This course examines theory and research of persuasion. Topics include message characteristics, credibility, compliance-gaining, decision- making, and motivational appeals.

Examines theory and research relevant to understanding advanced issues in organizational communication. Topics may include strategies of innovation, organizing, networking, decision-making, globalization, technology, power, and diversity.

This course focuses on what and how popular culture entertainment media functions to communicate and persuade. Forms to be examined may include films/movies, television programs, music, cartoons, and/or comics. Ultimately, students will be equipped with tools to make educated decisions as critical consumers of the messages conveyed in popular culture entertainment media.

This course focuses on the role of the mass media in contemporary public health campaigns. Most class sessions focus on the application of theory and research to the design of these campaigns. Earlier studies examining the role of the mass media in health campaigns indicated that the mass media played a small and rather insignificant role in changing health behaviors. However, more recent studies indicate that careful targeting combined with formative research often yield successful behavior change.

Examines theory and research on the nature and development of small group communication. Topics include leadership, interpersonal relations and roles, goals, and decision-making in multiple organizational contexts. Communication major or permission of instructor required for enrollment.

This course provides the student with basic knowledge about the discipline of public health. After receiving a philosophical and political orientation to public health, students will begin to acquire functional knowledge of the strategies most often applied in public health practice. Key content areas (such as HIV prevention, maternal and child health, reducing obesity rates, and reducing tobacco addiction) will become focal points for the investigation of these strategies.

This course will provide students with an introductory understanding of public health concepts through critical examination of popular cinema and instruction in basic public health principles, disease principles, and behavioral and social interactions related to the movie topics. A combination of lectures, readings and film viewing will enable students to understand the relationship between behavioral, environmental, biological and other risk factors with disease, injury or other health outcomes. The effect of social, economic and health systems context will also be examined.

This course will be an in-depth introduction to the relationship of sex and sexual behaviors to health and wellness.

This course will outline the history of epidemiology as a science and examine its wide-ranging contributions to the fields of public health, medicine, and the social sciences. This course will focus on epidemiological methods to investigate health outcomes and identify associated and causative factors of disease in populations.

This course provides focused coverage within domains of public health, including: Health Behavior; Epidemiology; Gerontology; Environmental Health; Health Services Management, and Biostatistics. A central goal of these special topics courses is to provide a public health context to material in a way that promotes applicability to undergraduate majors university-wide.