Communication

This course explores the new role of brand activism as a tool to forge consumer-brand relationships, manage corporate brand reputation, and drive social and environmental impact. It examines both the promise and the pitfalls of brand activism and evaluates how storytelling and digital enhancement can support brand activism. The course covers how brands are increasingly embracing social, environmental, and political ideologies as a way to build their brand-centered identity and engage with various stakeholder groups. It explores this phenomena as an off-shoot of corporate social responsibility and more traditional branding strategies. It examines the corporate brand as the embodiment of the firm’s value position. After an introduction to what is meant by brand activism, the course moves to examine several planning issues, including how to connect with stakeholders, choosing values and causes that are authentic, and determining risk exposure. It then moves to explore how storytelling, digital enhancement, and partnerships can all magnify the impact of brand activism. 

The purpose of this practical, discussion-oriented (PBL) course is to investigate the important role that culture plays in international business scenarios and hone students' overall English proficiency levels. After learning some basic cross-cultural communication theories, principles and concepts, the course discusses different ways of increasing intercultural-communicative competence and global English-language proficiency skills.

Working in groups, students present on various topics related to their home culture; the "multimodal" role they play in their own communities, and how to use the course contents to improve their understanding of engagement in international business situations. In doing so, we will discuss issues of cultural business etiquette; stereotypes; inclusion, and SDG-sustainability in today's global marketplace.

This course examines principles and practices of inclusive leadership and communication in the context of diverse organizations. It investigates key causes and consequences of inequalities and barriers to inclusion within organizations, including overt and covert biases and forms of discrimination based on gender, ethnicity and disabilities. It also explores leadership strategies and best practices for building and sustaining inclusive organizations.

This course involves completion of an 80-100 hour work placement integrating academic learning, employability skills and attributes and an improved knowledge of organizations, workplace culture and career pathways. The placement is supplemented by pre- and post-placement classes, including a compulsory placement induction in Week 1 and compulsory pre-placement sessions in Weeks 2 &3, designed to introduce workplace culture and strategies for developing, identifying and articulating employability skills and attributes and linking them to employer requirements. The placement should draw on specific discipline skills associated with the course of enrolment. Pre-placement seminars will also include career development and planning, self-assessment, reflexivity and professional skills. Students are responsible for identifying a suitable work placement, by Week 1 of semester, with support from Student Programs staff.

The course is designed to prepare students for leadership in a globally interdependent and culturally diverse workforce. Throughout the course, students are challenged to question, think, and respond thoughtfully to the issues they observe and encounter in the internship setting, and the designated city in general. Students have the opportunity to cultivate the leadership skills as defined by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), such as critical thinking, teamwork, and diversity. Assignments focus on building a portfolio that highlights those competencies and their application to workplace skills. The hybrid nature of the course allows students to develop their skills in a self-paced environment with face-to-face meetings and check-ins to frame their intercultural internship experience. Students complete 45 hours of in-person and asynchronous online learning activities and 225-300 hours at their internship placement.

The independent study consists of a personal project each week, mainly focused on developing visual communication processes and products. The instructor provides a critique, feedback, and offers suggestions for new steps on how to improve projects. The independent study focuses on developing clear visual communication in print and web material, involving typography, layout, branding, illustration, and web design.

This survey course introduces the field of environmental communication, its core concepts, perspectives, components, contextual theories, and nature of its scholarship. It first covers the major areas that construct an environmental public sphere—the public, environmental groups, media, government, and corporations. Then, relevant Chinese environmental cases in each area are presented to apply the theories.

For Fall/Autumn 2023, students in this course will participate in the Virtual Business Professional Project (https://www.marshall.usc.edu/departments/business-communication/vbp-project) which will be coordinated by the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California (USC). Students will be assigned to a team and will collaborate with students from other universities on a project about major global companies. 

From the VBP Project website: 
The VBP Project is a global student collaboration project created and managed by business communication faculty at the Marshall School of Business at USC. The goal of the VBP Project is to help students develop skills necessary to succeed in a fast-paced global business environment that is increasingly relying on social platforms and virtual collaboration for their internal and external communication.  Every semester, 500 to 700 students participate in VBP. These students collectively represent over 50 countries around the world and study at 17 universities in 10 different countries.