THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT ASHEVILLE

FACULTY SENATE

Senate Document Number 0405F

Date of Senate Approval 11/10/05

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Statement of Faculty Senate Action:

APC Document 5: Addition of MCOM 327, 329, 351 and 353

Effective Date: Fall 2006

1. Add: On pg. 167, the following new courses: MCOM 327, 329, 351 and 353

327 Editorial Writing Workshop (2)

Editorial writing in a standard newspaper format. Emphasis on utilization of factual material to support opinion, news judgment, and argument construction. See department chair.

329 Copy Editing Workshop (2)

Reading and editing copy. Sentence and paragraph restructuring, lead clarification, and word choice. Emphasis on news judgment as a basis for editorial decisions. See department chair.

351 Public Relations Workshop (2)

Exploration and creation of press releases, fact sheets, backgrounders, feature stories and other persuasive communication media. Development of crisis communication plans and internal and external public relations strategies. See department chair.

353 Advertising Workshop (2)

Exploration and creation of effective advertising copy. Emphasis on involvement devices, rational and emotional techniques, integrated marketing communication, and media selection. See department chair.

Impact:

These additions will have no impact on other programs. The 2-hour workshop format allows for more frequent offering of these and other courses to meet student demand without substantive resource implications.

Rationale:

The Mass Communication Department has had great success, both in terms of student outcomes and student evaluation, with workshop-format courses, and hence we are attempting to move many of our courses to the new format. MCOM 343, Public Relations and MCOM 345, Communication Strategies in Advertising include conceptual and theoretical materials that are covered in other courses. They are being deleted to make way for these new workshops, which will cover the practical portion of the deleted courses. Recent research in best practices in communication education suggests that workshop format courses, such as these, lead to the best student outcomes, and as suggested earlier, we have found that to be true in our own practice. MCOM 325, Opinion Writing differs substantively from the proposed Editorial Writing Workshop in that the Opinion Writing course is not in a workshop format, and focuses on a broad array of writing styles utilizing auctorial opinion. Therefore, it will remain a part of the curriculum.