Eloquentia Perfecta / EP: OVC Overview 

Eloquentia Perfecta: Oral and Visual Communication Core Courses are part of a rigorous and cohesive set of courses designed to cultivate “perfect eloquence” in writing, speaking and other forms of creative public expression in alignment with the foundational goals of the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum. In these courses, students are trained in the five duties of the rhetorician: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Courses that satisfy the Oral and Visual Communication requirement develop students’ ability to prepare and deliver effective oral and visual messages and arguments within academic and professional contexts and advocate for the common good. Students advance their oral and visual communication skills through assignments that require them to consider their own positions, present audience-appropriate messages and arguments, and acknowledge multiple and contradictory perspectives. In this process, students learn to evaluate oral and visual arguments and reflect on the ways in which identity, values and diverse cultural contexts shape their own and others’ oral and visual communication. They also reflect on the ways in which rhetorically fluent communication is vital to ethical public discourse, understood as effective communication in service of the common good.