Current Students

Concentrations

Public Advocacy & Rhetoric Concentration
Organizational Communication Concentration
Media Studies Concentration

Public Advocacy & Rhetoric Concentration

Background & Expectations
This concentration of Communication Studies includes the study of the skills, critical methods and communication theories necessary to effective leadership, citizenship, and professional engagement in a functioning democracy.

Students of Public Advocacy and Rhetoric will develop competencies that enable them to think critically, understand the value of a variety of theoretical perspectives, make persuasive arguments, and gain the skills and confidence necessary for successful participation in their workplaces, their communities, and their nation.

The Public Advocacy and Rhetoric curriculum requires coursework in Persuasion & Rhetoric and in Classical Rhetorical Theory, with the flexibility to choose among courses in Argumentation, Rhetorical Criticism, Television, Advertising, Political, and Legal Communication, Persuasive Speaking, and other courses.

Connection to the Work World
Our students will find training in Public Advocacy & Rhetoric useful as they move on to careers in law, public service, education, public relations, non-profit advocacy, and advertising. Our graduates regularly go on to law school and graduate school, or find jobs with public interest organizations, corporations, small businesses, and government.

Organizational Communication Concentration

Background
Communication is a central, pervasive, and multifaceted component of organizational activity. While it is a truism to say that we all exist within organizations of one sort or another, organizations are not static entities. Rather, they are created, sustained, and can deteriorate through our communication practices. Students of organizational communication examine why communication is central to organizational activity and how organizational women and men can become more effective communicators. The organizational communication concentration incorporates general principles of human communication as foundational to its study.

Expectations
Through their participation in this concentration, students should be able to:

• understand and apply various theoretical perspectives on organizations;
• develop practical communication-based skills to participate effectively in organizational settings;
• reflect upon and critique dominant forms of organizing.

Connection to the Work World
Broadly speaking, the Organizational Communication concentration prepares students to think critically and creatively about communication activities in a range of organizational and institutional contexts. More specifically, students develop a repertoire of skills that can be applied in various career fields, such as corporate communication, communication consulting, as well as advertising and public relations. These skills include:

• the ability to assess organizational strengths and weaknesses through an examination of communication practices
• the ability to create and disseminate rhetorically effective messages to a variety of audiences, both internal and external to the organization
• the ability to make ethical judgments about communication practices that take into consideration multiple stakeholders.

Additionally, other students go on to further study in graduate school.

Media Studies Concentration

The courses in this concentration are taught with the belief that to comprehend the current, rapidly changing media environment it is necessary to understand culture and the complex and contradictory ways in which social structures and power relations operate in our everyday lives. In a very general sense by offering this “critical approach” our courses are intended to challenge how students think about both the media and world we live in, and to ask questions about what is assumed to be real, valued and significant in our culture.

For example rather than simply explaining the structure of the media industry we analyze the media with the following two goals: (1) we seek to understand why it has become common sense that our media should be commercially organized to make a profit and (2) to think about the wider cultural consequences of having a commercially organized media, for example its affect on democracy.

As a concentration we teach the skills required to think critically through complex ideas and arguments, to explore the assumptions behind the organization of media, the development of technologies or the way people and ideas are represented (or not) in media. These skills are important for anyone who wants to comprehend and navigate our media-saturated world. More broadly these are skills that will help students become active citizens in an increasingly complicated world. To this end Media Studies works to further the important goals of social responsibility and active citizenship highlighted in Northeastern University’s academic plan.