Course Profiles
Course Profiles are designed to help students, faculty, prospective students, alumni, and
employers better understand how the courses in the
School fit together and build upon each other to create an outstanding
education for our students.
This section contains an overview of the seven parts of the Course Profile, as well as an overview of the SJMC's "professional," or skills-based, curriculum.
Users may also move directly to the Course Profiles for professional courses in the journalism track, or to Course Profiles for professional courses in the strategic communication track.
Each Course Profile
contains seven sections:
1. Number and title of course: Additional information includes number
of credits, whether multiple sections of the class are offered (many
SJMC professional courses offer multiple sections each semester) and how
many class meetings occur weekly.
2. Prerequisites: SJMC professional courses are restricted to students
formally admitted to SJMC programs. Information about the required
status of the student and previous SJMC courses the student must have
taken are provided here.
3. Course Description: This section provides a one paragraph
description of the course that provides more information about the
course than is included in the course catalogue or Undergraduate Student
Handbook.
4. Expected Competencies: The skills and understandings students are
expected to have developed before enrolling in the courses. Many of
these competencies are developed in prerequisite classes, which is why
the School insists that students take courses in the correct order.
5. Competency Goals: This section provides the key information in the
Course Profile: the skills and understandings students are expected
to master in the course.
6. Assignments and Activities: This section provides information on
what students do in the course: the types of assignments, exams, and
activities students engage in to master the course competencies.
7. Workload: This section indicates the proportion of time students
will typically spend on such class activities as reading, gathering
information, writing assignments, working in SJMC labs, working outside the classroom, carrying out
projects.
SJMC's Professional Curriculum
The School offers two different professional tracks, one in Professional Journalism and
the other in Strategic Communication. Both tracks include introductory,
intermediate, and advanced courses. Students build their competencies
in two ways as they take professional courses. First, they utilize the
same set of basic skills in gathering information and writing as they
proceed through intermediate and advanced courses, but they do so in
more complex ways and are held to higher standards in their
assignments. Second, additional skills and understandings are
introduced in the advanced courses to enable students to carry out
assignments in more sophisticated and increasingly professional fashion.
Because students develop their competencies across the curriculum in a
cumulative way, we strongly urge students to follow two principles in
their programs:
(1) Take the required prereq courses. As you carry out your
program, make sure that you enroll in an intermediate or advanced
professional course only after you have taken the prerequisite for that
course. 3004W (Information for Mass Communication) is a prerequiste for
all professional courses in the School, although it may be taken
concurrently with a few of the introductory professional courses. New
majors should take 3004W (or Jour 3004V if in the Honors Program) in their first semester as a major, and it is
better to take 3004W before the first professional course if possible.
Students who become majors by the middle of their sophomore year can
do this, but students who become majors later may have to take 3004W concurrently with their first professional course.
Other prerequisite classes required for an intermediate or advanced
professional class are listed in the Course Profiles. You will be
expected to achieve the competency goals of the prereq class before you
start these classes so your professional development can build upon your
prior learning. Develop a four or five semester plan for your classes and follow your plan.
(2) Do not take more than two professional courses in any
semester. Professional courses are usually more intense, involving
more assignments and more projects, than other types of courses at the
University. Consequently, students who try to take three professional
courses are often overwhelmed by the amount of work required.
Additionally, developing competencies in a cumulative way requires time
to practice the skills to insure that they are learned thoroughly. It
is best to take the six or seven professional courses that most students
take in four semesters; jamming these courses into three or even two
semesters results in less learning.
Once you understand the contents and purpose of the Course Profiles, you can begin to use them in planning your program.