Report of the Hope College Conference on Designing the Undergraduate Curriculum in Communication

Abstract

The 2000 Hope College National Communication Association Faculty Development Institute conference on undergraduate curriculum requirements for communication programs produced a consensus document, which is presented in full. The document is placed in historical context, with a comparison to the original 1985 conference report. Forty-two participants at the 2000 conference, coordinated by Joseph McDoniels and Roger Smitter and facilitated by Stephen Littlejohn, agreed that all graduates of an undergraduate degree program in communications should meet conceptual and competency standards in eight different areas: theoretical approaches, sensitivity to diverse others, presentation, media literacy, influence processes, systematic inquiry, ethics, and human relational interaction. The group also proposed varied methods by which even small programs could meet these standards.

Keywords:

• Undergraduate Communication Curriculum Standards
• National Communication Association Faculty Development Institute