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Reviewing our service mission, 2005
In the past two years, we have continued to extend and improve our service mission, helping students develop their public speaking skills, and helping other faculty help their students.
Sp Cm 212: Fundamentals of Public Speaking
Between August 2004 and August 2005, Fundamentals enrolled approximately 1580 students in 76 sections staffed by two tenure line faculty members, three lecturers and nine teaching assistants. Newly equipped classrooms for the course allow all students to use Powerpoint in delivering their speeches and to tape their speeches for later self-assessment. A WebCT site for the course was initiated in 2005, and with the help of a Miller grant, we are working to deliver many basic course functions online, such as pre-test/post-test, feedback, grading, exam review and scheduling.
ISUComm and Communication Across the Curriculum
Slagell and Ringlee have been active in support of the ISUComm initiative to build increased oral communication emphasis into the basic composition courses. We have led training sessions on presentation exercises, assessing oral communication, and communication for classroom teachers. We have delivered similar training sessions through the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching and the Preparing Future Faculty program. In addition, we have worked directly with the Veterinary College on Bioterrorism Awareness Training (Slagell) and Mechanical Engineering on student presentations (Ringlee). We have partnered with Natural Resource & Ecological Management as part of the NSF- and Cargill-funded SENCER initiative, supporting the teaching of science through civic engagement, helping faculty use debate exercises (Goodwin).
Support of other programs
Fundamentals of Public Speaking includes one or more Learning Communities every semester, including the Catt Center's ACT Learning Community and the Animal Ecology Learning Community.
Almost all our upper-division courses are listed as satisfying the advanced study requirement for the Rhetorical Studies track within the English major. Several of our courses are now listed as satisfying requirements for the Communication Studies major, alleviating overcrowding there somewhat. Our advanced public speaking course, Sp Cm 312, is being incorporated as a basic requirement of the new LAS Leadership minor, with many other courses being electives in the minor. In addition, Laware is scheduled to teach a special topics course that will be cross-listed into Women's Studies, and Dearin's Sp Cm 417, Campaign Rhetoric, is cross-listed into Political Science.
