Communications & Rhetoric

Combine communication skills with discipline-specific content, and broader interdisciplinary and professional applicability in real-world contexts.

How can Communications & Rhetoric courses be used?

  • Electives to complement your degree
  • Expand the scope of your Major and/or Minor
  • Develop academic, professional and cross-cultural communication skills
  • Complete a 15 credit Certificate

Courses in Communications and Rhetoric develop advanced level communication and research skills in specific disciplines: humanities, sciences, and social sciences.

Students will gain interdisciplinary knowledge in a range of communication and rhetoric concepts, theories, and skills, to help them work efficiently in academic, professional, and diverse sociocultural contexts.

Rhetoric is embedded in every act of communication through the purpose and persuasive strategy that we weave into our verbal, non-verbal, and creative acts. Communications and Rhetoric provides additional ways of knowing, learning, and producing collaborative research through different pathways of experiencing  communication concepts: through literary and cultural studies, the creative arts, world literature and languages, as well as management, the sciences and social sciences.

Courses offered in this area will prepare students for the vital role of written, oral and digital communications in the 21st century workplace. They will produce a variety of texts and creative artefacts in professional, intercultural and community settings to enhance career opportunities.

Courses taught this year Academic Calendar

Certificate in Communications and Rhetoric

The Certificate in Communications and Rhetoric is distinct in addressing an identified need for a more diverse, inclusive and laddered approach to developing students’ skills in communication and rhetoric, including oral, written, performative, digital, and creative communications.

Students will engage in the design and creation of diverse multimodal artefacts, digital, textual, audio, and/or other visual forms of communication, the creation of online blogs and e-portfolios, and participation in digital platforms such as UBC Blogs. Community service learning and collaborations with community and industry partners in the profession, and project-based collaborations, will grant opportunities to apply conceptual knowledge through professional practice.

To receive a COHR certificate, students must complete 15 credits through courses from four thematic interdisciplinary and relational clusters, and a final capstone project.

The Community: Communication genres and styles are agreed upon within communities; this cluster offers students in-depth understanding of communications expectations, needs, and challenges within a range of communities.

Students must take 3 credits from:

  • CORH 203 Communications in the Sciences
  • CORH 204 Communications in the Humanities
  • CORH 205 Communications in the Social Sciences
  • CORH 206 Rhetoric of Indigeneity

The Media: By researching, analyzing and creating digital, textual, audio, and visual media, students will engage with contemporary communication theory and practice

The Self: Understandings of self and how the self impacts relationships with others are a foundation for effective personal and professional communication

The Individual and Others: Interpersonal communication skills across a range of digital, written, and oral platforms can enhance students’ abilities to navigate professional, personal, and academic contexts

Communication Capstone: Combining different disciplinary strands in a research-centric collaborative project.

Students pursuing any undergraduate degree at UBC Okanagan can register to complete the CORH Certificate, and must have completed all the pre-requisites for the required courses. Students must register via the link below.

Registration

Students are expected to contact an academic advisor before enrolling in the Certificate program to assess their eligibility and academic progression. These 15 credits are included in the 120 credits a student is required to complete as part of their program. A student may be required to go above the 120 credits if they have not completed all of the pre-requisites prior to registering for this program.

Up to two courses (6 credits) used to satisfy a program requirement may also be used to satisfy the certificate requirements. They may also complete the Communications and Rhetoric courses to fulfill degree requirements or as electives, with permission from their home faculty/department.

View the Academic Calendar for information.

  • Student testimonials

    COMMUNICATIONS & RHETORIC students at UBC Okanagan speak about the courses they took. They talk about the courses being lectives to complement their degrees, how they expand the scope of their Major and/or Minor, and how they develop academic, professional and cross-cultural communication skills.

  • Communication in the Humanities

    This is a practice-based course that develops advanced level communication and research skills in the humanities. Understanding expectations as they vary across academic domains can help writers more successfully participate in a range of conversations and communicate effectively within those disciplines.

    Students will work on advanced writing skills, while also considering the topic of human migration as a starting point to recognize how different disciplines within the Humanities argue it differently to establish an awareness of audience and style. Research topics will change each year to address diverse academic conversations. (Course: CORH 204)

  • Communication in the Sciences

    Classroom

    This is a practice-based course that develops advanced level communication and research skills in the sciences.

    This course will explore how knowledge is constructed in the physical and natural sciences and communicated through a broad range of genres and contexts within specialist communities in the scientific disciplines, and to non-specialist audiences.

    Students will gain the skills necessary to navigate through a variety of genres and discursive modes in science writing, verbally, orally and digitally, and to present information precisely and persuasively.

    (Course: CORH 203)

  • Communication in the Social Sciences

    This is a practice-based course that develops advanced level communication and research skills in the social sciences. In this course, students will gain an understanding of how to effectively communicate the issues pertaining to human and non-human communities, the environment, and sociocultural and sociolinguistic contexts to varied audiences.

    Students will generate ways of engaging multiple approaches from a social science communication perspective to respond to these issues. (Course: CORH 205)

  • Why Communications & Rhetoric?

    Communications is vital for talking about pressing social issues, and for thinking about how certain stories, ideas, and perspectives are shared. Rhetoric is embedded in every act of communication through the purpose and persuasive strategy that we weave into our verbal, non-verbal, and creative acts, explains English professor, Aisha Ravindran.

    “Being aware of how language is used to persuade, and using it strategically and ethically to achieve your objectives, can make you more productive, confident, and highly respected as an efficient communicator.” She says.

    Read more…

Kerrie Charnley | Indigenous Epistemologies, Indigenous Literacies, Indigenous Land/Ocean-Based Pedagogies and Praxis, Indigenous Storywork, Indigenous Literatures, Indigenous Oral Traditions, Indigenous Languages, Coast/Salish Epistemologies, Multimodal and Multi-sensory Literacies, Cognitive Maps and Geography, Rhetoric, Discourse Analysis, A/r/tography and Arts-Based Research, Writing Education, Autoethnography and Memoir, Mixed Genre Writing, Critical and Transformative Literacy Education.

Anita Chaudhuri | Communication; Rhetoric and Composition; Second language writing; Critical Discourse Analysis.

Marie Loughlin | 16th-century poetry and prose; early modern women’s writing; early modern drama; women’s literature; 16th and 17th-century literature; spiritual autobiography; speculative fiction; feminist and queer theory.

Aisha Ravindran | Internationalization of higher education; academic writing in multilingual, multicultural, and globalized environments; English as an additional language (EAL); university writing pedagogy; the intersections of language, culture, literacies, and student and teacher agency and identities; second language teacher education; new materiality and posthumanism; Gilles Deleuze.

Jordan Stouck | Composition studies; Canadian and Caribbean literature; postcolonial and decolonization studies; scholarship of teaching and learning.

Minor in Communications & Rhetoric

Communications & Rhetoric is being developed into  a Minor (anticipated launch date: Fall 2023).

The 30-credit Minor will align with the communications needs of students across the disciplines at UBC Okanagan. The suite of 10 courses will combine communication skills with discipline-specific content, and broader interdisciplinary and professional applicability in real-world contexts.

The program advisory team includes faculty from the Faculty of Creative & Critical Studies, Faculty of Health and Social Development, Faculty of Management , Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Okanagan School of Education, School of Engineering and the UBC Okanagan Library.

Communication skills are highly valued in most industries and identified as essential employment skills by the Government of Canada, as well as a core expectation from a university degree by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

UBC Okanagan students have noted the value of communication both for their university studies and for their future careers (OPAIR, 2017).