ISUComm Mission

The goal of ISUComm is to strengthen students' communication abilities and critical thinking by creating opportunities for them to analyze, practice, and assess communication throughout their academic careers. While many institutions encourage faculty from all disciplines to include writing assignments in their courses, ISUComm speaks to a broader set of communication competencies. It is contemporary and comprehensive in its emphasis on written, oral, visual, and electronic communication, building on both the distinct features of these four modes and the basic rhetorical principles that they share.

ISUComm works at four major levels:

Foundational. Students begin their ISUComm journey in two communication courses, one in each of their first two years. Here they engage their own culture and the cultures of others through critical analysis, practice in written, visual, oral and electronic (WOVE) composing, and formal reflection on their communication experiences.

Advanced. Students continue their WOVE development through advanced communicatin courses. These may be discipline specific; part of academic learning communities; focused on a mode like public speaking or on a broad field such as business, scientific, or technical communication; or aimed at a specific genre, such as report and proposal writing or web design.

Disciplinary. ISUComm helps academic disciplines assess their communication needs, plan communication activities to meet those needs, and assess communication learning. Some colleges will want college-wide communication centers. Some departments will want upper-level, communication-rich course linkages. Some programs will want communication-intensive capstone courses. For the entire university, the Writing and Media Help Center offers students and faculty support for communication learning and teaching.

Professional. ISUComm supports professional activities for students, faculty, and other Iowa educational institutions. It promotes WOVE scholarship, partners on external grants, pioneers assessment of multimodal communication learning, conducts professional development workshops, and showcases best teaching and learning practices.