CURRICULUM

The focused, highly-interactive curriculum fuses communication theory with practice equipping students with the skills essential to professional success. The four-quarter curriculum consists of a set of core courses with the flexibility for students to create their own program through elective options.

Students are enrolled in one core course and one elective course each quarter. In addition, students will complete a series of one-day graduate level topical seminars to fulfill the Master’s Practicum requirement. At the end of the academic year, students will have completed 9 credit units to receive the Master of Science in Communication degree.

Change Management

This course focuses on the use of basic communication theory to examine communication as a process and as a resource at both micro and macro levels, as well as the management of communication in organizations.

Communication in the Global Workplace

Successful managers in a global workplace must recognize and work with local cultural forms and practices at odds with what were once simply practical, instrumental and rational propositions of organization, technology, and economics. This course seeks to foster an awareness and understanding of cultural perspectives, values and communication styles and show their relevance to conducting business globally.

Communication, Management & Ethics

This course provides a framework for systematic reflection on the ethical dimension of managerial communication. The course raises both "philosophical" and "practical" questions and focuses on the area of human interaction where it is difficult to be either wholly principled or merely practical. The course includes discussion of representative texts and case studies, including attention to predicaments encountered or observed during the term. The readings draw on several literatures on ethical judgment, the demands and evasions defining various communicative practices, the conflicting responsibilities of institutional work, the relationship between private and public interests, and so forth.

Managing Information & Innovation

This course is designed to provide students with a mix of approaches and techniques to manage technological innovation and change within their organizations. The course examines how teams and organizations can be designed to promote innovation, discusses strategies that encourage or impede effective product development, and explores practices used to implement new technologies and drive change.

Communication, Strategy & Competition

This course explores the roles of communication technologies in shaping industries and organizations, investigates how information technologies impact productivity, and determines criteria for evaluating investments in technology.

Contemporary Media in Business, Government & Society

This course concerns the many intersections between media – both old and new – and social institutions.  These institutions include business, the not-for-profit sector, the professions, science, and government. The focus of the course is on news and informational media broadly defined to include, for example, advertising and public relations. The behavior of audiences and their patterns of media use is also a topic considered in the course. The general orientation is social scientific analysis of the process and effects of mediated communication.

Corporate Citizenship

This course addresses the relationship between corporations and their stakeholder, It explores best practices for improving social responsibility, transparency, and effectiveness of ethical communication in a (sometimes) unethical world.

Current Issues in Law, Technology & Strategy

In this course, students discuss the legal framework affecting the full range of converged communications, including intellectual property law; communications law and regulation; spectrum policy; web contracting; corporate email and Internet policies; compliance with Internet privacy regulations; online liability; and issues of competition and industry structure. Students will also conduct an extensive examination of strategies for corporate influence of the marketplace and participation in policy making.

The Design of Digital Organizations

This course will provide the opportunity to explore theoretical and practical communication issues in organizations as they relate to the organization operating in cyberspace. Contemporary communication perspectives will be presented and critically evaluated via the study of how organizational culture, structure, and information communication technologies provide an important foundation for understanding how an organization can "live" successfully in the online world. In this course, students will consider message construction, patterns of interaction, new media, information flow, organizational forms, and how to strategize online communication behavior within a legal framework.

Leadership & Decision Making

This course investigates how individuals influence group decisions. Students are video taped in decision-making interactions in order to assess and improve their leadership and analytical thinking skills in groups. This course is highly interactive – allowing students to evaluate and practice real world challenges in this content area.

Managing Global Teams

Globalization, information, and technology access have transformed the face of the business world. Whole industries have been re-defined, i.e. impact on cost sturcture by foreign manufacturing, speed of product development, and ability to leverage global resources for almost any business need. These opportunities also create new challenges for today's managers. This course uses an action-oriented approach to develop a good understanding of international management and their practical implications when leading and managing multicultural teams in the new global economy.

Managing Workplace Diversity & Inclusion

Workplace diversity represents significant managerial challenges and opportunities. This course explores current diversity issues, including gender, ethnicity, class, age cohorts, disability, and personality -- and identifies a range of inclusive strategies that can lead to productive teams. Issues of work/life/family balance and a dispersed workplace also will be addressed. The course seeks to foster an awareness of both differences and similarities in order to create a culture productive inclusion in the work place.

Master's Practicum Seminar Series

The Master's Practicum Seminar Series is designed as a set of one-day graduate level seminars as a content addendum to the curriculum. Seminars are revised annually to include topics such as crisis management, corporate ethics, digital media, globalization/economy, and communication technologies to name a few. Students are required to complete four (4) pass/non-pass seminars.

Organizational Behavior

Motivation, job attitudes, and emotions are critical elements in an organization’s culture. Similarly, organizational networks, teams, feedback loops, and other influence processes impact managerial and leadership effectiveness. This course examines essential theories in the context of organization case studies and experiential learning.

Persuasion

This course is an exploration of the ways in which communication can be more effectively used to exert influence and to exercise power — bringing together a variety of disciplines including rhetorical analysis, leadership theory, composition, speechwriting, and public speaking. The goal is to help students understand how the beliefs and behaviors of decision-makers and publics can be influenced by effective communication.

Public Speaking

This course covers the theory and practice of public speaking, building on ancient rhetorical canons while recognizing unique challenges of contemporary public speaking. Public Speaking guides students through topics of selection, organization, language, and delivery of public speaking assignments in the form of formal speeches, extemporaneous speeches, speech analyses, and evaluations.

Topics in Marketing Strategy

Beyond the Great Recession, companies are facing a variety of unprecedented strategic challenges from globalization, technological change, and empowered consumers and corporate buyers. Thriving in such an environment requires the kind of market-driven approach to strategy taught in this course. After an initial overview of marketing strategy basics, each week we will discuss practical approaches that address a series of "hot" marketing issues, followed by a discussion of communication implications. Using lessons from the course, each student will work on a course project to develop a marketing plan for a product in their company.

Understanding & Leveraging Networks

This course uses social network concepts to understand and leverage the growing connectivity and complexity in the world around us on different scales — ranging from small teams to the World Wide Web. It discusses how we create and manage social networks within organizations, as well as with suppliers, customers and competitors and how these networks shape attitudes and behaviors.