CAS News

Communication Studies

Collaboration on “Intergenerational Conflict”

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Renee Heath, Communication Studies

Dr. Renee Guarriello Heath (Communication Studies – CST) shares news of a just-published research article entitled Generational Perspectives in the Workplace: Interpreting the Discourses That Constitute Women’s Struggle to Balance Work and Life.  Co-authored with CST M.A. graduate Linda Williams Favero, Heath said this national report adds evidence and insight for “anyone who has ever encountered the concepts of ‘paying your dues’ or needing to put in ‘face-time’ at work.  Those who have experienced intergenerational or gendered conflict over these ideas may be especially interested.” 

The study investigated how and why professional women may clash about managing work-life balance due to being socialized within different generations.  Using interpretive focus group findings, the study explored “paying one’s dues” and “face-time” as two prime discourses women use to unpack and interpret their thoughts, feelings, and actions about that key workplace tension.  “Organizational communication research is very interested in the idea of how we use communication to produce and reproduce what work/life balance means.  Ultimately the idea of work/life balance is negotiated through communication at and around work” says Renee.  This study deconstructs these women’s interpretations and offers a hopeful starting point for conversations that can help bridge perspectives regarding work/life balance.     [Read more…] about Collaboration on “Intergenerational Conflict”

Rising Rwanda Project

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Rising Rwanda is a documentary project that intertwines photography, video and in-depth interviews to tell a story of identity and culture in a post-genocidal Rwanda. The project was designed to capture the visual and aural narratives of 35 children, ranging in age from six to fifteen, in an effort to understand and define the underlying tone of the first post-genocide generation in Rwanda. The children, who were representative of multiple social and economic backgrounds, were asked to draw pictures that portrayed them engaging in an activity with someone they respect. The drawings helped to create the space for the interviews, conducted with the help of a local translator, that examine the content and meaning of their pictures and their perception of self, community, and nation. [Read more…] about Rising Rwanda Project

Communication Studies Welcome

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Welcome to the Department of Communication Studies.  We’re dedicated to explaining how people use communication to exert influence and construct knowledge, identities, relationships, and societies.  Here you’ll find exciting courses, motivated professors, and challenging major options that help you build the communication insights, ethics, and skills that give you a big advantage in 21st century life and work.

“Communication” is the key term of the age in which we all live, which increasingly advantages those who can explain and shape communication dynamics in everyday living.  Persuasion, leadership, and cultural influence take place in settings ranging from face-to-face negotiation to media outpouring that reaches millions in a moment.  As a communication studies major, our programs offer you three unique advantages:

  • consistent focus on key leadership abilities,
  • access to the best available theory and scholarship on communication processes, and,
  • hands-on practice using your growing insights.

Your coursework helps you learn to negotiate and persuade, orally communicate ideas and plans, probe for underlying meanings, teach others, and solve problems in teams, abilities that key success in a wide variety of occupations and settings.  Your classes and projects reflect state-of-the-art insight in building and evaluating powerful messages: our program’s unique mix of social science, humanism, and professional training assures you’ll have the insight, abilities, ethical basis, and knowledge employers prize and healthy communities need.

We offer both undergraduate and Masters-level programs of study.  Our Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree offers liberal arts concentrations in media studies and journalism.  Our Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree program in organizational communication gives more specialized instruction in professional aptitudes associated with workplace and community roles, readying you for skilled work managing human resources, public relations, and other key roles.  And our courses in the University’s core curricula develop the interpersonal, speaking, and teamwork facilitation abilities you’ll need to succeed as a student and beyond.

At the graduate level, Communication Studies’ Master of Science (M.S.) program in management communication – offered in cooperation with UP’s Pamplin School of Business Administration – develops students’ professional aptitudes in workplace settings.  Our Master of Arts (M.A.) program more broadly enables students to advance their abilities and understandings within a range of rhetorical, journalistic, and organizational communication expertise.

The complexity and challenges of our world demand rigorous preparation, and you’ll find that in your studies here.  Our curriculum is led by eight full-time faculty members dedicated to excellence in teaching and mentoring students; each is an active scholar and valued contributor to professional, campus, and community conversations.  We’re all devoted to helping you develop the knowledge, ethical foundation, and abilities necessary for success, service, and satisfying living.

We hope you’ll visit to meet our faculty, staff, and students.  Please contact our office at (503) 943-7229 or (800) 227-4568 with any questions or requests for more information. We look forward to meeting you.

Cordially,

Jeff Kerssen-Griep
Chair, Communication Studies Department
kerssen@up.edu

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