Message from the Chair

Welcome to the web site for the University of St. Thomas Department of Communication & Journalism. This is an exciting time in our department's history, and we encourage students to become part of it as we create a dynamic new program. Whatever we create, you can be sure of what we value: Good teaching and active learning.

Good teaching is the essence of our department. It's who we are as a faculty: We want to be good teachers because that's how we best help students become ethical practitioners in advertising, corporate communication, digital and electronic media production, journalism, organizational communication and public relations.

Good teaching goes on every day in this department. Our full- and part-time faculty bring excellence and energy to their classrooms. They devise thoughtful, real-world assignments that help our students learn and practice the skills needed to succeed in the communication world. That means our students in skill-related courses, such as Videography or Design Concepts of Communication, are designing and editing web pages, interviewing and observing people in local communities to tell their stories in newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, or conducting focus groups and administering surveys to understand the audiences they're trying to reach with an advertising and public relations campaign. During these assignments, students also focus on the ethical issues raised by the messages they're creating and the skills they're developing.

In our more theoretical courses, such as Intercultural Communication or Communication Theory, students will still find themselves connecting course material to the larger world around them. We use hands-on, project-based assignments to help our students actively and critically connect the forms of communication they see around them with the principles we're teaching in class.

Of course, we devote much effort to teaching our hallmark senior seminar in Communication Ethics, too. The course has been around since the 1950s, and its long history makes our program nationally distinctive. We think the way we teach it makes us educationally rigorous as well. We use an active learning philosophy that asks students to “do” ethics rather than just learn about ethics. For instance, we use discussion and debate in such assignments as the Ethics Bowl, a department-wide event that puts all our seniors into teams to debate current ethics cases in competition before alumni judges. We also foster active learning about ethical issues in communication by directing our students' work on an individual primary research project. The project typically involves content analysis of newspapers, magazines, broadcast reports and web sites, or focus groups, interviews and surveys of professionals working in advertising, corporate communication, digital and electronic media production, journalism, organizational communication and public relations. It ends with application of ethical theory.

But our learning doesn't just occur in our classes. Our students learn significant lessons about the ethical practice of communication when they work on our award-winning student media. Students can hone professional skills as reporters and editors on The Aquin student newspaper, as producers, directors and videographers on our “Campus Scope” television news magazine, or as programmers and on-air talent at our internet radio station KUST. Students also learn about professional skills and issues when they're active in Ad Club and its entry in the National Student Advertising Campaign, the Communication Club, the Public Relations Student Society of America and the Society of Professional Journalists.

And because of our location in the Twin Cities, students have ample opportunities to complete internships in local television newsrooms, at regional magazines and newspapers, at advertising and public relations agencies, at video production companies, and at non-profit organizations.

We think active learning that probes the ethical responsibilities of communication is what we do best. I hope you'll join us.

Kris Bunton, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair
Department of Communication & Journalism