Courses

This course introduces students to the importance of communication within organizations. Organizational communication theory is discussed as it relates to climate, dyads, small group, public, and mediated communication. Students apply theory in several business writing and speaking assignments.

This course requires students to research, create, and deliver speeches on topics and issues that reflect personal beliefs and values. In doing so they discern diverse materials, consider logical and ethical demands, and analyze their audience in order to create socially and globally responsible rhetorical messages.

Topics vary from year to year.

This course provides an in-depth look at television as a mass medium with particular financial and cultural constraints. Students examine the decision-making process behind television programming, learn criteria for viewing television critically, and ask how Christians may respond to television responsibly.

This course considers the social and cultural impact of video games in contemporary culture from a Christian perspective. Students play, read about, write about, and critically engage a wide variety of computer and video games.

Prepares students to use social media professionally and to culturally engage these same tools of communication with a critical perspective. The course invites students to discover and analyze best practices in social media marketing and community building, as well as to apply theory to critical investigations of the cultural roles and impacts of current digital media, both in North America and around the world, with the goal of helping students become both effective communicators and highly-ethical and faithful global citizens who can positively impact their profession and their society.

This course explores the nature and development of the Superhero figure and myth from its ancient origins to the contemporary Hollywood blockbuster craze. Emphasis will be placed upon exploring the Superhero as myth, archetype, icon, moral hero, and anti-hero, and investigates why the Superhero type figure has been a perennial character and what the current emphasis on superheroes might tell us about contemporary social, moral, political, gender, and cultural concerns.

Emphasizes the role films and filmmakers have played in impacting culture and reflecting their historical milieu, especially as they relate to the events and traumas of World War II and the Cold War. Students explore key post-World War II film movements including Neo-Realism, the French New Wave, the rise of art house and nationalist cinemas, and the moral and social rebellions of the 1960s and 70s.

This course focuses on understanding the nature of ethics and morals in the media. Through reading, on-going discussion, case studies, guest lecturers, on-site observation and media analysis, students develop their own framework for moral and ethical decision-making.