OVERVIEW OF THE PROPOSED COLLEGE OF MEDIA, COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION

CMCI Mission Statement

The College of Media, Communication and Information (CMCI) prepares students for careers as engaged and effective citizens endowed with deep understanding of the historical and contemporary context of human communication and expression. Challenging the conventional picture of communication as passive transmission, CMCI trains graduates to study and practice constructive interaction among people, communities, industries and publics. The college equips its graduates with the skills needed to produce, gather, archive, curate, analyze and evaluate the flood of information, messages, images, sounds and ideas that populate our complex and rapidly evolving global media landscape.

To these ends, CMCI resourcefully combines disciplines newly extended and empowered by digital media and the social and cultural transformations those media engender. These include established scholarly, creative and professional fields such as media studies, communication, the history and interpretation of film and television, journalism, advertising and video production in its cinematic, documentary and broadcast forms. But the college also houses both the fast-growing field of information science—a discipline that, through inquiry and innovation, tackles the problems and opportunities facing an increasingly networked society—and the emergent disciplines of intermedia art, design, music, writing and performance.

In giving these activities a collaborative home, CMCI facilitates innovative interactions among them. Its academic structure accordingly stimulates cross-disciplinary cooperation at all levels of curriculum, research and creative work. Further, CMCI promotes the transformational exchanges it nurtures within its own walls for campus-wide benefit. Its organization thus fosters outreach to—and student and faculty participation from—other schools, colleges, centers and facilities throughout CU Boulder and the wider Colorado community.

1. COMMON CURRICULUM

Mission Statement

The Common Curriculum blends liberal arts learning with skills necessary for success in careers involving media, communication and information. It aims to cultivate ways of thinking and doing that serve the educational, vocational and citizenship needs of CMCI students. To these ends, the curriculum promotes expression, collaboration and critical literacy across multiple forms of communication—from speech and writing to computing and visual media. Those skills underwrite learning across the humanities, the arts and the social and natural sciences, insuring educational breadth. The Common Curriculum matches

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that breadth with focus through a secondary concentration that students choose to supplement their major—a minor, certificate or focused cluster of courses either in or outside the college. Through designated history and diversity courses, the curriculum equips students to live in globalizing worlds, consider issues from multiple perspectives and engage in long-term thinking beyond the contemporary moment. Finally, the curriculum promotes both intellectual cohesion and independent learning through an introductory Common Experience course for all students and specialized Capstone Experiences tailored to particular majors and interests.

Educational Goals

The Common Curriculum is designed to help CMCI students master ways of doing, thinking and investigating essential to studying and working in media, communication and information fields. These competencies may be studied and practiced in course work either within or outside the college. Graduates of the college are expected to be able to demonstrate competence in the following:

• Multi-modal composition and expression: being able to use written, spoken, visualand digital media for effective expression, argumentation and communication of ideasand sentiments to audiences.

• Collaboration, design and creative problem solving: being able to work effectivelyand inventively with others in complex problem solving and design tasks.

• Communicative interaction: being able to look at phenomena from the perspective ofsymbolic and material interchanges among individuals, collectives and institutions.

• Media literacies: being able to interpret and critically analyze messages and formalconventions (genres, grammars, logics) in multiple modes and media ofcommunication (visual, sonic, discursive), and to consider them from the perspectivesof their audiences, political economies and histories.

• Quantitative and computational thinking: being able to approach and solve problemsquantitatively and algorithmically, and to apply and utilize computing models andresources when advantageous.

• Institutional and organizational understanding: being able to consider problems,policies and collective action from the perspectives of different institutions andorganizations—e.g., political, legal, economic and religious.

• Cultural understanding: being able to consider problems and social experiencescomparatively, considering different global and domestic cultures, with attention tocategories of race, class, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexuality.

• Historical understanding: being able to consider social, cultural, intellectual,technological and/or institutional phenomena in historical perspective.

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• Ethical action: being able to recognize moral issues, deliberate intelligently aboutthem, and uphold the ethical standards of particular disciplines and practices.

Design of the Common Curriculum

The Common Curriculum is designed to be both flexible and comprehensive. While promoting a shared mission and identity for CMCI students through a set of college requirements, the Common Curriculum also promotes breadth and porosity of learning across all the schools and colleges of the CU Boulder campus. Most of the requirements may be taken either within or outside the college, and many are covered by a student’s major. Students who wish to double major in a CMCI discipline and a discipline outside CMCI will find that the CMCI Common Curriculum dovetails almost entirely with the core or breadth requirements of other CU Boulder schools and colleges.

Common Curriculum at a Glance

Hours required

College requirements

Common Experience: 2 courses + 2 labs/studios 8–10 (TBD)* Capstone Experience: 1 course 3 Area of concentration outside the major variable

Breadth requirements

Composition and Expression: 2 courses Lower-division writing 3 Upper-division composition 3

Quantitative Thinking: 1 course 3 Computing: 1 course 3 Foreign Language: third-year high school or third-semester college proficiency 0–3 The Natural World: 2 courses + a lab 7 People and Society: 2 courses 6 Humanities and the Arts: 2 courses 6

Point-of-view requirements

Historical Views: 2 “H” designated courses 0–6 additional Diversity and Global Cultures: 2 “D” designated courses 0–6 additional

College Requirements

1. A Common Experience course sequence: lectures + lab/studio (2 courses, *8–10credit hours, to be determined by a future curriculum committee). This coursesequence introduces shared themes, values, ethical issues and competencies across thecollege and emphasizes the marriage of study and practice that will be the hallmark ofCMCI as a whole. Each course is structured as a lecture plus a lab/studio in whichstudents create projects putting the lecture’s ideas into practice by means of writing,speaking, design, visual presentation and other modes of expression, and by means ofcollaborative and active learning.

2. An upper-division Capstone Experience: scholarly, lab-based or studio-based (1course, 3 hours). This course fosters students’ research, creative work, servicelearning and/or invention, and may include teamwork as well as individual

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achievement. This course may be taken within the major, or it may be offered as an interdisciplinary option.

3. An area of concentration outside the major (variable hours). Defined as a second major, a minor, a certificate or an area of concentration as established by departments within or outside the college, this sequence of courses helps students develop the intellectual versatility necessary for successful study and work in media, communication and information fields.

Breadth Requirements NB: Breadth requirements may be satisfied either within or outside the college. They may also overlap with requirements for individual majors.

1. Composition and Expression (2 courses, 6 hours):

a. Lower-division writing (3 hours). This course develops the foundational skills in written expression expected of every CU Boulder graduate.

b. Upper-division visual, digital, verbal, written and/or media composition (3 hours). This course requirement emphasizes the many alternative forms of composition and expression that CMCI students cultivate.

2. Quantitative Thinking (1 course, 3 hours): This course provides students with the ability to think at a certain level of abstraction, to manipulate symbols and to assess adequately the data that will confront them in their course work and in their daily lives. This requirement may be fulfilled by passing the CU Boulder QRMS exam.

3. Computing (1 course, 3 hours): This course introduces students to the basic principles of computing, including computational architectures and logic, coding and scripting, issues in technical project management and issues in human-centered technology design.

4. Foreign Language (0–3 hours): This requirement encourages students to comprehend the structure and vocabulary of a language other than their native one, to read significant and difficult works in that language and to understand aspects of the culture(s) lived in that language. This requirement may be met at the time of matriculation by fulfilling the MAPS requirement of high school, third-level proficiency in a single language. Students who lack the MAPS requirement must pass an appropriate third-semester college course or a CU Boulder–approved proficiency examination.

5. The Natural World (2 courses + lab, 7 hours): These courses study the nature of matter, life and the universe. They enhance literacy and knowledge of one or more disciplines in the natural or physical sciences, and enhance the reasoning and observing skills necessary to evaluate issues with scientific content. A laboratory or

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field experience helps students gain hands-on experience with scientific research, develop observational skills of measurement and data interpretation, and learn the relevance of these skills to the formation and testing of scientific hypotheses.

6. People and Society (2 courses, 6 hours): These courses introduce students to the study of social groups, including social institutions and processes, and the forces that mold and shape social groups, including values, beliefs, communication processes and organizational principles. They prepare students to approach social phenomena of all kinds in an informed and critical way; to describe, analyze, compare and contrast social phenomena; and to analyze their own sociocultural assumptions and traditions.

7. Humanities and the Arts (2 courses, 6 hours): These courses foster students’ understanding of fundamental aesthetic, cultural, literary, philosophical and theological issues. They sharpen critical and analytical abilities so that students may develop a deeper appreciation of works of art and literature and of philosophical, ethical and religious ideas and belief systems.

Point-of-View Requirements

NB: Point-of-view requirements may be satisfied either within or outside the college. They may also overlap with breadth requirements and/or major requirements. In addition, a single course may be designated both “H” and “D.”

1. Historical Views (2 “H” designated courses, 0–6 additional hours). This requirement enables students to understand that every contemporary issue has a history, and that an understanding of historical context and change is essential to an understanding of the contemporary moment. “H” designated courses emphasize longitudinal thinking and the investigation of the processes and the meanings of change over time.

2. Diversity and Global Cultures (2 “D” designated courses, 0–6 additional hours). This requirement increases students’ understanding of the world’s diversity and pluralism. “D” designated courses study some aspect of two broad and interrelated areas: (a) the nature and meaning of diversity and the experience of groups marginalized because of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality or other characteristics; and (b) cultures other than those of Europe and the United States.

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2. MEDIA RESEARCH AND PRACTICE PhD PROGRAM

Mission Statement

A major lesson of the dramatic transformations in media and technology witnessed over recent decades is that the problems and opportunities facing any one discipline will be productively as well as disruptively shared with others. This communion of problems and opportunities is especially visible at the leading edge of scholarly and creative work, where advanced students and researchers in strategic communication, journalism and media studies regularly find themselves exploring common ground. Thus specialists in public relations, for example, discover the need not only to master the arts of multi-platform digital storytelling practiced by journalists but also to understand the social, historical, economic and political contexts in which their own practices take shape. And what is true for strategic communicators is equally so for journalists and media scholars: the worlds on which they report or whose origins and future evolution they analyze, interpret and attempt to predict owe their specific character to the discoveries made and activities conducted in related professional, creative and academic fields.

The Doctoral Program in Media Research and Practice is designed to take advantage of this situation by combining advanced research and practice in three related disciplines under a single umbrella. The PhD in Strategic Communication offered by the Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design, the PhD in Journalism Studies offered by the Department of Journalism and the PhD in Media Studies offered by the Department of Media Studies are accordingly parallel tracks under a single, overarching programmatic heading. In addition to exploiting the efficiencies such a grouping makes possible by pooling administrative, technical and pedagogical resources, the umbrella Program in Media Research and Practice ensures that students, scholars and creators in the three disciplines involved will pursue their studies, research and creative work in a setting that encourages collaboration at all levels of doctoral training and in every facet of faculty effort.

NB: For details on each of the program’s three doctoral tracks, see the PhD descriptions presented by the relevant departments below.

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3. DEPARTMENT OF JOURNALISM (JOUR)

Mission Statement

The Department of Journalism is founded on the principle that a well-informed and engaged public is essential to democracy—perhaps more so now, at a time of dizzying change, than it has ever been; and that, in the face of this change, journalism retains a unique role in contributing to civic life and to the quality of public discourse.

We put this principle to work by helping students become constructive participants in an ever-evolving global media landscape, where distinctions between producers and consumers of content have blurred. More specifically, we prepare them, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, for careers in journalism and other fields of public communication. We train students to gather information from a diversity of sources, to analyze it critically, and to report what is significant, through stories and other media forms across multiple media platforms. As part of this we work, we encourage ethical awareness so that students will think independently, being prepared to reflect on and to help shape media practices and norms rather than take them at face value. We believe in the integration of classroom instruction with practical experience. Many of our students work for, and manage, campus online news and entertainment sites, television programs and a radio station. They intern at broadcast stations, newspapers, magazines, websites and social media companies. Lastly, as a faculty, and with the help of colleagues elsewhere in our College who are working on new and innovative forms of human communication, we are committed to improving journalism through pioneering research and creative work. Degree Programs Bachelor of Arts in Journalism Journalism majors develop skills in information gathering, storytelling, and analysis across a variety of platforms, including television, social media, mobile devices, radio and print—using an ever-expanding variety of media tools and technologies. In addition to their professional preparation, students combine a broad education in the liberal arts (through the College of Arts and Sciences) with a robust Additional Field of Study (for the equivalent of a dual degree). Students complement their skill competencies with courses such as Journalism Law and Ethics and conceptual courses offered elsewhere in the college and university. Journalism students are also encouraged to acquire multi-departmental certificates in such areas as Media Entrepreneurship, Environmental Communication or International Media. We offer a curriculum with these learning goals:

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• Communicate to various public audiences with clarity and precision, using the mosteffective combination of images, sounds and words, and applying the mostappropriate contemporary technologies.

• Gather information, through research, observation and interviews, and evaluate whatis gathered.

• Acquire expertise in a particular subject and use that expertise to communicate clearlyto various public audiences.

• Base journalistic work on such enduring ethical principles as accountability, fairness,accuracy, responsibility, and diversity.

• Think analytically, critically and creatively about the social, historical, economic andscientific forces that underlie daily events, in order to provide appropriate context inthe reporting of daily events.

• Apply the laws of freedom of expression, in both the United States and in a globalmedia setting.

• Blend entrepreneurial strategies with journalistic enterprise to enable success in afast-changing economic environment.

Required Courses and Semester Credit Hours

Within the campus standard of 120 credit hours for the bachelor’s degree, the BA in Journalism requires 33 credit hours, with 21 of those satisfied through the departmental Common Curriculum:

JOUR Common Curriculum

Media Literacy: offered through the Media Studies department (3 credit hours).

Beginning and Advanced Storytelling: This is a new, two-semester foundational course in storytelling (written word, audio, video, photography, multimedia) across a variety of established and emerging media platforms, such as printed publications, television, radio, online publications, blogs, social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), and smartphone/tablet. The course is team-taught in a lecture/lab format so students garner expertise in a variety of areas and apply their new tools and skills immediately (two semesters, 3 credit hours each).

Fundamentals of Reporting (3 hours)

Journalism Law and Ethics (3 hours)

News Media Internship (3 hours)

Capstone Course: At the end of their experience in the College of Media, Communication and Information, all undergraduate journalism students come together in a capstone course. The course taps into their collective experiences, and allows them to practice the skills they’ve learned in a daily news setting. This experience includes a variety of publication options (print, web, cable/broadcast, etc.) and—to the greatest

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extent possible—–is integrated with similar capstone experiences in other departments in CMCI. CU News Corps qualifies as a capstone course (3 hours).

Other Courses in Journalism

Electives (12 credit hours): Students choose from a variety of advanced journalism courses, including but not limited to the following: Reporting of Public Affairs; Entrepreneurship for Journalism; Editing and Design; Opinion Writing; NewsTeam Boulder; Advanced Storytelling Techniques; a series of 1-credit, 5-week courses that would include Math/Statistics for Journalism, Data Visualization for News, Advanced Copy Editing or Photo Editing.

Additional Field of Study (33 credit hours): All students are required to earn the equivalent of a second degree in a discipline that complements and enhances their journalism education.

CMCI “Common Experience” (9 credit hours): see Common Curriculum above.

CMCI “Breadth” and “Point-of-View” Courses (39 credit hours): see Common College Curriculum above.

Additional Electives (6 credit hours): Students may use their final credit hours to take any courses inside or outside the department but are encouraged to acquire multi-departmental certificates—typically 15 credit hours—in such areas as Media Entrepreneurship, Environmental Communication or International Media.

This BA curriculum is designed to enable an undergraduate student to complete the journalism degree (including the Additional Field of Study, the college-wide core and an interdisciplinary certificate) in four years without enrolling in summer classes. This is possible because several courses in any Additional Field of Study or certificate also satisfy CMCI Breadth or Point-of-View requirements.

Master of Arts in Journalism

Students may earn an MA degree in either of two options: the Professional Practice Option or the Area of Expertise Option. Regardless of option, this degree is designed for students with limited academic or professional experience in journalism. It prepares students to work in a wide variety of professional settings, including print and broadcast outlets, digital and social media platforms, and corporate communications. The focus is on multimedia training and experience for all students. In particular, we will engage students in multi-platform projects like Project 36, which was begun in spring 2014. Involving the Center for Environmental Journalism, the CU News Corps and the Technology, Arts and Media program of ATLAS, this project is exploring the impact of global climate change in Colorado by telling 36 representative stories strung together along U.S. Route 36, running from Estes Park in the Rockies to the Kansas border.

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Professional Practice Option

This option within the Department of Journalism’s MA degree is for students who wish to focus on quickly obtaining advanced journalistic skills. It can be completed with as few as 30 credits and in as little as two semesters plus a summer.

All students in the MA program take a common core of classes covering reporting and multimedia skills, and the law and ethics of journalism (see detailed descriptions below). In addition, students complete two required capstone courses (choosing from a list of at least three options). Lastly, electives inside and outside of the department provide students an opportunity to further develop their journalistic skills and also sample offerings from other departments in CMCI.

Common Core:

Media Tech Boot Camp (3 hours)

Precision Journalism (3 hours)

Newsgathering and Documentary Storytelling (3 hours)

Journalism Law and Ethics (3 hours)

Newsgathering Capstones: Students can choose two of the following (with additional options possible in the future: CU News Corps (3 hours), Internship (3 hours), Professional Project (4 hours).

Journalism Electives: Students can choose from a long list of electives, including but not limited to Science Writing, Reporting on the Environment, Magazine and Feature Writing, TV Newsgathering, TV Documentary, Opinion Writing and NewsTeam (6–9 credit hours).

CMCI Electives: Students may pick from a variety of courses outside the journalism department within CMCI (6–7 credit hours).

Sample Sequence of Courses, Professional Practice Option:

Year 1—Fall: Media Tech Boot Camp (Common Curriculum) Precision Journalism (Common Curriculum) Newsgathering and Documentary Storytelling (Common Curriculum) CMCI elective

Year 1—Spring: Journalism Law and Ethics (Common Curriculum) Journalism electives

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CMCI elective

Summer: Capstone courses: 6–7 credits (e.g., Internship, Professional Project*)

NB: Students choosing the Professional Project capstone start their work during the semester before they complete the required project. During this time they work with their project advisor to prepare a proposal and have it approved by a professional project committee.

Area of Expertise Option

This option within the Department of Journalism’s MA degree is for students wishing not only to acquire advanced journalistic skills but also to complement them with an area of expertise, such as environmental science and policy. This option within the MA degree can be completed with a minimum of 42 credits and in four semesters.

All students in the MA program take a common curriculum of classes covering reporting and multimedia skills, and the law and ethics of journalism (see detailed descriptions below). In addition, students complete two required capstone courses (choosing from a list of at least three options). Electives inside the department and elsewhere in CMCI provide students an opportunity to further develop their journalistic skills and knowledge of media, communication and information issues. Lastly, students complete additional courses inside and outside of the CMCI to develop a specific area of expertise.

Common Core:

Media Tech Boot Camp (3 hours)

Precision Journalism (3 hours)

Newsgathering and Documentary Storytelling (3 hours)

Journalism Law and Ethics (3 hours)

Newsgathering Capstones: Students can choose two of the following (with additional options possible in the future): News Corps (3 hours), Internship (3 hours), Professional Project (4 hours).

Journalism and CMCI Electives: Within the Department of Journalism, students can choose from a long list of electives, including but not limited to Reporting and Writing (formerly called Newsgathering 1), Science Writing, Reporting on the Environment, Magazine and Feature Writing, TV Newsgathering, TV Documentary, TV Investigative Reporting, and News Team. Other CMCI departments offer a variety of complementary courses (6 credits).

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Electives in a Specific Area of Expertise: Currently, students can choose the Environmental Journalism Emphasis as their area of expertise, but we anticipate the creation of others as well, including Political Communication (in collaboration with Political Science), Documentary Practices (in Collaboration with Critical Media Practices), and Journalism, Religion and Spiritual Life (in collaboration with the Center for Media, Religion and Culture and the Department of Religious Studies) (18 hours).

Students choosing the Environmental Journalism Emphasis complete it by taking the Graduate Certificate in Environment, Policy and Society (EPS), which consists of 18 total credit hours. Two of the courses, Science Writing and Reporting on the Environment, are taken within the Department of Journalism and satisfy other requirements for the MA. Four of the certificate courses are taken outside the department and the college from a list of EPS courses. We also anticipate broadening student options for completing the Environmental Journalism Emphasis.

Sample Chronological Sequence of Courses, Environmental Journalism Emphasis:

Year 1—Fall: Media Tech Boot Camp (Common Curriculum) Newsgathering and Documentary Storytelling (Common Curriculum) Science Writing

Year 1—Spring: Journalism Law and Ethics (Common Curriculum) Reporting on the Environment Journalism or CMCI elective

Year 2—Fall: Precision Journalism (Common Curriculum) Environmental Certificate courses (6 hours) Journalism or CMCI elective

Summer: Capstone course (3–4 hours)

Year 2—Spring: Capstone course (3–4 hours) Environmental Certificate courses (6 hours)

NB: Students choosing the Professional Project capstone start their work during the semester before they complete the required project. During this time they work with their project advisor to prepare a proposal and have it approved by a professional project committee.

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MA Common Curriculum Course Descriptions

Media Technology Boot Camp: This one-semester intensive course will offer a foundation in the technologies of journalistic storytelling across a variety of established and emerging media platforms, such as printed publications, television, radio, online publications, blogs, social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), smartphone/tablet, and emerging forms of communication. The course could be team taught so as to allow the students to best garner expertise in a variety of areas. Students will emerge from the course with an understanding of the technical tools they’ll need as journalists. (Resource Note: The delivery of this labor-intensive Boot Camp will require lab and lecture facilities with state-of-the-art technology. We strongly recommend that it be taught in the ATLAS building with instructional support from the TAM staff.)

Newsgathering and Documentary Storytelling: This one-semester course will help journalism graduate students put their growing technological prowess to work in pursuit of advanced storytelling in a complex and ever-evolving mediascape. It will cover the craft of research and reporting on public issues and news events, as well as the construction of narrative in the journalism and documentary traditions. With faculty, students will explore various techniques, including traditional print reporting and writing, multimedia production, cross-media storytelling, and the emerging field of trans-media storytelling used by the likes of the National Geographic Society. The goal is to help students develop skills and knowledge that are independent of any single medium or platform, leaving them better prepared for new developments that will inevitably arise in their professional media production careers.

Precision Journalism: This one-semester course instructs students in data-driven investigative reporting. It includes hands-on, in-depth instruction in how to gather data from census reports, commercial databases, global information networks, and other sources, and also how to employ spreadsheets to analyze the information in ways that can help deepen and strengthen journalistic stories on a wide variety of subjects. In the course, students will work on specific information-gathering and analysis projects that will help inform journalistic work they are doing in other courses.

Journalism Law and Ethics: This one-semester course for MA and PhD students will explore the legal frameworks of media production, curation, consumption, subject privacy, and intellectual property. It will also cover the current and historical frameworks used to examine the ethical issues that arise in newsgathering and publication. At a much deeper level than the undergraduate version of this course, it will delve into the subtleties and variability of the case law precedent system that governs most legal questions in media production.

PhD in Journalism Studies

This degree is offered as a track within CMCI’s doctoral program in Media Research and Practice (see Section 2 above). It recognizes the unique status of journalism in an increasingly complex mediascape, while highlighting the role of social science and the

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humanities in guiding the democratic aspirations of media in an era of technological disruption and the challenges to professional legitimacy and identity this disruption has entailed. The need for a Journalism Studies program has never been greater. This doctoral program highlights the university’s commitment to supporting journalism at a time when that discipline needs an infusion of intellectual capital. The university cares deeply about the revival of journalism as the professional context in which ideas are communicated and interpreted in the public sphere in ways that enhance understanding of increasingly complex issues. The efficacy of policymaking, the capacity for public deliberation and government accountability all depend to a great extent on a knowledge-based journalism that is more comfortable with scholarly expertise than traditional journalism has been and that is confident in its application to solving problems. Moreover, journalism scholars can provide reliable research results to those eager to safeguard journalism’s viability as an institution but struggling for clarity about its future. The program is highly interdisciplinary in scope, and students take at least one-third of their courses outside the Department of Journalism. We thus offer students opportunities to apply theories and methods from communication, political science, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, economics, business, history, literature, linguistics, public policy and law. Sub-areas within Journalism Studies include the sociology of media, the history of journalism, media processes and effects, media and politics, media law and policy, science communication, professional ethics, transnational media systems, and the dynamic interplay of journalism with emerging media.

Doctoral candidates take 42 hours of course work before taking written and oral comprehensive examinations, normally at the end of the third year. While fulfilling course requirements, students master a range of quantitative and qualitative methods. They then go on to complete a traditional dissertation in an area of specialization of their choice; but the program also encourages the practice of public scholarship in new and innovative forms. The degree appeals especially to practicing journalists who wish to join the academy, and we promote the program in professional contexts in order to draw applications from both legacy and emerging media. Required Courses and Semester Credit Hours

Course work includes a one-semester, 6-hour Proseminar (Theories of Journalism), required of all first-year doctoral students; 15–18 hours in one or two areas of emphasis within CMCI; 12–15 hours of electives taken outside CMCI; and 6 hours of the qualitative and quantitative methods courses offered within the CMCI. (Examples of areas of emphasis include Journalism and Politics, Journalism and New Technologies, International Journalism, Literary Journalism, Journalism History, Journalism Law and Policy, Journalism Economics, Informatics for Journalism and Visual Journalism). The faculty encourages students to present their research on innovative media platforms as well as in traditional academic writing. The journalism doctoral program draws on two longtime courses in Media Studies:

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Qualitative Media Research Methods: Examines methods of qualitative data gathering and analysis in the mass media context. Quantitative Media Research Methods: Examines methods of quantitative data gathering and analysis in the mass media context. In addition, the program offers (or plans to offer) the following new courses: Proseminar: Theories of Journalism Studies: Introduces the principal concepts, literature and theoretical and paradigmatic perspectives of journalism studies, and explores their ties and contributions to parallel domains in the social sciences and humanities. Elaboration of Social Theory for Journalism Studies Journalism and Technology Journalism and Politics Visual Communication Philosophy and Ethics of Journalism Journalism and Conflict Literary Journalism Freedom of Expression Economic Models for Journalism Readings in Journalism History International Journalism Sociology of Newsmaking Journalism and the Public: Cultural Approaches Alternatives to Mainstream Journalism Political Economy of News Media Journalism students and faculty pursue a variety of intriguing research questions, such as: How do journalists use new technologies to engage citizens in political deliberation? How do journalists discover and eventually adopt new technologies for their professional practice? How has technology led journalism to a more global set of normative practices? How are prospects for media reform enabled or constrained by the ideology and epistemology of professional journalism? What economic models can journalism use to recover from the overthrow of its current business models and become a more stable institution in global society? Which are the most effective among the many new technology-enabled formats for journalistic storytelling?

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4. DEPARTMENT OF ADVERTISING, PUBLIC RELATIONS AND MEDIA DESIGN (APRD)

Mission Statement

The strategic communication problems that organizations and society face today are more complex than ever before. Finding solutions for such complicated problems involves more than just a mastery of technical skills and tools. It also takes a greater breadth of knowledge, a more conscious and disciplined creative problem-solving process, and an eagerness to step into uncharted waters where risk-taking is as much in demand as hard work—only a tolerance for failure makes success possible. The Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design (APRD) strives to produce leaders in the area of strategic communication who have mastered a design-thinking process grounded in analytical and creative thought. We believe in amplifying our students’ curiosity, increasing their tolerance for risk and adventurous thinking, and encouraging them to look at life and a career with an entrepreneur’s eye for opportunity. APRD is committed to providing students the necessary tools and techniques to think critically, adapt, create and above all lead in a rapidly changing media world. Educational Goals APRD faculty are dedicated to discovering and transmitting knowledge associated with advertising, public relations and media design through individual research effort and by fostering collaborative research projects with other units. In particular, our department encourages partnerships that facilitate the exploration of topics such as the persuasive effects of new media, the role of technology in the creative process, the ways in which big data and analytics impact strategy development, and the best means to measure effectiveness. Our goal is to help students acquire the kind of in-depth expertise in at least one area of strategic communication and design that will enable them to generate ideas and solve problems for a variety of organizations, including but not limited to ad agencies, PR firms, publishing and design firms, nonprofits, start-ups and personal ventures. We produce graduates who are forward-looking and have a deep interest in and knowledge of diverse cultures both within the United States and throughout the world.

The Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design actively encourages students to enroll in courses offered both within and outside CMCI. Similarly, many of our courses (as well as the APRD certificates in strategic communication and design) are open to students in other units on the grounds that the design-thinking process can be used to solve problems in a wide variety of disciplines.

Degree Programs

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The advertising program at CU Boulder has existed for many decades and has earned an international reputation. Our ad program is indeed considered one of the best in the nation. We have also offered many courses in public relations both in the former School of Journalism and Mass Communication and in the program that replaced it in 2011. This means that, building on the resources already in place, the only additions to our proposed degree are a track and related courses in media design. However, APRD will also offer two new degrees at the graduate level: a master of arts and a doctorate in Strategic Communication.

Bachelor of Science in Strategic Communication

“Strategic communication” is an umbrella term covering all three undergraduate tracks offered by the department. The tracks from which students are free to choose are (1) Media Design, (2) Advertising and (3) Public Relations.

Each track requires 40 credit hours, comprised of the 15-hour departmental Common Curriculum and 25 hours of specialized course work. The courses of specialized studies include “Strategic Communication Campaigns,” a 4-hour capstone course completed in the student’s final year.

Required Courses and Semester Credit Hours

APRD Common Curriculum To complete the department Common requirement, students take: 1st semester:

APRD 1010: Idea Industries (3 hours) APRD 1020: Introduction to Design Thinking (3 hours, not required but strongly recommended)

2nd semester: APRD 2010: Introduction to Creative Concepts (3 hours) APRD 2020: Introduction to Branding and Strategy (3 hours)

Any time after 2nd semester: APRD 3000: Strategic Communication Law and Professional Ethics (3 hours) APRD 3900: Internship (any time after 3rd semester: at least 3 hours)

Media Design Media Design consists of 2 required courses (6 hours), 5 electives taken from the general APRD course list (15 hours) and the capstone campaign course taken in the final year (3 hours + 1 hour of lab/workshop = 4 hours).

3rd semester: APRD 3110: Fundamentals of Design (3 hours)

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APRD 3120: Intermediate Creative Concepts for Digital and Print Media (3 hours)

3rd through 8th semesters:

EITHER 5 electives offered by APRD under the Media Design track, OR one of two suggested pathways:

1. Creative Advertising: Design for Digital Media OR Writing for Digital Media (3 hours); Portfolio 1 (3 hours); Portfolio 2 (3 hours); and 2 electives under Media Design track. 2. General Design: Design for Digital Media (3 hours); Human Factors and Design Psychology (3 hours); Design Portfolio (3 hours); and 2 electives under Media Design track. General Electives: Design History; Design Research; Information Visualization; The Entrepreneurial Mindset; Leadership: Styles and Situations; Imagining Futures. Media Design Electives: Design for Digital Media; Writing for Digital Media; Web Design and Information Architecture; Designing Mobile Apps; Game Design; Motion Design; Package Design; Designing Brand Experiences; Interaction Design; Human Factors and Design Psychology; Designing User Experience (prerequisite: Interaction Design OR Human Factors and Design Psychology); Advanced Graphic Design (Grad/Undergrad) (prerequisite: Design for Digital Media).

7th and 8th semesters: APRD 4900: Capstone in Strategic Communication Campaigns (3 hours + 1

hour of lab/workshop = 4 hours) Advertising Advertising consists of 3 required courses (9 hours), 4 electives taken from the general APRD course list (12 hours) and the capstone campaign course taken in the final year (4 hours). All advertising students are also required to maintain a portfolio of their work, preferably online. A portfolio review is required for graduation. 3rd and 4th semesters: APRD 3210: Strategic Communication Research Methods (3 hours; this

course is a prerequisite for Strategy Design) APRD 3220: Communication Platforms (3 hours) APRD 3230: Strategy Design (3 hours)

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4th through 8th semesters: EITHER 4 electives offered under the Advertising track OR one of two suggested

pathways:

1. Media Planning: Media Planning (3 hours); Brand Analytics and Metrics (3 hours), and 2 electives under Advertising track. 2. Account Planning and Management: Account Management (3 hours); Consumer Insights (3 hours); and 2 electives under Advertising track.

General Electives: Branding and Popular Culture; History of Advertising and PR; Branding for a Multicultural World; Global Brands; Sustainable Branding Practices; Sports and Entertainment Branding; Branding for Nonprofits. Advertising Electives: Brand Management Principles; Brand Relationships and Psychology; The Art of Negotiation; Brand Experiences; Creative Process for Strategists; Curiosity for Strategists; Consumer Psychology and Emerging Media; Cultural Engineering; Brand Development and Gaming; Quantitative Methods for Creative Strategists.

7th and 8th semesters: APRD 4990: Capstone Strategic Communication Campaign (3 hours + 1 hour lab/workshop = 4 hours)

NB: It is strongly recommended that students pursuing the Advertising track take the 1-credit workshops APRD offers to present special skills to add to their skill sets and portfolios. Examples of such workshops include: Effective Presentation Techniques, Excel Ninja Training, Portfolio for Strategists and Social Media Bootcamp. Public Relations Students pursuing the Public Relations track take 3 required courses (9 hours), 4 electives (12 hours) and a capstone strategic communication campaign (4 hours). All PR students are required to maintain a portfolio of their work, preferably online. A portfolio review is required for graduation. 3rd semester:

APRD 3210: Strategic Communication Research Methods (3 hours, required)

4th through 7th semesters: APRD 3310: Introduction to Public Relations (3 hours, required) APRD 3320: Strategic Writing for Public Relations (3 hours, required)

4th through 8th semesters: 4 electives offered under the Public Relations track:

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General Electives: Persuasion (COMM 3320); Organizational Communication (COMM 2600); Public Speaking (COMM 1300); Argumentation and Advocacy (COMM 3310); PR and Society; History of Advertising and Public Relations; Social Media Strategies; PR Law and Ethics.

Public Relations Electives: Strategic Relationship Building; Strategic Planning and Case Studies; Public Diplomacy; Nonprofit PR; Crisis Communication; Healthcare and Behavior Change; Governmental PR; Corporate Finance and Investor Relations; PR Metrics and Analytics; Sports PR; Special Topics in PR.

7th and 8th semesters: APDR 4990: Capstone Strategic Communication Campaign (3 hours + 1 hour lab/workshop = 4 hours)

NB: It is strongly recommended that students pursuing the Public Relations track take the 1-credit workshops ADPR offers to present special skills to add to their skill sets and portfolios. Examples include: Social Media Bootcamp, Event Planning Workshop, and Presentation Skills and Public Speaking (or How to Do a Killer Presentation).

Certificate in Design for Social Change

The department also offers a 4-course (12-hour) undergraduate Certificate in Design for Social Change.

The courses are:

Introduction to Design Thinking Design Research Introduction to Design for Social Change Advanced Design for Social Change (prerequisite: Intro to Design for Social

Change

Master of Arts in Strategic Communication Design

Our MA in Strategic Communication Design adopts a design-thinking approach to solving strategic communication problems, with a particular emphasis on creative and analytical thinking as well as the innovative multi-platform use of emergent digital media.

The master’s program is positioned to draw heavily from units both within and outside the College of Media, Communication and Information. Many of the courses students will be interested in come from other units such as information science and communication (in CMCI) and marketing (in the Leeds School of Business). In other words, the proposed graduate degree in strategic communication design is an ideal

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candidate for cross-disciplinary teaching, concurrent or cross-listed courses and collaborative research both within the new college and across the university.

The MA program offers two tracks of specialization: a Professional Media Design track and an Academic Research track.

Professional Media Design is aimed at candidates with some work experience (either in or outside the area of strategic communication) who are interested in furthering their careers. The track prepares students for leadership roles in advertising, public relations and media design, with a focus on areas such as graphic design, app design, game design, product and package design, and Web design. The Academic Research track is aimed at students interested in conducting basic research in the area of strategic communication with a view to pursuing a PhD. Professional Track in Media Design The rise of digital media has dramatically changed the professional design landscape. As a result, graduate programs need both greater breadth and greater depth than ever in order to prepare students for design careers. This is why many of the graduate programs we reviewed require students to complete 48 hours. However, by creating a carefully focused program, we can give our students the preparation they need in 39 hours over two years. The Professional Media Design track requires 33 hours of coursework and 4 hours devoted to a capstone professional project. In addition, one 2-hour course taken in the 4th semester, on client relations, contributes to the project in that many students may in fact be working for actual clients, and all of them will have at least notional ones. Given the importance of client relations in professional life, this means that the professional project consumes 6 of the total of 39 hours. In addition to the 2-hour course in client relations, student course work consists of 7 foundation courses (21 hours) taught by the department, 2 electives (6 hours) chosen from the department list and 2 electives (6 hours) chosen from other units inside or outside CMCI. 1st semester:

Transmedia Design (3 hours) Visual Systems (3 hours) Typography 1 (3 hours) Design for Digital Media 1 (3 hours)

2nd semester:

Design for Digital Media 2 (3 hours) Identity Systems (3 hours) Time- and Motion-Based Narrative (3 hours) Outside Elective (3 hours)

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3rd semester: Professional Project 1 (1 hour) Outside Elective (3 hours) Elective (3 hours) Elective (3 hours)

4th semester: Professional Project 2 (3 hours) Client Relations (2 hours)

Academic Research Track The Academic Research track is a 36-hour program and typically takes two years. Students may choose between a thesis option (6 hours) or a comprehensive examination option involving 2 electives (6 hours), plus a written exam. In addition to completing a 3-course Academic Research core (9 hours) covering strategic communication (Theory and Practice, Qualitative Research Methods and Quantitative Research Methods), students pursue two emphases: a 4-course emphasis (12 hours) drawing on APDR and a 3-course emphasis (9 hours) drawn from any area of study either within or outside CMCI, including but not limited to marketing (Leeds School of Business), information science or communication (CMCI) and economics, anthropology or sociology (College of Arts and Sciences).

The recommended course-flow for the thesis option is as follows:

1st semester: Strategic Communication: Theory and Practice (3 hours) Qualitative Methods (3 hours) Elective (3 hours)

2nd semester: Quantitative Methods (3 hours) Elective (3 hours) Outside Elective (3 hours)

3rd semester: Elective (3 hours) Elective (3 hours) Outside Elective (3 hours)

4th semester: Thesis (6 hours) Outside Elective (3 hours)

PhD in Strategic Communication

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The Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design offers a research-based PhD in strategic communication as a track in the general doctoral program in media research and practice (see Section 2 above).

The PhD in strategic communication is an interdisciplinary program dedicated to producing graduates who wish to seek teaching and research positions at Research I universities or research positions in industry in the area of strategic communication (advertising and/or PR).

The PhD program is purposely designed to be broad, flexible and interdisciplinary in order to encourage students to collaborate and take advantage of the full range of courses and faculty research interests available both within and outside CMCI. Graduate students in APRD are highly encouraged to pursue research interests and find connections with other units in CMCI and across the campus. Graduates of the doctoral program are expected to be thought leaders in the field of strategic communication and actively engage in expanding the frontiers of knowledge in our discipline by producing scholarship and research at the highest level.

The doctoral degree is designed to be a full-time program, with reviews conducted each year to evaluate each student’s performance and progress. While we expect degree completion times to vary, the recommended time is four years, with three years dedicated to course work and the final year spent writing the dissertation.

Required Courses and Semester Credit Hours

There are three aspects to the doctoral degree in strategic communication: course work, comprehensive exams and research that leads to a dissertation.

The PhD degree requires a total of at least 76 credit hours of graduate study (46 hours of course work plus 30 dissertation hours). In addition to taking 10 hours of Common Curriculum courses, students choose three courses (9 hours) in advanced research methods and two emphases, one inside APRD and the other outside. The inside emphasis must include a course in the theory and practice of strategic communication.

The following is the recommended breakdown of credit hours for a PhD in Strategic Communication:

Required  Common Curriculum  Courses  (10  hours):  Proseminar 1: Introduction to Research Faculty (1 hour) Proseminar 2: Theories of Mass Communication (3 hours) Qualitative Research Methods (3 hours) Quantitative Research Methods (3 hours)

Elective Courses (36 hours) Advanced Research Methods (9 hours) Inside emphasis: 5 electives (15 hours)

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Outside emphasis: 4 electives (12 hours) Courses from which students choose electives for the inside emphasis are: Interactive Media: Theory and Practice

Media Effects International and Multicultural Branding Brand Management and Strategy Social and Mobile Branding Creativity and Design Theory History of Design Health Communication Strategic Communication Law and Ethics Current Issues in Research in Strategic Communication

Given the interdisciplinary nature of our PhD, we expect course work for the outside emphasis to come from other units both inside and outside the College of Media, Communication and Information. Possible areas of concentration outside APRD include: journalism, media studies, information studies, communication, marketing, sociology, women’s studies, anthropology, film studies, media production, art and art history, computer science, psychology, economics and ethnic studies. In other words, the proposed doctoral degree in strategic communication is an ideal candidate for cross-disciplinary teaching, cross-listed courses and collaborative research both within the new college and across the university. The doctoral comprehensive examinations are normally taken at the end of students’ third year in the program.

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5. DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION (COMM)

Mission Statement

Faculty members and students in the Department of Communication study how communication enables people to create, share and transform meaning and ways of living together. The word “communication” is derived from the Latin verb communicare, which means “to make common.” Hence, one important focus of department members is on the process of making things common, with communication studied and taught as a set of capabilities, competencies, resources and tools that people can learn to use to accomplish personal, professional and societal goals. Among these goals are initiating and maintaining healthy interpersonal and family relationships; making effective group, organizational and institutional decisions; and promoting fair and just societies that respect freedom of speech. An even more important focus of department members emphasizes that which is made common, a constitutive perspective that views identities, relationships, groups, organizations, institutions and societies as resulting from the communication conduct in which people engage.

Educational Goals

The CMCI’s Department of Communication offers undergraduate students a liberal arts education that promotes a deep conceptual understanding of, an ability to critically reflect on, and the competency to create and sustain effective and ethical communication processes, practices and products. Students learn qualitative and quantitative methodologies to understand and interpret complex mediated and nonmediated communicative acts, especially their social significance. At the MA and PhD levels, the department offers a concentrated focus on three important areas of communication study: discourse and society, organizational communication, and rhetoric. Running throughout those three areas is an exploration of new technologies and emergent forms of communication (e.g., social media), and a commitment to help students become engaged citizens and social change agents.

Through research, the Department of Communication produces scholarship that expands the boundaries of knowledge about the context-bound practices that constitute social worlds. Using both social-scientific and humanist research methodologies, we study a variety of social phenomena to develop distinct communication-based theories and explanations about the complexities of human interaction. Despite an array of individual research agendas/foci, examples of cross-cutting themes that integrate our scholarship (research and teaching) include:

Design and Practice: We strive to understand and facilitate the planning and enacting of communication that creates and maintains structures, processes and practices that promote high-quality human interaction.

Culture and Democracy: We critically examine how communication constitutes and reflects cultural assumptions/beliefs, structures and practices, especially those that enable

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citizens to negotiate competing ideological, political and ethical commitments in the larger social context of citizens participating in the proposal, development and creation of policies that serve the greater good.

Community and Justice: We study how communication binds people together collectively such that they care about one another and work together collaboratively to confront significant issues and problems facing them, especially power, discrimination and inequality, to create more fair and just societies.

The study of communication has been open to interdisciplinary inquiry since its inception. Faculty members in the department will continue to seek interdisciplinary connections with other units of CMCI to expand understanding of the creative connections among communication theories, methods and practices. Looking into the future, communication faculty envision CMCI as a laboratory for exploring how communication theories and methods enhance communication practices, how practices sharpen theories and methods, and how the theory–method–practice nexus translates into a curriculum that leads students to be informed practitioners capable of understanding and harnessing the power of communication.

Degree Programs

Bachelor of Arts in Communication

The bachelor’s degree in communication provides analytic work from both humanistic and social-scientific perspectives, and practical work to improve communication performance in various kinds of situations.

The undergraduate degree in communication emphasizes knowledge and awareness of:

• the history and development of communication as an object of scholarly study, including both the humanistic and social-scientific traditions;

• the basic contexts in which communication is enacted (e.g., interpersonal, group, organizational and public contexts);

• the various processes of interaction within these contexts; • the basic methods of investigating questions about communication; • the ethical issues and responsibilities of communication practice; • the diversity of communication styles associated with gender and cultural

differences; and • the uses and implications of communication technology.

In addition, students completing the BS in communication are expected to acquire the ability and skills to:

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• express ideas in an informed, coherent and effective manner, particularly the ability to articulate and develop a sustained argument, both orally and in writing;

• analyze, criticize and evaluate messages and interactions in a variety of practical contexts, both orally and in writing; and

• adapt messages and negotiate interactions responsibly in diverse and changing situations.

Graduate study in communication examines problems of human interaction and relationship, participation and collaboration, and deliberation, dialogue and decision making in personal relationships, workplace and institutional contexts and community and public life.

The master’s program provides students with knowledge of selected bodies of communication scholarship and develops their skills in analyzing complex communication situations for a range of professional positions in business, nonprofit institutions and other types of community groups, and for doctoral study in communication.

The doctoral program provides students with opportunities to conduct theoretically grounded, practically useful research that crosses traditional academic boundaries and that prepares them to assume faculty positions in universities, as well as in research and training programs in business, government and social service agencies.

Required Courses and Semester Credit Hours

Majors must complete a minimum of 33 credit hours of course work in communication, 18 of which must be upper division (3000 level or higher). Only courses with grades of C- or better count toward the major, and the overall major GPA must be 2.000 (a C- is 1.700).

COMM 1210: Perspectives on Human Communication (3 hours) COMM 1300: Public Speaking (3 hours) COMM 1600: Group Interaction (3 hours) COMM 3210: Human Communication Theory (3 hours) COMM 3300: Rhetorical Foundations of Communication (3 hours) One methods course: COMM 3740, 3750, or 3760 (3 hours) One senior seminar: COMM 4220, 4300, 4400, 4510, 4600, or 4610 (3 hours) Two of the following: COMM 2360 Campaigns and Revolutions (3 hours) COMM 2400 Discourse, Culture, and Identities (3 hours) COMM 2500 Interpersonal Communication (3 hours) COMM 2600 Organizational Communication (3 hours) Two additional upper-division electives (3000- or 4000-level courses): 4000-level courses may be taken twice (only twice) with different topics (6 hours)

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NB: Up to 8 credit hours of independent study and 6 hours of internships may be taken. These are upper-division elective hours but do not count toward major requirements. Eligible students interested in graduating with department honors should contact the department’s honors coordinator as soon as possible.

The department encourages its majors to take related courses in business; English; ethnic studies; linguistics; media studies; philosophy; political science; sociology; speech, language and hearing sciences; and theatre and dance.

The department also encourages participation in optional programs such as study abroad, internships and graduating with honors.

Graduate Degrees in Communication

The Department of Communication offers programs of study leading to the MA and PhD in communication. Graduate study in the department can emphasize any one of the three following areas of specialization, corresponding to the emphases of department faculty:

1. Organizational Communication Faculty teaching and researching in the program area of organizational communication are recognized for critical and interpretive scholarship on the constitutive role of communication in human organizing. We explore connections between organizational change, power, culture, technology, gender, identity, knowledge and discourse. We focus on both corporate and alternative organizations, including nonprofit, community and stakeholder groups. 2. Discourse and Society Students with an emphasis in discourse and society consider the way communicators’ discourse expression (language, talk, interactional devices, semiotic practices, written texts) reflect and construct societal activities and institutional scenes, as well as how discourse expression varies across different speech communities. 3. Rhetoric The rhetoric program area integrates contemporary approaches with cultural studies and the interpretive turn in social science. Its faculty are linked by a common interest in the persuasive dimensions of discourse with emphases on the rhetoric of science, vernacular rhetoric and publics, and rhetoric and social thought. In addition, students may explore one or more of the following cross-cutting themes: Critical and Cultural Studies Faculty at CU Boulder represent some of the foremost critical and cultural scholars in the discipline, represented throughout our areas of program focus. Topics of study include power and control, popular culture, race and gender, and media. Studies in Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine

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The communicative dimensions of science, technology, engineering and medicine (STEM) constitute an expanding theme in departmental research and teaching. Central topic areas include the rhetoric of science and medicine and the history of race in science; computer-mediated communication and collaboration in group, organizational and leisure settings; and the study of technological cultures and discourses. Interdisciplinary Connections The department fosters strong ties with other units in the College of Media, Communication and Information and elsewhere on campus, including the Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences; the Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society (ATLAS); the Center for Environmental Journalism; the Center for Humanities and the Arts; the Center for Media, Religion and Culture; the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research; and the Program for Writing and Rhetoric. Master of Arts in Communication The master’s program serves individuals for whom this will be a terminal degree, as well as those seeking ultimately to complete the PhD (either at CU or at another institution). Students wishing to continue in the department’s PhD program following completion of the master’s degree must reapply at that time.

In consultation with their advisor, students in the master’s program may select one of two options for the completion of requirements: thesis, or course work with examination. For the thesis option, the student works with the advisor to develop a thesis proposal, which is approved by a faculty committee during the second year. The thesis is defended in an oral examination. The course work with examination option requires students to complete, in the spring semester of their second year, approximately 6 hours of written examination, followed by a 1-hour oral defense. With normal progress (full-time), the MA can be completed in two years.

Required Courses and Semester Credit Hours

Students pursuing the thesis option are required to complete at least 33 graduate credit hours, including 27 credit hours of course work and 6 thesis hours (including oral defense of the thesis). Course requirements include Communication Research and Theory (COMM 6010), at least one methods course (currently COMM 6020 or COMM 6030), at least two readings courses (currently COMM 5210, COMM 5320, COMM 5420, COMM 5620, or COMM 5720), and five additional graduate-level courses. Course work completed for the thesis option may include a maximum of 6 hours of independent study. A maximum of 9 hours may be transferred from graduate work completed in other programs and/or institutions. A maximum of 9 credit hours of courses may be taken outside the department. Transfer and outside courses combined may not exceed 12 credit hours.

Students pursuing the course work with examination option are required to complete at least 33 graduate credit hours, a written comprehensive examination and oral defense of

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the examination. Course requirements include Communication Research and Theory (COMM 6010), at least one methods course (currently COMM 6020 or COMM 6030), at least two readings courses (currently COMM 5210, COMM 5320, COMM 5420, COMM 5620, or COMM 5720), and seven additional graduate-level courses.

Course work completed for the examination option may include a maximum of 6 hours of independent study. A maximum of 9 hours may be transferred from graduate work completed in other programs and/or institutions. A maximum of 9 credit hours of courses may be taken outside the department. Transfer and outside courses combined may not exceed 12 credit hours.

PhD in Communication

Required Courses and Semester Credit Hours

The student’s individual course requirements must be specified in a plan of study approved by the student’s committee. The committee must approve any changes to this plan of study. A minimum of 54 graduate credit hours of course work is required (plus 30 hours of dissertation credit, for a minimum total of 84 credits). At least 30 graduate credit hours of course work must be in communication. Requirements for PhD courses include: 1. The introduction to the field, COMM 6010: Communication Research and Theory. 2. Broad-based background in communication. This requirement will usually be satisfied by completing the following graduate courses or their equivalent transferred from another institution: Readings in Communication Theory, Readings in Rhetoric, Quantitative Research Methods, and Qualitative Research Methods. 3. Advanced expertise in a primary area of specialization. This requirement can be satisfied by taking courses, seminars and independent studies in the primary specialty declared in the student’s approved plan of study. This can include courses taken outside the department. 4. Advanced expertise in a primary methodology appropriate to the area of specialization. Advanced expertise means competence to conduct research that will satisfy professional standards in the area of specialization. This requirement will usually be satisfied by taking methodology courses in communication and/or cognate disciplines. Methodological expertise can also be developed through independent studies and participation in research projects. The methodology may be primarily quantitative (statistics, experimental design, measurement, etc.), primarily qualitative (ethnography, conversation/discourse analysis, rhetorical criticism, etc.) or may include a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods. Although the PhD program requires that students choose two of three methods courses, those who seek to claim a scholarly identity as a social scientist (as opposed to one grounded in the humanities) are highly encouraged to take both the quantitative (COMM 6020) and qualitative (6030) methods courses.

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5. Expertise in a secondary area of specialization or methodology. This requirement can be satisfied by taking courses, seminars and independent studies in the secondary specialty declared in the student’s approved plan of study. This can include courses taken outside the department.

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6. DEPARTMENT OF CRITICAL MEDIA PRACTICES (DCMP)

Mission Statement

The Department of Critical Media Practices (DCMP) is dedicated to a deep understanding of the historical and contemporary context of human communication and expression. The increased flows and interactions between people and new technologies are transforming the world of cultural production and consumption. This process of cultural globalization requires local, regional, national and global connectivity. Although the Internet has provided an important means of connection and exchange other connections are made possible through the collaborative potential of people working with computers in virtual environments across great distances. The workflow for many media producers now includes file sharing with editors and artists from around the world. The multimedia capabilities of a new generation of computers such as laptops, tablets, and digital cameras have placed powerful tools within the reach of artist media makers. New technologies generate hybrid forms of art and interdisciplinary ways for artists to work. As such, we need a clear understanding of the significance of these developments placed within the broader background of cultural and historical understanding.

DCMP addresses the changing landscape of electronic media making by developing both analytical and production skills across a wide range of platforms, practices and technologies while simultaneously placing them within the broader perspective of culture and history. The department explores cross-platform media production, computational media and creative ethnography, as well as other time-based media arts practices such as locative media and performance art. Our convergent approach to media spans a variety of media tools including digital photography, audio/video editing and single camera video production, open source programming, and digital single lens reflex cameras, as well as emergent tools under development. With an emphasis on the interaction between critical theory and media production practices, students are encouraged to not only thoughtfully engage with the diversity of media cultures but to also become active entrepreneurial media producers, directors, writers, editors and scholars at the forefront of emerging cultural industries. Critical Media Practices prepares students to make productive use of the tools to engage creatively with the future trajectories of media, wherever they may lead.

The department values collaboration, cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary teaching, creative work, research and teaching. The Department fosters outreach to—and student and faculty participation from—other schools, colleges, centers, and facilities throughout CU Boulder and the wider Colorado community.

Educational Goals

Students of Critical Media Practices will be exposed to a variety of approaches concerning the study of media, information and communication through Common Curriculum CMCI classes. The undergraduate program is designed to provide basic hands-on grounding in production theory, aesthetics, techniques and approaches emphasizing innovative

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approaches to media making. As such, the department provides a rich and varied resource for cross-pollination and collaboration. At the graduate level, the program features a terminal MFA as well as graduate certificates. The department also supports a practice-based PhD in Emergent Technologies and Art Practices. This innovative merger of theory and praxis, spanning undergraduate through graduate education, places CU on the cutting edge of institutions exploring innovative models for educating twenty-first-century students as well as publishing and disseminating scholarship. Degree Programs Bachelor of Arts in Media Production Students complete the foundational courses in theory and practice before proceeding to advanced courses in media production and critical studies. Once the basic requirements are completed, students in this major may elect to focus on a specific area of concentration. Students may also elect to follow a comprehensive approach to media production provided by a 9-credit-hour elective structure. Students from within or outside CMCI can pursue course work within DCMP, provided they meet course prerequisites, though seating priority is given to declared majors. With advisor and faculty guidance, DCMP majors may elect to design a 12-credit-hour concentration derived from areas within the CMCI. Bachelor of Arts, Digital Media Cultures concentration Students follow the basic major requirements described above, but instead of taking electives they complete the 12-credit-hour certificate offered through the ATLAS Technology, Art and Media program. This provides students with an opportunity for an in-depth exploration of contemporary digital media cultures. Bachelor of Arts, Documentary Practices concentration Students follow the basic major requirements described above, but instead of taking electives they complete 12 hours of prescribed course work within DCMP focusing on documentary storytelling. Bachelor of Arts, Music Technology concentration Students follow the basic major requirements described above, but instead of taking electives they complete the comprehensive course work in the Music Technology Certificate offered through the College of Music. Bachelor of Arts, Performance Media concentration Students follow the basic major requirements described above, but instead of taking electives they complete courses that develop a performance vocabulary and explore the historical and cultural contexts of performance through project-based courses exploring the design and implementation of media installations. The capstone project will be a large-scale performance or installation. Required Courses and Semester Credit Hours

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Students will take the foundational courses in theory and practice (DCMP 1400: Introduction to Media Screen Cultures (3 hours) and DCMP 2500: Introduction to Media Practices (4 hours) before proceeding to advanced courses in media production. Critical studies courses require that students take DCMP 1400: Introduction to Media Screen Cultures (3 hours). In addition to the basic requirements, students in this major may elect to focus on a specific area of concentration. Students may also elect to follow a comprehensive approach to media production provided by a nine credit hour elective structure. Students from within or outside the college may pursue course work within DCMP, provided they meet course prerequisites, though seating priority is given to declared majors. With advisor and faculty guidance, DCMP majors may elect to design a 12 credit hour concentration derived from areas within the college. All students will be required to take the capstone course DCMP 4900: Concepts and Practices of New Media (3 hours) in their final year. Credit distribution for BA in Media Production: Critical Media Practices courses (12 credit hours); Interdisciplinary Media Production requirements (13 credit hours); and Production electives (9 credit hours) or a DCMP concentration (12–18 credit hours). Required Studio Courses (13 credit hours): DCMP 2500: Introduction to Media Practices (4 hours) DCMP 2600: Creative Media Making (3 hours) DCMP 3500: Digital Photographic Practices (3 hours) DCMP 4900: Concepts and Practices of New Media (3 hours) Studio Electives Courses (Rotating Electives): DCMP 2710: Media Production Methods and Ideas (3 hours) DCMP 2720: Animation (3 hours) DCMP 2810: Documentary Media Poetics (3 hours) DCMP 3610: Contemporary Image Making Practices (3 hours) DCMP 3620: Images and Stories (3 hours) DCMP 3710/ ATLS 3030: Fundamentals of Digital Design (3 hours) DCMP 3720 / ENGL 3856 / ATLAS 3519: Multimedia Composition (3 hours) DCMP 3810: Engaged Documentary Media Practices (3 hours) DCMP 3820: Introduction to Performance Media (3 hours) DCMP 3830: Performance Design for Media (3 hours) DCMP 3840: Sound Practices (3 hours) DCMP 3910: Media Production Topics (3 hours) DCMP 3990: Media Professional Seminar (2 hours) DCMP 4610: Small Screen Storytelling (3 hours) DCMP 4620: Media Installations and Environments (3 hours) DCMP 4630: Fundamentals of Computational Media (3 hours) DCMP 4710 / THTR 4095: Projection Design (3 hours) DCMP 4720/ ARTS 4104: Performance/Installation (3 hours) DCMP 4730 / ARTS 4176: New Directions in Digital Art (3 hours)

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DCMP 4810: Advanced Documentary Media Practices (3 hours) DCMP 4820: Ethnographic Media (3 hours) DCMP 4910: Independent Study (3 hours) DCMP 4920: Media Production Internships (3 hours) Required Media Production Critical Studies Courses (9 credit hours): DCMP 1400: Introduction to Media Screen Cultures (3 hours) DCMP 2100: Approaches to Historical Media Practices (3 hours) DCMP 2400: Media Aesthetics (3 hours) Media Production Critical Studies Electives DCMP 2010/ATLS 2000: The Meaning of Information Technology (3 credit hours) DCMP 3110/ARTS 3236: Electronic Arts Survey (3 hours) DCMP 3210: Interactive Digital Cultures (3 hours) DCMP 3350: Modes of Documentary Media History (3 hours) DCMP 3410: Topics in Media Studies (3 hours) DCMP 3450: Critical Perspectives in Media Practices (3 hours) DCMP 4110: Cultures of Digital Sound (3 hours) DCMP 4220: Digital Archives in Media Practices (3 hours) DCMP 4310: Screen Culture and Globalization (3 hours) DCMP 4320: Media Engagement in Digital Diasporas (3 hours) DCMP 4410: Topics in Contemporary Screen Technologies (3 hours) DCMP 4450: Contemporary Issues in Documentary Media (3 hours) Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Documentary

This terminal degree taps into the Front Range’s burgeoning documentary community and provides graduate students with an immersive experience in documentary storytelling from a variety of philosophical and cross-disciplinary perspectives across both established and emerging platforms. Disciplines such as anthropology, geography and art will be among those engaged with this program. The analysis and production of nonfiction media is likewise an important theme within the CMCI with connections to reportage and television.

Required Courses and Semester Credit Hours The MFA is a three-year degree program requiring 60 hours of course work, and a first-year, second-year, and thesis review (with public presentations of work each year). All students must complete the following: Three studio courses Seven seminars: one in Research and Methodologies, four in Documentary Lab, and two for the MFA Thesis One documentary production methods course One production workshop One media/culture studies elective

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Contemporary Issues in Documentary Media Three self-directed research projects (faculty supervision required) Four electives Each student’s thesis project will be presented in a third-year Spring MFA Exhibition. A written thesis reflecting on the project will be required.

Program Outline: Year 1—Fall: DCMP 5100: Research and Methodologies Seminar (3 hours) DCMP 5500: Documentary Production Workshops (3 hours) DCMP 5900: Documentary Production Topic (3 hours) Year 1—Spring: DCMP 5600: Documentary Lab Seminar (3 hours) DCMP 5650: Documentary Field Work (3 hours) DCMP 5200: Contemporary Issues in Documentary Media (3 hours) Summer: Individual Thesis Research Year 2—Fall: DCMP 5600: Documentary Lab Seminar (3 hours) DCMP 5910: Individual Project Study (3 hours) Media/Culture Studies course elective (3 hours) Year 2—Spring: DCMP 5600: Documentary Lab Seminar (3 hours) DCMP 6500: Producing Practicum (5 hours) DCMP 5910: Individual Project Study (3 hours) Year 2—Summer: Individual Thesis Research Year 3—Fall: DCMP 5600: Documentary Lab Seminar (3 hours) DCMP 6600: Documentary MFA Thesis Seminar I (5 hours) DCMP 5910: Individual Project Study (3 hours)

Year 3—Spring: DCMP 6650: Documentary MFA Thesis Seminar II (5 hours) DCMP 5910: Individual Project Study (3 hours) PhD in Emergent Technologies and Media Art Practices Successful art and technology leadership and innovation is predicated on the preparation of people who are able to flexibly navigate the theory and practice of art and technology

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from an interdisciplinary perspective. This innovative program is designed for scholars and practitioners from a wide variety of backgrounds interested in exploring and navigating the relationship between theory and practice in cinema, digital media, visual and performing arts and intermedia activities including text-based practices. Scholars produce traditional academic work, creative work informed by theory-based explorations, or some combination of the two. The DCMP PhD in Emergent Technology and Media Art Practices functions in similar ways to a traditional PhD, with an emphasis on scholarly research into media arts practices as a concrete academic outcome. Accordingly, students are expected to pursue research into the theoretical, philosophical, historical and cultural dimensions of emergent media arts production. The DCMP PhD seeks, through original research and scholarship, a clearer understanding of the significance of contemporary media arts developments against the broader background of cultural and historical understanding. The applied research component of this PhD, making it a “practice-based” research program, offers students the opportunity to use hands-on work in media production to investigate more deeply the relations between historical movements in art, theoretical scholarship and media arts practices across a broad canvas of cultural and global developments. Required Courses and Semester Credit Hours The PhD in ETMAP is a five-year degree program requiring 60 hours of course work, and first-year, second-year, third-year, and dissertation reviews, as well as written and oral comprehensive exams and the dissertation defense (with public presentations of work each year). A faculty advisor and committee for the comprehensive exams should be chosen by the end of the fall semester of the second year, and students should choose their dissertation committees by the first semester of year three. The credit breakdown is as follows: Total MA Coursework (first two years): 36 hours Additional Coursework: 24 credit hours Electives (6 hours) Topics and Independent Study (6 hours) Collaborative Practice I and II (6 hours) Dissertation Development Seminar (3 hours) Independent Studio Critique (1-6 hours) Dissertation: 30 hours Total: 90 hours Before advancing to candidacy, all students in the ETMAP program must pass the comprehensive examination and must demonstrate their proficiency and understanding of the fundamental historical and theoretical concepts explored and developed in prior coursework. The comprehensive examination will consist of a written component in research and methodologies, production methods, theories of the avant-garde, and the history and theory of emergent technologies and media arts practices as well as an oral

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examination focused on the student's major area of research and practice. If passed, students will be awarded an MA degree. Each student’s dissertation work will be presented publicly during the fifth year. Dissertations will include both a practice-based and theoretical component. Year 1—Fall: DCMP 7100: Historical Overview of Technology and Art (3 hours) DCMP 7500: Production Methods I (3 hours) DCMP 7200: Research and Methodologies I (3 hours) Year 1—Spring: DCMP 7150: Theoretical Overview of Technology and Art (3 hours) DCMP 7550: Production Methods II (3 hours) DCMP 7350: Research and Methodologies II (3 hours) This semester culminates in the first-year review and public presentation of research. Year 2—Fall: DCMP 7300: Theories of the Avant-Garde (3 hours) DCMP 7410: Cultures of Art and Technology Topics (3 hours) DCMP 7400: Contemporary Practices (3 hours) Faculty advisor and committee for comprehensive exam chosen by the end of this semester. Year 2—Spring: DCMP 7600: Emergent Technologies: Theory and Practice (3 hours) DCMP 7910: Art and Technology: Methods and Ideas Topics (3 hours) DCMP 7450: Comprehensive Exam Seminar (3 hours) This semester culminates in the second-year review and public presentation which shares research or creative work as well as the comprehensive examination (written and oral), which if passed awards students with an MA. Year 3—Fall: Guided Elective within or outside the Department of Critical Media Practices (3 hours) DCMP 7920: Independent Study (3 hours) DCMP 8500: Collaborative Studio Practice I (3 hours) The dissertation committee should be finalized by the end of this semester. Year 3—Spring: Guided Elective within or outside the Department of Critical Media Practices (3 hours) DCMP 7410: Cultures of Art and Technology Topics (3 hours) DCMP 8550: Collaborative Studio Practice II (3 hours) This year culminates in a completed collaborative project (NOT a work-in-progress) and research paper that tracks and reflects their practice as co-investigators, includes a working model of the collaboration.

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Year 4—Fall (dissertation abstract due): DCMP 8100: Dissertation Development Seminar (Critical Studies) (3 hours) DCMP 8600: Independent Studio Critique (Practice) (1–6 hours) Students should complete a prospectus for an approved program of study and dissertation topic. Year 4—Spring: DCMP 8999: Dissertation and Project Guidance (1–10 hours) Year 5—Fall: DCMP 8999: Dissertation and Project Guidance (1–10 hours) Year 5—Spring: DCMP 8999: Dissertation and Project Guidance (1–10 hours) Students present and defend their dissertations.

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7. DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION SCIENCE (INFO)

Mission Statement

The Department of Information Science is home to a new discipline that unites a number of interdisciplinary approaches for understanding and shaping a future characterized by pervasively available digital information and communication technology (ICT). Information science considers the relationships between people, places and technology, as well as the information or “data” those interactions themselves yield. The Internet is a broad example of a socio-technical system that is comprised of hardware and software but that, in daily life, is better understood as a constantly changing social infrastructure upon which complex forms of human-human and human-information interactions rest. Scholars and students of information science develop new methods to study these socio-technical phenomena, and translate those findings to the design and development of useful and meaningful technology.

The Department of Information Science takes as a core idea that data sit at the primary point of interaction between social and computational systems. By focusing on the transformation of data across systems of people, places and technology, we can continuously invent what new things society can do with technology, and what technology can do for society. Because of this view, rather than only imagine what today’s technology makes possible, information scientists create new ways of supporting new socio-technical connections by considering the enduring fundamentals about how people and technology interact.

Information science draws on knowledge from social science, the humanities and computer science to support the study and ongoing innovation of socio-technical systems. Cultural, historical and organizational factors are among the many creative tensions that productively drive the discipline. The disciplinary yield is the creation of new technology, ideas and theory—and a workforce that understands the dynamic processes and potentials that underlie socio-technical interaction.

The department equips students with the conceptual machinery to succeed in a future characterized by new ways of:

• working with ICT and highly distributed and changing information spaces;• coordinating with people, ICT and the information behaviors to which they together

give rise; and• envisioning occupational, personal and civic goals as enabled by new ICT

opportunities and the information they mediate.

The iDepartment advances the research of the discipline and delivers an innovative educational program to its students while aligning with the aims and guidelines of the Information School (I-School) Caucus, a 52-member international association with 26 members located in the United States. As such, the Department of Information Science at

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CU Boulder is home to grant-driven empirical research that matches the ambitions of the national research goals of the discipline. Educational Goals

The informational opportunities that arise from technological innovation are vast and varied. The department therefore wants students to see themselves as participants in the dynamic opportunities of a future that they themselves can influence and create. To these ends, we broadly cast the conceptual machinery that people must have as supporting new, innovative forms of entrepreneurship—both social and commercial, both personal and collective—in a world where all forms of information are the continuous and dynamic inputs and outputs of such endeavor.

Students acquire skills in multiple forms of analysis of information, from small data to big data, from quantitative to qualitative, and including information integration, ontology creation and data visualization—because to work with information artifacts, industries and populations means to interact with data inputs and outputs. It means keeping an analytical eye on trends, markets and social behaviors as they manifest themselves in digital traces. Our students are trained in computing to support their information analytic skills. Such training includes building prototypes and writing scripts to be able to model and implement information artifacts and solutions.

Graduates also acquire skills in human-centered design, participatory design and research design, specifically to be able to craft solutions and evaluate trajectories for those solutions in a real-time relationship with implementation, deployment, use and revision.

Our students must understand matters of information security and privacy, because to work with information artifacts, industries and populations means to work within ethical limits of control and access, and to ensure data security for persons, corporations and the state. Students are trained to understand that our very innovations and interventions create new conditions for control and access.

Students in the Department of Information Science are trained in socio-behavioral theory, including but not limited to theories of organization, mobilization, motivation and participation, and collective action. To work with information artifacts, industries and populations means to understand technologically abetted human behavior on a number of scales.

Students acquire skills in data curation, archiving and management, because to work with information artifacts, industries and populations requires technical and conceptual capacities to navigate and manipulate heterogeneous information corpora.

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Our graduates’ knowledge and skills enable them to participate in and shape emerging changes in the structure of enterprise. Customized, creative production, as in the “maker culture” movement, is expanding notions of enterprise, as are distributed and mobile workforces.

The curriculum culminates in projects that put learned skills into place, often in partnership with the Boulder/Denver tech community and/or in relation to disciplines across the entire campus that are expanding their purview as they address new computational opportunities. Degree Programs Bachelor of Science in Information Science The bachelor’s degree aligns with standards set by other universities. It includes liberal arts education combined with empirical work and computing knowledge. The BS also aligns with the grant-driven, collaborative “lab model” research that characterizes the natural and engineering sciences. In addition to course work, the BS has a “domain minor” requirement (or a double major if the student so chooses). The idea is that each student will acquire application domain knowledge in one of the knowledge areas of science, humanities, law, business or engineering—areas that produce a great deal of information that in turn creates new frontiers in those target domains, yielding opportunities in, for example, bioinformatics, crisis informatics, music informatics and digital humanities. The curriculum culminates in projects that put learned skills into place, often in partnership with the Boulder/Denver tech community. Collaborations occur throughout the College of Media, Communication and Information and with other units on campus, including, but not restricted to, computer science, the Business Cross-Campus Entrepreneurship Program, ATLAS, ICS, the College of Music and the Center for Arts and Humanities.

Required Courses and Semester Credit Hours

The BS in Information Science requires 55 credit hours. Foundation courses comprise 33 credit hours. Students complete major specialization electives (18 credit hours) in sub-areas of information science. A 4-hour capstone project unites the knowledge from students’ domain minor with information science approaches, often in partnership with members of the Boulder/Denver tech community. Lower-Division Foundation Courses: INFO 1000: Information Science Futures. Surveys the field of information science, its application in specific contexts and its fast-moving future directions. Students will be exposed to projects and readings across an array of fields and organizations that increasingly benefit from graduates trained in information science. Students will learn to

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see themselves as participants in a future with dynamic opportunities that they themselves can influence and create. In this class, students begin to learn about the conceptual machinery that they must have to support innovative forms of entrepreneurship—both social and commercial, both personal and collective—in a world where all forms of information are the continuous and dynamic inputs and outputs of such endeavor (3 hours).

INFO 2010: Statistics for Information Science. This undergraduate course teaches advanced statistics for manipulation of data. To work with information artifacts, industries and populations means to interact with data inputs and outputs. The course will help students develop an analytical eye for trends, markets and social behaviors as they manifest themselves, including in the “big data” of digital traces. Prerequisite is the core-level mathematics course (3 hours).

INFO 2015: Qualitative Methods. Teaches qualitative methods that are applicable to requirements-gathering and technology design for digital environments and hybrid physical-digital environments (3 hours). INFO 2020: Programming for Prototyping. Teaches students scripting and programming and use of end-user toolkits for tech development. Training includes building prototypes and writing scripts to be able to model and instrument information artifacts and solutions. Prerequisite is the Common Curriculum-level computing literacy course (3 hours). Upper-Division Foundation Courses:

INFO 3005: Human-Centered Design. The course is organized as a design practicum, where student teams complete a project from start to finish. In-class and out-of-class activities are organized around topics that will teach students, step-by-step, how to establish user needs, derive design ideas, assess tradeoffs, and report results. Students will develop and iterate prototypes and evaluate their designs with representative and real users. The objectives of the course are: (1) to develop skills to innovate new and adapt existing information communication technologies (ICT) from a user-centered perspective; (2) to develop practical skills in the design and evaluation of good user interfaces for ICT; and (3) to provide an overview of ongoing and emerging research topics in human-computer interaction (3 hours).

INFO 3010: Information Security and Privacy. Teaches students to understand ethical limits of control and access, and to ensure data security of the individual, the corporation and the state. Students will be trained to understand that our very innovations and interventions create new conditions for control and access. They will understand that control and access have both social and technical constraints and affordances (3 hours).

INFO 3020: Structures of the Enterprise for Commercial and Social Entrepreneurship. Teaches issues in technical project management, including software lifecycles and important social entrepreneurship trends that students will be exposed to in the workplace. Teaches current trends in distributed work and crowdwork for commercial and social entrepreneurship (3 hours).

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INFO 3030: Socio-Behavioral Theory and Application. Offers training in socio-behavioral theory, including but not limited to theories of organization, mobilization, motivation and participation, and collective action. To work with information artifacts, industries and populations means to understand technologically-abetted human behavior on a number of scales. (3 hours) INFO 4010: Information Visualization. Teaches the use and application of toolkits for powerful information visualization applicable to a wide variety of data sets from a range of sources (3 hours). INFO 4020: Social Computing. Teaches the history, the study, the theory and the design of online sociality. The course equips students with training needed to adopt constantly changing tools that help collect, analyze and understand computer-media communication (3 hours). INFO 4030: Data Curation, Archiving and Management. Teaches technical and conceptual capacities to navigate and manipulate heterogeneous information corpora for a range of environments (3 hours). INFO 4050: Capstone Project. The one-semester capstone project is undertaken in students’ final year so that they connect their information science work to application to and data from their domain minor knowledge area. This is often done in partnership with the Boulder/Denver tech community (4 hours). In addition to foundation courses, the department offers elective courses. These include Medical Informatics, Crisis Informatics, Music Informatics, Digital Humanities, Visual Design, Information Architectures, Advanced Prototyping, Human Computer Interaction Survey, Digital Youth, Mobile Society, Humanitarian Computing, and Social Network Analysis. Master of Science in Information Science The master’s degree aligns with standards set by other universities. It includes liberal arts education combined with empirical work and computing knowledge. The MS also aligns with the grant-driven, collaborative “lab model” research that characterizes the natural and engineering sciences. Masters students benefit from the same “CU I-School approach” that benefits the undergraduate program, which blends analytical, entrepreneurial and humanist approaches to information as a discipline in the new world of social computing. MS students most likely enter with training from other disciplines, and benefit from focused training in the information discipline described in the mission statement. Collaborations occur throughout CMCI and with other units on campus, including, but not restricted to, computer science, the Business Cross-Campus Entrepreneurship Program, ATLAS, ICS, the College of Music and the Center for Arts and Humanities.

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The MS in Information Science requires 30 total credit hours. At initial rollout, a fixed set of foundation classes comprise the MS curriculum. However, as the full faculty grows, two slots will open for specialization electives. This means that two of the advanced courses will become electives once additional comparable electives at the same 6000-level become available to students.

Required Courses and Semester Credit Hours

INFO 5000: Information Science Futures. Surveys the field of information science, its application in specific contexts, and its fast-moving future directions. Students will be exposed to projects and readings across a diverse array of fields and organizations that increasingly benefit from graduates trained in information science. They will learn to see themselves as participants in a future with dynamic opportunities that they themselves can influence and create. In this class students begin to learn about the conceptual machinery that they must have to support new, innovative forms of entrepreneurship—both social and commercial, both personal and collective—in a world where all forms of information are the continuous and dynamic inputs and outputs of such endeavor. Surveys a range of current topics in Information Science, including Medical Informatics, Crisis Informatics, Digital Humanities. INFO 5005: Human-Centered Design. The course is organized as a design practicum, where student teams complete a project from start to finish. In-class and out-of-class activities are organized around topics that will teach students, step-by-step, how to establish user needs, derive design ideas, assess tradeoffs, and report results. Students will develop and iterate prototypes and evaluate their designs with representative and real users. The objectives of the course are: (1) to develop skills to innovate new and adapt existing information communication technologies (ICT) from a user-centered perspective; (2) to develop practical skills in the design and evaluation of good user interfaces for ICT; and (3) to provide an overview of ongoing and emerging research topics in human-computer interaction. INFO 5010: Information Security and Privacy. Teaches ethical limits of control and access, and to ensure data security of the individual, the corporation and the state. Students will be trained to understand that our very innovations and interventions create new conditions for control and access. INFO 5015: Methods for Information Science. This graduate course teaches statistics for manipulation of data and qualitative methods. To work with information artifacts, industries and populations means to interact with data inputs and outputs. The course will help students develop an analytical eye for trends, markets and social behaviors as they manifest themselves including in the “big data” of digital traces. It also teaches introductory forms of qualitative methods to apply to socio-technical environments, including the qualitative investigation of very large digital data corpora to extend the limits of quantitative investigation.

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INFO 5020: Programming for Prototyping. Training includes building prototypes and writing scripts to be able to model and instrument information artifacts and solutions. Prerequisite is the Common Curriculum-level computing literacy course.

INFO 5030: Socio-Behavioral Theory and Application. Offers training in socio-behavioral theory, including but not limited to theories of organizing; mobilization; motivation and participation; and collective action. To work with information artifacts, industries and populations means to understand technologically-abetted human behavior on a number of scales.

INFO 6005: Structures of the Enterprise for Commercial and Social Entrepreneurship. Teaches issues in technical project management, including software lifecycles and important social entrepreneurship trends that students will be exposed to in the workplace. Teaches current trends in distributed work and crowdwork for commercial and social entrepreneurship.

INFO 6010: Information Visualization. Teaches the use and application of toolkits for powerful information visualization applicable to a wide variety of data sets from a range of sources.

INFO 6020: Social Computing. Teaches the history, the study, the theory and the design of online sociality. The course equips students with training needed to adopt constantly changing tools that help collect, analyze and understand computer-media communication.

INFO 6030: Data Curation, Archiving and Management. Teaches technical and conceptual capacities to navigate and manipulate heterogeneous information corpora for a range of environments.

PhD in Information Science

Students are trained in a full range of scholarly approaches to information science as a discipline. The PhD aligns with the grant-driven, collaborative “lab model” research that characterizes the natural and engineering sciences.

PhD students benefit from the “CU I-School approach,” which blends analytical, entrepreneurial and humanist approaches to information as a discipline in the new world of social computing. The character of the PhD in Information Science has internal precedents, with examples from dissertations produced by ATLAS students and the human-centered computing students in computer science. It has numerous external precedents from I-Caucus schools. PhDs produced by this program will be targeted to academic and industrial research job opportunities.

Collaborations occur throughout CMCI and with other units on campus (including Computer Science, the Business Cross-Campus Entrepreneurship Program, ATLAS, ICS, College of Music and the Center for Arts and Humanities), as well as through domain minors with still other departments in other colleges/schools.

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The PhD in Information Science requires 30 course credit hours, and 30 thesis credit hours. Eight courses are part of the foundation, with two slots for electives within the Department of Information Science or elsewhere within CMCI, or, with advisor approval, outside the college.

Required Courses and Semester Credit Hours

INFO 5005: Human-Centered Design. The course is organized as a design practicum, where student teams complete a project from start to finish. In-class and out-of-class activities are organized around topics that will teach students, step-by-step, how to establish user needs, derive design ideas, assess tradeoffs, and report results. Students will develop and iterate prototypes and evaluate their designs with representative and real users. The objectives of the course are: (1) to develop skills to innovate new and adapt existing information communication technologies (ICT) from a user-centered perspective; (2) to develop practical skills in the design and evaluation of good user interfaces for ICT; and (3) to provide an overview of ongoing and emerging research topics in human-computer interaction.

INFO 5006: Statistics for Information Science. This graduate course teaches advanced statistics for manipulation of data. To work with information artifacts, industries and populations means to interact with data inputs and outputs. The course will help students develop an analytical eye for trends, markets and social behaviors as they manifest themselves including in the “big data” of digital traces.

INFO 5007: Qualitative Methods. Teaches qualitative methods that are applicable to requirements gathering and design in the milieu of digital environments or hybrid physical-digital environments.

INFO 5008: Research Design. Teaches advanced forms of research design to apply to socio-technical environments.

INFO 5020: Programming for Prototyping. Training includes building prototypes and writing scripts to be able to model and instrument information artifacts and solutions. Prerequisite is the Common Curriculum-level computing literacy course.

INFO 5030: Socio-Behavioral Theory and Application to Information Science. Offers training in socio-behavioral theory, including but not limited to theories of organization, mobilization, motivation and participation, and collective action. To work with information artifacts, industries and populations means to understand technologically-abetted human behavior on a number of scales.

INFO 6010: Information Visualization. Teaches the use and application of toolkits for powerful information visualization applicable to a wide variety of data sets from a range of sources.

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INFO 6020: Social Computing. Teaches the history, the study, the theory and the design of online sociality. The course equips students with training needed to adopt constantly changing tools that help collect, analyze and understand computer-media communication. Elective courses will supplement these offerings and will be added as the faculty for Information Science grows. Three courses that are currently planned for master’s students are listed below, and could be appropriate for electives. Courses in Social Network Analysis, Humanitarian Computing, Action Research Methods and Projects, Crisis Informatics, and Health Informatics will also be offered. INFO 5010: Information Security and Privacy. Teaches ethical limits of control and access, and to ensure data security of the individual, the corporation and the state. Students will be trained to understand that our very innovations and interventions create new conditions for control and access. INFO 6030: Data Curation, Archiving and Management. Teaches technical and conceptual capacities to navigate and manipulate heterogeneous information corpora for a range of environments. INFO 6005: Structures of the Enterprise for Commercial and Social Entrepreneurship. Teaches issues in technical project management, including software lifecycles and important social entrepreneurship trends that students will be exposed to in the workplace. Teaches current trends in distributed work and crowdwork for commercial and social entrepreneurship.

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8. INTERMEDIA ART, WRITING AND PERFORMANCE (IAWP) PhDPROGRAM

Mission Statement

IAWP is an interdisciplinary digital arts and humanities research unit with a practice-based PhD in Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance. Core faculty collaboratively investigate past and present forms of digital art, writing and performance, and offer graduate students a hands-on, experience-based learning environment in which to explore emerging forms of creativity triggered by practice-based research methodologies. The research conducted in the program reflects the rapidly transforming knowledge systems and digital media economies generated by the substantial technological shifts currently taking place in our society.

Digital creative work and critical media literacy play a defining role in our information society and are transforming all aspects of contemporary life, including the way many visual artists, multimedia performers, writers, publishers, digital humanists and archivists pursue their professions. Traditional scholarly and creative work outputs such as the single-authored print book or conventional gallery exhibitions have already been challenged by the emergence of multi-authored and/or hybridized forms of transmission such as Internet art sites, multi-platform storytelling or transmedia narratives, software art, interactive installations for public spaces, social media game art, networked media activism, telematic performance art and innovative art applications for mobile devices and tablets.

IAWP provides the university and the larger Colorado community a research and teaching unit that functions as an incubator for transdisciplinary studies tied to the advanced digital arts and humanities. By offering a unique, practice-based PhD program in intermedia art, writing and performance, IAWP enables an interdisciplinary group of already established practice-based arts and humanities researchers at CU to work with other faculty in CMCI, faculty across the campus (particularly in ATLAS, the projected School of the Fine Arts, the College of Music and CU Libraries) and with individuals and organizations outside of the campus, including the thriving tech and startup communities that are also invested in practice-based forms of research and creativity.

IAWP-affiliated faculty work with top graduate student recruits to probe the significance of a digitally expanded and collaborative research environment located in a cluster of interdisciplinary research labs. Using hands-on collaborative forms of lab-based research that feed teaching while also drawing on it, IAWP provides a flexible pedagogical structure that leads to the creation of new and hybridized forms of art, writing, performance, scholarship, research, theory, design, curation, exhibition and publication appropriate for our evolving cultural moment. The program concentrates its curriculum on digital forms of creativity, thus enhancing the larger agenda of the university to cultivate cutting-edge investigations into the practice, theory, history and philosophy of media and into media’s relationships to creativity, communication, technology and information.

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In short, the IAWP program offers itself as a hub of practice-based digital arts and humanities research that promotes interdisciplinary collaborations across departments, colleges and schools, and even outside the CU campus.

PhD in Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance

The Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance (IAWP) program is an interdisciplinary digital arts and humanities research unit offering a practice-based PhD.

Students in the IAWP PhD program learn how to develop creative and strategic practice-based research into the digital arts and humanities at the interface of intermedia art, writing and performance, and reflect on the ways contemporary art practice and scholarly research and production are being rethought in relation to the digital media, communication and information technologies that permeate international culture.

By focusing the pedagogical structure of the unit around a cluster of faculty directed research labs that foreground experimental, collaborative, process-based learning and technical development in the intermedia arts and digital humanities, students who graduate with a PhD in IAWP will bring into the world an advanced and creative skill set that includes the ability to create, produce, direct, design and theorize complex digital media projects that investigate both contemporary and future forms of interdisciplinary art making, performance, writing, publishing, exhibiting and curating. The flexibility of the collaborative learning environment that grows out of numerous disciplines, including studio-based arts practice, humanities research, creative writing and collaborative performance, will enable students to recalibrate the vital role creativity plays in the interdisciplinary research community. All of this will in turn serve as an incubator for future forms of personal expression and civic presence in digital culture.

Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the program, students in IAWP learn from and collaborate with faculty and graduate students located across various CU Boulder colleges, institutions, centers and departments, and thus will expose themselves to the best possible interdisciplinary learning environment. Given that the core and affiliated faculty members in the program are rostered in different colleges and departments across campus and are significantly involved with many arts and humanities departments, IAWP students will learn new ways to build strategic alliances with collaborators from many different disciplinary backgrounds.

Required Courses and Semester Credit Hours

Students take 30 credit hours of required course work in the first two years of the program. At the end of their second year, students take their general examination. Once they have passed the general examination their research focuses on the creation of an original and substantial project centered on practice-based research. The final outcome of their research results in a creative work or body of creative work accompanied by a 60- to 80-page dissertation that describes its significance and locates it in the broader artistic, technical and/or theoretical context of intermedia art, writing and performance as a whole. Students must devote a minimum of 30 hours to the final project and dissertation.

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The required course work will include an interdisciplinary set of IAWP classes that introduce students to collaborative, practice-based research processes in the arts and digital humanities as well as additional courses taught in IAWP, within other CMCI departments, or within partner departments across the CU Boulder campus.

The first two years of course work will include the following:

1st semester:

IAWP 5000: Introduction to Practice-Based Research

IAWP 5100: Doing Digital Humanities 2nd semester:

IAWP 5200: Intermedia Collaboratory plus one of the following: IAWP 5300: Performance Making IAWP 5400: Transmedia Writing and Publishing IAWP 5500: Cultural Technics IAWP 5600: Advanced Methods in New Media Art and Theory IAWP 5700: Special Topics IAWP 5800: Intermedia Seminar IAWP 5900: Independent Study

3rd semester:

one of the following: IAWP 5300: Performance Making IAWP 5400: Transmedia Writing and Publishing IAWP 5500: Cultural Technics IAWP 5600: Advanced Methods in New Media Art and Theory IAWP 5700: Special Topics IAWP 5800: Intermedia Seminar IAWP 5900: Independent Study plus one elective in CMCI or some other approved graduate-level course at CU

4th semester:

one of the following: IAWP 5300: Performance Making IAWP 5400: Transmedia Writing and Publishing IAWP 5500: Cultural Technics IAWP 5600: Advanced Methods in New Media Art and Theory IAWP 5700: Special Topics IAWP 5800: Intermedia Seminar IAWP 5900: Independent Study

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plus one elective in CMCI or some other approved graduate-level course at CU

5th through 8th semesters:

IAWP 8990: Doctoral Project and Dissertation

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9. DEPARTMENT OF MEDIA STUDIES (MDST)

Mission Statement

The Department of Media Studies is dedicated to providing students with a liberal arts education for the twenty-first century that encompasses humanistic, social scientific and artistic approaches to the study of the material means of mediated communication. Communication media constitute some of the most ubiquitous and powerful social formations of the modern world. Dense communication networks are essential to vital social processes, the development of communities of interest, the maintenance of ethnic and religious identities, and much else.

Contemporary media practitioners, both professional and amateur, influence the values and behaviors of national and global populations, challenging and shaping the authority, legitimacy and control exercised by governments and other powerful social institutions. Because of this, media and cultural studies are central to research about the complex intersections of culture, politics and economics from the local to the global levels. Appropriately, the Department of Media Studies emphasizes the history, nature and impact of mediated sounds, images and texts from a wide range of inter- and cross-disciplinary perspectives.

Educational Goals

As modes of storytelling, technologies, public forums and industries, the media have become an essential part of our social and cultural experience. We simply cannot evade their pervasive presence. Our students are deeply immersed in this rich media landscape not only as consumers but also as creative producers of their own media. This rapidly shifting media landscape requires a dynamic curriculum that is adequately attuned to the nature and scope of this influence in contemporary society.

The Department of Media Studies examines ways of thinking about and conducting research into the intersection of media, communication and cultural practices in both historical and contemporary perspectives. Encompassing humanistic, social scientific and artistic approaches to the study of media and culture, and interdisciplinary in its theoretical and methodological approaches, the degree spans traditional boundaries between theory and practice. It fosters media “literacy” in the broadest sense by providing students with critical skills to analyze contemporary media and culture, along with technical, aesthetic and intellectual principles that facilitate strong media practices.

In addition to courses about the forms, practices, institutions, economics, politics and social implications of media (i.e., radio, film, television, photography, print, digital and electronic), the Department of Media Studies benefits from and contributes to the curricular porousness of CMCI by offering both media studies students and students from across the college and campus a wide range of courses in media design, digital

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storytelling, digital art/textuality, information science, documentary filmmaking, journalism and video production.

Degree Programs

Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies

The goal of the media studies BA is to prepare students to become intellectually engaged critics of their media environment through a commitment to rigorous scholarship and creative media practice. Students will exit the program with a vital edge as innovative, critical professionals and well-rounded, independent thinkers.

A vital component of this degree is a course that teaches undergraduates not only to navigate and critically evaluate the value of messages in a complex web of information, but also to learn how to effectively participate in the media as an exercise in responsible citizenship in a democratic society. Using a critical pedagogy approach, this course leads students to scrutinize their media experiences and acquire new competencies in researching and clearly articulating their thoughts in an evolving multimedia environment.

Required Courses and Semester Credit Hours

Students pursuing the BA in Media Studies complete 13 courses, for 39 credit hours.

Four required courses comprise the MDST Common Curriculum: Media Literacy (3 hours) Media Research (3 hours) Media and Communication History (3 hours) Digital Culture and Politics (3 hours)

Students would then take the following courses offered by MDST, other departments or programs in CMCI, or departments outside CMCI: Advanced Research Methods (3 hours) Media Practice (6 hours)

The Media Practice component consists of courses involving hands-on work in the CMCI Departments of Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design; Journalism or Critical Media Practices; or in the Technology, Arts and Media program in ATLAS.

Students will additionally explore an area of emphasis by taking 4 courses (for 12 credit hours) in one of the following: Media and Culture Media and Politics Global and International Media Multimedia Practice: Design and Production Media History and Archaeology

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Media Leadership: Management and Entrepreneurship Media Technology and Society Images and Screen Studies Self-Designed Emphasis (requires faculty approval) Courses meeting this requirement could come from anywhere within CMCI or across the CU Boulder campus curriculum. MDST requires an internship (3 hours) in a field of the student’s choice, and a capstone project (3 hours), both usually completed in the senior year.

Masters of Arts in Media and Public Engagement

The MA in Media and Public Engagement (MAPE) is a theme-based course of study that emphasizes a proper balance between academic excellence and social responsibility. Using an innovative curriculum, the MAPE program offers a critical study of the history, institutions, economics and social implications of the media, nationally and globally, combined with a practice-based media training geared toward civic engagement and community building. MAPE students learn how to apply skills of critical learning, media criticism and technological innovation to exposing social problems and bringing awareness to public issues that are poorly or never addressed by mainstream media and politics. The program accepts students based on the quality of their project and their commitment to social change and the public good.

With an interdisciplinary critical curriculum and a high-quality technical training in media production, the MAPE program offers students a unique opportunity to select and study in depth a specific social, political or cultural issue. In addition to completing courses in media theory and other fields of interest, students learn how to create thoughtful and engaging projects using a variety of media practices including documentary film, multimedia websites, interactive video installations and other online tools. In the course of two years, students will collaborate with faculty, community leaders, nonprofit organizations and socially engaged corporations to devise innovative pathways to the study, commentary and presentation of social issues.

PhD in Media Studies The department offers a research-based PhD in media studies as a track in the general doctoral program in media research and practice (see Section 2 above). Doctoral students may choose from six areas of concentration. Each concentration is served by a range of courses offered by the department. A number of courses in the department serve more than one area of concentration, reflecting some degree of beneficial overlap among the concentrations, but each concentration has its own unique intellectual center of gravity. Students are expected to take a minimum of 72 hours to complete their degrees, although they may take additional course work if there is a justified need. Students are expected to complete their course work and defend their dissertations in 4–5 years. Students may take up to 15 credit hours of course work outside the Department of Media Studies, through a

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required Outside Emphasis (9 hours), which complements the student’s plan of study, and through Advanced Methods in Media Research and Practice, (6 hours), which may include relevant courses offered either inside or outside of the department.

Media Technology and Society: The study of technology as a political, economic and cultural force is a central area of study in contemporary media scholarship. Within this concentration students can focus on philosophical, ethical, social and political dimensions of information and communication technologies, old and new; the social transformations of society due to the widespread availability of multiple screens, from the stationary cinema and home entertainment center to highly mobile tablets and smartphones, and of innovations in sound design and acoustic technologies; the history of technological devices and forms of mediation, including media archaeology and the study of “dead media”; the legal and political implications of technological regulation and change; copyright and intellectual property; uses of information technologies as tools of surveillance and related privacy issues; technologies of the built environment; new and emerging forms of media technology convergence, and the impacts on traditional media institutions (for example, transformations and reorganization in the film, music recording, newspaper, magazine and book publishing industries); and the significance of social media as tools for cultural expression and social mobilization.

Media Industries, Politics and Policy: This emphasis enables students to explore relationships of power involved in the creation, distribution, and consumption of mediated communication. Areas of inquiry include the political economy of the media and cultural industries (including advertising, public relations, journalism, the music recording industry, film, radio, television and the Internet); political communication, including electoral politics, grassroots activism and political protest, along with government efforts to influence news reporting and public opinion; public policies governing media and culture, and the efforts by advocacy groups to influence media policy; professional practices and organizational forms in the media and cultural industries; communication rights, particularly those related to issues of media access, censorship and surveillance; the politics and cultural significance of media globalization; the sociology of news; and the influence of technological changes in the media on the public understanding of politics.

Critical Theories of Media and Communication: The study of media and communication requires engagement with a variety of theoretical traditions, including cultural studies, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, hermeneutics, political economy, pragmatism, symbolic interactionism, Frankfurt School critical theory, feminism, gender and queer theory, critical race theory, postcolonialism, critical legal theory, Bourdieuian field theory, structuralism and post-structuralism. The department approaches critical theory from the perspective of ongoing critical self-examination of how knowledge and culture are created, acquired, maintained and transmitted. In its Common Curriculum courses and elective seminars the graduate program seeks to train doctoral students to be flexible yet rigorous practitioners of critique in its many forms.

Media, Religion and Culture: The department offers courses and faculty expertise to

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train students to explore the intersection of media and religion as they influence one another and our daily lives, focusing on the practices and experiences that define religion and spirituality today, the way media represent religions and spiritualties, and on how the media interact with religion in the public sphere, how media are used by formal and informal groups and movements, and the implications for religious institutions and authority.

Global and International Media Studies: This area of concentration focuses on the influences of transnational media, including critical theories of globalization, transcultural flows, international development and postcolonial studies, comparative media systems, cross-national comparative research design, global social movements, international and intra-national media and culture treaties and policymaking, critical cultural geography, alternative modernities and global ethnography. Theory and Practice of Public Scholarship and Public Engagement: Scholars from many disciplines are attracted to finding ways to use the means of popular communication to reach beyond narrow audiences of fellow specialists. But gaining mastery over the means to public engagement requires both technical skills and an understanding of the inherent risks and rewards of doing so. To achieve this, students can focus on the role of the intellectual in public life through courses that survey concepts of the public sphere; the role of public opinion polling as a means of generating political consensus (sometimes problematically); the problems of anti-intellectualism as an impediment to public reason; the idea of “public culture” as an arena in which complex ideas and information (e.g., about history, art, science, the environment, finance and international affairs) are presented in accessible ways; how intellectuals increasingly use new means of communication, including online “pre-publication” venues, blogging and social media, to widely disseminate and discuss their ideas; and uses of the means of communication to disseminate complex ideas in the process of mobilizing and sustaining social movements. In general, course offerings toward the PhD in media studies emphasize the following cross-cutting themes that are treated in each of the areas of concentration listed above: • sophistication in the treatment of theoretical issues; • rigor and high ethical standards in the collection, analysis and presentation of

research; • thorough knowledge of the historical context of media institutions and practices; and • sustained focus on issues of social and cultural diversity (race, ethnicity, gender, class,

sexualities), and on issues arising due to the increase in transnational media and information flows and influences.