During this one-year program, you’ll examine the theory and practice of persuasive communication, brand responsibility, brand management, creative, and account planning. And you’ll round out your coursework with a professional project that showcases what you’ve learned over the year. See the courses you’ll be taking with your cohort below. Consult the UO Class Schedule to find out when these courses are offered and register.

Core Courses

JCOM 557 Curiosity for Strategists 4 credits
Build intellectual curiosity as a problem-solving technique within the context of culture and media. This class is a mix of theory and skill building, with an emphasis is on critical thinking, readings, projects, and performance.

JCOM 594 Strategic Communication Research 4 credits
Learn how and why public relations and advertising professionals conduct research, and how they use it to formulate strategic campaigns and evaluate their effectiveness. This class is a mix of theory and skill building.

JCOM 607 Brand Responsibility Seminar 12 credits total / 4 credits each term
Do a deep dive into brand responsibility while tying together all coursework under the brand responsibility framework. Here’s what you’ll learn in each term:

• Fall seminar: Define brand responsibility: what it is, how it differs from and complements corporate social responsibility, how brands identify their responsibility, and how they communicate this responsibility to consumers.
• Winter seminar: Examine case studies in brand responsibility, drawing from cases developed by SOJC faculty and students or published by Harvard Business School. Work with outside professionals to identify best practices in brand responsibility.
• Spring seminar: Develop brand responsibility while creating your own campaigns.

JCOM 610 Design, Technology, and Culture 4 credits
Through a variety of guest speakers, workshops, and modern design processes, students will examine different perspectives on how technology and advertising has evolved, why it has evolved, how it affects us personally, how these shifts affect us globally, how innovation affects policy, and how these all shape our communities.

JCOM 611 Media & Society 4 credits
Learn the social, technological, economic, and political trends that influence communication practice in the digital age and analyze the forces challenging legacy news organizations today.

Terminal Project

JCOM 609 Terminal Project 6–9 credits
There are many ways to approach this capstone project. You could get an internship with a brand responsibility component. You could create a strategic brand responsibility advertising campaign, present a case study of a brand that successfully implemented a brand responsibility campaign, or conduct a comparative analysis of how different brands express the same responsible aspect, like diversity. See examples of previous students' capstone projects in our student work feed.

Electives

JCOM 510 Ideasmithing 4 credits
Learn tools and techniques for generating exceptional ideas by understanding consumer behaviors. This is primarily a skill-building class.

JCOM 510 Interactive Media 4 credits
Explore the range of the digital channels available to persuasive communicators.

JCOM 512 Strategic Social Media 4 credits
Get an overview of the history, theory, and practice of social media.

JCOM 560 Advertising and Culture 4 credits
Critically examine the intersection of advertising and culture in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity. This class is a mix of theory and skill building.

JCOM 560 Essentials of Brand Planning 4 credits
Learn the basics of account planning and the role it plays in creating brand campaigns. This is primarily a skill-building class.

JCOM 560 Green Brand Strategy 4 credits
Get an introduction to sustainable brands, services, and messages. Find out how brands can help change consumer attitudes and behaviors toward the environment. This class is a mix of theory and skill building.

JCOM 560 Writing Design Concepts 4 credits
Develop conceptual problem-solving skills for traditional and emerging media. This is primarily a skill-building class, with an emphasis on conceptual development, advertising writing, design, campaigns, and presentation of developed work.

Questions?

Need some guidance? Here are a few options:

1. Download our graduate handbook for more details about program requirements and resources.
2. Contact our graduate recruiter with questions about the program, the application process, and admission.