjects. Teaches students to produce their own video for training purposes or information access.

COM 570 Technical and Science Editing 3.0 Credits

Covers techniques of formal editing, including project and copy editing. Requires students to read, discuss and edit numerous types of documents from professional, government and industry sources.

COM 605 Sports Journalism 3.0 Credits

This course enables students to gain a deeper understanding of the meaning-making power of sports journalism. In it, we explore the changing role of the sports journalist, from the mythmaking and hero-worship seen during the field's infancy, to the detachment and devotion to the craft of journalism that marked sports reporting beginning in the mid-20th Century.

COM 610 Theories of Communication and Persuasion 3.0 Credits

Examines the application of theories and models of communication and persuasion. Introduces theories underlying technical communication and issues informing the discipline. Draws readings from a number of disciplines, such as rhetoric, cognitive psychology, discourse analysis, linguistics, and communication.

COM 611 Interconnections: Science, Technology, Literature and the Arts 3.0 Credits

Examines issues concerning relations among science, technology, literature, and the arts, and leads students to learn something if the nature of science and technology and explore the contribution of literature, the arts, and aesthetic theory to effective science and the technical communication.

COM 612 Ethics for Science and Technical Communication 3.0 Credits

Studies principles and concepts of ethics for technical and scientific writers, editors and publishers. Examines moral presuppositions of the profession as they pertain to technical and scientific communications, to the effects of computer technologies on ethical practices in the workplace, and to the responsibilities of editors for preventing fraud.

COM 613 Ethics for Public Communication 3.0 Credits

This course is a seminar in journalism and public relations ethics. Topics discussed include: professional responsibilities of journalists with respect to truth-telling and objectivity in reporting the news; ethical issues surrounding morally offensive radio and television content; ethical issues concerning what is and is not covered by the news and manipulative advertising.

COM 616 Campaigns for Health and Environment 3.0 Credits

This reading and writing intensive, seminar-style course explores theories and practical aspects of environmental information campaigns and community-based social marketing campaigns. The theories and frameworks presented in this course apply to health issues as well as environmental issues. This course has a strong applied component.

COM 617 [WI] Environmental Communication 3.0 Credits

This reading and writing intensive course will explore communication about environmental issues. Topics can include advocacy campaigns, social marketing, environmental journalism, media coverage of environmental issues, green marketing, the environment in popular culture, risk communication, and public participation.

COM 620 Message Design and Evaluation 3.0 Credits

Examines research and theory on the design of messages. Introduces research methodologies appropriate for the evaluation of scientific and technical communications. Examines research in document design and usability, testing and other strategies for collecting, analyzing and presenting data.

COM 625 Cultural Significance of Fame 3.0 Credits

This course explores our fascination with fame and celebrity, and the desire of so many people to achieve fame: from Alexander the Great to American Idol. Key issues include: the mass media's role in creating the cultural significance of fame, psychological characteristics of fame seekers, and changes in what it means to be a fan of the famous.

COM 630 Software Documentation 3.0 Credits

Teaches the principles and goals involved in writing, revising, and testing computer documentation, both paper and on-line. The focus will be on the end user documentation, although the principles involved may also apply to systems documentation.

COM 635 Electronic Publishing 3.0 Credits

Electronic Publishing gives students applied and theoretical knowledge of professional electronic publishing. Students will focus on issues relating to writing and integrating text and graphics to create websites and on-line publications. Students will also consider how issues in document design and usability analysis can be used to evaluate websites.

COM 640 Desktop Publishing 3.0 Credits

This course focuses on designing and developing publications using Desk Top publishing software. Students develop a publication plan for a specific organizational situation and learn basic design principles. Classes deal with planning, designing, writing and budgeting publications. Students concentrate on two major kinds of publications, brochures and newsletters, and will also learn about smaller publications.

COM 650 Telecommunications Policy in the Information Age 3.0 Credits

The historical, governmental, social, economic and political structures of telecommunications policies are examined. Special emphasis is placed on how assumptions concerning living in an information age affect policies, philosophies, structures and outcomes, especially at a global level.

COM 655 Ethnography of Communication 3.0 Credits

Following an examination of theories about interaction in speech, the course provides and in-depth look at qualitative communication studies. Both transcripts of talk in natural settings and videos of actual interactions will be used. Considers such topics as story telling (narrative), self-presentation in talk (performance and identity), the construction of gender in communication, literacy, and cross-cultural approaches to politeness.

COM 657 Media Effects Advanced Seminar 3.0 Credits

In this course we will examine the contemporary facts and the discourse on media effects. The focus will be on electronic media.

COM 660 Investigative Journalism 3.0 Credits

An intensive hands-on course in researching and writing investigative news stories. Students will select and cover beats and submit a series of in-depth articles on deadline.

COM 663 Event Planning 3.0 Credits

This course will provide the student with the theoretical and practical fundamentals in understanding the complexities of producing special events across all major industries.

COM 665 Journalists, Courts and the Law 3.0 Credits

Students explore and apply techniques for covering the court system, and explore case law and recent key legal developments that have reshaped how journalists do their jobs.

COM 670 Medical Writing 3.0 Credits

Students learn about the major branches of medical writing and editing, for both medical and pharmaceutical contexts. The course includes the following topics: writing for professional, commercial and popular audiences, preparing FDA submissions, reading and researching medical literature, using medical statistics, interviewing subjects and writing ethically.

COM 673 Medical Journalism 3.0 Credits

This course teaches students how to research and write articles geared to the medical field for the mass media and public relations, and to evaluate the scientific merit of medical research relative to the pressures on scientists, doctors, researchers, companies and universities to garner media attention.

COM 675 Grant Writing for the Arts and Humanities 3.0 Credits

Students develop the skills needed to write an effective grant proposal. Topics include idea development, analyzing a team's capabilities to complete a project, developing a clear plan of attack, locating funding sources, honing research skills, and effectively using graphic elements in proposal design.

COM 680 Public Relations Writing and Strategies 3.0 Credits

An intensive, advanced public relations course covering public relations theory, strategies and writing. Students will apply theory and tactics in the development of crisis communication plans and issue management strategies.

COM 685 International Public Relations 3.0 Credits

This course is a comprehensive overview of international issues in PR including history and evolution of the field, image-formation and image-change processes, PR in war and conflict, effects of different political and legal systems on PR, actual PR practices in different countries and regions of the world.

COM 686 International Communication 3.0 Credits

This course is taught within the paradigm of media ecology. Such issues as the historical context, theoretical concepts, economic and structural aspects of international communication is considered. The effects of culture, language, religion, history, politics, and tradition on the process of international communication are also examined.

COM 687 International Negotiations 3.0 Credits

This course examines theoretical and practical elements of international negotiations. Students are taken into the work of diplomats, policymakers, and corporate leaders negotiating agreements and are guided through psychological, sociological, and political dimensions of the talks process. By the end of this course students will be able to analyze negotiations scientifically and professionally.

COM 690 Special Topics 3.0 Credits

Covers selected topics in technical and science communication. May be repeated for credit.

COM 701 Contemporary Social Theory 3.0 Credits

This course is a graduate level introduction to social theory, familiarizing students with original works by the major theorists of the late 19th century to the present. Students will especially examine the production of social theory as an ongoing conversation about the predicaments of modernity and post-modernity.

COM 702 Communication Theory I 3.0 Credits

This course is an introduction to the study of persuasion and media effects. Readings include elements of persuasion and compliance seeking, as well as how persuasion takes effect through mass media. Course draws liberally from contemporary research in communication literature.

COM 703 Communication Theory II 3.0 Credits

Through readings of major theoretical ideas and voices, and occasional case examples, this course introduces students to theories of discourse and semiotics, including the role that language plays in social construction, discourse and post modernity, theories of the sign, structuralism and post-structuralism, pragmatics and language ideology.

COM 704 Research Methods in Communication 3.0 Credits

This course familiarizes students with various quantitative research methods in communication research including analysis, survey research and experiments. Each state of the research process will be explored from hypotheses to defining and operationalizing variables. To effective sampling, to analysis and write-up. Also introduces students to a wide range of original research studies.

COM 705 Data Analysis in Communication 3.0 Credits

Students are introduced to statistics for communication research, including quantitative analysis techniques for survey data and content analysis. Casual models, sampling and basic ideas of correlation and regression are discussed. Course is a hands-on approach with equal attention to technique and theoretical understanding, using SPSS software.

COM 710 Mass Communication and American Social Thought 3.0 Credits

Mass communication was at the center of most of the hopes and anxieties of the 20th Century. Would mass communication promote democracy or totalitarianism, support the powers-that-be or challenge them, make us more or less intelligent, enhance real life or distort it, etc.? In the end, what do we want mass communication to be and do in the 21st Century?.

COM 715 Media, Advocacy and Public Spaces 3.0 Credits

Half of the world’s population lives in cities. With this increase, notions of public space, rights of access, land use and development become highly contested. Students will conduct their own ethnographic fieldwork in urban environments that address issues of conflict that take place in or engage with urban public spaces.

COM 720 Critical Theory 3.0 Credits

This course provides an overview of critical theory. It starts with the creation of the critical Frankfurt School, and reviews the works of Gramsci, Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse. It then focuses on the expansion of critical theory by Jurgen Habermas through consideration of his Theory of Communicative Action.

COM 799 Independent Project in Technical and Science Communications 12.0 Credits

Provides advanced independent study in technical or science communication. May be repeated for credit.

COM 801 Seminar in Contemporary Theory 3.0 Credits

This is a special topics seminar course that will introduce students to different currents in contemporary social theory, especially through in-depth reading and discussion of a single major theorist or theoretical school. Course may be repeated for credit.

COM 802 Seminar in Discourse and Semiotics 3.0 Credits

This is a special topics seminar course that will explore in-depth a particular theoretical or research approach to the study of language and signs. Students will work with major theoretical approaches as well as research in the area. Course may be repeated for credit.

COM 803 Seminar in Structural and Cultural Dynamics 3.0 Credits

Through in-depth exploration of a specific research topic, this seminar course will introduce students to what is called the sociological imagination. The course examines special topics that will illuminate such broad sociological approaches as political economy, cultural analysis, neo-institutionalism or post-modernism. Course may be repeated for credit.

COM 804 Seminar in Research Methodology 3.0 Credits

This course focuses on a single research method. The course takes students through the inception of research ideas, research design, implementation and data-analysis/write up as the mean to understanding the limitations and possibilities of the research process according to methodology. Course paper involves student research design practicum. Course may be repeated for credit.

COM 805 Seminar in Communication Ethics 3.0 Credits

By in-depth examination of a single issue in research ethics, this course develops student awareness of ethical issues in processes like peer review, human subjects research evaluation, and public consumption of knowledge generated by scholarly investigation. Course may be repeated for credit.

COM 998 PHD Dissertation Research in Communications 1.0-12.0 Credit

Requires supervised research, including literature research, data collection, and writing of doctoral thesis.