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Classes are designed to challenge your thinking and develop your professional skills. You’ll leave each class with a unique set of tools to approach new communications challenges.

Tailor your experience to your career goals by focusing on one of eight areas of specialization. Use the search widget below to sort classes by quarter, specialization, instructor and degree track for each quarter. Get a comprehensive view of the full academic year in our Course Guide.

View the University of Washington Academic Calendar for important dates, including quarter start and end dates, registration dates and deadlines, and campus holidays.

Registration numbers (SLNs) are located on the Time Schedule. Please read the Department’s statement on internet resource requirements for access to courses.

COMMLD 563: Multicultural Marketing: Creating Equitable and Inclusive Communications

(

Park

)

- 2024-2025 | Autumn 2024

MCCN Elective | Meets Law & Ethics Requirement | 5 Credits
Saturdays 9:00am – 5:00pm, 9/28, 10/12, 10/26, 11/9, 11/23 | Online
Registration SLN: 13074

Course Description

This course will take a close look at the evolution of multicultural marketing, industry best practices and foundational strategies related to multicultural communications. We will explore how agencies and companies have adapted, pivoted and transformed the way brands and organizations engage with diverse audiences. You’ll learn how to build marketing campaigns that are rooted in principles of diversity, equity and inclusion. Additionally, we’ll learn how to craft campaigns that are responsive to the increasingly diverse marketplace and ever-changing marketing landscape.

Meets Law & Ethics Requirement.

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COMMLD 560A: Wellness Narratives

(

Bradshaw

)

- 2024-2025 | Autumn 2024

Track Neutral | Meets Research Methods Requirement | 5 Credits
Mondays 9/30 – 12/2, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | DEN 113
Registration SLN: 13072

Course Description

“Wellness” is one of those buzzwords that hovers over the top of various pop culture and advertising we consume. It’s a concept that permeates much of how we live and work in the world, and can often feel like a given. But what does “Wellness” actually mean? This course will dive deep into wellness and well-being as central concepts to mental, physical, and emotional modes of health in the 21st century. The goal is for communication professionals to better understand how modern “Wellness” campaigns connect all the way back to early 20th century American advertising campaigns, and why this history matters.

Yes, we will talk about GOOP, reflect upon Soul Cycle, and different popular diets like Paleo and Keto. But we will also explore them through a historical, cultural, economic and technological framework that connects the current moment to 20th century cultural anxieties of the physical and mental body, including the focus on losing unwanted weight and detoxifying the body from various ailments. Other wellness topics for the course will include productivity, health, corporate and social responsibility, clutter, burnout, and more.  

The final assignment helps showcase the student’s ability to do preliminary research while taking complex ideas and distilling them into an understandable presentation for an executive audience. We will do weekly reflective journal exercises throughout the quarter that engage with the readings and screenings from the course. Come prepared to engage in discussion, deep dive into wellness research, and hone your writing skills!

Meets Research Methods Requirement.

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COMMLD 544: Professional Short-Form Writing

(

Tomasic

)

- 2024-2025 | Autumn 2024

Track Neutral | Meets Professional Writing Requirement | 3 Credits
Wednesdays 9/25 – 12/4, 6:00pm – 8:20pm | CMU 126
Registration SLN: 13069

Course Description

This collaborative hands-on course explores the kind of short-form writing that dominates today’s rapidly evolving professional communications space — the digital space where lines between content and form increasingly blur and where always-on media feeds deliver a mix of advertising, marketing, public relations, human resources, personal brand-building and journalistic reporting and research. It’s a space that presents new writing challenges every day: professional emails, office memos, newsletters, website copy, funding proposals, executive summaries, op-eds, tweets, blurbs, blogs. Much of this material is badly done. Most of it is mediocre. The best of it, though, sings out and demands our attention, demonstrating mastery in the kind of critical thinking and dedicated practice that delivers copy sharply focused and sure in matching voice and material with form and audience. This course is part professional-communications criticism class and part writing workshop. It’s about learning how to identify good writing; it’s about understanding the process that produces good writing; and it’s about practicing that process yourself.

Meets Professional Writing Requirement.

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COMMLD 541A: Crisis Communication

(

Visneski

)

- 2024-2025 | Autumn 2024

Track Neutral | Meets Law & Ethics Requirement | 5 Credits
Wednesdays 9/25 – 12/4, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | Online
Registration SLN: 13067

Course Description:

Nothing is more dramatic than a crisis. When an organization, company, industry, or individual in the public eye is in a crisis, communication is one of the crucial routes back to normalcy. Oftentimes, organizations find themselves unprepared when a crisis hits and only then think “Oh goodness, we should get a crisis communications plan in place!” Trying to “spin” a bad situation can both be unethical, and ineffective, damaging reputation, and subsequently business.

This course will teach you how to be rapidly responsive, responsible, and to avoid common pitfalls in crisis comms. We will examine how organizations attempt to anticipate and recover from crises, how the broadcast and print media cover different types of crises, how crisis communications fails, and how it succeeds.

Meets Law and Ethics Requirement.

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COMMLD 540A: The Power of Revision

(

Baltus

)

- 2024-2025 | Autumn 2024

Track Neutral | Meets Professional Writing Requirement | 3 Credits
Mondays 9/30 – 12/2, 6:00pm – 8:20pm | CMU 242
Registration SLN: 13065

Course Description

No matter what kind of writing you do, editing skills are essential to producing your best work. In this course, experienced writers will learn a rigorous, methodical approach to revision that transforms a rough draft into a compelling finished piece. You’ll gain the awareness and control you need to diagnose and address problems, develop ideas and themes, create structure, and craft a story. You’ll also hone your ability at the line level, learning ways to make your writing clearer and more precise by eliminating clichés, clunky phrases, and extraneous words. As an editing workshop, this course emphasizes the importance of giving and receiving kind, productive feedback. It focuses on longer-form texts for public audiences, such as blog posts, executive op-eds, and news releases, though its principles are applicable to all forms of writing and creative iteration.

Meets Professional Writing Requirement.

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COMMLD 535: Foundations of Audio Storytelling

(

Partnow

)

- 2024-2025 | Autumn 2024

Track Neutral | 5 Credits
Tuesdays 10/1 – 12/3, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | PCAR 297
Registration SLN: 13063

Course Description

The podcasting industry has surged in recent years, with podcasts also becoming an increasingly important part of marketing and communication campaigns. Since it is the only medium that audiences can consume while engaged in a multitude of other activities, audio storytelling has a unique advantage to inform, entertain and call to action.

This course will teach you how to use audio to tell a powerful story. You will learn how to create your own short sound-rich, nonfiction audio story driven by characters and scenes. You will move through the process of research, reporting, interviewing, writing, editing, and mixing an audio story, as well as pitching a story for radio or podcast. By the end of the class you will have a working knowledge of the basics of audio storytelling and production. You will feel more confident about how to support visual storytelling with audio, as well as how to work with a larger production team on audio projects.

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COMMLD 525: Brand Values & Creativity

(

Howard

)

- 2024-2025 | Autumn 2024

Track Neutral | 5 Credits
Wednesdays 9/25 – 12/4, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | DEN 213
Registration SLN: 13057

Course Description:

This course will take a close up look at corporate brand values in marketing communications today. Brand values should be timeless and unchanging, but in a constantly fluctuating business environment, is this goal even possible? While high volume video advertising and A/B testing is exploding, paradoxically, messaging of corporate brand values is oftentimes minimized. Marketing today is composed of ever-changing algorithms, transactional communications, and confusing narratives. Should creativity play a bigger role in storytelling in today’s marketplace? Do customers even know what the companies they make purchases from actually stand for values-wise? Does it matter? How can companies still connect emotionally with consumers? Students will ideate a marketing film for a company or nonprofit of their choice. All the while, they’ll be considering deeply how emotion, story, and marketing message function in a project that resonates with the consumer while also reinforcing an organization’s belief system.

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COMMLD 520A: Principles of Marketing

(

Meyer

)

- 2024-2025 | Autumn 2024

Track Neutral | 5 Credits
Mondays 9/30 – 12/9, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | CMU 126
Registration SLN: 13053

Course Description

This course is designed to provide you with an understanding of foundational marketing concepts and their application within business and non-business organizations. We start with an overview of marketing strategy, including strategic goal setting and planning and assessment of the market environment (company customers, and competitors), and then review fundamental elements of the marketing mix – product, price, placement (distribution) and promotion. We’ll go deeper into marketing communications, including product/service launches, branding, and integrated campaigns. We will explore all this through a dynamic mix of lectures, case studies, guest speakers, videos, in-class discussions, and individual and group projects.

At the end of the course, you will know how to develop a marketing plan, including how to perform market segmentation, targeting, and positioning; implement branding concepts; execute market research tools and techniques; analyze consumer/audience behavior, introduce new products or services, and develop advertising and integrated communications campaigns.

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COMMLD 513: Content Marketing

(

Weaver

)

- 2024-2025 | Autumn 2024

MCCN Elective | Meets Research Methods Requirement | 5 Credits
Saturdays 10/5, 10/19, 11/02, 11/16, 12/07, 9:00am – 5:00pm | Online
Registration SLN: 13051

Course Description

This course focuses on the approach and implementation of marketing programs that encourage community building and engagement. Content marketing is a special kind of content that you can use to build relationships with audiences, drawing new audiences or rewarding loyal fans. Our focus will be on how to give freely of our knowledge. We will explore a research-backed method for how to make content that educates and supports audiences, that complements advertising, mission-driven, or task-based content.

To do so, we will learn the basics of a content strategy process. Our 6 part data-driven methodology includes working with secondary research: stakeholder goals and audiences. Conducting our own primary research in comparative and content review. Building from research, we’ll explore best practices and tactics for messaging, content planning, and delivering strategy concepts to clients or coworkers. Our final product focuses on building brand storytelling, effective messaging, and planning adaptable content for multichannel (physical or digital) environments. Final materials can be useful for portfolios.

Meets Research Methods Requirement.

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COMMLD 503: Practicum: Search Engine Optimization

(

Long

)

- 2024-2025 | Autumn 2024

Track Neutral | 2 Credits
Thursdays 9/26 – 12/5, 6:00pm – 7:50pm | CMU 126
Registration SLN: 13042

Course Description

In this practicum, students will work on a real-world Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy—forming a partnership among SEO students, instructor, and a client. Students will work in a team-based context and apply their SEO skills to be able to give the client an SEO strategy recommendation for their website to help them improve their keyword rankings in Google.

The final deliverable will be a client presentation highlighting keywords that the client should target based on the use of various analytics tools resourced with help from the instructor. Students will also deliver a sample of a page that has been optimized on the client’s website as an example, with resources the client can use to further optimize their site. By the end of the Practicum, students will have a sample for their portfolio to demonstrate their knowledge of SEO.

About Communication and Leadership Practicum:
Communication and Leadership Practicum courses give you the opportunity to engage in contemporary professional practice by addressing the challenges of real-life organizations. Each section is matched with a client organization or group of client organizations, and focuses on a distinct professional skill or practice that is deemed essential across a variety of professional fields. 

Designed to mirror a professional setting, our Practicum offer you the opportunity to work at a higher level and with greater responsibility than what you might encounter in an internship or in entry-level work. In the span of a quarter, you will enhance highly-desirable professional skills, produce work that you can include in your own professional portfolios, and most importantly, leave with a story–your story – of what you did in this project to create value for your client.

Credit/No Credit Only

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COMMLD 501: Leadership and Communities

(

Yasin

)

- 2024-2025 | Autumn 2024

Track Neutral | 5 Credits
Thursdays 9/26 – 12/5, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | PCAR 192
Registration SLN: 13041

Course Description

This foundational class considers leadership development through the two lenses of story and community. Sustained community engagement in the service of a more equitable and just world requires strong leadership models. Personal history and cultural context influence leadership styles, so using cross-sector profiles and guest speakers, we will carefully consider a range of leaders, their life stories, communication styles, and how they connect meaningfully to customers, colleagues, and constituents.

Credit/No Credit only

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COMMLD 600: MC Research Project

(

)

- 2023-2024 | Summer 2024

Track Neutral | 5 Credits
Application Required

Course Description:

After completion of a minimum of 50% of Comm Lead course work, students can choose to conduct a scholarly research project. An MC Research Project is roughly the equivalent of a master’s thesis in scope and rigor, and requires the student form a committee of at least two faculty members to evaluate the work, as well as give a public presentation of the final deliverable. See complete details and application instructions on the Guide to MC Research Project page.

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COMMLD 593: Internship

(

)

- 2023-2024 | Summer 2024

Track Neutral | 1-5 Credits
Application Required

Course Description:

An internship can be a useful way to give students a fundamental understanding of the industry and to accelerate one’s career path. Internships should be directly relevant to the student’s field of study (degree or specialization). Part-time jobs not related to the degree will normally not be approved for internship credit, as the purpose of an internship is to apply what you have been learning in your degree to a real world work experience. See complete details and application instructions on the Guide to Internships page.

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COMMLD 591: Independent Research

(

)

- 2023-2024 | Summer 2024

Track Neutral | 1-5 Credits
Application Required

Course Description:

Independent Research projects are student-driven, with faculty serving in a loose advisory capacity. This option is for students with a clear project in mind who will only need minimal faculty support to accomplish their end goal. See complete details and application instructions on the Guide to Independent Research page.

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COMMLD 503 A/B: Practicum in Immersive Experience Design

(

Cioffi

)

- 2023-2024 | Summer 2024

Track Neutral | 2 or 3 credits
Thursdays 6/20 – 8/15, 6:00pm – 8:20pm | CMU 302
2-credit 503A Registration SLN: 10828
3-credit 503B Registration SLN: 14193

Course Description

In this practicum course, students will collaborate with Mental Health Over Dinner and the Seattle Chamber of Connection to advance storytelling projects across various platforms. Through event design, user-generated content strategies, and immersive technologies like XR, students will develop comprehensive story plans to drive client missions forward. They will learn essential skills such as navigating ambiguity, deep listening, and delivering tangible outcomes like storyboards, slide presentations, and execution plans. By the course’s end, students will have honed their storytelling abilities and gained practical experience in real-world project development and collaboration.

Section A will be 2 credits. Section B will be 3 credits.

Credit / No Credit Only.

About 503 Communication and Leadership Practicum

Communication and Leadership Practicum courses give students an opportunity to engage with and understand the uses of course concepts in contemporary professional practice by addressing the challenges of real-life organizations.

Each section of the Comm Lead Practicum focuses on a distinct professional skill or practice that is deemed essential across a variety of professional fields. Students can choose their section based on their interests and needs. Each section is matched with a client organization or group of client organizations who are interested in partnering with Communication Leadership students.

In the span of a quarter, students analyze the issues faced by the client organization(s), collaborate and brainstorm collectively in small teams, and with the support of their faculty mentor create a deliverable for the client organization(s) that relates to the specific practice. Students may also create creative samples as part of the project. In doing so, students can develop and enhance skills, build foundations of practice, and produce work that they can include in their own professional portfolios.

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COMMLD 560A: Inclusive Design & Product Equity

(

Liu

)

- 2023-2024 | Summer 2024

Track Neutral | Meets Law & Ethics Requirement | 5 Credits
Mondays 6/17 – 8/12, 5:30pm – 9:20pm | CMU 126
Registration SLN: 14185

Course Description:

This course offers a comprehensive exploration of the critical intersection between Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and technology. In an era where technology such as artificial intelligence and machine learning plays an ever-expanding role in shaping our world, we should interrogate who gets to build it, use it, and profit from it. As future technology leaders it is imperative to not only be well versed in DEI but to create necessary solutions that democratize technology rather than allow it to perpetuate systems of inequality.

Meets Law & Ethics Requirement.

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© Copyright 2025 Department of Communication. University of Washington

© Copyright 2025 Department of Communication. University of Washington