Core Course Teaching Assignments

The CRDM Program strives to staff core courses with the most highly qualified faculty, whose teaching experience and published research records demonstrate appropriate expertise for each course.

At the same time, the Program aims to expose students to a diversity of epistemological and theoretical perspectives on communication, rhetoric, and digital media via the core courses.


Finally, the Program aims to offer qualified Program Faculty members the opportunity to teach core courses that match their expertise.

In order to ensure high-quality instruction, appropriate faculty expertise, intellectual diversity, and faculty opportunities to teach in the CRDM core, the CRDM Program Committee employs the following oversight process:​​

1
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At the beginning of each year, the CRDM Program Director will circulate to the Program Faculty a call for proposals to teach core courses. The call will include the course action forms or past syllabi for the CRDM core courses (701, 702, 703, 704, and 790, as well as CRD 791). An archive of past syllabi for specific courses will also be made available to faculty who request them.

2
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Faculty interested in teaching a core course will send to the Program Director, by a specified date, a brief course proposal explaining how the faculty member intends to teach the course including a brief course description and a list of major readings, assignments, and methods of evaluation (note that course catalog descriptions and learning objectives do not change from year to year).

3
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The Program Committee will review the proposals received and will advise the Program Director on the combination of faculty teaching assignments that best satisfies the following criteria:

  • appropriate faculty expertise for the specific course proposed;
  • potential for high-quality instruction;
  • intellectual diversity of the core as a whole for each cohort;
  • opportunities for a number of faculty to teach in the CRDM core;
  • diversity of topical offerings and breadth of faculty participation in teaching sections of CRD 791.​

4
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The Program Director, in consultation with the Associate Director and the Department Heads, will determine course assignments, taking into account the Program Committee’s recommendations and other available evidence of teaching qualifications and excellence.

5
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To the extent possible, core course assignments will be determined on a rolling two-year schedule (that is, with assignments being made two years in advance) in order to address the above criteria.

6
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The Program Director will inform the Program Faculty and the departmental scheduling officers of the CRDM core course teaching assignments in a timely manner, with adequate time for the faculty members to plan their courses.