The School of Communications has revised its curriculum to better prepare students for the breadth, depth and convergence of communications in the future.
The revisions will have no impact on juniors and seniors unless they prefer to go under the new curriculum. First-year students and those beginning their sophomore year will be under the new curriculum because course changes affect only the junior and senior years.
Here are the seven key revisions:
1. MAJORS
Starting this fall, the School is offering four majors:
— Journalism (with print/online and broadcast news concentrations)
— Strategic Communications (formerly the corporate communications concentration)
— Media Arts & Entertainment (consisting of the broadcast and cinema concentrations)
— Communication Science (for those interested in research or graduate school)
Click on the colored banners at the top right for details on each major and concentration.
2. PREFIX
Starting in January 2009, all Communications courses will have a COM prefix instead of the current JCM prefix. A number of courses also will have number changes to reflect a better range among 100- to 400-level courses. For example, JCM 395 Media Law & Ethics will become COM 400 Media Law & Ethics starting in January.
3. COURSES
Each major in the new curriculum concludes with an advanced skills course. Starting in Fall 2009, journalism students will take a new course called Multimedia Journalism instead of choosing from a specialty list; broadcast students will take Producing for Broadcast and New Media; and cinema students will take Producing Narrative Cinema or Producing the Documentary. Strategic (corporate communications) students already take Campaigns as their advanced skills course; this won’t change, although the course is being renamed Strategic Campaigns.
4. CAPSTONE
The 4-hour Great Ideas capstone course will become a 2-hour course in Fall 2009, becoming more consistent across sections by focusing on research and the professions.
5. INTERNSHIP CREDIT
From now on, all Communications internships will be for either 1 or 2 credit hours. Students still can do more than one internship to earn up to 4 credit hours overall, as permitted by the School’s national accreditation body. The 0-credit work experience option will no longer be offered.
6. ADDITIONAL ELECTIVES
The preceding changes free up additional hours in the School for another elective. Over the next year or two, the School will add new elective offerings such as Environmental Communications, Sports and Media, Sports Information, Advertising Techniques, Audio in Sound Media, and Media Management & Sales. This will permit students to do a special two-course Optional Emphasis, if they wish, in specialty areas such as advertising, sports communications, audio recording and photojournalism.
7. PUBLIC SPEAKING
The new curriculum requires incoming students to take GST 115 Public Speaking (2 credit hours). Many students have taken this course as an elective, either during the past year as a GST course or in previous years as a JCM course. This curriculum requirement goes into effect only for incoming first-year students. Returning students are invited to take the course as an elective if they haven’t already. GST 115 counts toward the national accreditation 80/65 rule, which requires all Communications students to complete at least 80 hours outside the School of Communications with 65 or more of those hours in the liberal arts and sciences. GST 115 counts toward the 80/65 hours required outside the major and not toward the 52 hours in the major.
For a comparative listing of JCM course names and numbers with the new COM names and numbers, click on “Courses and Curriculum” in the list of topics on the right-hand side.