COMM-469: Senior Seminar: Communication Studies

COMM-469: Senior Seminar: Communication Studies

Professor Thomas Wagner

Community Partner: Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center (IJPC)

Effective communication is at the root of every organization’s success. Without it, there is no good way to influence constituents. That is exactly what students in COMM 469 set out to help with.

 This spring, Professor Thomas Wagner integrated service learning into his Communication Studies Senior Seminar (COMM 469) course to prepare his students to formulate communication strategies after graduation, and assist local non-profit, Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center (IJPC).  Since their founding in 1985, IJPC has continued to support and take collaborative action to address issues including the abolition of the death penalty in Ohio, educating about human trafficking, promoting immigrant justice, and fostering peace on a local national and international level. To accomplish that they have several educational and direct advocacy programs centered on elevating dialogue with a variety of constituents about the death penalty, human trafficking, immigration, and peace and nonviolence.

This semester, Professor Wagner’s students split into six teams and worked closely with IJPC to identify ways to refine the nonprofit’s communication strategies. Focus areas ranged from social media to public speaking strategies for IJPC’s student led Youth Educating Society (YES). Students researched and formulated detail plans that they proposed to IJPC at the end of the semester.  The relationship between the local nonprofit and the students is a reciprocal one, wherein students implement what they have learned during their time at Xavier and organizations have the chance to expand their communication strategies.

Dr. Wagner emphasized when working with local nonprofits over the last couple of years, he relates the work students put in to the equivalent of “having 50 hours with a communication consultant” in which the nonprofit can implement communication strategies that best suit them.  Dr. Wagner organized brief weekly meetings with each team, but it was up to the students themselves to find and implement the best strategy for their client. Each team started by creating a needs assessment for IJPC and then curating a plan to address the need. Some teams built interactive websites while others created a detailed social media plan.

“The experience prepared you for what you would expect post-graduation. It was up to our teams to figure out how to address the needs of the non-profit and determine the best way to implement that plan,” senior MaKayla Conners added. “We were put in a situation to use what we had learned in our other communication classes and make IJPC’s communication more effective.”