Health Communication track, Professional Communication BA

A student completing this course understands the process of finding, synthesizing, evaluating, and documenting sufficient and reliable information appropriate to a variety of purposes including upper division coursework, senior capstone papers or professional writing, and communication tasks. Students also explore a number of the contemporary issues surrounding information in society, have opportunities to use and/or visit primary resource collections and learn a variety of research techniques. Specific sections of the course will structure assignments around a course theme identified in the class schedule. Prior themes have included Civil Rights, Holocaust and Genocide, Crime and Punishment, Food, Immigration, and Health Care. Both themed and non-themed sections are offered every semester as are online and in-class sections.

Full course description for Searching for Information

Intercultural Communication has a global perspective and engages students in reflectively thinking about the growing interdependence of nations and peoples. Students develop their ability to apply a comparative perspective to cross-cultural communication episodes in interpersonal interactions. Students research topics of interest that compare two or more cultures in some aspect of their social, economic, or political values and practices. Through field experiences, in class exercises, and readings, students learn the dynamics and skills needed to engage in respectful and sensitive communication with others whose beliefs, values, and attitudes are different than their own.

Full course description for Intermediate Intercultural Communication

This course is designed to provide an understanding of the health care industry and the theory and practice of face to face and mediated forms of communication by health care administrators, managers, providers, and patients. Students will analyze both common and best practices in health care campaigns, training, public relations, patient satisfaction, patient advocacy, administration, media covering health issues, and public education. Significant focus is given to issues of race and racism, and how social constructions of race and racism affect perspectives and create disparities in health care access, communication, and outcomes experienced by different populations.

Full course description for Health Communication

This course is designed to develop skills in perceiving and responding to others as whole persons. Particular attention is paid to working with individual in health care and human service settings. The course is organized into five major units: 1) Groundwork for helping relationships; 2) Basic skills; 3) Understanding the client¿s current situation and concerns; 4) Assisting the client in identifying and committing to a desired change; and 5) Facilitating the development of action strategies to move forward. The focus within each of the units will be on mastering the communication skills that contribute to the greatest likelihood of success with clients in the helping professions.

Full course description for Interpersonal Communication for the Helping Professions

This course examines communication patterns and systems functioning in modern organizations in sectors such as government, nonprofit and corporate. Course simulations and topics include analysis of organizational communication models, formal and informal communication networks, external and internal communication channels, the changing shape of future organizations, mentoring, ethics, diversity, technologies, and the purpose of communication research.

Full course description for Organizational Communication

This course is designed to provide students with the opportunity to effectively promote and advocate for events, organizations, or issues using a variety of social media and multi-media. Students will combine online writing (or blogging) with other forms of social networking and media (wikis, YouTube, Facebook, and/or Twitter) to build a comprehensive online initiative promoting a timely and relevant issue or event either of their choosing or provided by the instructor. Students will increase their knowledge of online rhetoric, audience research, planning for media events, script or treatment writing, and evaluation of communication programs.

Full course description for Communicating with New Media

This course focuses on designing, implementing, and evaluating communication campaigns designed to impact the beliefs and behaviors of people with the goal of improving health outcomes. In order to prepare Health Communication professions for work on health campaigns, the course will address identifying critical health concerns, exploring the populations and sub-populations affected, determining beliefs and/or behaviors to strategically target, developing persuasive messages, selecting specific media, and evaluating the effectiveness of the health communication campaign. Different persuasion theories and approaches will be explored, and logic models will be developed for campaigns.

Full course description for Advanced Health Communication: Campaigns

This capstone course is designed for majors on the health communication track. Students will learn to apply an equity lens to multiple facets of health communication including: how race, culture, and bias play a role in patient-provider communication, health communication campaigns, and mediated representations of health issues in the U.S. context. Students will learn about the historical sources and causes of health disparities as well as learn ways to improve health disparities across these areas. Students will also be exposed to a community engagement component, and will be exposed to health disparities researchers and organizations.

Full course description for Health Communication Capstone: Communication for Health Equity

This is a mandatory workshop to help undergraduates prepare for academic internships (350I) in the following areas: ARTS; COMM; INFS; MDST; MUSC; RDNG; SCRW; THEA; WRlT. You cannot be registered for an academic internship unless you are registered in this workshop.

Full course description for SCWA Internship Workshop

This class provides practical experiences in public relations writing. Focusing on written communications in major Public Relation genres. This class will incorporate a workshop approach, with emphasis on weekly assignments that are critiqued and discussed as a class. We will focus on producing clear, concise writing that is accurate, organized and targeted to specific audiences.

Full course description for Public Relations Writing

This course will provide an introduction to the field of health psychology, which is concerned with the roles of behavioral/lifestyle, psychological, and social/cultural factors on health/wellness, illness and chronic disease. The course will address four general subject areas: 1) attitudes, behavior, and lifestyle factors affecting disease prevention and development; 2) stress and the related psychological and social processes associated with disease development and progression; 3) social and psychological factors involved in the illness experience; and 4) long-term social and psychological implications of chronic illness (e.g., heart disease, cancer).

Full course description for Health Psychology

This course examines the theories, current trends and practical dimensions of how people organize to effect change. Topics include the nature of community organizing, cultural and historical models, issue identification, leadership development, approaches to social power, campaign planning and implementation, and the relationship of community organizing to other forms of social action. The class is participatory and includes intense interpersonal and reflective exercises designed to increase students organizing skills. Students will supplement classroom learning with a case study of a Metro area community organization.

Full course description for Community Organizing and Social Action

This course focuses on the multidisciplinary field of environmental communication and helps students understand the ways in which environmental issues and conflicts develop, the values underlying the ideologies on these issues, the ways in which these values are presented, and the variety of scientific and technical communication genres involved in understanding environmental communication messages. Significant focus is given to issues of race and racism.

Full course description for Environmental Communication

This course offers a rhetorically-based, process-oriented approach to strategic, effective writing of proposals and grants for individuals and organizations. The course is designed primarily for writers, artists and technical communicators who expect to find themselves, as freelancers or as employees, seeking funding for a variety of programs and projects in academic, nonprofit or corporate situations. This course provides a systematic process for analyzing audiences, writing needs statements and finding sponsors all within an electronic context.

Full course description for Writing Proposals and Grants

Primarily for students who have completed their writing requirement, but who seek further writing instruction and practice, this course begins with a brief review of the principles of academic writing. It then engages students in the thinking and writing required in various disciplines throughout the university. Students study and practice summary, explanation, analysis, interpretation and other critical strategies used to write essays, reports, research papers, case studies and other texts. The course also emphasizes understanding how audience, purpose and situation shape writing. Students learn how to use a flexible process of writing and revision to complete assignments, and how to respond constructively to the writing of others.

Full course description for Writing in Your Major