Communication Studies Minor

Goal 1: Students will gain critical awareness of the social role of media.

Outcome 1.1: Students will understand the history and context of the role that media has played in society.

Outcome 1.2: Students will be able to articulate and critique the role media has historically played, and currently plays in society.

Goal 2: Students will understand the principles and practices of effective media communication.

Outcome 2.1: Students will be able to identify and employ a range of effective communication strategies to navigate audience, purpose, and context.

Goal 3: Students will understand and apply human centered design approaches to communicating through digital media.

Outcome 3.1: Students will analyze, articulate, and understand how multiple theoretical approaches of aesthetics and design inform the way audiences act, interact, and produce meaning.

Outcome 3.2: Students will be able to create media objects which effectively applies these design principles for a desired rhetorical goal.

Goal 4: Student will understand the relation between media and social responsibility.

Outcome 4.1: Students will understand and articulate the ethical questions and principles that inform the use of digital media.

Outcome 4.2: Students will understand and articulate how digital media has been, and can be, employed to facilitate innovation, social change, and civic engagement.

Goal 5: Students will be able to use digital media in a way which demonstrates information literacy.

Outcome 5.1: Students will employ digital media tools and approaches to establish the veracity and credibility of information.

Outcome 5.2: Students will demonstrate the ability to effectively manage the ubiquitous flow of digital media information.

Outcome 5.3: Students will be able to effectively use digital media to research, gather, and assess digital information and knowledge.

Six courses are required to complete the minor. To gain solid grounding in the field of communications, all students will satisfy three core requirements and then select three other courses from a range of options. Students must apply to enter this Minor.