Courses I teach at the Mount:

COM 100 - The Spoken Word
This course is designed to assist average and advanced students' understanding of interpersonal and public communication processes and practices. Emphasis is placed on developing effective and ethical listening and speaking strategies needed in personal, academic, and professional life.

COM 200 - Introduction to Communication Theory
This class serves as an introduction to the field of communication as a distinct area of study and practice, including theoretical approaches, methods, content areas, and rationales for scholarship commonly found within the field; and a survey of major communication theories and research findings. Emphasis is placed on application of theories to particular contexts as a way of illuminating possibilities for improving human communication practice.

COM 210 - Mass Media and Modern Culture
This course focuses on developing students' knowledge, understanding, and critical assessment of mass media (including books, newspapers, magazines, film, radio, television, and the internet) and their relationship to modern culture. It deals with the history of mass media, mass media as major business enterprises, the psychological and sociological impacts of mass media, and ethical issues related to them.

COM 320 - Oral Communication
In this class, the techniques of conveying information, participating in conferences and group discussions, interviewing effectively, and speaking in public are studied and practiced. Thus, this is an applied speech communication course that focuses on developing public speaking skills, particularly in organizational, professional, and other structured contexts.

COM 330 - Rhetorical Foundations of Human Communication
This course is an introduction to major theories and perspectives in the rhetorical tradition, from the classical era to the contemporary period, with emphasis on recurring philosophical and ethical controversies surrounding the nature and role of rhetoric. A central theme is the tension between the promise of rhetoric for constructing a rich, just, and meaningful civic life and the dangers of its use as a tool for manipulation, oppression, and demagoguery.

Questions of right and wrong arise whenever people communicate. Ethical communication is fundamental to responsible thinking, decision making, and the development of relationships and communities within and across contexts, cultures, channels, and media. Moreover, ethical communication enhances human worth and dignity by fostering truthfulness, fairness, responsibility, personal integrity, and respect for self and others. 

-- from the National Communication Association Credo for Ethical Communication

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