Learning Outcomes

Students across all majors in Communication Studies will:

1. Apply relevant research protocols and strategies to develop communication content that is ethical, compelling, and comprehensive.
2. Develop and utilize professional-level knowledge and skills in leadership, problem solving, and critical thinking.
3. Demonstrate proficiency in communicating messages within diverse environments to build relationships and bridge communities locally, nationally, and globally.
4. Assess the impact of communication on human dynamics and make decisions based on ethical considerations.
5. Craft and deliver transformational oral and written presentations across platforms, cultivating the art of effective storytelling.

Outcomes specific to each of the department's major fields of study are included below.

Students will: 

1. Describe the Communication Studies discipline, its central questions and its artifacts by analyzing social movements, issues, and perspectives.
2. Evaluate the opportunities and challenges of communication technologies as they relate to various communication situations. 
3. Employ communication theories, perspectives, principles, and concepts and to engage in communication inquiry.
4. Critically analyze messages and systematically apply reasoning that supports communication goals.

Students will:

1. Acquire and apply up-to-date theoretical, practical, and immersive knowledge of models of public diplomacy, electoral politics, and issue advocacy at local, national, and international levels.
2. Achieve high levels of proficiency in quantitative and qualitative public opinion, political market, and content analysis research methods.
3. Demonstrate multidisciplinary, non-partisan critical thinking, crisis management, negotiation, storytelling, and leadership skills. 

Students will:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of historical and contemporary approaches to the study of public relations.
2. Critically engage various techniques of public relations, including: crisis communication, public affairs, events management, non-profit, and campaign communication.
3. Create and implement strategic objectives that ethically deliver persuasive messages to institutional and emergent media, and target publics.
4. Develop and execute critical analysis skills in internal and external communication processes at the individual, organizational, and societal level.
5. Critically assess traditional and emergent media systems as factually sound to detect and avoid misinformation and disinformation. 

Students will:

1. Demonstrate knowledge of theoretical foundations in sports communication and their practical application to sports, sports business, and sports media.
2. Develop a knowledge base pertaining to the current trends, industry demands, and professional opportunities in sports communication.
3. Analyze sports and sports media through both global and historical perspectives, including the ways in which they intersect with various discourses such as gender, race, and other identities.
4. Utilize effective strategic decision making approaches in the sports communication process.